Perhaps it was raining very hard
Richard Brautigan and Michaela le Grand, 1967
People are contradictory. They are liberal and conservative, optimistic and cynical, and angry and happy. It would be so much easier to be one thing, like a character on a TV show. But we are trapped in this conflict. I like to think of myself as a good American: patriotic, love of country, remembering the good times when you spent a day fishing and eating apple pie from the window ledge. But, I also have that other side, the counter-culture anti-establishment thing. Maybe it’s from being a child in the Haight in the 1960s, or maybe I’m just weird. But it works for me.
Richard Brautigan is one of my favorite authors. Granted the work is haaaaard to get through. In Watermelon Sugar is not an easy idea to understand, but oh so beautiful. There is that revolutionary approach that says, “I am not interested in the right way. This is my experience.” I love that. So if you have some extra several weeks on hand and plenty of mind-altering substances, I suggest a walk on the wrong side of the street and Richard Brautigan. How can you not love someone who said, ““I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word ‘mayonnaise.”
“I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren’t worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it. She wanted her next lover to be a broom.” ― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout
“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”
“He created his own Kool Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.”
“Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream.
I’m not, she said.”
