Splash di Jour: Friday

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
-- Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

He used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

When novelist Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared most from men, they said: ‘We’re afraid they’ll kill us.’ When men were asked the same question about women, they said: ‘We’re afraid they’ll laugh at us.'
-- Naomi Wolf --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit --

Have a great Monday!
*****

It's Just Technology?

Maybe some of you have noticed that for the past little while I have not been posting anything on my blog. I appreciate the comment from "anonymous" in my last Splash du Jour that suggested that my absence was felt.
My internet was down for a bit. Such an aggravating condition when that happens. Would you agree? It's even more aggravating when the reason it is down is because you called your service provider on an entirely unrelated billing matter, and the next time you try to access the internet, it does not work. As in, a minute after you hang up the phone. Arrrrrgh!
So I called them back immediately and was given the usual runaround -- as though it was something I had done myself. As if in the interim I poured a gallon of milk into my wireless modem or whatever. ACH! So aggravating. At one point the person on the other end said, "I'm sorry sir. It's just technology!"
Just technology? "Yes," I agreed -- "But I am paying for that technology to work properly!"
I finally got them to admit they needed to send a real live technician human being to my apartment -- and by golly -- they did. It's now fixed, and better than ever.
I'm still reading Alan Hollinghurst's latest novel, The Stranger's Child, and really enjoying it even though I'm finding that it is difficult to keep the introduction of so many characters in line. One feels the need to construct a family tree, perhaps.
But it's good, it's good. As was his Booker Prizewinner The Line Of Beauty, back in 2004.
Happy reading, y'all.
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.
-- S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Horseblankets? A Saturday Snapshot

You know you're in the wild wild West when the local laundromat has a designated machine specifically for horseblankets! This is a shot of me out front of just such a place when we were touring around in British Columbia -- hmm… we just got in the car and drove, exploring wherever the road[s] would take us, so I actually forget the name of this town we landed in.
But wow, we got out of the car and instantly felt like we were extras in an episode of Gunsmoke! 
It was a mining town, actually quite a beautiful place, surrounded by tree-lined mountains. A wonderful, relaxing holiday -- I highly recommend B.C. to one and all if you have any vacation time coming up. 'Specially if you own a horse with laundry issues.

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday!

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.
-- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest --

Have a great [Good] Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.
-- Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten --
   
Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- Bertrand Russell --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!

*****

Thinking About A Poem...

In the novel I am currently reading [Canada, by Richard Ford] I came across an allusion to a poem by Yeats. In the book, the narrator is thinking back upon his mother's philosophy of life, concluding that she had an ability to harmonize the dichotomous aspects of perfection and imperfection. Things being imperfect, "yet still acceptable". At one point in his youth he recalls her citing a line of poetry -- "Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent."
This line intrigued me, so I looked it up.

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'
-- William Butler Yeats --

For such a short poem it's quite packed and powerful. It turns out it is the sixth in a series of seven poems Yeats wrote spotlighting this character "Crazy Jane", an old and possibly deranged woman. In this one, the Bishop admonishes her in the first stanza to finally, in her old age, renounce her former lusty ways and seek spiritual regeneration.
She replies, however, in the following two stanzas by saying [basically] that virtue and vice are not only coexistent, but actually need each other for the positive aspects of life [in this instance, sexual fulfillment vis a vis Love] to be appreciated. She denies the implication that the body is to be hated or deprived of pleasure and states that [old or not] her body remains for her the physical location of Love.
I see it as a poetic way of saying "Screw you!"
It's an ingenious capturing of so much about existence in general, I think. Nothing about it [existence] is as simple as the Bishop's statement that one is either a resident in a "heavenly mansion" OR "a foul sty." Crazy Jane points this out by suggesting her "mansion" is [anatomically] nearest the place she excretes bodily waste!
Go figure!
As for the last two lines, the initial source of my intrigue, I now paraphrase:
Wholeness necessitates an acceptance of goodness and badness / perfection and imperfection. NOTE: There is also the perhaps not so subtle suggestion that we start out torn ["rent"] and must become whole.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Here’s all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
-- George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
-- Albert Einstein --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-- Frank Herbert, Dune --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Stories never really end even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don’t end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.
-- Cornelia Funke, Inkspell --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Not In Me

It’s not in me to win a bout, my Love.
Your eyebrows, or how you say chocolat
as if you know other words in French.

The little chirping sounds when you’re hurt.
Your unique al dente rules for spaghetti.
Your sock-folding ways and love of oral

hygiene. The way you floss, and toss.
The gloss on windows when you’re done.
It’s not even fair at all you should know

when it comes to anything knock down
drag out -- the referee will be slapping the
mat thrice, and holding your left arm high.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2009 --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

With great power… comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later.
-- Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Literature -- which is art married to thought, and realization untainted by reality -- seems to me the end towards which all human effort would have to strive, if it were fully human and not just a welling up of our animal self. To express something is to conserve its virtue and take away its terror. Fields are greener in their description than in their actual greenness. Flowers, if described with phrases that define them in the air of the imagination will have colours with a durability not found in cellular life.
-- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet --



Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
-- Oscar Wilde --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.
-- Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense --

Have a great Monday!
*****

The Loss of a Faithful Friend: A Saturday Snapshot

Well, this will be a sad posting, I'm afraid.
Some, or more likely, most of you who know of Bookpuddle know also of my cat, Jack. I've talked about him a lot over the years. Jack became very ill in the past few weeks. I only noticed that he was not eating his usual amount of food and drinking water in an odd manner -- and, to my own shame, I waited a bit too long to take him to the vet.
His first trip there was last Saturday, a week ago, and the doctor discovered that Jack had a tumor on the underside of his tongue. Painkillers and steroids were prescribed, and I had a heck of a time getting these pills into his mouth, especially when this was an area so sensitive to him at the time.
A few days later [Thursday] I returned to the vet with the intention of having poor Jack injected with steroids, rather than continuing to struggle with the pill format.
His prognosis was not good, though. He had deteriorated yet further, having lost about one-quarter of his body weight, and was in more obvious pain than before.
The doctor considered that given Jack's age [nearly 13], even with surgery there was no guarantee that Jack would survive, fully healed and pain-free.
I had to make the decision then and there, to have Jack euthanized.
I have rarely been more sad and grieved, and definitely never more sad over the loss of a pet. 
He died in my arms, wet with my tears.
Jack was the perfect gentleman -- the calmest and most patient of friends, my room-mate and buddy for over 12 years. He was just the best cat ever. Sitting here now in the quiet of night, so aware of the lack of his presence, is very painful for me.
The above photo was taken just before we went to the vet on Saturday. Out of respect for Jack, I do not show his face. He was still beautiful and heartrendingly adorable, but his mouth was inflamed and very irritated looking.
Below is a shot of Jack about a year ago now, in all his inquisitive beauty.
I love you and miss you Jack.

Thank you Alyce, for hosting the terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.

-- Jack --

May 1, 2000 -- March 7, 2013

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.
-- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

And he loves to read. He loves the whisper of the pages and the way his fingertips catch on rough paper, the pour of the words up from the leaves, through soft light, into his eyes, the mute voice in his ears.
-- Keith Miller, The Book of Flying --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Crime or Good Fortune: A Saturday Snapshot

I'll admit, these particular Saturday Snapshots of mine may be a bit boring to a lot of people, perhaps. But to me, this is like… scenery! Like, like -- a beautiful moment, captured.
See -- last night as I made my way to the elevator, loaded down with grocery bags, I glanced into the open door of the laundry room in my apartment building and there was a pile of books on the folding counter. And next to them a sign that said "Take these! FREE!"
Most of the books were absolute junk. Like real boring. [Meanwhile, the ice cream in bag number three is melting, you get the picture]… I had to look through them all, of course. 
Then my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
There, amid the riffraff, and in pristine shape, was a hardcover volume of Jose Saramago.
Blindness and Seeing, both novels combined in this one edition. Beautiful.
Did I take it? Of course I took it.
I revere Jose Saramago's writing, and these are two of his best books. Not only have I read EVERYTHING by him [except his book about Portugal], but I also had the privilege of meeting him in person. Being in his presence, if you will, in the year 2005.
He is just such a gem. Since his passing in June of 2010 -- I have had the pleasure of reading several of his posthumously published works. And finding this beauty last night was a real treat. 
Enter a moral dilemma, though -- Is it wrong for me to have absconded with this thing when I already own both books? In fact -- having an autographed copy of Blindness here on my shelf? [see below]. Is it wrong for me to have deprived someone else of discovering Saramago?
Crime or guiltless Good Fortune. What is your verdict?

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.

Splash du Jour: Friday!

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don't know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want.
-- John Kenney, Truth in Advertising --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Scanning Book Spines

I have been so terrible at blogging lately… seriously, I bet no one ever reads my blog anymore and I would not blame you.
I've read such great books lately and have failed to even review them -- I'm lazy. I'm lazy. My work life drains me of my preferred energies.
But I just started what is turning out to be a real excellent read -- The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides. I so love this author.
Anyhoo -- a passage near the beginning of the book made me think of one of my own literary proclivities. The protagonist Madeleine Hanna is obsessed with books and literature [I love her already]! She comes from an affluent book-loving family, and I dug the following description:
Even as a girl in Prettybrook, Madeleine wandered into the library, with its shelves of books rising higher than she could reach -- newly purchased volumes such as Love Story or Myra Breckinridge that exuded a faintly forbidden air, as well as venerable leather-bound editions of Fielding, Thackeray, and Dickens -- and the magisterial presence of all those potentially readable words stopped her in her tracks. She could scan book spines for as long as an hour.
So could I.
That is what I mean to say with this blog tonight. So could I.
In fact, I do it all the time -- I wander in the bookstore. I am WRITING this blog from the bookstore. I find the meandering among book spines not only utterly fascinating, but very relaxing. 
I wonder if I'm alone in this. In my opinion, the only thing better than wandering among books is sitting down with one and reading it. 
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?
-- Ernest Hemingway --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Every man waits his destined hour; even the cities are doomed to their fate. Let us spend our leisure with our books, which will take our mind off these troubles, and will teach us to despise what many people desire.
-- Poggio Bracciolini, in a letter to a friend, September, 1430. --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of the bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.
-- Petrarch --

Have great Monday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?
-- Yann Martel, Life of Pi --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
-- Albert Einstein --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare's, the Cornish sea.
-- Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.
-- Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Arthur & George

Tonight I finished reading Arthur & George by Julian Barnes.
My verdict? TERRIFIC.
This is an author that definitely deserves a good reading! 
I did no research whatsoever before picking this book up, so I had no idea it was of the historical fiction / thriller genre. I did not know it was based on real events and that the "Arthur" of the story is none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
The novel is uniquely structured, alternating between the entirely separate, seemingly unconnected lives of.. well…. Arthur & George. I've already mentioned who Arthur is -- George is a much lesser known figure, historically speaking.
George Edalji, a vicar's son, is a half-caste [Parsee / Scottish] boy who grows up in a small Staffordshire village. His family becomes victim to a series of malicious and completely unwarranted [perhaps racially motivated] slander. Life for the Edaljis becomes unlivable as they are increasingly maligned by this anonymous letter-writer and prankster. And soon, letters are not all they have to worry about. Someone is maiming animals in the night, slashing away at the bellies of cows and horses, leaving the animals to slowly die. The effect on the community is devastating, because in turn-of-the-century [1900] England, these are not only crimes against livestock, but against livelihoods.
Through what seems to be an explicit smear campaign aided by a less than competent police force, George is accused of the crimes. And convicted.
We, the reader, believe that he in innocent.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle picks up on the story, he is also convinced of George's innocence -- and sets out to clear George's name, seeking not only for exoneration, but reparation of this wrongful conviction. What follows is a re-telling of how Doyle virtually took on the persona of Sherlock Holmes, and painstakingly, courageously, and brilliantly tracked down the right clues -- finally achieving justice in what was essentially a travesty of the court system of the day.
It reads like a crime novel, but with an elegance and exquisiteness found only in the best of literature. Which is to say, we read not only a great plot, but also examine, in beautiful prose, the baseness and greatness of human nature. Barnes has stuffed all of that into these pages. 
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.
-- Carlos Ruis Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The Shape I Gave You

Water looks like what it’s in.
Else it’s flat, and spread too thin.
The shape of you is much the same.
It needs a cup, a house, a frame.

It wasn’t long before I knew
The very curve and slope of you
Belonged in me, to never part
My ever loving, beating heart.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Have a great Valentine's Day!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I Know Her

Because across the room I know her.
A glance, just one, tells me we are on the same page.
Once someone spoke badly of her, in my hearing,
and everything within me knew they were mistaken.
She lives in a place that is beyond proving
or improving herself, to me or others.
And I would jump a cliff for her wink.
She derails me. Oh, makes me angry, yes,
now and then, but that is because I am learning
her. Learning me. I have looked at water
thirty feet down, fish oblivious ‘tween boat
and sand. She is clearer than that.
Her laugh ignites every best thing about me,
and when she arrives, I am more happy.
Than I was. Before.
It was not always like this. My life was not always
like this.

Even now, there are times, and they are frequent,
when I feel in a dream. I doubt.
And I believe that none of this should happen
to me.
But that is when I read what I have written above
and know that I am awake, and that across the room,
or across ten time zones,
I know her.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Life. How easily everyone, including himself, said the word. Life must go on, everyone routinely agreed. And yet how few asked what it was, and why it was, and if it was the only life or the mere amphitheatre to something quite different. Arthur was frequently baffled by the complacency with which people went on with… with what they insouciantly called their lives, as if both the word and the thing made perfect sense to them.
-- Julian Barnes, Arthut & George --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Two Fine Cats: A Saturday Snapshot(s)

My longtime American Reading Partner [a very inclusive, yet moreso exclusive Book Club] sent me two pictures of her daughters' cats. I haven't been given proper legal authorization to use these cats' first or last names, so we will call them Cat A [the orange one] and Cat B [the close up].
Are you a cat person?
I definitely am, as you all know. I am deliberately not allowing Jack [my own cat] access to my computer for the next few days so he doesn't see this posting and become jealous of these two fine specimens here. If either of these cats were up for adoption [and they aren't] -- which would you choose to have? 
It would be a difficult decision for me. I think, in the end, Jack would be forced to somehow get along with both of them.

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot blog meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life -- the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within -- can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
-- George Eliot, Middlemarch --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

"What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?'
'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly.
'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ...
'Finn?'
'"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)"
-- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.
-- Henry David Thoreau --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-- Isaac Asimov --
Have a great Tuesday!
*****