i'm trying to catch up on my reading this summer. when i was in school, we read some heavy hitters; aquinas, john of the cross, augustine, church council documents, theology of the body etc. so this summer i can catch up on all of my bubble gum novels guilt free.

i think everybody has a list of books they want to read. and most of the classics are on that list, just so that people can say that they've read them. i have read a ton of books from different periods up until modern and post-modern literature. and i don't know of alot of really talented modern authors. so i've developed a new technique. i just walk down the aisles, open up a book and read the dedication and the first few lines. probably every 10 books start out something like this;

"it was the first cool day in months, which remined sally williams that she needed to have someone come out and look at her seemingly one thousand year old furnace. he had always done that, and until that fateful day three years ago, she couldn't tell you if it was a good thing or a bad thing that there was a small fire burning inside of it."

*sighs* next book.

it's funny how everyone writes about death and loss. the theologian in me wants to say that people write about it because it is unnatural; adam and eve weren't created to die, it was a result of their sin. but the other parts of me know that the challenge for the author lies in attempting to put such a life-altering experience into words.

i love words. language is an incredible tool; i don't ever want to take for granted the gift of expression that we have been given in words. our words are so far beyond the sounds that animals make to 'communicate'. an animal's mating call doesn't make the other animal feel anything, it's just instinct. but our words can evoke so much emotion; but it's not the sounds, it's not the syllables but together to make the expression - it's the person who is speaking, the thing that he is speaking about that evokes different emotions. the word 'death' is not directly corralated to the actual thing; it's just noise that we make to communicate what is going on. and the script of our noise are just characters assigned to the individual noises. just another form of communication.

amazing.

amazing that we can make noise and adapt our understanding to be moved by it.

"when they write my obituary. tomorrow. or the next day. it will say, 'leo gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.' i'm surprised i haven't been buried alive. i often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. if i had to bet, i'd bet on the delivery boy from the chinese take-out." the history of love, nicole krauss

"the candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. he took off his hat and came slowly forward. he looked down at the guttered candlestub. he pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the fold of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. that was not sleeping. that was not sleeping." all the pretty horses, cormac mccarthy