Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Riding Around With T.C. Boyle*


He is skinny, intense. He doesn't exactly grip the wheel as much as strangle it. This guy is focused.

"The heat  today pounds like a fist," he says.

"Yup. It's hot," I reply.

"The ocean is hammered copper," he goes on.

"It is pretty bright," I say, holding my hand over eyes, wondering where this ocean he sees is as I look at the wash. I see sand and greasewood bushes, a few overturned shopping carts.

He seems to know where we are going, so I just sit back and watch the broken up sidewalks of Tucson slide past the window. The only people are tired looking, with the grime and hand-tied belongings of the long-term homeless. I wondered what that was like, to wander the streets day after day on foot or by bike.

"His whole life was a headache, his whole stinking worthless pinche vida," he said, just under his breath, pointing at one leather-faced guy hawking papers in the median.

"Is it always that bad?" I asked.

"Sometimes he slept with thirty-two other men, sleeping in shifts and lining up on the streetcorner for work."

"I guess I just don't know how things are on the streets."

"That's because all your neighbors can talk about, back and forth and on and on as if it were the key to all existence, is gates….To be erected at the main entrance and manned by a twenty-four-hour guard to keep out those very gangbangers, taggers and carjackers you've come here to escape."

"Do we have to separate like that? Can't we find some way to understand each other?"

"It’s an angry, fragmented society out there, I tell you, and I’m not only talking about your native haves and have-nots, but the torrents of humanity surging in from China and Bangladesh and Colombia with no shoes, no skills and nothing to eat."

He went on "It’s about Mexicans, it’s about blacks. It’s about exclusions, division, hate."

"Yes, I conceded, that is the way it is out there. I see it in the speeches about migration, hidden between the lines. It's hard to to look at though.  What should we do about it?"

First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/17732-T_C_Boyle
First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/17732-T_C_Boyle
"First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something. Then you write."

"Pleasure," he goes on "is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain."

"It's hard to really look at something and see it for what it is, unpleasant facts and all," I agreed.

He went mute, staring ahead, down a dark road.

His hand motioned for me to get out at the corner, where a convenience store sold beer, cigarettes, and gas.

"It's your turn," he said as I opened the door and stepped into the blinding light. "Remember. First you have nothing. Nothing."

* All but of a few of Boyles' lines here are excerpted from his novels or interviews. 

First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/17732-T_C_Boyle


1 comment:

  1. :-)
    thank you for writing this
    thank you for sharing this
    like eating a .. a..something akin to a tidbit, but a perfect tidbit...the ultimate "bite"

    ReplyDelete