There's this quote that I really enjoy, from John Waters. I've told most everyone I know, but I wanted to type it out anyway. Set in in visual stone.
He says, "If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!"
Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.
-HST
"Contrary to what I'd expected, my father did not gloat and my mother did not yell. They were too worried. Both their boys were way off the playground, and nothing they had done had fixed things. After a while, Dad slapped his knees and said we ought to hit the road. He led the way with my suitcase, while mom trailed a step behind. At the bottom of the front steps, Dad suddenly dropped my luggage, turned around, and grabbed Mom by the arms. Because she was still on the steps, they stood at eye level, looking at each other intently. Then they began to shake their heads and cry. My mother sank into my father and they kissed for what seemed a very long time. I had thought that Millie and Nathan Berg hated each other."
When I read that paragraph for the first time, it jogged a memory. I probably re-read it eight or ten times that night, sometimes reading it and other times not really seeing it because I was focusing on that memory.
Life has, for me, and so far- been impossibly fair. The mercies heaped upon me and mine- too numerous to mention. I'll try one day.
But there has been a time or two when, while performing some action, in some place, I've had some thoughts- and among them:
What's happening right now is very big.
My doing this is going to change things.
These changes may be for the better, or they may not.
After this, things will never be able to go back to the way they were.
I have to be okay with that, or I'm not gonna make it.
One viewer- A Mr. Dionne from California, who likely didn't consider himself part of the "lower strata"- fired off an angry, rambling letter, complaining haughtily that 'the most disciplined attention I could give [The Cube] was a belch from the grave of Marcus Aurelius, occasioned, I might add, by the dead weight of its own dust caving in on itself.'
Two weeks later came Jim's one-sentence response:
Two weeks later came Jim's one-sentence response:
Dear Mr. Dionne:
What the fuck are you talking about?
Yours truly,
JIM HENSON
