Book 12: M Train by Patti Smith

M Train is described as a memoir but it was far more than that: an unusual travel guide and a meditation on writing and art. Patti Smith is a wonderful writer.

This was one of my many library book sale purchases. I had heard of Just Kids--actually that's the book I thought I was buying. I hadn't heard anything about M Train. At one point, I wondered if I should even read it. I'm glad that I did.

Here are a few lines I marked:

A young women brushed past me with an armful of flowers. A dizzying perfume lingered, then dispelled, replaced by a vertiginous refrain. I was conscious of everything, a beating heart, the scent of a song wafting in a conflict of breezes, and the human current heading home.

Slowing his blood, the beating of his heart, with the forbearance of a fasting scribe he writes what has to be written, conscious of the movement of his wrist as words spread across the the surface of the paper like an ancient magic spell. 

Images have their way of dissolving and then abruptly returning, pulling along the joy and pain attached to them like tin cans rattling from the back of an old-fashioned wedding vehicle.