Sunday, May 15
A partial inventory of things found in one of those blue plastic tubs from
my parents' basement, where I threw a bunch of stuff the last time I had to move
in a hurry:
Pile of mid-1990s birthday cards from Aunts and Grandmothers.
Some notes from a highschool physics class.
The Gulag Archipelago, a Harper & Row edition translated by Thomas
P. Whitney. Purchased used; gives no indication of having ever been read by
anyone.
Pirates of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in a University of Nebraska
Press Bison Books edition. A sample:
It seemed to me that I descended thousands of feet and yet I had seen no
sign of the city. Several times I heard creatures moving through the trees
at a distance, and twice I heard the hideous scream of a targo. Should one
of these monstrous spiders attack me—well, I tried not to think about
that. Instead I tried to occupy my mind with recollections of my earthly
friends; I visualized my childhood days in India as I studied under old Chand
Kabi, I thought of dear old Jimmy Welsh, and I recalled a bevy of girls I
liked and with some of whom I had almost been serious. These recalled the
gorgeous girl in the garden of the jong, and the visions of the others faded
into oblivion. Who was she? What strange interdiction had forbidden her to see
or speak with me? She had said that she loathed me, but she had heard me tell
her that I loved her. That sounded rather silly now that I gave it thought.
How could I love a girl the first instant that I laid eyes upon her, a girl
concerning whom I knew absolutely nothing, neither her age nor her name? It
was preposterous, yet I knew that it was true. I loved the nameless beauty of
the little garden.
Two badly folded maps: The United States, and a National Geographic
insert titled "Heart of the Middle East".
Manila envelope with a chai recipe written on it in green ink.
The Artful Astrologer: Aquarius, by one Lee Holloway (hardcover, 47 pages;
includes photographs of David Lynch, Geena Davis, Carol Channing; price sticker
on back: $4.99).
Travels With Charlie, by John Steinbeck. Seems to have once belonged to
my Great Aunt Anna Mae Brenner.
Classics Illustrated no. 144 - The First Men in the Moon, apparently
printed in 1969, and given to me some time in the early 90s by my 4th grade
teacher, Mr. P, who owned a nearly mint-condition set of Mars Attacks cards and
made us memorize poems and constellations.
Draft of a paper on the wartime political involvement of Kenneth Rexroth
and Weldon Kees, which is not good but which is also not quite as bad as I'd
remembered.
Several 1980s issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction and
Analog.
Blue folder containing: Resume mentioning both chainsaws and Unix
(but no actual work experience); Peace Corps application packet (never
started); Pile of Latin quizzes (considerable red ink). One of the latter
contains this fragment of attempted translation:
she herself young branches and tender shoots
for the bull
cuts with an unaccustomed hand
Pile of unused aerogrammes.
Legal pad full of drunken ranting:
that fucking stack of exams
is like 9 miles of mountain
to climb before a morning
that is going to come
before you even want to
think about the things that
daylight always drags up
Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels With
alternative readings from the Manuscripts and Noncanonical Parallels, edited by
Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr.
Small stack unused bluebooks.
An empty folder titled "Student Government Stuff".
A ticket stub for Qantas Flight TN 102, AUCKLAND to LOS ANGELES, seat 22K.
tags: topics/poem, topics/reading, topics/sfnal
p1k3 /
2011 /
5 /
15