"But where were the glands of its destiny and the adrenalines of its parched, green entrails?" asks Clarice Lispector about a grasshopper. And I was like, "Beats me!" I said this book was kind of like her "blog," but I don't know. "What could love be like between two grasshoppers? Green and green, and then the same green, which, suddenly, because of a vibration of greens, turns green." Well, before that, before the glands of destiny and everything, she's all, "Hey, I saw a real neat grasshopper today!" I'm paraphrasing. But there is this, verbatim: "It is three o'clock in the morning. I am having one of my bouts of insomnia. I made myself some coffee since sleep seemed unlikely. I put in too much sugar and the coffee tasted horrid." Okay? And on the page after that, "How does an untidy person become tidy?" So. But then: "The egg is the chicken's soul. The awkward chicken. The stable egg. The startled chicken. The placid egg." And tantalizingly, "I have also written at some length about monkeys." On the very next page: "It would never occur to me to keep an owl." The chicken section is honestly beautiful and my poor excerpt doesn't do it justice. Now I am thinking of that awesome Sam Shepard book DAY OUT OF DAYS, which was sort of like HIS "blog," if "blogs" were mainly about severed heads crying out to passers-by from sodden ditches. And aren't they? (Photo by Judge.)
