I don’t know where the artificial stops
and the real starts.
The nicer I am,
the more people think I’m lying.
It’s not what you are that counts,
it’s what they think you are.
Remember, they’ve never seen you before in their life.

They always say time changes things,
but actually you have to change them
yourself.
You can’t make them change if they don’t want to,
just like when they do want to,
you can’t stop them.
Or is life a series of images that change
as they repeat themselves?
The channels switch, but it’s all television.

Sex is more exciting on the screen
and between the pages
than between the sheets.
People should fall in love with their eyes closed.
I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.
You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.
Sex is the biggest nothing of all time. So what.

That’s one of my favorite things to say.
So what. So what.
It takes a long time to learn that trick,
but once you do,
you never forget.
I never fall apart because I never fall together.

Life is so quick
and it goes away too quickly.
The machinery is always going.
Even when you sleep.
It doesn’t matter how slow you go
so long as you do not stop.
The mystery is gone
but the amazement is just starting.

From the words of Andy Warhol

Linda Frye Burnham 2012

Eldon Frye as Alred E. Neuman, by Eldon Frye

We would not let our enemies have guns,
why should we let them have ideas?
We don’t let them have ideas,
why would we let them have guns?

Death is the solution to all problems.
No man – no problem.
One death is a tragedy;
one million is a statistic.
You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.
Everyone imposes his own system
as far as his army can reach.
The Pope? How many divisions has he got?

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.
And gaiety is the most outstanding feature
of the Soviet Union.

                                    From the words of Joseph Stalin

Linda Frye Burnham 2012

Stalin, 1902

But how about cutting the re-bop?

I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof.

We all live in a house on fire.
Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray
of infinitely varied narcotics,
even while it prepares us for
the fatal operation.

Luxury is the wolf at the door.
Rhinestones are next door to glass.
A high station in life is earned by
the gallantry with which
appalling experiences are survived with grace.

Oh, you beautiful, weak people
who give up with such grace.
Grown-ups don’t hang up on life!
Life is no damn football game.
Life isn’t just a bunch of high spots.
To be free is to have achieved your life.
You got pain, at least
you know you are alive.

I tell what ought to be truth.
Nothing is more powerful
than the odor of mendacity!
Mendacity’s a system that we live in.
Liquor’s one way out and death’s the other.
And booze goes fast in hot weather.
Truth is the one thing
I never have resisted.

But all cruel people describe themselves
as paragons of frankness.

Oh look, we have created enchantment!
And you?
You’re gonna miss me.

                                    From the words of Tennessee Williams

Linda Frye Burnham 2012

I just hate to be a thing.
I want to be wonderful.
I’m trying to prove
that I’m a person.
All I demand is
my right to twinkle.

Fame will go by
and, so long, I’ve had you, fame.
I always knew that you were fickle,
but that’s not where I live.

I guess I am a fantasy.
But I have feelings too.
I am still human.
And I know from life that
one can’t love another,
ever,
really.

What do I wear in bed?
Chanel No. 5,
of course.

                                    From the words of Marilyn Monroe

Linda Frye Burnham, 2012

Be a dumbsaint of the mind,
an old teahead of time,
no fear or shame
in yr experience,
its dignity.

Keep track of every day,
accepting loss forever:
the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
of the individual,
the bottomless true story of the world,
the eye within the eye.

Love the holy contour of yr life,
the jewel center of interest
emblazoned in yr morning.

Submit to everything in tranced fixation,
dreaming upon the object before you.

Work from the pithy middle eye,
swimming in the language sea.

The crazier the better.

Try never to get drunk
outside your own house.

                                                From the words of Jack Kerouac

Linda Frye Burnham, 2012

I have decided to let go. I have sold or given away hundreds of book over the last year. It didn’t hurt at all. I have more shelf space, more white space in my life. Even the art books I relied on heavily for writing: I used them well. Bye-bye. Even books I loved, like a children’s book that was passed on to me by my grandmother. It’s too antiquated to appeal to my grandchildren. I love looking at the familiar pictures, but not as much as I am beginning to love my white space. I have adored the shelf of travel books I have saved from every trip I took, but I now carry Dublin in my heart. Why do I need “Ireland on $5 a Day” from 1975?

I’m not ready to let go of my hardback “Collected Works of Dylan Thomas.” The title has come off the spine and the binding is a little wiggly. But I love it truly, deeply, madly. However, I don’t really need four copies of “The Wizard of Oz” (including a popup version). I parted with my gorgeous book of B&W photos of Chet Baker; I gave it to my sister for her birthday. I gave my son the detailed book on hiking Tuolumne Meadows; it’s time for him to take his kids and I will probably never see those granite hills again. I gave my best friend my cherished copy of “Shoulder to Shoulder,” a book based on a TV documentary about feminist movement history. That book turned my life upside down. Now she has to deal with it.

So many of the books I have loved/hoarded sit around unopened and mildewed, like all those books on gardening and cooking. I turn to the Internet for that information now. When I’m dying for something new to read, I hit the free bookshelf outside my local gourmet convenience store, carting home pre-loved copies of books I might never have come across. When I’m through, they go right back to the free bookshelf.

It’s exhilarating. Like shedding weight. I can’t take my books with me when I die. At my age, everything is an exercise in letting go. It’s a lot of fun.