judypatricia

I never really thought there were other people out there who have to stop what they're doing just to quickly jot down something they hear someone else say. Then one day I heard about an author who wrote a book entirely of random, overheard pieces of conversation and one-liners. And I was so happy about that. But I don't know what the book is called or who the author is. That's just something I like doing. I have a thing for the English language.

Tonight something which struck me as an odd, eerie thing to say, came out of my physics professor. He has a tendency to ramble, so his topics usually snowball...which is familiar turf for me, considering that's all I ever do. And he said, while on the topic of warfare, They used to teach you how to kill with your hands; now you just blow your enemy up from a few miles away with torpedoes. He said, "You used to know who your enemies are."
That sentence, in conjunction with the part of killing with your hands versus killing with machinery, made me pause. Things like that equate to some words are worth a thousand pictures. Or maybe it's just me.

I finished reading The Lovely Bones tonight. What a uniquely comforting book.

One night...I saw him: Holiday, racing past a fluffy white Samoyed. He had lived to a ripe old age on Earth and slept at my father's feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight. He had stood with Buckley while he built his fort and had been the only one permitted on the porch while Lindsey and Samuel kissed. And in the last few years of his life, every Sunday morning, Grandma Lynn had made him a skillet-sized peanut butter pancake, which she would place flat on the floor, never tiring of watching him try to pick it up with his snout.
I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he had slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.

That part made me cry.

So I ordered online, tonight, two new books (new to me, but they're both used). Both by Ray Russell. I'm taking this gamble on them, because I had read a short story by him--"Sardonicus"--and liked it enough to want to search out some more of his work. But why is he so obscure?

And I hope when I fall in love again, I'll find someone who will sit up in bed with me, reading, before we both go to sleep. I've never been able to do that with someone, and as seemingly insignificant or annoying that may seem, it would mean the world to me. I see couples do that in movies, and sigh.