Bookpuddle

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-02-02T02:40:00.002-05:00

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
-- Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Good Endings?

2012-02-01T23:57:00.012-05:00

Recently I had a discussion with a friend who was advocating the reading of non-fiction over against fiction. In his opinion, reading novels does not educate the reader in anything near as valuable as what could be gained by reading non-fiction. An investment in fiction does not add to a person's storehouse of intelligence. [I am paraphrasing].
And I did concede him a few points, along these lines -- proceeding to defend my approximate 80% to 20% fiction-to-non-fiction ratios by saying I read novels for entertainment. The chemical rush I get, etc.
But thinking about it afterward -- there is so much more to it than this. For me, it is much more than merely a different way of watching a movie. By reading fiction, I believe we actually do "learn" things in ways that we could not otherwise know [in our limited experience] and sometimes we gain this "knowledge" in ways that would be impossible by learning facts.
Anyhoo -- my friend also said that he does not like to read novels because "not a one of them has ever ended well." To summarize, he feels that all novels have poor endings that only serve to exemplify an author's frustration with the requirement of a last page, at some point.
I sort of disagreed, but when he asked me to provide an example of a novel that satisfactorily ended, I was a bit mute, I must admit.
But then I thought of Anna Karenina, and so I offered that one as my choice of a well-ended novel. I've read it twice, and it's probably my favourite novel ever. It merits a third reading. I'm a bit of a collector, the three copies shown above are mine, and I have a misplaced fourth one around here somewhere.
Both times, I remember finishing Tolstoy's Anna and thinking, "Damn, that is a good novel!"
It ends up zeroing in on the character of Levin, rather than Anna. All though the book, Levin [some say a representation of Tolstoy himself] holds out for real love. His love for a woman named Kitty. This calm pairing is pitted against the tempestuous one of Anna and Count Vronsky all the way along. And in the end Tolstoy focuses his attention on Levin's spiritual regeneration, showing this to be much more a novel of ideas than a book fixated on romance. The very last paragraph is so amazing -- my favourite in all of literature. [Don't read it if you have not read the book, don't peek!]
But the very final line is this:
…my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.
I love that.
It emphasizes the very thing the suicidal Anna was unable to accomplish in her own life.
Do any of you have any further arguments I can offer my friend, as to the merits of fiction? Any favourite well-ended novels?
Books with a last page that can justify having read the first one?
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-02-01T02:55:00.003-05:00

I’d hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that’s as good as you’re going to feel all day.
-- Dean Martin --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-31T03:16:00.003-05:00

Science is not only compatible with spirituality;
it is a profound source of spirituality.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Serendipity Happens...

2012-01-30T22:37:00.012-05:00

Have any of you ever had a sort of peaceful, fun interim period of your life that you like to look back upon from time to time?
I have many!
But today, for some reason [maybe because it was a Monday and I did NOT want to be at work] I was thinking of a particular few months of my life -- back almost twenty years ago now. I was living in beautiful British Columbia. My career path at that time had taken a sudden turn for the… obliterated. I found myself simultaneously unemployed and heartbroken. A bad combination.
When does this story get "fun" Cipriano?
Right now.
An old college friend happened to roll through town just in the nick of time. Because I have not gained permission to publicly speak of this story I will not use his name. So, in Kafkaesque anonymity, I'll call him K.
My dear friend K had found his place in this world as an itinerant seminar speaker. And so, he rang me up while he was doing a gig in my town.
I went to hear him speak that night.
The topic was Stress and Anxiety.
I sat and listened to him that night speak to a roomful of about a hundred really stressed out people. He was humorous, engaging, dynamic -- really knowledgeable and well-spoken. I was impressed.
Afterward, we had some drinks in the hotel lounge and I proceeded to fill him in on how horrid my own life was.
He then asked me if I would like to travel with him and assist in the sale of merchandise at his seminars. Would I like to do this?
I think my instant answer was something like, "Is the Pope Catholic?"
I was ecstatic. This seemed the perfect thing to get me out of my near-suicidal doldrums.
I packed up some clothes and the very next day headed out with him on the road.
For the next several months we were everywhere! Well, OK -- all over British Columbia and Alberta. Traveling in a rental SUV loaded with stress-related materials, we criss-crossed those provinces from Vancouver to Lethbridge, and everywhere in between.
My function was to wear a suit and welcome the stressed and anxious humans as they arrived at these venues, sit around reading a book over yonder while K disbursed his experiential wisdom, and then after the seminar, while he answered questions from a never-ending line of anxiety-sufferers, I handled the financial side of making sure that the forking over of extreme amounts of money was done correctly. People would line up and buy the tape series and instruction booklets, videos, and binders of whatnot.
Later in the lounge or hotel room, tallying up the results, I was amazed to find that some nights would bring in $10,000 to $15,000 in sales. Sometimes more.
A most hilarious side-effect of these adventures is that a few weeks into it, I myself began to counsel people. K being too busy, they would come to me and ask all manner of real serious questions. I would tell these people straight-up that I had never once suffered from any of their symptoms.
Never had a panic attack in my life. But they didn't care.
They still wanted advice -- so I gave it.
Thing is, it's true that I had become a sort of pseudo-expert in the subject, having heard K's speeches so many times I could have almost delivered them myself in his absence. Even so, I'm afraid that a lot of my advice was about as "deep" as the words shown in the image at the top of this blog posting!
Of far greater importance to me was the fact that K paid for all of my expenses on this hiatus, including meals and much boozing, plus an additional stipend on the side.
I would have gladly done it for the rest of my life, I think. It was such fun. It was just what the doctor would have ordered for me at the time, had I gone to see one.
The magnitude of his own expense account hit me one time when we were trapped by a snowstorm in Fernie, B.C. on our way to far-off Medicine Hat for a gig that very night. As we we were rolling across a treacherous mountain pass in the wake of a white-out blizzard, authorities literally CLOSED the highway behind us. In town, a similar roadblock on the western side caused us to return and grab the nearest hotel room, as were the rest of any travellers, that blustery day. In the room I rustled through my luggage to see if I had anything resembling swim-trunks, as there was an indoor pool in the place. But soon I overheard K on the phone with his employers. They were arranging for a helicopter to pick us up there and fly us out.
My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
When he finally hung up the phone I looked at him and said, "Who the hell are you? James Bond?"
As it was, no helicopters were available. So we had a night off. We ate non-Chinese food in a nearby Chinese restaurant, played billiards back at the hotel and drank ourselves into a delightful stupor. In the morning -- we set off in yesterday's direction to our re-scheduled event.
I was sad when all of this ended. But I'm over it now.
Why am I even relating this story in the first place?
I really don't know.
Except maybe to say the following:
Sometimes in life we can be going through a truly rough time. Things can be looking blacker than the tenth plague of Egypt. But then… serendipity happens.
As it did for me, that time way back when.
If any of the people that bought K's product received half of the benefits I got from selling it to them during those idyllic months, they got one hell of a deal.
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-30T01:56:00.004-05:00

Birds

One thing about birds.
Not a one of them smiles.
Not ever.

Yet, give me wings
and I imagine my face ripping
off from the smiling alone.

Not to mention the wind itself
hollowing out my jowls
as I swoop and dive.

Defying what I know about gravity
in a macabre smile
thinking thoughts

no bird, anywhere, has
ever thunk.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-27T08:22:00.002-05:00

Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes; you have no idea how important it is to be acknowledged. Even if it's an angry stare, because it's when they ignore you, when they look right through you, that you should start worrying.
-- Cecilia Ahern, in If You Could See Me Now --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-26T02:11:00.001-05:00

I've never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This is all part of the superstition, the folklore, the mania of the business, the fetishistic fuss… dying in the middle of a word, or three-fifths of the way through a novel. My friend, the novelist Brian Moore, used to fear this as well, though for an extra reason: "Because some bastard will come along and finish it for you." Here is a novelist's would-you-rather. Would you rather die in the middle of a book, and have some bastard finish it for you, or leave behind a work in progress that not a single bastard in the whole world was remotely interested in finishing?
-- Julian Barnes, Nothing To Be Frightened Of --

Have great Thursday!
*****

Terrorist

2012-01-25T23:10:00.008-05:00

I just finished another book by John Updike.
Did I like it?
Yes.
Should you read it, too?
Yes, I think you should.
So far I've read three books by this author, and I have liked them all.
In The Beauty of the Lilies [<-- fabulous] Gertrude and Claudius [<-- a behind the scenes look at Shakespeare's Hamlet characters, very very good]… and now this one. Depth-wise, perhaps the weakest of the three, but still -- I find Updike to be an author that deserves my continued attention. And I have many others of his on deck here amid the Bookpuddle shelves.
Terrorist tells the story of young Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy. The second surname is that of his red-haired all-American-Irish mother. Ahmad is the product of a brief liaison she had with a man of Middle Eastern descent. Growing up in post 9/11 [I hate that truncated phrase but use it here for brevity, as we all tend to do] New Jersey, Ahmad embraces the faith of his absentee father, and becomes as devoted as any high-schooler can be, to the stringent dictates of the Muslim faith. He exceeds the devotion of his imam-tutor, learning fluent Arabic, and constantly reciting the Holy Qur'an in his heart and mind.
When he graduates, Ahmad takes up the profession of truck-driver for a furniture company and becomes embroiled in, umm… a bit more than the mere delivery of sofas and ottomans.
Updike weaves together a thread of diverse, believable characters, some of them intent on hindering Ahmad's faith, and others -- very much urging him onward toward more than anyone should ever ask of another human being. Namely, the giving of their own life, for a religious ideal. Behind those willing to be martyrs, there is a long line of others that shrink not only into anonymity, but, continued life.
This last point is, I think, the real unique thing that Updike achieves with this novel. He shows us that those that we may call "terrorists" are not necessarily inherently evil people.
They are just deluded, as is anyone of any religious faith that succeeds in becoming convinced that others would be better off dead than alive, if different while living.
Well worth reading. The final pages keep you riveted until you finally exhale and say, "Holy shit. I think I understand a lot more about how this happens, now."
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-25T03:45:00.005-05:00

I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe ‘Sky Above Clouds’ canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally.
-- Joan Didion, The White Album --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-24T04:55:00.002-05:00

When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything.
-- Jack, in Emma Donoghue's novel, Room --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-23T02:45:00.003-05:00

The young people in the library talk out like they're in their own living rooms, it's the same at the movies, there are no manners any more, television has ruined everybody's.
-- Beth, in John Updike's novel, Terrorist --
Have a great Monday!
******

Wherein He Still Does Not Answer The Question...

2012-01-22T16:42:00.010-05:00

Often, people will ask me what I love to read. Happens at work, even.
Co-workers always see me reading there, on my lunch breaks.
And it is amazing that I have never been able to adequately answer that question. I get all.... verklempt.
Yet, the question itself should be easy to answer.... hell, I almost LIVE to read. I desire to spend most of this day, as I did yesterday -- reading and thinking. And thinking about reading. Interacting with what I have read.
I often answer the question by saying "I like to read what I consider literature!" Or sometimes I will say "I like reading stuff that seems timeless." Or, "I like the classics." But all of those answers are not really hitting at what I truly love to read, or why I do it at all.
The truth is, I like to read stuff written by authors that are able to transcend their own limited place in this world.
I think of Margaret Atwood, for instance, and the way she can dabble so freely in the genre of dystopia, and then also write something like Alias Grace. I gravitate toward authors that have a broad scope of subject matter [like Updike, or Saramago] authors that give you that sense that they've tapped into something [the "something" is, I think, a wondrous fascination with life] and are able to speak beyond their own experience [isn't that what fiction should be, anything else being a memoir?] while giving us something that we all know to be true. A good author, I think, leads us along the path that he or she has chosen for us and all the while makes us feel like we have been here before. But we know that we, in fact, do need them to guide us. If they were to leave all of a sudden, we cannot finish the journey alone. Yet in a subtle way -- we've seen this path before, and we know it.
I think of this picture that I have hanging in, of all places, my bathroom. [Hey, I do some great reading, even in there!] I asked for it once as I was walking through a bookstore that was being run out of business by one of the new conglomerates. The proprietors were throwing everything out -- and I saw that picture and I asked if I could have it. The woman said, "Sure, take it." I was ecstatic, because I just loved that phrase, "I will go with thee and be thy guide." [photo, above]
I think that exemplifies what a good author does.
If you are reading this Bookpuddle blogpage, you are probably what I would call a true and genuine reader. With people like us, there is the added feature of what I would call cumulative understanding, when it comes to literature. One may not be able to recount every nuance, or even properly relate a plot outline from a book one read five years ago -- but there are actual cells in the brain storing that information and subtly drawing upon those memories with the result that a current read is illuminated by the faint flickers of the past. In this sense, reading [true life-long reading] is a journey, not a destination. This is why you and I will never finally read a book and say "Aha! This is it! I can now stop plodding through all these pages. I have arrived!"
It is also why novice readers cannot really appreciate the better books. There is not the wealth [the framework] of prior reading experience to buttress the interest level. It's like trying to paint the upper portions of a three-story building without having the scaffolding to climb the hell up there. It's why Shakespeare and DeLillo are not read as much in America [or the world] today as are Stephen King and James Patterson. Or Sue Grafton, working her way through the alphabet, A to Z.
I am not dissing these other writers -- I'm just suggesting that it's refreshing to see someone reading Robertson Davies, or W.G. Sebald, once in a while.
Nor am I suggesting that a good reader has to always be immersed in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky!
For instance, some of you may be aware of my own penchant for delving into what I call juvenalia every Christmas time. I truly love those times -- because, in keeping with the holiday season, it's sort of like throwing an extra scoop of gravy on a pile of mashed potatoes [stay with me, we're talking about Cipriano-fantasies here, which nearly always involve food…..] it's like a "treat" is what I am saying. Reading Winnie-the-Pooh or Wind In The Willows or Peter Nimble, etc.
But even there, in these gluttonous moments, astute readers like you and I can read such books with one eye on the nutritional value of things without which we would not be healthy, the rest of the year.
To sum up -- it is evident that I still do not quite know how to answer the question in any simple fashion.
******

The Winter of My Dickenscontent

2012-01-21T20:03:00.015-05:00

No, this will not be a blog about a newly found posthumously published Steinbeck novel. Rather, I thought I would say a few words about a certain fantasy of mine.
But first, I digress.
I would describe myself as being somewhat of a loner.
And all the people who know me would say, "Amen!" [Followed by, "Did he really say, 'somewhat'?"]
OK, I am an extreme loner.
I've always been introspective, since birth, really. Sometimes I feel it's as though I've spent a lifetime trying to rationally comprehend the fact that I was born at all!
Being introspective does not necessarily lead to being an introvert, but in my case I think it has. I enjoy people for the most part and I don't think any one would describe me as being socially inept, but overall, I have become somewhat of a hermit. And again, the word "somewhat" is a bit of an understatement.
Returning to the main subject matter [my fantasy] -- for the longest time now I've entertained in my mind a vision of what would constitute a sense of peace and happiness for me.
The scene is quite simple:
A deep winter's night, snow silently falling outside. There are houses nearby, little wisps of smoke exiting their chimneys, but these houses are as quiet and self-contained as my own, where I'm ensconced in a comfy chair before a fire in the grate, a cat purring next to me, deeply engaged in a novel by Charles Dickens.
[That is to say, I am reading the novel, not the cat].
A vital component of this fantasy is that I have all the time in the world to keep doing it. No agenda, no curfew, no interruptions. And an endless supply of coffee.
Some interesting things emerge from this.
Firstly, why is it, in my fantasy, that I am always reading Dickens?
I have no idea. I am not an aficionado of the author, having read only three of his books in my life. Maybe it's because most of his books are so lengthy? And they always seem so… Dickensian?
Secondly, [and with apologies to my feline friend] I admit that being alone is not the best scenario possible. Not by far. For even in my fantasy there does come a time when, satiated, I put the book aside.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-20T03:19:00.002-05:00

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
-- Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Be Still My Heart

2012-01-19T22:08:00.004-05:00

So tonight at Chapters I discovered the magazine of my dreams!
<-- It's called [be still my heart, be still…] Ground Beef.
I grabbed it off the rack like a wolf nabbing an injured rabbit, and trotted back to my table with the thing. Let me say the words again -- GROUND BEEF! Arguably the greatest invention since sliced buns, which, incidentally, were invented so that we could put ground beef between them!
I sipped my coffee and leafed through this magazine. Feeling guilty about the drool stains I left on the pages, I bought it.
The recipes in here are amazing -- and the magazine as a whole is just so… frigging comprehensive. And you should see the centerfold!
It's everything a domesticated carnivore could ever want!
I love it so much I've already cancelled my subscription to Better Homes and Burgers.
The only problem? One day ground beef probably will "still my heart" -- in a way that has little to do with recovering from former excitement levels.
But in the meantime, my rallying cry shall remain, "Bring on the condiments!"
*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-19T08:18:00.002-05:00

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-18T02:24:00.002-05:00

He read political books. They gave him phrases which he could only speak to himself and use on Shama. They also revealed one region after another of misery and injustice and left him feeling more helpless and more isolated than ever. Then it was that he discovered the solace of Dickens. Without difficulty he transferred characters and settings to people and places he knew. In the grotesques of Dickens everything he feared and suffered from was ridiculed and diminished, so that his own anger, his own contempt became unnecessary, and he was given strength to bear the most difficult part of his day: dressing in the morning, that daily affirmation of faith in oneself, which at times for him was almost like an act of sacrifice.
-- V. S. Naipaul, A House For Mr. Biswas --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

What Books Do At Night

2012-01-17T20:17:00.011-05:00

Have you ever wondered what books do at night? For instance, when the bookstore closes for the day and everyone goes home?
I have.
Admittedly, I'm afflicted with a few fairly serious mental issues, but I've always imagined that books left to themselves have little parties -- or at least conversations. A few years ago, I even wrote a poem about the phenomenon. I guess it's hard for me to imagine that something that brings such joy to my own life can have no joy or life of it's own.
There's probably a little shindig going on right now in my apartment, books running around all over the place. I just hope they don't drink all my beer.
I'm sitting in a bookstore as I write this, and I'm just looking around, imagining the mayhem that will ensue when the humans leave and the lights go out.
Recently a fellow Ontarian blogger [Melwyk from The Indextrious Reader] solved the mystery once and for all by posting on her site some actual footage of what goes on after closing time.
This particular party, captured by multiple video surveillance cameras, took place at Type, a bookstore in Toronto. It's well worth watching.
NEVER UNDER-ESTIMATE THE SHENANIGANS OF UNATTENDED BOOKS!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-17T03:21:00.001-05:00

Heaven and hell are nothing more than the assertion that the mind of God, as we human beings have created it, is still operating to reward or punish us after our death. Religion almost inevitably creates God in the image of the human being and then tries to force all of the reality into that frame of reference.....That is why there is no religious system that is eternal. That is why when human experience can no longer be interpreted adequately inside the traditional religious framework, the framework itself begins to die.
-- John Shelby Spong, Re-Claiming The Bible For a Non-Religious World --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-16T04:28:00.001-05:00

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
-- Agatha Christie --

Have a great Monday!
******

5 Things That Shall Outlive Me

2012-01-15T20:36:00.003-05:00

Recently I've taken notice of certain possessions of mine.
More specifically, the unaccountable longevity of their existence.
Admittedly, I'm a person that loathes change, in general. And I figure if something ain't broken -- why fix it. Why replace it?
But certain things of mine...
OK, let's start with my alarm clock.
I have had the same alarm clock -- how do I even describe the thing… I'm almost sure that Noah received his summons to build the Ark just after being awoken by the very same Candle© alarm clock.
I've been rudely awakened from slumber by this damn thing my entire adult life. I've had it for over 30 years. Even the very store where I bought this clock does not exist any more. [Consumers Distributing. You ordered stuff from a catalog and then went and picked it up! How ancient is that?]
Secondly, my tooth brush holder. I've had the same one for about 30 years. Thankfully, I change what it holds a bit more frequently.
My wallet? Pushing 30. It is like legendary. [I've written about it before]. Certain parts of it are held together with tape. Still, I do not buy a new one.
Fourthly, my favorite comb. I stole it from my girlfriend when I was just out of high school. I still use this same comb. [and have much less hair to sweep through it, nowadays].
Fifthly, my coffee scoop.
My first coffee maker was a Melitta. Circa 1986. It came with a plastic scoop thing [see image, above]. Since then I have had many many coffee makers…. but I have never abandoned this one scoop thing. I've kept it around.
Who does these sort of things?
What is wrong with me?
Should I see a therapist?
For a horrid example of what I hear every weekday morning, long before I myself want to hear anything, click --> HERE!
******

Where I Live...

2012-01-14T17:36:00.005-05:00

Hey, is there still time to get in on the Saturday Snapshot?
I'm afraid my entry this week is not only late, but also -- not all that super-exciting or anything. It's a moonlit picture of where I live. Not really, but almost.
In all seriousness, I spend so much time at this particular bookstore, [mostly in the Starbucks inside it] that well, yes, I might as well live here. I've considered getting my mail forwarded. When it comes down to it, my cat is the dominant tenant in my apartment, time-wise at least! [I wish he would help with the bills!]
For those who may not know, Chapters / Indigo is Canada's biggest bookstore chain. It's the true north Walmart of book-buying.
This particular store opened in 1996, and I've been here pretty much every day since. It's my hangout after work. Over the years I've gotten to know so many "regulars" -- people that also frequent the place.
But I remain, by far, the regularest of them all.
They come and go -- but I have outlived even all of the staff! Many times over!
I'd love to know how many thousands of gallons of coffee I've consumed here.
How frequently do I visit? Well….. I'm writing this blog from the place.
And you can't be more here than that!

Many thanks to Alyce from At Home With Books for hosting this Saturday Snapshot meme.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-13T08:03:00.001-05:00

Have a great Friday!
******

Re-Thinking The Bible

2012-01-12T23:05:00.006-05:00

I am in the beginning stages of reading what is turning out to be an absolutely fascinating book about the Bible.
John Shelby Spong, a decade into his retirement as an Episcopal Bishop in New Jersey, shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, in one footnote he refers to a subsequent book, scheduled to be published in 2014. This current one is called Re-Claiming The Bible For A Non-Religious World.
My initial reaction? One word --> Wow!
For those of you who may not already know, I myself have a bachelor degree in Theology. I studied full-time in college, for four years, [1987-1991] and graduated with Honors -- which is to say, I took it fairly seriously. Since then, though, all I have really excelled at is…. being a bachelor.
All that aside, my interest in the Bible has not waned. But my focus has shifted, largely in part to authors like Spong, who have taught me that the Bible is a book that is not meant to be interpreted literally. In my opinion, only when that fact is fully understood can the Bible become a relevant text, worthy of true study.
One would have to be fairly ostrich-headed to have not noticed in the past decade or so the plethora of books that have been written about the Bible and/or the Christian religion in general. Writers like Tom Harpur, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens come to mind. I've read them all.
The difference with Spong is that he is someone who still considers himself a "believer." But his perspective is so astute, so NOT nonsensical, that he succeeds in bridging a gap that these other writers seem only to widen, at times, with their own brand of fundamentalism.
Spong says, on page 15 -- When I read books written by the new breed of militant atheist writers, who have become both best-selling authors and household names, I find myself perplexed as to how to respond to them. I have no desire to attack them or rise to God's defense. The religion, the Christianity and the Bible that they reject are the same religion, Christianity and Bible that I reject. My problem with such writers is not located there. It is rather in the apparent fact that they do not seem to know that there is any other way. Why should they, since the church has worked so hard not to allow other possibilities to become visible? My desire is to work in that very arena and to close that gap in knowledge at least in regard to the Bible. I am not the enemy of the Bible. I am the enemy of the way the Bible has been understood and the way the Bible has been used. I do not think for one moment that the Bible is in any literal sense the "Word of God."

Having read many of his books, it is not the slightest exaggeration to say that I have learned [infinitely] more from John Shelby Spong than I've learned in all the years of my formal study.
This book is a gem. It begins, just like God did, in Genesis, and finishes off at Revelation. Thing is, with every chapter, Spong respectfully shows the reader how incredibly foolish that phrase "just like God did" really is.
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-12T03:01:00.002-05:00

Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.
-- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22 --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-11T07:57:00.002-05:00

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Warmth

2012-01-10T22:55:00.005-05:00

Warmth

Not that I saw them, but I felt them. Ice crystals
on my upper lip. Steam preceding me, wrapping
‘round my frozen thoughts -- boots breaking an
endless row of bones against a dog’s distant bark.
That’s how warm it was, walking home tonight.

“Warm”?
The coldest we have ever felt, is warmth.
Lingering effects of an atomic blast, without which
we walk few steps further. Have the sun go out.
Speak to me eight minutes later, about cold.

The shaking key let me in to the building’s glow.
Pressing 14, I melted in the elevator. How
vulnerable we are -- how utterly dependent upon
things none of us fathom, much less think about.
The door opened, to ever-increasing warmth.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-10T03:45:00.003-05:00

The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.
-- John Shelby Spong, Eternal Life: A New Vision --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-09T08:24:00.001-05:00

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

Have a great Monday!
******

My Saturday Snapshot

2012-01-07T02:02:00.008-05:00

I received a terrific book (t.y.L.i.I.) for my birthday in December, and I've finally gotten around to reading it.
How To Live or A Life of Montaigne: In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.
That's quite the subtitle, I know.
Montaigne was a French philosopher/essayist of the 16th Century, and this biography by Sarah Bakewell explores his life and ideas. For Montaigne, learning to live "appropriately" (a propos) is the "great and glorious masterpiece" of human life.
I took this photo with my little statue of Rodin's Thinker, looking on -- as this is most exemplary of my own posture and attitude as I turn these pages.

Many thanks to Alyce from At Home With Books for hosting this great meme called The Saturday Snapshot.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-06T04:30:00.001-05:00

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can... Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.
-- David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-05T02:30:00.003-05:00

Something tells me this guy is still wishing he had checked the height of his trailer, sooner.

Have a great, accident-free Thursday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-04T02:41:00.004-05:00

The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
-- Tim O'Brien --

Have a nice Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-03T03:09:00.001-05:00

Sorry the man, to my mind, who does not have in his own home a place to be all by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to hide!
-- Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592) --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Better Than Hamburger

2012-01-02T20:35:00.009-05:00

Well, here we are at the beginning of a New Year.
When I was a kid, if someone had talked about life in the year 2012, I would have thought the story should include riding around in spaceships on a daily basis.
But here we are. And we still have cars!
Looking back on 2011, I acknowledge it as a fairly un-prolific year for me, as to both my reading and my blogging about reading.
I blame three things -- Firstly, a bit of emotional turmoil that took my mind away from pages for a while. Secondly, early-onset senility. Thirdly, hamburger.
Too much hamburger in my bloodstream, resulting in abject laziness.
All in all, I read only 39 books in total -- considerably down from my usual 50+.
Even so, there were so many memorable books among those. I'm going to try and choose five here as the ones I would most recommend to my friends.
And once again [I can literally feel hamburger clogging my valves…] I'm going to be customarily lazy and just sort of mention them without going into much of a defence of my reasonings. In other words, no reviews, nary a dust-jacket blurb.
In no particular order, here are the best five novels I read in 2011:

1) The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.
2) Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.
3) In The Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike.
4) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
5) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.

As soon as I place those five books there I feel guilty, because…. what about The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor? Or Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien? Or Rules of Civility by Amor Towles? Or Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler?
Choosing is such a fickle business.
But in all seriousness, let's narrow it down to the one criteria of…. when you set the book down you literally are dying to pick it up again? The book that can make you forget your need for another burger?
For that I must say that The Line of Beauty by Hollinghurst, read back in a prior January, was all of that and more.
Wishing you all a terrific year of reading great books!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-02T03:03:00.001-05:00

As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror… And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue.
-- Virginia Woolf --

Have a great Monday!
******

Old Acquaintance

2011-12-31T04:26:00.009-05:00

As the New Year of 2012 inexorably approaches I am reminded of something I recently read in a fabulous novel by Amor Towles. In Rules of Civility, there is a passage as follows:
Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Sometimes, it sure seems that's what life intends. After all, it's basically a centrifuge that spins every few years casting approximate bodies in disparate directions. And when the spinning stops, almost before we can catch our breath, life crowds us with a calendar of new concerns. Even if we wanted to retrace our steps and rekindle our old acquaintances, how could we possibly find the time?

My answer to the initial question is quickly answered:
No.
Old acquaintances should not be forgotten.
Just because we have moved on in our life to other things, other people even, doesn't mean we should forget what someone has meant to us -- I think that the New Year is a terrific time to rekindle those memories.
If any of us were to make one resolution, this should be it.
To say hello to someone overdue of our acknowledgment.
I immediately know who I want to say "Hi" to, and I bet you can think of the same in your life.
It's true that time seems to constrain us, at every remove. But I encourage you to make [invent, if you must] the time to say "hello" to someone who has not heard it from you, in a long while.
Wishing you, my Dear Acquaintances, all the best in 2012.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-30T03:10:00.002-05:00

But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.
-- Zadie Smith --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-28T02:38:00.001-05:00

It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all of you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.
-- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T10:55:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas to one and all!

Dabbling in Juvenalia

2011-12-23T21:23:00.012-05:00

Every year around this season [of Christmas], my Reading Partner© and I partake of a children's book. We indulge.
"Children" is the wrong word though.
A younger person's book might be better phraseology. I prefer to think of it as "dabbling in juvenalia".
In 2011 we've chosen Jonathan Auxier's Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes.
Terrific book. I can't wait to get back to it as soon as I write this blog. It would be almost impossible for any book to top Philip Pullman's series His Dark Materials, or Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, but this one is right up there in its own right.
Peter Nimble is this ten year old orphan who had his eyes pecked out by a raven.
He becomes a master at thievery, utilizing the resultant attenuation of all of his other senses.
But, in the process of his… thievery -- he manages to pilfer a box of magical eyes.
Three pairs of 'em.
When he plugs these things into his empty sockets, he is immediately transported into adventures beyond the realm of… well, it is just bizarre. It's worth a look.
One thing I love about Auxier's style is the lack of "dumbing down" -- I mean, the story is even crazier than anything we have read before -- but I just love how Auxier refrains from being child-friendly. There's quite a bit of violence here.
And it's not just the violence I admire, but also the vocabulary.
In one scene an unconscious Peter Nimble is shackled and imprisoned, an empty flour sack tied over his head. He awakes amidst some rather major nasal convulsions, and we read:
With each sternutation came a sharp pain in the back of his head, which was still sore from the ambush outside the Eating Hall. [p.201]
Excuse me?
Sternu…… what?
I had to look this word up. And I am not only 48 years old, but also, pretty much a linguistic genius.
Apparently it means "the act of sneezing."
Ohhhhhh…. right. I get it now.

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas season, free of the flu, or even a cold.
Which is to say... completely sternutationless.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-23T07:26:00.001-05:00

Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No, it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams."
-- Martin Amis, The Information --

Have a great Friday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-22T08:20:00.003-05:00

Being wise, Professor Cake knew that any relationship not beginning with a punch or two would most assuredly fade over time: it is a well-known fact that brawling begets friendship. Already Peter and Sir Tode were planting seeds of mutual respect that might one day blossom into something far greater -- a friendship to rival the stuff of legends.
-- Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Terrarium: A Poem

2011-12-21T22:21:00.011-05:00

Relatively speaking, it's been rather a slow year for me and my poetry efforts.
"Efforts" is the wrong word to use though, because poetry should never be a struggle.
2011 was not exactly prolific. I'm OK with that, really.
Poetry, like love, cannot be forced.
I just write when an idea or a vision, or maybe an experience, takes over... and words form.
Usually I am dealing with a ratio of about 80% fiction to 20% reality, in my poetry. Sometimes it's 100% fiction. At other times, I'm at about 90% reality.
You can NEVER be at 100% reality, because as soon as you put something into words it is not what it once was. And that's not to say it is less.... most often it is more.
And you add a few percentage points for someone else reading it.
I think the need for language itself eats up that 10% of reality, no matter how close to "reality" a writer attempts to transmit an idea or a feeling.
A Robert Bateman painting [the epitome of detail, and I have one] will never be as true as a photograph. But neither is it meant to be. Thirdly, nothing beats a real tiger, staring you in the face. But the beauty though, of art, has nothing to do with reality. It's never about what is or was, but it is always about what could never be, until now. The beauty of art lies in its transferability.
I have a cache of almost 400 poems... or what I would call poems. Some people might just call them sentences strung together. If you were to study them in chronological sequence [not all of them appear in blog-format] you would find a movement from structure and rhyme scheme, to arbitrariness, free-verse, and abstraction.
I am thankful for this evolution in my writing, and I attribute my attitude of bravery to my exposure to Billy Collins [a master of the written moment] who taught me, without saying it in so many words, that everything is poetry.
I encourage you to try it.
Write about the difference between how your vaccination scar feels today, compared to the day you received the shot. Write one specific memory of a deceased loved one. Your grandmother's rhubarb pie. Your uncle's barn. The way a candle went out when you opened the window.
But most importantly, write about none of these things I have mentioned. Write about what matters to you.
Just write stuff -- it's fun. It's..... poetic.
One day you and I will not be able to do this, and so we should do it, now.
So many many things that you saw today, or that happened to you, or that you felt, or saw in your mind's eye -- are a poem, longing to get out.

Terrarium

As my father set the thing up I watched,
heart set on a bike, a Mizuno catcher's mitt.
Confusion trebled with the dumping of ants.

This will teach you about industry, production.
And it did, it did that. Day after day, tunneling
against the sides, they carried. Endless lifting.

A frantic community intent on thriving, thrived
under my gaze. But I hated the invisibility of
needless desire. The lack of leisure -- love.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

For more of my poems, click --> HERE.
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-21T03:02:00.003-05:00

A child lies like a grey pebble on the shore until a certain teacher picks him up and dips him in water, and suddenly you see all the colours and patterns in the dull stone, and it’s marvellous for the stone and marvellous for the teacher.
-- Elizabeth Hay, Alone in the Classroom --
Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-12-20T03:09:00.001-05:00

There is something wonderful that happens between true friends when they find themselves no longer wasting time with meaningless chatter. Instead, they become content just to share each other's company. It is the opinion of some that this sort of friendship is the only kind worth having. While jokes and anecdotes are nice, they do not compare with the beauty of shared solitude. It was a fact that as the days drew on, Peter and Sir Tode were spending less time talking and more time simply sitting side by side, listening to the sea.
-- Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-12-19T02:44:00.002-05:00

It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.
-- Martin Amis, Time's Arrow --

Have a great Monday!
******

Rules of Civility

2011-12-18T03:49:00.005-05:00

Surely the writing of legendary debut novels is not unprecedented.
[I think of Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, or Flaubert].
Amor Towles is in that camp.
I don't know what he's smoking, but I want a few puffs.
I just finished reading Rules of Civility and recommend it to all my readers, without reservation. The blurb on the back of the dust jacket is no hyperbole -- "a voice influenced by Fitzgerald and Capote, but clearly true to itself."
The bulk of the story takes place in later 1930's New York. In this era of fortunes won and lost, 25-year old Katey Kontent finds herself tossed into the currents of poverty and extravagance that were a hallmark of the time.
The author wastes no time at all in having Katey and her flat-mate Eve meet up with the dashing and debonair banker, Tinker Grey. Through this chance encounter in a bar on New Year's Eve [1938], the girls are thrown from worrying about how far they can make their three or four dollars stretch, to having not a care in the world.
Well -- at least one of them will be afforded this new worldview.
A tragic accident causes Tinker to follow his conscience -- he devotes himself to the glamorous Eve... and kudos to her, she was really "working it" not just that first night, but thereafter, as well.
Or…. was she? Because, later, when he…. no, I won't say it -- I hate spoilers.
Where do the deepest affections of Mr. Grey really lie?
Or, for that matter, which of these women truly loves Tinker Grey?
What an engaging, thoroughly satisfying, searing and poignant story!
Albeit bittersweet.
Aren't all the best stories at least a bit of that?
Once-upon-a-time meets happily-ever-after, happily or not?
This a witty, well-crafted, wonderful book.
Whatever Mr. Towles has to smoke to top this novel -- I want some of that, too!
I close with a representative citation, from the penultimate page:
....life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions -- we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.
Go get it. Do it, now.
******

One Big Spider!

2011-12-17T00:39:00.007-05:00

I live just down the street from The National Art Gallery of Canada, here in Ottawa.
In front of the Gallery stands a giant sculpture of a spider, created in 1999 by artist Louise Bourgeois, and installed in 2005.
I remember the very day, I watched them installing the thing with big cranes, and workmen countersinking the spider-feet into the stones.
Last weekend I was walking past just as a jet crossed the sky, leaving a vapor trail in perfect juxtaposition. I snapped this shot -- I thought the effect was as if the spider had just descended from outer space, on this slender white thread.
A couple more pics --> HERE.

Many thanks to Alyce for hosting this wonderful Saturday Snapshot meme.
*******

A Loss -- A Terrible Loss

2011-12-16T20:16:00.003-05:00

This morning I clicked on my computer and saw two messages informing me of what had happened during the night.
One was from a commenter on my blogpage, the other, an email from my Reading Partner.
I felt an instant shock on both counts.
Of course, I knew that the days of Christopher Hitchens were numbered.
I guess I was somehow hoping that he could beat the odds.
But this writer, this amazingly astute thinker, a man I greatly admire -- he has slipped away from us in the night.
Christopher Hitchens was someone I think I would never tire of listening to. Someone who would so gamely point out to me that the sentence I had just written was grammatically incorrect.
I wish that just once in my life I could have sat and had a drink with him.
Hitchens, an atheist, taught me more about my current concept of "god" than probably anyone else in the world.
And so, I thank you for that, Mr. Hitchens.
What manner of words can I arrange, to summarize -- to eulogize such a man?
The attempt seems blasphemous to me.
The very word so many levelled at him.
Hitchens once said that he and a friend, contemplating their demise, had mused that there would come a day when the newspapers would come out and they wouldn’t be there to read them. “And on that day, I’ve realized recently,” he went on, “I’ll probably be in the newspapers, or quite a lot of them. And etiquette being what it is, generally speaking, rather nice things being said about me.” He shrugged. “Just typical that will be the edition I miss.”
You've missed today's newspaper Mr. Hitchens.
But not as much as I already miss you.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-16T08:21:00.001-05:00

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion -- whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment -- if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say.
-- Amore Towles, Rules of Civility --

Have a great Friday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-15T08:11:00.002-05:00

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-14T06:23:00.004-05:00

Now, there is a wonderful thing in this world called "foresight". It is a gift treasured above all others because it allows one to know what the future holds. Most people with foresight end up wielding immense power in life, often becoming great rulers or librarians.
-- Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble & His Fantastic Eyes --
Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-12-13T05:06:00.002-05:00

Have a great Tuesday!
******

The Hundredth Meridian

2011-12-12T22:37:00.009-05:00

Can any good thing come out of Kingston, Ontario, Canada?
[John 1:46]
You bet it can.
Admittedly, a lot of bad things go in to Kingston for a bit of a stay, as it is home to Canada's most notable maximum security penitentiary, Canada's San Quentin, basically -- but one good thing has definitely come out of there!
The band Tragically Hip!
On the way home, I had to zap my radio up to full volume when this song came on -- it's an oldie, from 1992, [from the album entitled Fully Completely] but still as mindlessly relevant today as it was then. I remember when this song came out, I was living in British Columbia at the time. And I just loved this song, and still do.
So I couldn't wait to get home and hit my iTunes where I have a plethora of The Hip on eternal standby.
Funny story -- for a long while I always thought that Gordon Downie was saying, toward the end of this song, "get a RACCOON to sing my eulogy…." only a decade or so later did I realize he's saying, "get RY COODER to sing my eulogy."
I'd opt for a raccoon.
Think of how neat-o that would be!

To me, it's profound, that one line where he says, "It would seem to me, I remember every single * * * * in' thing I know!"
Because I do.
I do.

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-12-12T08:20:00.002-05:00

The notion of Florida brought mention of the Keys which brought memories to Tinker of reading Treasure Island as a boy and digging with his brother for backyard doubloons; which brought memories to both of us of Robinson Crusoe and daydreams of being stranded; which got us on the track of what two belongings we'd want in our pockets when we were eventually shipwrecked alone: for Tinker (sensibly) a jackknife and a flint; for me (insensibly) a pack of cards and Walden by Thoreau -- the only book in which infinity can be found on every other page.
-- from Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles --

Have a great Monday!
*******

'Tis The Season...

2011-12-10T01:35:00.004-05:00

Firstly, in light of the common exigencies of Disclaimer Etiquette I must say that the above photo is in no way endorsed by the fine folks at Alcoholics Anonymous.
This is a reoriented shot of me at last Saturday's work Christmas Party.
I rotated it to the left.
The photographer was much better-positioned than I was at the time.
Anyone who has even an amateur dabbling in physics will know that beer will not angle itself down like that into the gullet, unless there is some sort of internal force driving it stomach-ward, other than gravity alone.
Some sort of funnel-effect.
To get the ACTUAL perspective of the original photo, you, the viewer, will have to tilt your own head to the extreme left side of yourself… basically ear to shoulder, which is not too far from my own cranial latitude, by the end of this night.
This year my gracious employer provided us with taxi chits to get us safely there and back, so the only civilian terrorized on the way home was the driver himself.
If my memory does not fail me on this, my New York strip steak was done to perfection -- but wow, the baked potato to the side of it was not the only thing that was "loaded".

Many thanks to Alyce for hosting this wonderful "Saturday Snapshot" meme.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-09T04:25:00.002-05:00

And then he only had eyes for the pie. Watch any man, he could be ninety years old and drooling spit, but at the sight of homemade pie every last one of his wits will spring to attention.
-- Elizabeth Hay, A Student of Weather --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-08T08:27:00.003-05:00

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you'.
-- Saul Bellow --

Have a great Thursday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-07T08:22:00.001-05:00

You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.
-- Daniel C. Dennett --

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-12-06T03:36:00.003-05:00

And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us from being swept away into the night.
-- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-12-05T02:58:00.002-05:00

I head down the steps to see if my mail-order copy of Catcher in the Rye is in the box. I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.
-- Kathryn Stockett, The Help --

Have a great Monday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-02T03:31:00.002-05:00

A personal library is an X-ray of the owner’s soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.
-- Jay Parini --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-01T04:28:00.004-05:00

Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
-- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now --
Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-11-30T08:21:00.002-05:00

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-11-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-11-28T03:31:00.003-05:00

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-11-25T08:17:00.001-05:00

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-11-24T08:23:00.003-05:00

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
-- Edith Wharton --

Have a great Thursday!
*******

Memories....

2011-11-23T20:28:00.005-05:00

Above is a picture of the house I mostly grew up in. We had other houses before this, but this one, that little green house was where I spent what I think of as my most formative time, from about age 8 or 9 onwards. Until pseudo-maturity.
That's where I morphed into the bag of tricks I am today.
Actually, they [whoever "they" are] say that long before age 8 we sort of "are" who we end up being, and so I guess I was already who I am prior to The Green House on Argyle Street.
I got the picture from Google Maps.
Someone else lives there now -- both of my parents are long since deceased, and today I live almost on the other side of the country. But I sooooooo remember that house!
High up on the inside of the main hallway closet I once wrote, in pencil, "I was here, Nov. ?, 1972." I forget the exact day. Almost 40 years ago. I know it is still there because when my mother finally moved out, my siblings looked up there and saw it, and sent me the picture. It's written on the INSIDE wall because I used to climb up there and hide from the world. [I had issues -- still have some!] In other words, it will never be painted over, it's so hidden.
See that roof there?
I used to LIVE on that roof, scrambling about. I still am not sure why I loved that roof so much -- I would get to it by climbing up the clothesline pole out back. I would look like such a crazy oaf if I climbed up there today, even if I had a special repair task to do, much less for recreational purposes.
I remember when I was taller than that one big tree out front, on the lawn.
I remember how amazed I was when we moved there from the small town we had come from.
This was the Big City!
Back then my simplified criteria of what constituted a "city" was "Does it have billboards?"
And this one did!
My younger sister and I would go just across the street [at the big high school]… on weekends in the summer and they would play Disney movies in the auditorium.
Maybe I am just too high on coffee here [and I do have quite the buzz going] but I miss being that young, sometimes.
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-11-23T04:08:00.001-05:00

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-11-22T01:27:00.002-05:00

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.
-- Steven Wright --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-11-21T08:22:00.002-05:00

The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.
-- Donna Tartt --

Have a great Monday!
******

Picasso: The Dream

2011-11-19T01:48:00.006-05:00

Those of you who have followed me through the years know that I am not below rescuing something lovely from the garbage.
On my way from the underground parking to the elevator I pass right by the area where people toss out their junk.

And I can't help but notice, from time to time, that I LIKE their refuse.
You may recall that I once rescued a lovely Modigliani specimen from the realms of utter oblivion. Well, last night I had to move that treasure to another wall to make way for my new orphaned art.
Picassos's The Dream.
Come on!
There's a half-exposed breast there, which is a rare sighting in this apartment [unless it's my own, which doesn't even count.]
Someone threw her out. I had to take her home.
So.
Rejoice with me, friends.
As the great artist himself once said: “If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!”
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-11-18T08:17:00.003-05:00

McDonald's, which had already upgraded its brewed coffee and bolstered it with free promotions, launched a national media campaign for its McCafe espresso brand.
"This is no longer fast food. " McDonald's Canada president John Betts told the Star this week. "This is great food served fast."

Have a great Friday!
And be sure to visit a McDonald's near you. I probably will!
******

Beautiful Music

2011-11-17T22:37:00.010-05:00

I'm afraid my blogging glut is still in effect. I've been doing some terrific reading, having "discovered" the missing link in my reading life. John Updike.
His novel In The Beauty of the Lilies is seared into my brain as one of the most wonderful things I have read in a long time. And now I am halfway through Gertrude and Claudius -- totally different genre, but same author. Here he is giving us sort of a prelude to the events of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It is AMAZING! It helps that Hamlet is one of my favourite stories ever!
And speaking of favourite things, I want to share with you perhaps my favourite piece of music of all time. The Largo section of Dvorak's New World Symphony.
I always imagine this being played at my own funeral. I actually want to write this into my will or whatever. To me, it is for sure the most moving way that I would be able, in my final act before being actually interred, to express to everyone how sad it is that I am now totally dead.
My love of Dvorak is not just something I am coming up with here tonight out of the blue. Several years ago I even wrote a poem about how much I love his stuff.

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-11-17T01:43:00.002-05:00

Men are so amusing. Show them a pack of wolves, dominated by the males, and they will say, See? It is natural for men to rule. Fine. But produce a beehive, controlled by the queen, with males used for menial labor, and they protest, Human beings are not insects. Yes, well.
-- David Maine, The Preservationist --

Have a great Thursday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-11-16T08:20:00.001-05:00

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-11-15T08:19:00.002-05:00

Have a great Tuesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-11-14T03:28:00.002-05:00

A company of believers is like a prisonful of criminals: their intimacy and solidarity are based on what about themselves they can least justify.
-- John Updike, In The Beauty of the Lilies --

Have a great Monday!
******

A Sunday Poem

2011-11-13T13:04:00.003-05:00

One Good Reason

One good reason will suffice -- with that
I’ll shelve my query and retract everything
spoken, before the wine. I want to know.
Is it simply busyness?

Or the cares? The worries of the day?
I will yet recant, before pouring another.
But tell me, Love. Observe, if you will
the inclination of her head.

Does it not appeal to you?
The veiled light? The gown itself, how it slips
from her shoulders? Yet, she is enwrapped,
Oh – oh, my heart.

I shall pour us each another of this shiraz
while I wait. And you do look thoughtful.
There is no wrong answer my dear. My
true love constrains me.

My own thought is that you would rather move
the hands forward than hear the clock tick.
But we have all night. One good reason,
and I am in no hurry.

Do you not at all envy the ease of the right
knee upon the left? Let me repeat for you
the original question – Why have I not once
seen you in such a state?

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

More recent Cipriano poems, including one from yesterday, --> HERE.
*******

Sometimes You Need a Break

2011-11-10T22:00:00.011-05:00

Brigitte has been cutting my hair for quite a while now. We have both watched each other age -- that's how long I have known her. She is doing it more gracefully than I am.
Tonight while I sat at Starbucks and read my book I realized I am due for a shearing. So, without an appointment, I floored it to the Mall where she works and she was busy when I arrived. She seemed flustered when I hesitated at her suggestion that I return tomorrow evening, finally saying, "Can you give me half an hour, though?"
"Sure," I said. "No problem at all."
I got a cranberry-lemon muffin from the place next door and sat at a table in the main aisle of the Mall, outside the barber shop. [It's actually called The Barber Shop]. Continuing on with my book, I kept glancing up where I could see her in the reflections of the hundred mirrors of the place. She did not have another client after the one that had just left. Instead, Brigitte just sat there in the chair that I would soon occupy, sipping on a coffee, running her hands through her incredible mane of hair and ponderously thinking.
At exactly half an hour, she popped out into the bustle of the Mall, saw me, and said, "Are you ready now?"
The reason I am relating this story is because as I sat and had my ears lowered, she mentioned at least five times how appreciative she was that I had afforded her that half hour. For me, it was not an imposition or a chore at all -- but to her, it was extremely necessary to sit there for that space of time and "collect her thoughts" as she put it.
It made me think of times when people have been patient with me when I have been down and out.
Sometimes you need a break.
A break that does not have to be earned or explained -- just a break.
I myself have needed a break lately, and I am so appreciative of the friends that have left comments on my blog. Things like "have a nice re-think" and "come back soon" and "I cannot live without you" etc. [OK, admittedly, I made that last one up!]
The past few days, my life-long friend has been giving me some terrific over-the-phone counselling -- and during one of our sessions he said something so profound, I want to tell you of it. He said, "The distance between your expectations and what is, is called frustration."
It really helped me. I think there is great wisdom in that statement and it can be applied in so many ways. On the face of it, there is a tendency to equate it with the idea of simply lowering one's expectations. As though that would cure all ills.
But I tend to interpret it as meaning one should strive to have more realistic expectations. It's not advocating pessimism as much as it is endorsing a truer sense of things, of what is.
Being true to yourself.
At this point you may be wondering what any of this has to do with an image of a box of beer, above.
Well -- see, it's part of my ongoing therapy.
On the way home, in honour of being more and more "true to myself" I knew that my expectations of even this evening here would be heightened…. yea, accentuated, if you will -- if I just had a couple of brewskis.
So far it is working. Re-thinking my inks while I be-drinking my drinks!
Therapy. Therapy, my friends.
Sometimes we just need to do what we need to do to be what we need to be.
Happy.
******

Re-Thinking My Inks

2011-11-08T02:33:00.004-05:00

This Bookpuddle page will be temporarily not-relevant.
[It's been not-relevant for a while now, Cip].
Point taken.
Please be patient with me as I, [as Chris Farley said in Beverly Hills Ninja], "re-think my inks."

Thank you, dear Puddlers.
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-11-07T08:05:00.002-05:00

Teddy knew a door had been shut that would not open again. He was old enough now to see that life is a bent path among branching possibilities -- after you move past a fork in the road you cannot get back.
-- John Updike, In The Beauty of the Lilies --

Have a great Monday!
******

As If I'm Serious...

2011-11-05T20:48:00.004-04:00

I want someone to click on the shirt and order it for me.
I'm just kidding, but in all seriousness -- I would look so good in this thing!
You know it, and I do, too.
So, the right thing to do is just get out the ol' credit card and click... click... click!
Happiness [mine] is just a mere click away!
It's one of my fave stories of all time.
Do I need a better sales pitch than my own happiness, friends?
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-11-04T05:06:00.004-04:00

Traffic Lights

We hear that death and taxes are the constant.
The two things that are sure.
But I say traffic lights.

Red, orange and green are on duty.
Stop, wait, or go on through.
At any intersection, these are the options.

To disobey them is a freedom, yes.
But like life's own signals, to do so regularly,
is to learn they knew best.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-11-03T08:10:00.001-04:00

If enough money is involved and enough people believe that two plus two equals five the media will report the story with a straight face always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that mathematicians however say that two plus two still equals four.
-- Susan Jacoby --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Updike and Bacon

2011-11-02T22:38:00.019-04:00

Recently I have made two very important discoveries.
John Updike, and tri-packaged bacon.
All evening I've been wrestling with the problem of which discovery to blog about first. Since I've only really just started this excellent Updike novel...
I'm going with the pork.
The other day in the supermarket I was astounded to find that someone [in this case, an outfit called Olymel Foods] has finally addressed themselves to the age-old problem of what to do with the unused portion of an opened package of bacon.
The answer? --> THERE IS NO UNUSED PORTION ANYMORE!
Open only one vacuum-sealed meal-size packet at a time! Why hasn't anyone else thought of this until now? I've been waiting years for this.

<-- See the second picture there?
It's the perfect thing for a non-Jewish non-Muslim pig-eating bachelor like myself.
You just tear off one of the three sections and fry up your four slabs of fine hog.
The rest stays fresh. Perfection.
And speaking of perfection -- 60 pages in this may be a bit of a premature summation on my part -- but I can't believe I have lived this long, always reading books, and only now have discovered this wonderful writer, John Updike.
Truly superb. Engaging. I am just so enthralled by this depiction of a minister in the midst of losing his faith. Updike's read my diary.
So that's a bit of what's going on around here --
Good books.
Good breakfasts.
Feeding my mind and clogging my arteries.
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-11-02T04:40:00.003-04:00

Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.
-- John Updike --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-11-01T08:20:00.004-04:00

Here is exactly how I feel this morning.
But I have to go to work!
Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-10-31T05:01:00.002-04:00

So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot.
-- Daphne du Maurier, The Scapegoat --

Have a great Monday!
******

All By Themselves

2011-10-30T16:11:00.006-04:00

This is the most adorable lip-sync video I've ever seen.
I love how intense the girl gets with the piano solo, while her friend continues to play the violin when there is no violin part. Ending with suicide by self-inflicted pen wounds and assisted strangulation.
Adorable.
******

Aliens on the Move

2011-10-29T15:47:00.006-04:00

Some of you may recall my former raw footage of messages from outer space, seen from my balcony vantage point.
Well, seems that during the night, the Aliens have begun construction of something resembling a place to land. An arrival terminal, if you will. Obviously they would have access to their own materials, but, [and this is just like what they would do] trying to be subtle and sneaky about it, they've opted for common Earth wood. Planks and boards.
That one gate-like opening in the front does scare me, though.
What if this is not an Arrival Pad -- but a corral in which unsuspecting human beings will be herded and experimented upon.
All I know is that even though it's Halloween weekend, if I'm walking around out there I'm not going to be diverted by or even listen to anything with big buggy-eyes or an antenna sticking out if its head!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-10-28T06:15:00.001-04:00

Have a great Friday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-10-27T04:28:00.002-04:00

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.
-- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow --

Have a great Thursday!
******

When You Aren't Working

2011-10-26T23:11:00.005-04:00

Tonight as I sat at Starbucks I couldn't help overhearing the conversation of two people that had obviously just met for the first time.
Maybe they met online or something.
Was I eavesdropping?
No, I was trying to zone them out and finish my Saramago book, but the woman portion of them was talking SO LOUD -- it was driving me crazy.
Anyhoo -- so much of the talk revolved around what they "do".
And by "do" I mean -- for a living.
I don't do much dating.
And by "much" I mean…….. any, really.
But if I did, I think this is one of the things I would be least interested in. What the other person did during the work-time hours of the day.
I would be more interested in what they loved to do when they are not working. After all, isn't that what dating is all about?
I would be more likely to ask the person, "What is it that you love to do when you aren't working?"
Isn't that what her and I are going to be doing most of the time, if any of this "works" out?
Not working?
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-10-26T04:05:00.003-04:00

Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."
-- Walter Isaacson, Einstein --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-10-25T02:51:00.002-04:00

Have a great Tuesday!

******