Here Piggy, Piggy...

Well, today is my 3rd Bloggiversary.
Three years of blogging. This current posting is #1,381.
But who's counting!
I love it. Blogging, I mean.
I shall not stop.
I’ve gained some super-duper friends in the blogging community, and I have learned so much from you all.
Thank you for tuning in here, at Bookpuddle, friends.

And on to the breaking news of the world…
Roger Waters has lost his flying pig!

For those of you who are not yet aware of my musical tastes, Roger Waters [of Pink Floyd fame] is perhaps my favorite artist of all time. Well, along with Eric Clapton.
The two flying pig photos on this blog posting are ones I took myself, at a Waters concert! Apparently, this legendary pig somehow broke from his moorings just a couple of nights ago, at an outdoor concert at the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival, in southern California.
Just floated away, while the band played on!
A $10,000 reward was offered for the recovery.

Oh, I am behind the times. Just got home and found out….
THE PIG HAS BEEN FOUND.
In tatters.
Read about it HERE!

Lettuce keep reading.
Lettuce keep blogging.
Lettuce keep listening to Pink Floyd!

**************

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
-- e.e. cummings --

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
-- Umberto Eco –

Have a great Monday!

"The Basket of Stories"

Quite a picture isn’t it? Adam looking into the night sky on the first day of his existence, contemplating the beauty of thousands of stars, despite the fact that the nearest star other than the sun is more than four light-years away. The Creator, clearly, didn’t want him to have to wait four years to enjoy that first nighttime star, so he made all of the intervening photons at once.
-- Kenneth R. Miller, in Finding Darwin’s God. p.79. –

I am reading a fascinating [the above named] book right now, subtitled:
A Scientist’s Search For Common Ground Between God and Evolution.
Is there “common ground”?
Well, the author [a professor of biology at Brown University] and yours truly, Cipriano [a gap-toothed imbecile in a Penthouse Apartment] tend to agree that the answer is YES, there is “common ground.”
But what are the context and implications of the quotation, above?

Well, in Chapter 3, Miller is discussing the scientific problems involved in assuming that the Earth is anywhere from between 6,000 to 10,000 years old, as thoroughgoing Creationists [those who reject all aspects of evolutionary theory] are forced to do. A literal chronological interpretation of the Biblical account of creation would lead to a kind of ipso facto conclusion that the earth has only experienced somewhere between six and ten millenniums.

Yeah.
So… anyhoo… Miller’s point is that, if this were indeed the case, Adam and Eve in the Genesis story would have either been looking up into a starless sky or viewing a kind of Hoax Light Show©, faked by the Creator God.
Why?
Because given our current knowledge of how unfathomably far away even the closest of those stars are from our planet, [in light-years of distance]… either no starlight would have been seen on that first night of creation or the Creator would have had to bring all of that light in at a far greater speed than it has ever traveled since… in effect, purposely giving the cosmos a deceptive appearance of age, greater than its actuality.
But never mind Adam and Eve.
The same thing applies to us, today.
If the Earth were a mere 10,000 years old, we would not even be seeing most of the stars that we do, in fact, see, in the night sky. Not to mention the even further distant explosive disintegration of stars and gravitational effects of black holes that are routinely observed by instruments such as the Hubble telescope!
Is every astronomical object and event more distant than 10,000 light-years fictitious?
Your jury may still be out on this, but mine has reached a verdict.

I love how Miller ends a previous chapter:
It is high time that we grew up and left the Garden. We are indeed Eden’s children, yet it is time to place Genesis alongside the geocentric myth in the basket of stories that once, in a world of intellectual naivete, made helpful sense. As we walk through the gates, aware of the dazzling richness of the genuine biological world, there might even be a smile on the Creator’s face – that at long last His creatures have learned enough to understand His world as it truly is.

I encourage you to click on the book's image. Terrific reading!

***********

Impossible: A Saturday Poem

Impossible

If you knew this, it would be a miracle.
No.
An impossibility.
How could you remember the rusty chains
Of the swing that held you aloft when I pushed
Your entire history upward, squeaking.
Higher and higher and higher and higher until
Giggles turned to a delighted terror, and the complete
Apparatus itself threatened some sort of collapse as it
Bounced and skidded and thudded about in the sand and
You very nearly wrapped around the upper bar for a second
Revolution.

No.
Even I find it difficult to recall. But it is there.
How could I expect you to remember the time
I swung you ‘round the carousel until east was west and
North was south and my hand, catching on one of the bars
Flung me whole into the Earth?
You, your wobbly tooth wobbling.
Laughing like the end of the world, and your mother falling over,
Holding her belly and pointing?
My dirt-filled eyes checking to see you unkilled by centrifugal forces…
Finding you safe, kissing your sweet face, engulfed with one thought,
You are my daughter?

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Splash du Jour: Friday

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And, because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how our failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
-- R.D. Laing –

Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.
--Dag Hammarskjold –

Have a great Thursday!

Are You Flawless?

I read a great book called Flawless: The Ten Most Common Character Flaws and What You Can Do About Them, by Dr. Louis Tartaglia.
We all have character flaws, it is an unavoidable fact. One of my own is the fact that I tend to be too aware of my character flaws!
But seriously, we all have idiosyncracies that hinder us at times, and sometimes downright debilitate us! Not only do these flaws make our own lives disappointing, but they make those around us wish that we were not around them!
Dr. Tartaglia shows us that these flaws tend to travel in clusters. They spin out of control and perpetuate themselves... "You only need to get one flaw going and the others automatically join. When they are all working in combination you are out of control. When they are out of YOUR control, your life becomes unmanageable."

The "flaws" he examines in this book are very... commonplace.
If you honestly ask yourself the 19 questions he places at the beginning of each chapter (why 19? I don't know), you will SURELY find yourself saying "Wow, hey, I do that all the time!" Or, conversely, you will say, "No, I have a lot of problems, but this is not one of them." Make a list. Take notes.
It's terribly interesting what you find out about yourself as you read this book. And it's so educationally beneficial and satisfying to place other people in those places that don't apply to you. "Oh, I know someone that is SO EXACTLY LIKE THAT!" etc. etc. Just think! You can photocopy those chapters and send them out as anonymous letters!

The chapters conclude with good practical pointers on how to overcome flawed behavior patterns. The author is witty and has definitely been around the block a few times in his observations about human behavior.
Flawless did not strike me as being notably PROFOUND though... it was just a lot of well-organized common sense, and toward the end it was starting to bore me. But it is always good to be reminded of the importance of common sense, and this book is worth the time.

***********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald –

Have a great Tuesday!

MC Trepidation...

This August I will be the MC at my niece’s wedding.
AUGUST!
I am so honored that she asked me.
← I’m already planning for the thing. Four months in advance!
I take these gigs seriously!
For one thing, if I get into rehab soon enough, I am hoping to be totally off crack by then!
But besides the drug problem, I just want to be worthy of the invitation, you know what I mean?
I want to really make people laugh.
On that day, I want to be totally pissed... I mean poised, and prepared.
Plus, I want to hug a lot of young bridesmaids.
I have been an MC at several weddings in the past, so I sort of know the ropes. People ask me to do it because I love an audience. [Plus, I’m on crack.]

But here I am tonight, putting together a string of great jokes and fictitious stories, re-writing the lyrics to famous songs that I am going to perform… and I am struck by an overwhelming realization.
When it comes to really joking around about the perils of getting married, we tend to focus on the GROOM!
Without realizing it, I find that about 98% of my jokes are directed at the groom!
Brides!
Who jokes about a bride?
What kind of an MC is going to make fun of the bride?

No.
It is the MEN we focus on!
It is the MEN that are going to have to change the most, after the nuptials!
This…. this is funny!

But the bride?
My God, the bride is already perfect!
And she will get even more perfect after the wedding! Let someone argue with that fact! I sure as hell am not going to step into that brood of vipers!
It’s always the man that we poke fun at… as though he has ‘nary a clue of what he is getting himself into, here.
Because let’s face it.
He doesn’t.
No man does.

At least this is what I am, once again, counting on, as I weigh my HWJR.
Husband ← → Wife Joke Ratio.
My freshly re-written version of Terri Clark’s When Boy Meets Girl is ENTIRELY directed at the fact that the groom’s first day of marriage is going to be the first day of the end of his friggin’ life.
And I’m counting on people to laugh at this!

Can you imagine if I poked similar fun at my lovely niece, who is going to be sitting there like a wonderfully anthropomorphized Bambi?

I’d have all of these seven-foot tall groomsmen [not one of them over the age of 25] immediately plotting my assassination, while I innocently hover over the hors d’ouvres table like the veritable sandwich-vulture that I am……
“OK, when I kick him in the ‘nads and he doubles over, Mario here will throw the gunnysack over him while Chris brings the car around…..”
Know what I mean?

If I crack jokes about my niece, Amy, there will be instant smatterings of dissent, at each table….
“Who the hell is this guy, anyway?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”
“I deny him, thrice.”
“Should we shoot him now, or wait a bit?”
“All I know is that he sure is not from MY side of the family!” [← And this last comment is from my MOTHER!]

Know what I mean?
No, no, my friends.
I have a good four months here to gather an ever-increasing pile of jokes about the groom.
The groom!

I was born at night…. but not last night!

***********

Splash du Jour: Monday

What is amazing and inspiring about books is. . . their very physicality, the sheer thinginess of them, the fact that you can hold a book in your hands, thump a couple of knuckles on the cover, riffle through the pages. You can use books as doorstops or paperweights or place mats.. .
-- Julia Keller, from her Sunday Chicago Tribune magazine article "This is a book. Perhaps you remember it?" --

Have a great Monday!

Woman: A Saturday Poem

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
-- Robert Frost --

Well, here it is Saturday again.
And on Saturdays, a sort of ritual has seemed to spontaneously develop.
The ritual is this → I’ve been posting some of my original poems.
Now, whether or not this ritual is loved or hated by readers, I have not yet been able to discern a consensus one way or the other!
I’ve received minimal comment or reaction!
So, today I thought I would try something a little different.
I will be posting a video-clip of one of my favorite poems of all time, the immortal free-verse Woman [a.k.a. Whoaaaaa-man!] as written and performed by none other than Mike Myers, portraying the character Charlie Mackenzie in one of the best movies in the history of cinema…. So I Married An Axe-Murderer.
In my opinion, this scene is Academy Award material. Not to mention, it’s a textbook example of what the great poet Robert Frost called, “playing tennis with the net down.”

[NOTE: → I have been known to also employ that final eyebrow and smirk manoeuvre after reading my own stuff aloud on stage. It’s very effective. That, and the candle.]

***********

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!

*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
-- W.B. Yeats –

Have a great Thursday!

Feminism? Please!

Tonight, I finished what I consider to be an essential book.
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.
A novel about a woman who lost it!
As in, her mind.

Wonderfully written, even though I still do not know what a bell jar is?
My research has only unearthed that the title referenced the fact that a bell jar essentially traps something to keep it on display. And supposedly, Plath used the bell jar as a metaphor to talk about the repression of women in American society.
See… I did not get that last point at all.
But, I seem to never see feminism when it is supposed to be there.
For instance, I love Margaret Atwood.
And I don’t just mean her books.
I mean personally.
I am sort of “in love” with her.
I have met her and spoken with her on several occasions, and I have honestly found her to be so gracious and receptive, and totally… Margaretty.
She leaves me somewhat... enamored.
One time [lacking a book] I got her to sign a Starbucks coffee receipt, and not only did she do it, she laughed about it.
Thought it was cute.

But whenever I tell people I love Margaret Atwood’s work [she is one of the very few authors I would buy without even checking for what the new book is about… I have to be selective like this when it comes to new releases, by the way, because I am horribly poor… so, Atwood shares this privilege of unconditionally getting into my wallet, along with an elite grouping of authors such as Jose Saramago, Jane Urquhart, Emma Donoghue, Ian McEwan, and Shakespeare…. the latter of which has, regretfully, if I have anything to say about it, really not released anything “new” in a while…] ← OK, that was the longest bracketed diversion in history…. so, as I was saying, whenever I tell people I am in love with Margaret Atwood, so often they say something like, “Oh, she is so feminist!”

Feminist?
I am waiting for clarification.
So what if she is? What would that have to do with the level of literature she is capable of producing?
To not read Atwood, based on such a [false] prejudice, would be like not reading Saramago because “he is so Portuguese!”
Or “old!”

Thing is…. I have read very nearly almost everything by Atwood, and I don’t even see her as a "feminist writer."
In reading Atwood, I always have found that her women are pretty much as screwed up as her men are.
In fact, the men are often more admirable and/or decent and/or intelligent than any of the women are.
Maybe what people mean when they say that Margaret Atwood is a “feminist” is that when she talks she has a sort of nasally tone that makes you instantly realize she is about at least 217 times smarter than you are, on virtually every subject at hand?

Is that what Atwoodian “feminism” means?
Just thought I would drop into town tonight, long enough to say that I do not see The Bell Jar as being a novel “about the repression of women in American society.”
And mind, I got this quote from a very reputable source.
Wikipedia.
And we all know that there are only four gradations of Veracity in the world right?
1) Oprah.
2) God.
3) Wikipedia.
4) Human Experience.

Granted, the book was published in the same year as I was born… [1963] so maybe back then, it was some sort of social statement of… something.
But I read it from a purely modern male perspective I guess, and my conclusion is that it is a wonderful novel that should not be overlooked by all of the three or four genders we have on the go, here in modern-day 2008!
And finally… do any of you know Margaret Atwood’s phone number?
I seem to have lost it!

*********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Yesterday I was a dog.
Today I'm a dog.
Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
[Sigh!]
There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy –

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

**********

Sylvia

← I know that all of my wonderfully astute readers have already read this fabulous book, but I just started it tonight and cannot put it down.
Wow!
The Bell Jar.
Just a bit into it, I am wondering how it is that Sylvia Plath did not write other novels, beside this one. I guess, for one thing, she did not at all live for as long as she should have lived. Without knowing much about her self-truncated life, these first few pages have convinced me that her decision to leave Earth early is a tragedy not only to English literature, but to that planet itself, that kept right on turning on the morning of Feb.11th, 1963.
Sad.
Sylvia.
Margaret Laurence.
Anne Sexton.
Virginia Woolf.
Sylvia, I am on only on page 91, and I already want to read your next novel.

Oct.27, 1932 - Feb.11, 1963
************

Splash du Jour: Monday

A basic principle in the interpretation of the Bible is that one must first ask what a given Scripture was intended to mean to the people for whom it was originally written; only then is the interpreter free to ask what meaning it has for Christians today. Failure to ask this primary question and to investigate the historical setting of Scripture have prevented many Christians from coming to a correct understanding of some parts of the Bible. Nowhere is this more true than in respect to the last book in the Bible. Here, there has been a singular lack of appreciation for the historical background of the book; the book has been interpreted as if it were primarily written for the day in which the expositor lives (which is usually thought to be the end time), rather than in terms of what it meant to the first-century Christians of the Roman province of Asia for whom it was originally written. This has resulted in all sorts of grotesque and fantastic conclusions of which the author of the Revelation and its early recipients never would have dreamed.
-- W. Ward Gasque –

The importance of understanding what the above is saying cannot be over-emphasized, in our current day-and-age of whacky eschatological ideas.

Have a great Monday!

**********

To My Princess: A Saturday Poem

To My Princess

I’ve heard he rides quite well, and in the sun
his armor gleaming
Would blind you if it wasn’t for the fact
that you were dreaming.
You’ve pictured him a thousand times
and when he calls, you’re ready.
(He seldom thinks of you and when he does
you’re one of many).

Now I’m not one for armor, and my horse
is prone to shyness…
Yet every thought of you contains the words
“Your Royal Highness.”
Let someone else daydream in vain
for Kings they’ve never seen.
Woman, you have a man that loves you
…let someone else be queen.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Splash du Jour: Friday

"I love film. But it can't in any way do what a book can. In the first place, a film has only two hours to make you fall for it. Not much time."
A Bookpuddle reader sent me the above comment.
Movies vs. Books.
We have wrestled with this subject before, haven’t we?
Anyone who argues that movies are superior, [how do I say this?] umm… their campfire is not one I want to warm my cold hands at.
Last weekend, I watched The Door in The Floor, hoping to see something worthy of John Irving’s A Widow For One Year. [Movie was re-named, and only went to Part One of a three-part novel].
I was very disappointed.
I agree with the above reader’s statement, which was in reference to the same movie.
I feel sorry for screenwriters of great novels.
Movies cannot a good novel, be.
John Irving’s gotta weep [except on his way to the bank] on this!

Have a great Friday!

************

Simulated Flavor[s]

Potato chips are about my only real vice, when it comes to junk food. Don't do candy bars. Don't drink pop.
Unless hamburgers are counted as junk food…. which to me would seem sort of a bit blasphemous, since I am convinced that hamburgers are proof of the existence of God.
I could live quite happily on a planet that had only hamburgers, as food.
I wish that all hamburgers were as large as the cows they came from.
They are made from cows, aren’t they?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what various food products are made from!
For instance, today I was in the lunchroom at work, reading my book and eating a bag of Salt & Vinegar potato chips.
My second favorite flavor, salt and vinegar.
When my break was over I closed the book and started to scrunch up the empty bag when I noticed two words on the package → Simulated Flavor.
I stopped in mid-scrunch.
Simulated flavor. What does that mean, exactly? It disturbed me.
Something about the whole idea of potato-chip deception made me unfold the bag and look at the ingredients.
I mean, [licking my fingers] I knew that those chips contained about a month’s worth of sodium, but as I continued to read through the list of ingredients, I DID NOT SEE THE WORD VINEGAR ANYWHERE!
Wow!
No vinegar!
That is disturbing.
How do they make them so…. vinegar-ry, then?
Well, they do it with all kinds of stuff that is NOT VINEGAR!

That is unnerving.

But then, as I went back to work, I began to speculate on the level of deception that is going on when I eat a lot of the stuff I love to eat. It is probably unfathomable, the sheer extent to which my bacheloric diet of processed food probably contains a lot of multi-syllabic, unpronounceable, and unearthly ingredients.
Stuff that even God does not know what it is!
Stuff that did NOT grow in the Garden of Eden.
Sticking with my potato chip scenario…. what have I been unconsciously assuming about my favorite flavor, which is Barbecue?
What do I think they are using to make the chips taste the way they do?
A frigging barbecue?
What kind of entrepreneurial scientists even invent this stuff?
Can you picture it?

SCENARIO → [phone ringing, some scraggly-haired guy answers…]
“Hello…”
“Bill, is that you?”
“Jim. How’s it goin’? Hey, seriously. About me throwing up on your couch last Friday…. I’m really sorry abo…”
“No time for that right now, Bill. Listen, what are you doing this afternoon?”
“Not much. Was going to shave my back and play some Atari and…”
“Can you get over here quick? Me and a bunch of the new interns are going to try and invent a new flavor of potato chip.”
“Really? What’s the flavor?”
“We want it to taste like a barbecue.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Never been more serious. Humans will buy this!”
“What are you using for ingredients?”
“Just the usual simulated stuff. Remember how we invented Dill Pickle? Today, for Barbecue flavor, we’re going to start by scraping some of your crusty puke off the couch, and then…..”

See how it works?
And these guys are RICH today!
While people like me are sitting around hoping that somewhere a scientific team is [even as I write this] scraping something off of something else, trying to create simulated Hamburger Flavor!

************

Splash du Jour: Friday

“It is like a firstborn son: you spend your life working for him, sacrificing everything for him, and at the moment of truth he does just as he pleases.”
--Dr. Urbino, on his wedding night, describing his penis to his young virgin wife Fermina, in Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera –
She continued to examine it, asking what this was for and what that was for, and when she felt satisfied with her information she hefted it in both hands to confirm that it did not weigh enough to bother with, and let it drop with a gesture of disdain.

Terrific book!
Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.
-- Winnie The Pooh --

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
-- Malachy McCourt –

Have a great, [resentment-free] Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

Years later, when he tried to remember what the maiden idealized by the alchemy of poetry really was like, he could not distinguish her from the heartrending twilight of those times. Even when he observed her, unseen, during those days of longing when he waited for a reply to his first letter, he saw her transfigured in the afternoon shimmer of two o’clock in a shower of blossoms from the almond trees where it was always April regardless of the season of the year.
-- From Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera –

Even in translation, so beautiful. I’m really enjoying this book.
Have a great Monday!

**********

This is Springtime!

At this time of year it is sometimes difficult to know exactly how to dress.
I don’t mean fashion-wise [although fashion-issues also apply, that is, if one is fashionable per se, which I myself, am not] but I mean morseo, temperature-wise.
At this time of year, bright and sunny does not always mean warm!
But today I got it right.
As the door to my apartment building closed behind me, I breathed in the freshest air of 2008 thus far, and thought one thought:
This is springtime!

I walked across the street, and through the park. To the left of me, the impossible-to-exaggerate mountains of snow which had so thoroughly ruined neighborhood skating for the season, lay quietly melting within the boarded corral of the rink. Soon, all will be torn down and stored away, the baseball field in its place. Three birds on a fence seemed happy about it.
This is springtime!

As I continued along Parent Street, a young couple placed some light luggage into the back of their SUV at a Bed-and-Breakfast. I heard the woman ask him, “Is that it?” as he walked around to the driver’s side and she closed the door to their weekend getaway. Neither of them had a jacket on, honest to God, just sweaters. Because winter has officially gone out of style today!
A few blocks later, to the right, on Clarence now, the outdoor patio of the Empire Grill is bustling with people. Most of them are happily drinking alcohol and nibbling on some sort of appetizer and contributing to an overall babble of springtime chatter.
Just as I zip across the street, a man and woman [the man pushing a noisily-occupied baby carriage] see some friends at a table.
“You mean you’re not working?” the carriage-pusher asks, as he reaches over the railing and clasps hands with an unjacketed guy.
“One day off a week, and today’s the day,” his friend answers, laughing.
This is springtime!

A block further, on York Street, three buskers are singing “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder”, two on guitars, one on banjo. The closer I get, the better the harmonies sound. They’re terrific. And a crowd of people are waiting for hotdogs and sausages as the vendor, behind his barbecue and pointing with his tongs, tries to explain the various degrees of spiciness in a tone a notch louder than the gospel music.
I stop, listen, and get in line.
This is springtime!

In the Clarendon Courtyard I walk across the cobblestones. Here and there, little icy patches of snow still lie about, but with a look of defeat.
A girl, twenty-something, sits at the bench just outside Planet Coffee. As I pass by, I notice she is reading, and as always, I try to see the cover. It is Love In The Time of Cholera, the bright red cover of the movie-edition, and she is halfway through, and intent. I laughed to myself.
In my backpack, the same book is riding in darkness, on its way here, to the Starbucks.
This is springtime!

***********

'Never Again': A Saturday Poem

‘Never Again’

These feelings can’t reach the frozen core.
No, chilled and shaken… you turn from the sun
And I cry, and I wonder how one
Lengthy coolness can come from so brief a storm
You never feel warm
anymore.

These feelings don’t end where they begin.
No, spilled and taken… they never flow back
And I die, and I say for the lack
Of a better word ‘Why?’ This one way emotion
Like river to ocean…
‘Never again.’

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Splash du Jour: Friday

“Nobody deserves your tears,
but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez --

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

Irving For One Year

Tonight I finished reading a terrific book.
A Widow For One Year, by John Irving.
I am not kidding, I think that Irving is perhaps thee most entertaining and engaging of authors that I have encountered in a long while.
A wonderful storyteller. I could listen to him forever.
For most true readers, Irving is not exactly a new discovery. For me, however, he is relatively a new find.
While reading this book in several coffee-shops, I’ve noticed that the majority of people that have seen its easily recognizable cover have felt the need to comment, along the lines of the following:
“Oh, that’s a good one, huh? Are you enjoying it?”
Or…
“My favorite is The Hotel New Hampshire but that one you’ve got there is good, too.”
Or…
"Owen Meany is his masterpiece, but A Widow For One Year?…. mmmm….” [followed by that universal sign of exquisiteness where the thumb and two fingers burst open in a smacky kiss as though the world’s greatest Italian chef has just pronounced the pasta al dente!]

You know what I mean?
All in all, I guess I am concluding → What kind of a person would NOT like John Irving?
Like, his books are excellent. And this one was a gem.
It is my third Irving.
It makes me want to read John Irving For One Year.
According to my research, he has ten other novels that I have not yet read.
So……
At an average of a novel a month or thereabouts, by next year I could read all of his stuff!
But you know what?
I’m not going to do it.
Know why?
Because then it would be over.

It’s good to be back online. I am still working on re-formatting my computer and I have just returned from the extremely non-religious cremation ceremonies of my old Hard-Drive!
I lost a lot of data there in that fiasco!

***********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
-- W.S. Merwin –



Absence sometimes makes the heart grow ANGRIER, I say!
I have so missed being able to blog, and to converse with my great blog-friends.
But I think I am back in business now!
The MAC is fixed!

Have a great Thursday!

**********