  Your memory is a monster; you forgetit doesnt. It simply files things away. It keep things for you, or hides things from youand summons them to your recall with a will of its own.
You think you have a memory; but it has you! - from "a prayer for owen meany" what a sad, beautiful book. i've noticed this about other john irving books (by this i mean, the only other one i've read, being "the world according to garp"): they start out slow and full of seemingly insignificant details, but, when the shit starts to happen, let me tell you that the shit starts to happen.
read the last part of that sentence with extra emphasis. every tiny paragraph of "owen meany," especially the ones that you thought were just filler, is suddenly vital to the integrity of the story. i find it absolutely amazing how that works out, because not every writer can do that. if i ever write a book, a whole bunch of nonsense is going to happen and then, out of nowhere, everyone will be maimed by the butler, who will not even be mentioned until you read the words, "then everyone was maimed by the buter. " it will befuddle you. of course, now i've just given away the ending of my novel, so maybe i should turn the butler into a dinosaur. a court jester. a crazy, one-eyed chef from lincoln, nebraska, who has a habit of adding extra vanilla to everything.
i guess it really won't matter much. who am i kidding anyhow? all i have so far for "my novel" is a bunch of random names and cities scrawled on a wad of cocktail napkins in pink lipstick. but at least i've stapled the napkins together. the thing that got me thinking after finishing "owen meany" has to do with the quote above, and how everything "came together" in the end.
my thought is- at the end of my life, is every little piece of bullshit going to suddenly come full circle? boy, would that be a trip. not to mention one very crowded hospital room. i can tell you right now which icon from my past would probably end up stepping on my life support cord. and which other one would ask to eat my jell-o. if the past *is* an indication, i can tell you that a car ride will be my undoing.
it won't be a car crash that will kill me, but it'll be something that happens in a car. like maybe i somehow catch on fire from a spark that jumps out of my cd player, landing unfortunately on my very flammable pants or in my hair-spray coated hair. not that i use hair spray all that often, but this day will surely be an exception because of the hair spray and yogurt convention i will be driving to as a part of my parole agreement.
or, maybe, a rabid dog will jump into my open car window while i'm stopped at a toll booth psychotically counting out my forty pennies, and ... no, the dog won't bite me, that would be too obvious. the rabid dog would have to somehow stab me with a letter opener that he had recently acquired from a mail order company operating out of memphis. trust me, memphis makes sense. it would be a small dog. a cute one, in a goddamn sweater. 
