Underworld

So I've been reading a new book I picked up at Half Priced Books in Apple Valley - Underworld, by Don DeLillo.  His layered storytelling and writing that moves like poetry; how he organizes the connecting pieces . . .it's like a favorite song.  I'm loving it like I loved Steinbeck's East of Eden.

Here are some quotes/teasers for you:

"What richness of subject, two living things changing before our eyes, going from dumb clamor, from milk slop to formed words, or starting school, or just sitting at the table eating, little crayoned faces pumped with being."

"I noticed how people played at being executives while actually holding executive positions.  Did I do this myself?  You maintain a shifting distance between yourself and your job.  There's a self-conscious space, a sense of formal play that is a sort of arrested panic, and maybe you show it in a forced gesture or a ritual clearing of the throat.  Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half-made selves, but it's not that you're pretending to be something else.  You're pretending to be exactly who you are.  That's the curious thing."

"The tremor had hit at cocktail time when I was standing in the hospitality suite with a number of colleagues, who peered over their drinks in the slow lean of the world."

And finally:

"Pain is just another form of information."

Okay, and here's one more (my favorite so far):

"This was my wretched attempt to understand our blankness in the face of God's enormity.  This is what I respected about God.  He keeps his secret, his unknowability.  Maybe we can know God through love or prayer or through visions or through LSD but we can't know him through the intellect.  The Cloud tells us this.  And so I learned to respect the power of secrets.  We approach God through his unmadeness.  We are made, created.  God is unmade.  How can we attempt to know such a being?  We don't know him.  We don't affirm him.  Instead we cherish his negation."

Go and read DeLillo, in this slow lean of the world . . . .

Oh Sweet Alone Time

Greetings to you from my basement in Eagan, MN.  The husband and sis-in-law are upstairs watching TV, and I'm downstairs buying half of iTunes.  It is GLORIOUS. 

Today's purchases include The National, The Avett Brothers, Keri Noble, Over the Rhine, Josh Garrels and Sara Bareilles.  And this Keri - is this the same Keri Noble as the one on the Cities 97 morning show?  If so, how are they not playing more of her music? 

The National has me feeling defeated this evening, but is still serving its cathartic purpose.  I love them for all of their melancholy and lack of anything straightforward.  Good music for you mildly depressed 30-somethings!

Over the Rhine is its usual perfection.  Favorite band, hands down.  Their song Failed Christian is a repeater, but understand this recommendation comes from a once seminary student more interested in researching those who went apostate than spending time with Calvin or Luther's exhortations.

Sara is a surprise . . .poppy, but her content not so much.  Interesting depth and contradiction that works.  Her song Sweet as Whole - fantastic.  I'll be singing this song in my head at work for the next month.

And Josh Garrels, Million Miles reminds me of how much I love my husband.  "Feel the wind blow/ through the window/  I know/ that we'll make it through . . . "  Thank you.