Old Acquaintance

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.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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!
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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to one and all!

Dabbling in Juvenalia

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.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

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!
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Terrarium: A Poem

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.
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

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!
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Rules of Civility

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.
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One Big Spider!

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.
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A Loss -- A Terrible Loss

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

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!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
******

The Hundredth Meridian

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

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!
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'Tis The Season...

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.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Friday

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

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!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

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

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

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!
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Memories....

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.
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

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

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

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!
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Picasso: The Dream

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!”
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Splash du Jour: Friday

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!
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Beautiful Music

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

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!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

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!
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A Sunday Poem

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.
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Sometimes You Need a Break

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.
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Re-Thinking My Inks

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.
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Splash du Jour: Monday

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!
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As If I'm Serious...

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?
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Splash du Jour: Friday

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!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

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!
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