Laurustina

I just finished reading “The House on Mango Street” and couldn’t help but think … now where did i leave those Villa Stories?

i haven’t left the house in two days. yesterday i managed to put real clothes on. today i got as far as putting my contacts in. i DID read a book, one i picked up at the used book section of my favorite thrift store a couple of weeks ago. The book  was falling apart when i bought it, something i didn’t notice at the time, realized when the first three pages fell out as I read them. There is something strange about a book which physically deconstructs as you read it, each page hanging in there just long enough to be turned, and then fluttering free as the forefinger sweeps them from right to left. it was a short book, a novella, and i was able to keep all the pages clutched together in a tidy stack, tucked into the broken spine. i finished it tonight after dinner, and wondered if i should save it or put it in the recycling stack. hell, you know i kept it, right? in part, because of the care it took to hold it all together. sometimes that’s enough.

I’ve been reading Dave Eggers’ book, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” which had long been on my To Read list but found its way to me through the book bins at the Hospice Hope Chest thrift store. These are my favorite book bins, because all paperbacks are a dollar, except when they are 50 cents because its one of those EVERYTHING 1/2 OFF days. For some reason, which I have yet to figure out, they have the best used book selection in town and I rarely leave without an armful. It is one of those cases of the right book finding you at at the right time. I like when they do that.

I logged in today, only to see that I had eight draft posts, which is particularly pathetic, even for me. One was about movies (Pineapple Express made me laugh so hard that I snorted Diet Pepsi out of my nose, which I hadn’t done in much too long). Another was about a couple of books I just read, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” and Andrew Sullivan’s “Love Undetectable” which consists of three rather brilliant and wrenching essays. Another celebrated Solonor’s completion of my requisitioned cover of “House of the Rising Sun”, which deserves more explanation and kudos than I am going to give it here (hence the uncomplete draft that will be completed posthaste). The others are a mish-mash of holiday/family/angsty/nothingish rambling, which usually ends up getting deleted rather than posted, and in that way, well you’re not missing out on all that much. Now, if I don’t hit PUBLISH, I can see this post ending up drafted along with the rest, so here you go.

I have spent the last week reading Jim Wallis’ “God’s Politics; Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it“. As an agnostic with Buddhist leanings, raised in an evangelical household, the intersection of religion and politics is of particular interest to me and Wallis’ book is easily the most profound thing I’ve yet to read on the subject. As I wrap up the last chapters, I find myself thumbing back to certain pages, marked with a creased page or a penciled arrow in the margin. The following paragraph is from one of those pages.

“The real theological problem in America today is no longer the religious Right, but the nationalist religion of the Bush administration, one that confuses the identity of the nation with the church, and God’s purposes with the mission of American empire. America’s foreign policy is more than preemptive, it is theologically presumptuous; not only unilateral, but dangerously messianic; not just arrogant; but rather bordering on the idolatrous and blasphemous. George Bush’s personal faith has prompted a profound self-confidence in his “mission” to fight the “axis of evil”, his “call” to be commander and chief in the war against terrorism, and his definition of America’s “responsibility” to “defend the hopes of all mankind”. This is a dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology.”  (Jim Wallis can be found at Sojourners and Beliefnet. I highly recommend his writings for the faith-into-action peacemakers among us or those you know.)

Over the weekend, I finally paid off my library fees and was rewarded with the opportunity of perusing the sacred stacks. I’d racked up some nasty late charges and as a self-inflicted punishment, had been subsisting on the shelf of books in my own stacks which, for one reason or another, I’d never gotten around to reading. It was a worthy exercise. As it turned out, there were both lovely and less-than things on that shelf. I fell in love with “The Bone People” and labored through “The Mermaid Chair”. I eventually finished “Gold By the Inch” only to realize that I needed to start over from the beginning, and joined the twenty-first century by finally devouring “Fast Food Nation”. But oh the joy of wandering the asiles of the library of my childhood, fingertips strumming the spines, touching upon ond friends and new possibilities. I tried to be conservative, choosing only five books to bring home, and as always, promising myself that I won’t rack up exorbitant late fees THIS TIME, that I’ll treat my beloved library with the respect she so rightly deserves.