the souls of pyramids

"The pyramids were built as pedestals that the souls of the truly alive and the truly in love could stand upon and bark at the moon. And I believe that our souls, yours and mine, will stand together atop the pyramids forever." -Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

I just finished the book from which the above quote was taken. What an amazing...thing? Story? Jaunt? Experience? It wasn't just the story, but the indescribably witty and perfect prose. I'd never read Tom Robbins before, and wasn't sure what type of guy he was......and as I was reading it, I felt layers of Vonnegut seeping in, and Burroughs maybe, Hemingway definitely; Pynchon, perhaps John Berger who I've never read? Anyway, other writers are beside the point. The point is, I started feeling like it was a certain "type" of novel but by the end, I didn't feel that way at all. It's not just a witty philosophical poo-smudge metaphor for life, but a genuine love story in the only bearable way imaginable. It lazed its way into a fantasyland of pyramids and UFOs and solitary confinement, yet became the most real and identifiable love story I've read in a long while, if ever. You start to think it's going off the deep end and then realize that every part of that world is within Leigh-Cheri's or Bernard Mickey Wrangle's mind; you start to realize that it's hidden deep within your own mind, too. Have I ever really looked at the package of Camel cigarettes? Why didn't I notice there were pyramids? Haven't I always felt there's a way to escape the present world and fall head-first into the imagined world of an object that envelops me? If we can animate inanimate objects with our own brains, then perhaps those objects aren't so inanimate after all. And at the heart of it all, you of course have the impossible love story, impossible in the sense that probably neither lover would have survived the dynamite explosion in the heart of a pyramid. Or would have run into each other in the way that they did, more than once. But I didn't feel like I was suspending disbelief, either....more that I just entered a world where certain things happened and you accept it. Like creating a whole new consciousness out of a Camel pack. During the scenes of Leigh-Cheri's self-imposed confinement, I would alternately wonder to myself whether she was crazy and self-destructive or smart and enviable. At times I wanted to experience that same raw unflattering but organic selfness that she discovered in the attic; other times I couldn't bear the idea of leaving my loved ones like that, of disappointing those who have faith in me, of throwing away the potential of the moment. Everything about those two characters is so extreme, yet in the end so commonplace too. How is it that we're satisfied with such an ending, in which the two impossible lovers just melt back into the blackberry house, live happily ever after, and such? I think perhaps it's because there's something more than just the love story going on. There's the philosophical exploration of the MYSTERY that is so enthralling about real love. What Tom Robbins says at the very end, in longhand because he's fed up with his fancy typewriter, is that (1) Everything is part of that mystery; and (2) It's never too late to have a happy childhood. I liked how the plot wasn't all that was going on, and the prose wasn't all that was going on. The plot and prose danced together to create this enthralling painting of the world as it is perceived by the perceptive.

(I won't let drunk college kids ruin it, either. Even though they're stupidly belting off-key notes at the tops of their lungs next door, SOMEDAY they'll see the light and wise up. If they don't, it's their loss for missing out on the more nuanced joys of life.)

Celebrity apprentice? Donald Trump is still around? I don't even know what that means. Go away, TV.

"Life is too short for us to be deprived of any one of its joys by the sad, sick androids who control laws and economics." (page 260)

I would like to spend time in the deep core of a pyramid, in all its perfection and cosmic energy. It's funny because doing that would be the ultimate solitary confinement from human society, yet it would take place in a structure that could only be built by humans, that derives its energy from our collective souls.