The toilet won't quit running water. It stops, but leaks every 8 or so minutes. I keep counting and thinking how much water is wasted. It's 2:14 am and me and Pav can't make it quit.
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I've been wanting this book... way before I wanted the 'last evenings on earth', but I could never find it. But behold, it was the only Bolano book they had at the library. Score! The story is told by a Uruguayan woman who is wanders in Mexico City hanging with the poets in cafes, not really having family or a steady place to live, but working odd jobs at the university. The story involves her, what seems to be short-lived, but memorable relationships and interactions with people in the city, but more often then not, she is brought back to relive the event of 1968 that she survived in the bathroom of the Literature and Philosophy department at the University. The army invaded and rallied all the students (to what hints to be war and death), but she was the only one who survived in the college and lived 12 - 13 days in the bathroom on water, poetry, and constant sleep. The book starts off proclaiming to be a horror story, but it's subtle and not at all creepified compared to his other stories.
I admire her persona.. she's what most people here, would consider a staggerer: skinny, toothless, no steady income or belongings, drunk at times, but she is known around the city and is offered places to reside, but knows when her stay is overdue. He adds that in Latin America, no one tries to hide they're poverty because it is just part of everyday living. She seems to become disillusioned at the end, but is smart, accepted, and a legend to the young in the city.
It's written sweetly and screams bolano... full of all his literary reference, his own fictitious cameo, and weird cryptic meaning shit. BUT its short and sweet... unlike his later books of bricks.
...it still didn't wear off my crema buzz.. I need to feel sleepy.
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