Mashed Banana Sunlight

I'm finally reading Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins' fifth book. It's funny, how I unknowingly pick up old books that are suddenly salient. Last September, I borrowed Caleb Carr's Killing Time. Apart from being just wretched, one of the main plot points was terrorism from Afghanistan directed toward America. Spooky, I tells ya. This Tom Robbins book is focused on the feuding between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Of course, that hardly ever stops, but I think it may be at a similar high point now as to what it was in 1990. Leave it to Robbins, however to discuss the Arab/Jew conflict by using the story of Jezebel, five inanimate objects, an artist with crazy hair, a welder with a crazy heart, a boil-ridden southern preacher, an almost-inanimate street performer, and a restaurant run by a Jewish shoe-fetishist and a red-nosed Arabic dishwasher. Every time I read one of his books, life gets a little easier. My common stresses seem insignificant. I want to burn incense and meditate and run through fields in flowing skirts and ride the subway from end to end, talking to people. I want to take time to think, really think, which I never seem to do. All I do is repeat certain phrases over and over to myself. What those phrases are is none of your business, but you know them. I'll bet you do it, too.

If you've never read Robbins, I recommend it. I've never read anyone like him. Start at the beginning, or don't. I don't guess it matters how you read him. He wouldn't think so. The books: Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life With Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Fierce Invalids Return from Hot Climates. And the aforementioned. Look, anyone who can describe a clitoris as a "a live bee. A bee trapped, tiny wings awhir, in a puddle of molasses," then go on to discuss the biblical and historical background of the issue of the Third Temple, is okay by me.