Literature

The saddest place in the world is the religious section in a used-book store. Books no longer needed, books full of promises of Salvation given away by disillusioned owners, broken promises, lost hopes - the road to Salvation has been traveled but this road has no end, and the traveller, the hopeful disciple never arrived at his destination - books claiming to be the one and only Way to the Lord or Buddha or Allah or any number or Goddesses and Gods and Spiritual Leaders - none of them turning out to be the right path after all, at least not to this disgruntled past owner who has given up all hope of reaching a higher plain and and now wishes he had spent that fifteendollarsninetyfivecentsplustax on pornography magazines instead - if there's no hope for long term enlightenment he may as well have short term satisfaction. Who buys these remnants of discarded religions? Who decides that this religion 'works' after it has been forgotten on a low corner shelf hidden artfully behind 'Rex Hunt's World of Fishing' and 'The Complete Book of Bookbinding Throughout the Ages' and 'How to Keep the Spark in Your Marriage'? (Did that book fail too? - A bitter ex-wife casts the book into a second-hand donation bin along with a copy of 'Cooking For Two' and 'Planning for Your First Child'.) Who buys these books? Is it the man who stopped me on the street corner to tell me that "Jesus loves you", to which I muttered, "Yes, he may, but no one else does", and who looked uncomfortable and turned away to enthusiastically greet the next recipient of Jesus' love? Is it the Mormons on the bus who spoke to me for twenty minutes about religion whilst I pretended I was interested in THEIR God and THEIR GOD ONLY, and promised I would go to service, just to be polite? Is it my peers who suddenly suprise me by revealing their religious devotions then spend three hours telling me that they accept anyone's religion, it's just that theirs is the only right one? Is it the old lady who is looking forward to death as she waits to meet God and see her husband again? Is it the teenage deliquent/Goth who carries a bible in the street as an ironic gesture but has never opened it and is not even sure what he is deriding? Is it a non-descript middle age person who needs something to prop up the leg of a table and who will never joke that The Truth is upholding their dinner plate? Is it the young Art Student Scruffy Type, maybe known as 'Tree', who wanders into the shop, high on weed and life, and finds that the words are the most profound thing they have ever heard, only to discard the book when they come down and wander why they ever bought it? Does anyone buy these books? Or are they destined to form mountainous piles in musty book stores until they topple, and The Truth crushes a frail intellectual, innocently searching for the third volume of 'A Dance to the Music of Time'?
- grace o'reilly

Black. There are different types of black. This black is comforting, providing no distractions, hiding the landscape. There is more than black; the headlights reflect the thin trunks on either side of us, giving them an etheral glow. The dashboard glows and white lines streak past beneath. Occasionally the headlights pick out the shape of small animal as it darts across the road. The repetitiveness of the landscape becomes hypnotic.
The glass is cold against my forehead as I gaze at the darkened sky, eyes unfocused yet registering the multitde of stars that drift slowly past whilst the trees rush beneath them. A faint conversation from the front gives me assurance I am not alone, but only slightly penetrates my thoughts.
"...if you consider the..."
"...remember how he went..."
I trail my finger along the roof and think of Sebastion Flyte and his car. I'd like a picnic with champagne, strawberries, and a nice rug. I'd like to pull over right now and eat strawberries in the quiet dark under the trees. It's not a serious consideration. What would life be like if I acted on all my sudden romantic unrealistic impulses? A slight giggle. My sister stirs beside me. If I threw myself from the car I could have a few seconds, the bliss of flight through the misty air before I hit the road.

There is always a slight problem when we reach a roadhouse at night. A brief mental battle with myself. Should I go inside, to the inviting presence of weak (but hot) coffee and roadhouse chips; or is my current state (crumpled from hours in the car, no shoes, hair askew) too humiliating to let me creep out of the car? Usually I do climb out, stiff and tired from hours of sitting (why is it that sitting down will make one so tired?), walk shyly barefoot past the truckdrivers slouching against the cabs of their trucks with the lights glaring, smoking cheap cigarettes.
Inside they're all the same really. The Elvis memoribilia crowding the walls. The TV in the corner showing a football game. (During the day it's 'wheel of fortune'.) The laminex tables and brown vinal chairs. An aging waitress calls you 'love'.
"...like some fries, love?"
"...tomarta sauce, love?"
There's a little stand holding roadmaps, a tape called Trucking Greats, a few keyrings. Perhaps an ancient airfreshener. Grab your junkfood and climb back into the car where you sit shivering for a few moments waiting to become warm while you drop crumbs on the seats. Get back on the road and spit your gum out the window. Fervently hope it will hit the car behind you.

Early morning light brings a white glow to the lakes and sandy dirt already glistening with salinity. Settlers took all the trees away and now the earth is useless. Duststorms whip the top layer of the country away, and the sky is pink and thick. The heat starts to seep through the glass. I'm restless and can't sit still. A slight sigh. Open the window. Hair whips in your face. Breath again. Lie down to avoid the worst of the sun. Wait for the blackness to return.
- grace o'reilly

"You have no right to use the newspapers in order to impose your own stupidity and pretense onto the more or less ignorant average reader."
- le corbusier

"The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hairsprays. That's why they are put away. They make other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in the nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, televisions, and subdivisions."
- from 'a confederacy of dunces', john kennedy toole

"She loved that madly, but in a delirious way of some kind; there was never any mooching and mincing around, just talk and a very deep companionship that none of us would ever be able to fathom."
- from 'on the road', jack kerouac

That night, as I walked home, I felt the world would soon cease to exist. I never pictured the ending of humanity as a violent, tumultous event - surely it would be as this evening. The sky was the most beautiful shade of smudged violet imaginable, touched with pink and gold, broken by silent flashes of light. The air warm and comforting, almost tangible. No rain. An evening I floated through, heart brimming and soon to spill over with perceived beauty.
"The spirit of abandon
Where the spirit is abandoned
And the body thinks itself to sour."
I could picture how the end would come - our hearts would fill and brim until we could take no more - a sudden flash of brilliant white heat - then nothing.
- grace o'reilly