FROM STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER

"I want to send my readers armloads of crystals, some of which are the colors of orchids and peonies, some of which pick up radio signals from a secret city that is half Paris and half Coney Island."

"There are three lost continents.... We are one: the lovers."

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has got a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself. Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time. Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon."

"Queen Tilli . . . thought fellatio was an obscure Italian opera and was annoyed that she couldn't find the score."

"Humans are the most advanced of mammals -- although a case could be made for the dolphins -- because they seldom grow up."

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."

"... if by the last quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn't next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness"

"January being to the year rather what Sunday is to the week."

"It's smart not to eat anything you find in a mirror"

"Hawaiian was a language that could name a fish 'humuhumunukunukuapua'a' and a bird 'o-o,' and never mind that the bird was larger than the fish."

"There are only two mantras, yum and yuk. Mine is yum."

"In the world according to the positivist, the inspiring thing about scambled eggs is that any way you turn them they're sunny side up. In the world according to the existentialist, the hopeless thing about scrambled eggs is that any way you turn them they're scrambled."

"I have a black belt in haiku. And a black vest in the clearners."

"I've also heard that kissing a person who's self-righteous and intolerant is like licking a mongoose's ass."

"Jesus, how can men be such lummoxes, such wads of Juicy Fruit on the soles of our ballet slippers and still feel so good?"

"Who does have a love life anymore? These days people have sex lives, not love lives. Lots of them are even giving up sex. I don't have a love life because I've never met a man who knew how to have a love life. Maybe I don't know how, either."

"Bananas is not the color of my true love's hair"

"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who look at life and see the frost on the pumpkin and those who look and see the drool on the pie."

"They made me turn around, grab the cheeks of my ass and bend over, so they could look up my rectum to make sure I wasn't hiding three kitchen knives and a seventeen-inch in diameter meat-slicing blade. Of course, they didn't find the missing cutlery in any of us. But they did find four bars of soap, a Playboy centerfold, three ice cubes, five feathers, Atlantis, the Greek delegate to Boys' Nation, a cake with a file in it, a white Christmas, a blue Christmas, Pablo Picasso and his brother Elmer, one baloney sandwich with mustard, two Japanese infantymen who didn't realize that World War II was over, Prince Buster of Cleveland, a glass-bottom boat, Howard Hughes's will, a set of false teeth, Amelia Earhart, the first four measures of 'The Impossible Dream' sung by the Black Mountain College choir, Howard Hughes's will (another version), the widow of the Unkown Soldier, six passenger pigeons, middle-class morality, the Great American Novel, and a banana."

"You're crying."
"I am not."
"My mistake. You aren't crying. You aren't out of breath, either. That's fortunate because this club doesn't admit women with pants. Is that a pun in my pocket, or am I just glad to see you?"

"Dreams never lie."

"The earth is hollow, Leigh-Cheri. Inside the ball there's a wire wheel, and there's chipmunk running in the wheel. One little chipmunk, running its guts out for you and for me. At night, just before I fall asleep, I hear that chipmunk, I hear its crazed chattering, hear its little heart pounding, hear the squeaking of the squirrel cage -- the wheel is old and rickety now and troubled by rust. The chipmunk is doing all the work. All we have to do is occasionally oil the wheel. What do you think lubricates the wheel, Leigh-Cheri?"

"Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently."

"Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top."

"People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve."

"I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject."

I guess love is the real outlaw."

"Who knows how to make love stay?"
1. Tell love you are going to Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.
2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to pain a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay
3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning."

"Well . . . I don't speak Chiclets.
"Then I thought: 'Why not?';"

"A successful external reality depends upon an internal vision that is left intact."

"Barking at the moon?"
"What about it?"
"That's all our love was to you?"
"That's all love ever is. Love is not a harpsichord concert in a genteel drawing room. And it sure as hell isn't Social Security, Laetrile, the Irish Sweekstakes, or roller disco. Love is private and primitive and a bit on the funky and frightening side. I think of the Luna card in the Tarot deck: some strange, huge crustacean, its armor glistening and its pinchers wiggling, clatters out of a pool while wild dogs howl at a bulging moon. Underneath the hearts and flovers, love is loony like that. Attempts to housebreak it, to refine it, to dress the crabs up like doves and make them sing soprano always result in thin blood. You end up with a parody. There're lots of pretty sounds that describe 'like,' but 'love' is more on the order of barking."

There will be more of these to come, when I get time to type them in. Meanwhile, I recommend that everyone go out and buy every Tom Robbins book ever written (there aren't that many), and live by them.

Time to go back!

Questions? Comments? Flowers?
Amy Rosenblatt-Andris