Birthday Letters and Rioting

I went into a second hand book shop the other day. I was bored and looking for phiosophy books, something to tell me the world is not deterministic, that free will does exist. The smell of old books was powerful, dusty and dry. I failed in that search, but bought Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters instead.

Read it all, very quickly, powerful stuff. Sometimes stark, but always full of feeling. It's him finally talking about his realtionship with Silvia Plath and it's really very beautiful. It turns out it mirrors and talks about Plath's work alot, so i have to find and read her journals and poetry and then read Birthday Letters again.

I havn't ever read poetry before, not a whole book anyway, and never so quickly. When i was home last time i flicked through an anthology of English poetry and found some cool stuff in there too. Maybe it'll make me a better writer, maybe i'll just read some interesting stuff.

In an entirely unrelated issue i didnt know about this. Its weird how these big events can entirely pass you by, and you have no idea they could happen. New york lost its power for one night and it went mad, ripped, burnt, stole and fought for a night. They woke up in the morning to find that they hadn't solved anything, they were still poor, ignored and angry. They did now have a TV though, although they didnt have a job, because someone had destroyed their shop. It reminded me of New Orleans, why on earth do people react like this? Why do we feel the need to go mad as soon as societies norms are subverted. I suspect sociologists have suggested an answer, i also suspect they would have missed the point. I dunno it's wierd.

But talk about a silver lining, loads of kids in the bronx went and nicked turntables and mixers and hip-hop happened. Thats awesome!