I read mainly to improve my own Wordsmith skills but also to lean more about the way others of my kin have lived and understood this Existence. A literally inclined mate in Melbourne recommended Mr. Miller a year ago and since then I have waded, painfully at times, through several of his books. I use the word waded because his narratives hit my mind less like a vibrant mountain river which picks me up at the start and propels me at breakneck speed towards the final page, more like a swamp. But what a magical swamp Mr. Miller creates...Tropic of Capricorn is the story of the author's adventures in love, lust and discovery of Self and Meaning. Pulling together threads from childhood, adolescence and dissolute adult wandering, a rich tapestry is created which exposes certain truths about Life which can be found in a less verbose but equally accurate form at the core of most popular spiritual teachings of Now and the Past. He seeks an Awakening, not just a raison d'etre but a meaning of all that is. And this knowledge, this state of understanding, cannot be found merely by swimming in the shallows. Miller knew that from a very early age so he made damn sure to Live, to swim with the sharks as well as the parrot fish, to revel in the Beauty as well as the Horror, to reach a state in which he never said NO to the Present. Only Yes Yes Yes...While I can relate to the author's spiritual quest and marvel at his incredibly vivid use of language, I am unable to deal with Suffering in the same way, which is perhaps an indication of my own inability to say 'YES’. However, I am not so distanced from the concepts and philosophy he flirted with and adopted as to be wholly unable to digest some of his wisdom and hopefully to use it to make my own Life more fulfilling and less hell-bent on catastrophe.
Probably not a good read for a hardcore feminist, due to the rather vile descriptions of the fairer gender but saying that, Miller is just as harsh about Men whether they be his so called 'friends' or just swine he encounters on his travels towards the Self....
Valdez Rating 8/10
'the hibernation of animals, the suspension of life practised by certain low forms of life, the marvellous vitality of the bedbug which lies in wait endlessly behind the wallpaper, the trance of the Yogi, the catalepsy of the pathologic individual, the mystic's union with the cosmos, the immortality of cellular life, all these things the artists learns in order to awaken the world at the propitious moment. The artist belongs to the X root race of man; he is the spiritual microbe, as it were, which carries over from one root race to another. He is not crushed by misfortune, because he is not part of the physical, racial scheme of things.'
'we are of one flesh, but seperated like the stars'
