Splash du Jour: Monday

"Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything."
-- Zadie Smith, her advice for young people --

Have a great Monday!

Splash du Jour: Friday

If all the girls attending the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.
-- Dorothy Parker --

Have a great Friday!

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Totally chillin'...

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
[Sound of me not working!]
I am only one day into my vacation time, and believe me, I am loving it. So far the weather is great, here on Vancouver Island.
More specifically, I am in Nanaimo, shown in picture.
So far... hmmm... what have I done? Well, a lot of visiting with my family, some coffee-drinking [Starbucks, of course. Fresh-ground beans. You know, I am still waiting for someone to invent a cologne called "Starbucks-Man"!]
I sat around on the deck this morning, sipping java and reading a great book. Zadie Smith's On Beauty.
Just lounging.
Yesterday though, I actually did do some work. Work that will lead to play!
I helped my brother-in-law install a wakeboard-pulling apparatus to the boat, [not an easy task] so that as early as today or tomorrow we can all commence trying to kill ourselves on wakeboards. For those who may need a visual on this, here are some pics of other people trying to kill themselves wakeboarding.
Just dropping by to tell you all that I am really into this "not working" thing!

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet --

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Our mania for defining things can be seen most clearly in the fact that the word “dictionary” is in the dictionary!
-- Cipriano –

Wheeee! I’m on holidays now!
Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home.
-- James Thurber (1894-1961) –

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

To honor the teacher is a means of honoring the Way. Therefore, the teacher shall posess the justice that reigns between a ruler and his subject and the love that exists between a parent and his child.
-- Ito Jinsai, Japanese philosopher, 1666 –
What I love about the above pedagogical philosophy is how it so quickly moves from → the student’s responsibility toward the teacher to → the teacher’s responsibility toward the student. In fact, it focuses on this latter thing, [as it should.]

Have a great Monday!

The Poe Shadow

“It was a dark and foggy night…..”
No, no, you will not see that kind of cliché sentence anywhere in Matthew Pearl’s latest novel, The Poe Shadow.
But you will follow the protagonist, young attorney Quentin Clark, into many a dark and foggy night!
Man, the trouble this guy gets himself into! And all of it a result of his indefatigable quest to unravel the mysterious unanswered questions surrounding the final week of Edgar Allen Poe’s life.
Clark, a great fan of Poe’s work, had established a correspondence by letter with the writer. One dreary Baltimore day [October 8th, 1849] he happens upon “the saddest funeral ever seen.” [← Cue first installment of rolling fog]. Unbeknownst to our hero, the funeral is Poe’s own.
Clark, suspecting foul-play in the events surrounding Poe’s demise, is soon entangled in a mesh of intrigue that threatens to destroy every aspect of his former existence. He sifts through a churning sea of spurious information, obvious lies and half-truths. 18 months later, his untiring quest to find out what really happened to Poe takes Clark to Paris, where he discovers two men who claim to be the real-life inspiration [or prototype] of Poe’s fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin.
One of these, [the one Clark himself believes to be the real one] returns with him to Baltimore to work on the case. By recreating the events through a collage of newspaper clippings and the use of Poe’s method of “ratiocination”*[see below] they continue to search through all available clues.
All the while, the second man, claiming to be the real C. Auguste Dupin, resurfaces. And his presence injects a ripping good twist of fog-laden doppelgangerism into an already labyrinthian tale!
We want to believe that Clark knows what he is doing, and we want him to succeed in his [oft-bungling] efforts, but we are never really sure of how it will all turn out. We are never quite sure of who is who…. who is helping, or who is hindering Clark in his investigations.

As I began the book, I wondered if I would have to be a Poe expert [which BTW, I am not] to truly enjoy it. I felt the same way when I began reading his debut novel, The Dante Club.
My conclusion is the same on both counts.
No.
Matthew Pearl is far too fine of an author to hinge the accessiblity of his work on the esoteric expertise of his readers.
There would be very few among us who are as well-versed as Pearl is, in either Dante or Poe. And he knows this. His books, couched as they are in actual historicity, are nonetheless so self-contained and self-explanatory that really, all that is left to do is read and enjoy.
Having said all of that, there is no doubt that a true-blue Poe enthusiast would be reading a different book here, than someone with a casual interest in Poe. There is a lot in The Shadow that depends upon a reader's awareness of the Poe tradition. Knowing it definitely helps see what Pearl is attempting to get across.
Allusions abound!
I found myself, several times, cross-referencing Poe poems and stories and re-reading many of these to get a better sense of Pearl’s story. Such activity may not appeal to all readers, but for someone as far gone as myself, any excuse to learn more about great literature is a valid and readily accepted one.

I hate to say the next thing, because it is placing a preferential evaluation upon two experiences of excellence.
Yet, I think that The Dante Club is a better book, overall, than this one.
Having said that, The Poe Shadow is a book that belongs in the hands of every lover of mystery. All lovers of well-written literature. Every person that loves to squint and try to catch some vanishing detail about that presence in the fog, up ahead.
Get your own copy of The Poe Shadow → HERE.

* Ratiocination. NOUN. The act of deliberate, calculated reasoning through the imagination and spirit; the intimate observation and forecasting of the complexities in human activity, especially the frequent simplicity in that activity. Not interchangeable with mere “calculus” or “logic.”
-- From page 111, The Poe Shadow --

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Splash du Jour: Friday

The Trouble With Reading
by William Stafford

When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,
and the meaning has to go find an author again.
But when we read, it’s just print – deciphering,
like frost on a window: we learn the meaning
but lose what the frost is, and all that world
pressed so desperately behind.

So some time let’s discover how the ink
feels, to be clutching all that eternity onto
page after page. But maybe it is better not
to know; ignorance, that wide country,
rewards you just to accept it. You plunge;
it holds you. And you have become a rich darkness.


Have a great Friday!
P.S.
→ Great article about Stafford.
→ My blog of a great Stafford poem. And another one.

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Something from an ancient mariner....

Everything we look at, even if we can't see it, is a poem.
The seagull in this photo, is a poem.
Everything we feel inside, even if we cannot write about it, is a poem.
Stefanie, proprietress of a superb blogpage called So Many Books, has written a little piece tonight, about the poetry of Rosemarie Waldrop.
For some reason, reading the snippetry of poems that she listed there, got me to thinking of some of the stuff I myself have written.
And so, if you feel so inclined, you can click here and read a short piece I once wrote, and this time around I even tried a silly device known as.... rhyming!
Cheers!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

New York is big but this is Biggar.
-- slogan for the town of Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada. –

Have a great Thursday!

More Time! More Time, Please!

But no one answers that request.
It is impossible to have "MORE TIME".
No one gets, "more time".... do they?
I want more time. If it is possible to get some, I want some.
Been overworked, and there is no two ways about it.
See, here's the scoop.
The place where I work was.... umm... it caught fire, basically. And the nature of the beast is that, because of all kinds of reasons that I cannot mention here, the employees sort of have to be intrinsically involved in FIXING the ensuing mess. While maintaining the normal work flow of our business.
Unlike, say... a WalMart. Where, if fire breaks out in Men's Wear, those who work in Women's Hosiery are probably not going to be called upon to help wring out men's underwear, soaked by sprinklerheads down yonder!
Right?
But alas.... I do not work at WalMart.

What am I really saying here?
That I've got soaked underwear?
No.
Just that I have not had the time I would like to devote to the discussion of literature.
So please be patient with me. I will be back one day.
Well.... wait a minute.
I go on vacation next week. So..... maybe it will be a while before I get back to normal here.
[Was there ever a "normal'?]
Point taken!

I must say though, I have had occasion to read two great books, as of late. One being Matthew Pearl's [2006] The Poe Shadow, and the other [finished it tonight] Peter Carey's [2003] My Life As A Fake.
Both excellent works.
I will speak of them both, here, soon.
Have faith.

All the best to you.
-- Cip

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equal.
-- Winston Churchill (1874–1965) –

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.
-- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) –

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

And Yet The Books
by Czeslaw Milosz

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are,” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, who frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

-- Czeslaw Milosz –

Have a great Monday!

Splash du Jour: Friday

HOLDUP MAN: → “Quit stalling – I said your money or your life.”
JACK BENNY: → “I’m thinking it over.”

Have a great Friday!

Mr. Worn-Out.

Dear Friends:
Just popping in here to say that lately I've been totally worn-out.
This is my excuse for being way less than interesting, as of late.
Actually, I blame my work. Certain events at work have left me feeling that, at the end of the day, I just want to sleep for about 16 years.
I feel like the engineer of the train in the picture probably felt, shortly after parking his locomotive in this fashion!
I feel like a slug.
So all that I can offer tonight is this poem I wrote about 64 years ago.
You can find it here, if you are so inclined.
And speaking of being inclined.... it is off to bed with me.
Good night, and sweet dreams...... zzzzzz! zzzzz!

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
-- Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio --

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) –

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind.
-- Cleveland Amory –

Have a great Tuesday!

Tribute To Alice Munro

One night, a few weeks ago now, I was driving down Fallowfield Road when I happened upon a snippet of a speech by Alice Munro, on the radio. She was speaking at a fundraiser in Toronto, and the gist of her message was that she was going to retire from her life of writing.
I turned the radio up. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean I did not want to believe it. But I listened.
She was witty. Charming. Eloquent. She had the audience alternating between laughter and disbelief as she continued to crack jokes about her life in general and drop hints that her next book, The View From Castle Rock, due to be released in November of 2006, would be her last.
At one point she said that she will quit writing "in the interests of a manageable life" and with self-effacing rationale she explained that it is rare for outstanding work to be produced in an author's later years, "so one or two books fewer won't really be anybody's loss."
For me, it will be a loss.
However, at the very end of her speech, after giving these multitudinous reasons as to why she will put away the pen, she said something like, “At least this is how I felt a few weeks ago, when I wrote this speech.”
Aha!
A wonderfully ambiguous, multi-interpretive, ending.
Like so many of her short stories!
I had to laugh. In fact, I clapped [applauded] in my car, like a certifiable lunatic.
It’s just that I cannot imagine a world without Alice Munro writing in it. I can’t. And I don’t want to.
In an article I read afterward, where Munro again spoke of her plans to retire, she quipped, "My husband says I've said this for about 15 years at least and it hasn't happened. I think he's kind of scared about when that will happen because I'm going to redecorate the house."
There’s still hope! I see a shred of hope in the above.
Her upcoming book will be a bit of a change of pace. She says, "It's not a book of complete fiction like I've always written before." In it, she will be dealing with a lot of her own ancestry and upbringing, as she did most clearly in stories such as Walker Brothers Cowboy and Images. [1968. Dance of the Happy Shades].

I am no Munro-expert, by any means, but all of the Munro I have read has been superb, in a timeless, memorable, meaningful, and artfully beautiful way.
I will never forget stories like Boys and Girls, or Tricks, or The Moon In The Orange Street Skating Rink. Or the three novella-like linked pieces in Runaway, entitled Chance, Soon, and Silence, in which the character Juliet appears and reappears for decades. Unforgettable writing.
I am right now in the midst of planning to live long enough to be able to thoroughly read everything she has ever written, and then re-read it all.

She has given us so much of herself.
Today, Alice Munro turns a young 75.
I love what publisher Douglas Gibson said of her, “she seems to be a much younger person, writing...” speaking of Alice’s new lease on life after her open heart surgery of about four years ago.
As to her alleged retirement?
If it is best for her, it will have to be best for me!
I am convinced that anyone who reads Alice Munro will come away feeling that they not only love the stories, but they love the writer, too.

I encourage you to check out the following EXCELLENT links.
With this first one, about halfway down the center of the opening page, you will see two blue icons that say “VIDEO”. Click on these [well, one at a time]. The clips are just awesome. Link → Here.

As for this next link…. well, I just cannot tell you how much I love this little clip of Alice on-the-spot!
It is truly adorable. Alice is asked about whether it is true that she “encouraged” her daughter to smoke marijuana.
Her response is just great.
Listen for the long pause after host Paula Todd asks the question, “Was that the extent of your experimentation?”
[Munro could have written a short story during this pause!]
Then she asks for clarification, “With drugs?”
And her eye just flits to the camera. It is to die for. OK, I will just shut up now. I just think that this clip gives us a wee glimpse, in a mere few seconds, of a really magnificent person.
→ Alice Munro.

Happy Birthday!

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Splash du Jour: Monday

Today is the birthday of the best short-story writer in the world.
The inimitable, elegant, wonderful, Alice Munro.
Born in Wingham, Ontario, July 10th, 1931.
She once said:

I like to look out the window. I have spent freely so much of my time doing this, and sometimes it strikes me how little I know of the various things other people can do. I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.
Alice Munro has a new collection, coming out in the fall of 2006, entitled The View From Castle Rock.
See my own brief review of her last book, Runaway, here.
And I love this.

Have a great Monday.

Denny's Grand-SCAM© Breakfast!

The above image is an actual [cropped] photograph of the Mastercard receipt for a meagre breakfast for two which took place in Niagara Falls on August 27th, 2002.
I guess I am still not over it.
The following vignette is an explanation as to why the line [denoting a big fat ZERO] was drawn through the “tip” portion of the receipt, that day!

My friend and I were spending a few days and nights of non-stop frivolity in Toronto. Vacationing, you might say.
Yonge Street was fun, but we had enough, and decided to spend at least one day at nearby Niagara Falls. Upon our arrival in the morning, we checked in at the hotel and then remembered that we were both starving, and so, looking out our window, we proceeded to the nearest place.
A Denny’s©, pretty much next door to our new accomodations.
We strolled in, were seated, and then had a look at the menu.
This photo that you now see here, is an actual [cropped] image of the horrific prices that accosted our hungering minds.


OK, it is probably too small to see on your screen, but that thing in the middle there is displaying a normal old “Grand Slam” breakfast for just a measly $21.99 CDN [or $14.20 U.S].
We looked at each other and both said, in unison, “What the hell?”
We looked around, at other tables… like one with an entire family at it, and I was already calculating…. “Sweet Lord, that guy is going to be shelling out a hundred bucks for breakfast!”
The prices seemed completely outrageous. In a corner of the page, there was a thing that said “Additional egg: $2.95 CDN. [$1.95 U.S.]”
What kind of chickens are laying these eggs?
How much to just buy the chicken, and eat that?
We were both staring at each other, wondering what kind of an exaggerated world we had landed in!
So we called the waitress over….

“Umm yeah! About these breakfast prices…..”
“Uh-huh?” she said.
ME: “Well, we were just wondering. Like…. we paid less than this for our hotel room just a few minutes ago…. so, what is the deal? What are we missing here?”
WAITRESS: “Sir, this menu reflects the average price of breakfast here in Niagara Falls. A lot of people find it sort of pricey, but that’s just the way things are here. You’re free to leave if you like and take a look around, but I assure you that these prices are the norm.”

So what were we to do?
Leave?
[My stomach grumbled…]
After all, we were starving to death.

We stayed.
We ate.
We paid.
To the tune of $45.96, we paid.
For two measly breakfasts, and the coffee was not even good!

Afterwards, we walked down Victoria Street, passing restaurant after restaurant, to the left and to the right, with big advertisements splayed on windows and signboards….. ads that said things like “All-Day Breakfast: $5.99” and “All-You-Can-Eat Breakfast Buffet: $7.99.”
Or one sign that said something like “No Human-Being Has Ever Been Able To Even Finish One Of Our Breakfasts, So Damn Huge Are They: $8.99 per Starving Human.”

We were LIVID!
It was highway robbery.
We’d been royally scammed!
Totally taken in. DUPED!
Furious, we returned to the Denny’s. Asked to speak to the manager. And we did. And we told him that he should be ashamed of himself. Literally LYING to unsuspecting tourists, like us.
He just shrugged it off, sort of like “Hey, Que sera sera! Have a great stay!”
This is when we grabbed a menu from the display and took a photo of it [which you see here, above].

That very evening, we went to a place two blocks from the Denny’s Robbery Emporium, and had an “All-You-Can-Eat Buffet-SUPPER” for $10.99 each!

So, all of this to say the following.
Thinking of a vacation? Perhaps planning your next honeymoon?
Listen to me, dear friend.
There is a Denny’s Restaurant, located at 5905 Victoria Avenue in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
If you go there, don’t go there!

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Splash du Jour: Friday

“I work until beer o'clock.”
-- Stephen King –
“Hey, I’ll think to drat!”
-- Cipriano –

Have a great Friday!

Does The World Really Need Another Cipriano© Poem?

Hi.
It's me.
Jack.
Seems like the old man is waxing poetic again.
Now he's talking about cats, so I tuned in, to listen.
He came home from work, drank a couple beers, and then passed out on the couch. But just before he went into a coma, he jotted this stuff down and so now I am reading it.
If you ask me, he's got it all wrong.
For one thing, the "cooperative ones" are only adorable because they want treats!
And we hide behind the sofa mostly because we have better things to think about than how much you want to ruffle our whiskers while jabbering "Oh, puss puss puss puss puss!"
It has everything to do with our innate knowledge that we are better than humans.
And we purr because we can!

You can read his "work of art" here!
sincerely,
Jack Cat

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
-- Gustave Flaubert –

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
-- W. Somerset Maugham 1874-1965 –

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

George Steiner has lamented that our age is leaving behind the habits of the book. He blames distraction, the loss of private time, and competing media. Why does the idea afflict me with such sadness? After all, people should be able to do what they want. I will always have my books; it is not likely that libraries will soon disappear. It must be that for me books are not just objects or means to ends – they are the symbol, and incarnation, of the life of the spirit. I fear that reverie and introspection and ideals of discrimination will gradually vanish from the culture. I fear that linguistic sophistication (and density, and difficulty), and with it our access to the real complexity of the inner life, are being pushed to the side by the simplistic and standardized idiocies of the television idiom…. This is a reader’s nightmare. It haunts me whenever I walk through a suburban mall or turn on the television set. I look to my books for reassurance.
-- Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies –

Have a great Tuesday!

Handkerchief

Handkerchief: [noun] a square of cotton or other finely woven material, typically carried in one's pocket and intended for blowing or wiping one's nose.
ORIGIN: mid 16th cent.: from hand + kerchief .

OK, please forgive me for the following ramble, but the upside is that this will not take long at all.
I am just sitting here at Starbucks and about three or four minutes ago I have, for the first time in my life, been appropriately horrified at the true meaning of the word “handkerchief.”
See, I am reading a superb book, Matthew Pearl’s new one, The Poe Shadow, and all of a sudden this sentence sort of leaped out at me.
Scene: → A library where our protagonist, the inquisitive attorney Quentin Clark is spying on a certain man…
He would usually sit among the papers, interrupting himself only to blow his nose ferociously into his handkerchief, or one he borrowed from an unluckly patron. [p.128].
OK, hold on a minute.

I’ve always thought of being “unlucky” as maybe not winning the lottery. Or being struck by lightning, or hit by a bus. Perhaps slipping on a patch of ice and landing on your keester, or hitting the bumper of the car in front of you while you were distractededly ogling a woman on the sidewalk. [Not that this last thing ever happened to me about three years ago or anything…]
But having someone blow their nose into something, and then accepting that mess back again?
No, that is not unlucky.
That’s just stupid!
Reading that sentence in The Poe Shadow has just made me think of the entire concept of the handkerchief in sort of a glaringly realistic way. I guess, not ever owning one, I have just never thought about it much before.
So, let me get this straight now.
A “handkerchief” [even according to the Oxford definition above], is a piece of fabric that you blow your nose into….. AND THEN KEEP IT!
You tuck it away again, till next time!
And then what?
Do you wash it?
I mean, I am not sure that I am understanding this aright.
Surely a disposable Kleenex or similar product would make more sense? Is it just that, as the definition goes on to tell us, the handkerchief is some archaic thing originating in the 16th Century for which there is no current usage?
Like, it was necessary prior to the invention of disposable tissue?
Is there any acceptable modern-day excuse to be utilizing such a barbaric thing as a handkerchief?
Do people still void the contents of their nostrils into a piece of cloth and then KEEP IT ON THEIR PERSON?
I certainly hope not.
However, having said all of this, I can yet recall [rather vividly, even] an incident in which I truly wish the person next to me DID have a handkerchief handy…

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Splash du Jour: Monday

Serendipity: → Searching for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter instead!
-- © Ciprianowords Inc. 2006 –

Have a great Monday!

Happy Canada Day!

To all Canadians [and everyone else, too]... far and wide, Happy Canada Day!
In a matter of minutes, the Snowbirds, Canada's aerobatic team will be flying past my apartment and right over the Peace Tower of the Parliament Buildings, as shown here.
In case you are wondering why the flag on top of the Tower is blue in this instance, rather than the usual maple-leaf red-and-white... it is because the Governor-General will be in attendance, as always.
There is a long and lengthy history of flag etiquette that swings into effect, when this happens.
The Governor General's flag (it has a lion on it, holding a maple leaf in its paw) has precedence over all flags in Canada except The Queen's Personal Canadian flag and the flag of the Lieutenant Governor of a Province at the Lieutenant Governor's residence or on occasion when the Lieutenant Governor is performing his or her duties as The Queen's representative in the Province. The same provisions specified for the Sovereign's flag and other personal standards apply to the Governor General's flag.
That's probably way more than you want to know, right?
But basically, it's like, "Is the Governor General here? Hoist the blue one!"
At all other times, well, unless The Queen is in town, it's back to the basic red and white.

Happy 139th Birthday, Canada!

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