As previously mentioned somewhere, obituaries don't hold all the phrase gems. And it's a good thing they don't. We'd have to wait for the right people to die so that someone could turn a nice phrase and say something poetic. Book reviews are a good source too.
Consider today's book review in the New York Times on Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Street by Cadillac Man. No, it's not written by Robin Williams, but rather by Cadillac Man, whose real name is Thomas Wagner.
The reviewer, Dwight Garner writes:
Cadillac Man--his real name is Thomas Wagner--began living on the streets in 1994, when he was 44. His descent into homelessness was gradual, and then quite sudden, the way a canoe is tugged downriver and then eventually drops over a waterfall.
How neatly put. My two visits to Niagara Falls were from the Canadian side. And each time it amazed me that the stream just before going over the falls, was moving quite slowly, almost as if stuck in traffic behind an accident. Waiting its turn to get to the edge, where it would suddenly become helpful in producing electricity by going over that ledge with tremendous force, completely unable to reverse itself, headed in the only direction left for it--down.
The review tells us of Cadillac Man's descent, and for him, his partial reversal.
The book sounds interesting. The review certainly is.
http://www.amazon.com/Land-Lost-Souls-Life-Streets/dp/1596914068/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238031973&sr=1-1
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com/
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