Friday, April 30, 2010

Imaginary People

I've been inspired by blogs my literature comrades have exposed me to recently. So I'm spreading the enthusiasm with this list of my favorite/ most intriguing fictional characters. Here are the fabricated folks that make up my top ten list.
1.) Kilgore Trout (from Breakfast of Champions)
2.) Henry Chinaski (from Ham on Rye)
3.) Boaz (from The Sirens of Titan...just because he loved those jelly creatures)
4.) Miss Lonelyhearts (from the same title, and probably Shrike from that too)
5.) Margaret (from In Watermelon Sugar..she had a big broken heart)
6.) Ignatius J. Reilly (from A Confederacy of Dunces)
7.) Judas (from the New Testament)
8.) Finny (from A Separate Peace...he really inspired me when I was 12)
9.) Satan (from Paradise Lost)
10.) Batman (from DC Comics)
11.)Judge Holden (from Blood Meridian) who may not be completely fictitious.
-I said ten characters, but Judge Holden inspired me to re-open this blog, which was originally written a while back. I encourage you to google his image and/or wikipedia his name.
Also remember there is no morality in art/literature.
#If anyone can inspire me with other books with fascinating characters, please add names in the comment section.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Poetry

I knew this guy I met in the Redwoods while I was jogging. He asked to walk me home, either trying or succeeding in impressing me with little personal thoughts like, "People are beams of light". He was the Captain of the Cross Country Team in the Redwoods of Humboldt, and he told me to gain energy in competitions he would 'borrow' energy from the trees. To this day, years
later, I tell my older brother, "I'm stealing your energy." when we do a run together.

*Side Note: No one is more fun to run with then my older brother Tim.

Anyway, I run into this runner randomly all these years later. I'd say I see him on one coast or another about every two years. Once I tried to hide from him, after he did not return one of my calls when I was very young and had first met him. So I tried to out run the cross country team in the woods. I ended up hiding behind a tree. I never got close enough to ask him if he saw me hiding.

This man's claim to fame (and his chick magnet) is knowing Neil Young's children. Neil Young is in my psychology book under, "The Theory of Multiple Intelligence" for his music 'gift'. Earlier in this interview he calls his talent a gift.

Neil Young was given the gift of a gold heart and music. But, "They give you this and you pay for that." Balancing out the universe, his wife gave birth to two children with Cerebral Palsy, which is where the runner who steals tree energy comes in: He pushes the wheel chairs of Neil's children on their summer Hawaii family vacation. Also one of his children and Neil Young himself have Epilepsy (as did Ian Curtis). Would you want his talent for the trade off? Balancing out the universe like bargaining with some supernatural force?

Also in this blog I'd like to remember a beautiful man who would come to my apartment in San Francisco, a musician, who would listen to Neil Young's every note, then leave with hardly a word exchanged between us. He once said that Neil Young's voice was as fragile as he seems.

No poet can say this better then Neil: