Walter in London: A Saturday Snapshot

This is one of my favourite pictures of my father.
A street bench in London, England -- enjoying a ciggy. This was taken by my brother when they went there together on a business trip many [and I mean many] years ago.
I've always liked the urban feel of this picture -- the busyness -- and my dad, who was more of a "country" sort of person, plunked down in the middle of that bustle.
At heart, we are a small town prairie-raised family. My father relocated us to the city in the early '70's and became a very successful business man, but his roots are on farmland.
He passed away just before the New Millennium, and I miss him dearly. He was the kind of man that makes me proud of my middle name, for it is his first name.
I've always wondered what the sign in the background means. If you click on the picture and enlarge it you may be able to solve the riddle for me.
Since this seems like a one-way street going in the other direction, I've ruled out "No Right-Hand Turn" and have concluded that in this particular part of London it is illegal to try and bend straight lines in half. Any theories?

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

Splash du Jour: Friday

The backdrop of half the experiences of life includes music.
-- Amy Grant --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.
-- Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic --

Have a great Wednesday!
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A Rare and Enviable Talent?

As I was reading in this excellent novel [Alone in the Classroom] by an author [Elizabeth Hay] who lives in my very city, the following passage made me stop and think a bit:
She smiled and gave him one of her winks. She could wink either eye with equal ease, a rare and enviable talent.
A rare and enviable talent?
Maybe it is!
But I've always been able to wink with either eye so readily that I guess I just assumed that everyone could do so. I've heard it said that owls are the only other animal that winks as we do, with the upper eyelid descending to meet the lower one. [That also seems strange to me. Don't dogs and cats and cows and stuff do the same thing?] At any rate, I thought I would throw this question out there and see what the consensus is out in Blogland.
Can you wink with either eye? Or only left eye, right eye?
Hopefully you can at least close both of them at the same time!
As seen above, Natalie Portman is pretty good with the left one. Talented, even!
Wow, if she winked at me like that -- I would seriously set my book aside!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

There is something about talking in the night, with the shreds of sleep around your ears, with the silences between one remark and another, the town dark and dreaming beyond your own walls. It draws the truth out of you, straight from its little dark pool down there, where usually you guard it so careful, and wave your hands over it and hum and haw to protect people's feelings, to protect your own… You can bring out the jaggedest feelings - if you are my wife and know how to state them calm - into the night quiet. They will float there for consideration, harming no one.
-- Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

The same feeling of fascination came over her that used to settle her as a child watching her mother bandage a cut knee, or roll a lemon under her palm, or scrape batter off her fingers with a bone-handled knife, or peel potatoes with such infinite regard for the flesh that her peelings too were skin-thin and elegant. How it lulls a person, the sight of work done easily and well and without conscious thought.
-- Elizabeth Hay, Alone in the Classroom --

Have a great Monday!
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My First Trifecta Word-Challenge

I am always up for any sort of Word Challenge thingy and a commenter on my Saturday Snapshot posting [yesterday] alerted me to a word-challenge called Trifecta.
The commenter was one Libby Rodriguez.
Here's how this works.
The fine folks at Trifecta give you the beginning of an extremely brief short story [33 words] and you have to finish it in a mere 33 words. That's all you are allowed is 33 words. Then a winner is chosen by process of election -- umm, so if you think my 33 words are worthy of your vote, please follow the link provided and vote for me.
That would be so crazy if I won, because I don't even know what I'm doing here.
So, what follows is the prompting from Trifecta in bold print, followed by my 33-word conclusion, given in italics.

“There’s nothing cute about it,” he said. The register of his voice indicated decision more so than discussion.
She disagreed heartily and privately, staring past his head and out the window behind him.

Handing her the mirror he shook his shorn locks to the floor, throwing the towel in her face.
Only then did she admit the truth.
It was indeed, the worst haircut in history.

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You [my dear readers] then go to Trifecta [<-- click on that link] scroll down to the links section on that page, read all the other submissions, realize that mine is the best one, and vote for me after 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today [Sunday, the 25th].
And may the best submitter named Cipriano win!
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Sunrise: A Saturday Snapshot

For today's Saturday Snapshot I am displaying my laptop's current desktop wallpaper.
It happens to be the sunrise as it appears from my balcony here on the 14th [technically the 13th] floor. This has been my morning scenario for fifteen years now.
And the sunsets are even nicer.
I live in Ottawa, Ontario -- capital city of Canada. And I LOVE it.
Just this past week, for the third consecutive year, Ottawa was ranked by MoneySense magazine as the #1 Best Place To Live in the entire country.
The criteria involved important things like: income, low crime rate, doctors per 1,000 sick people, amount of drive-thru hamburger joints -- things like that.
I'm so proud of my city, even though in the same week it was also ranked as the #1 Unfaithful City in Canada. As a confirmed bachelor, this more negative news does not greatly affect me one way or the other.
In the last chapter of the book I just finished reading [W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants] one of the characters reminisces about emigrating to England -- "I can no longer say exactly what thoughts the sight of Manchester prompted in me then, but I believe I felt I had found my destiny."
And later, he says "…with every year that passes a change of place seems less conceivable. Manchester has taken possession of me for good. I cannot leave, I do not want to leave, I must not."
These sentiments reflect my own feelings of Ottawa.
[Note: Clicking on the photos will make them considerably larger.]
The pointy thing in the more panoramic photo below [not the smokestack column, but the other pointy thing to the left of it] is the Peace Tower of The Parliament Buildings -- Canada's equivalent to Big Ben, in London.
Hence, I live in the very heart of the action -- but just far enough away that when birds glide on by, I hear their wings in the air.

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

Splash du Jour: Friday

You've just gotta love [and miss] dear ol' Carl Sagan!
Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.
-- Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy --

Have a great Thursday!
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Books With Pictures

Dear Blog-friends, please forgive my lack of blogging lately. I seem to have a bad case of Bloggage of the Arteries!
But I have been doing some dandy reading -- just finished the latest Ondaatje novel, [The Cat's Table] and I liked it, but I am too lazy to write about it, much less do a proper review. As an aside, I have been so bereft of reviewing in the past year or so that I've quit receiving [or asking to receive] free review books from my good friends at Random House.
Currently I am reading W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants.
I'm thoroughly enjoying it, as I did his Austerlitz, but I hasten to add that Sebaldianism© in general is not the sort of… genre that would appeal to a wide audience. His books tend to dwell heavily upon recollection, [memories, retrospect, etc.,] which is to say that they do not thrive on plot. Most of the subject matter deals, in literary terms, with the trauma of World War II and its effects on the German people.
One thing that very much appeals to me is the use of photographs in his books. Every so often photographs appear on the page to illustrate the current discussion. I find myself studying these photographs -- it gives his work a sort of scrapbook appeal.
Other authors use this technique [I think of Alain de Botton] and I am aware of a recent book by Umberto Eco that does a similar thing -- I'm just wondering if any of my readers can recommend other authors that employ photographs or images amid their text.
Is this something you enjoy in a novel, or do you find it distracting?
It is so sad that W.G. Sebald, at the age of 57, died in a car crash in 2001. I think the world [tragically] lost a truly terrific author.
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

The quintessential emblem of religion — and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core — is the sacrifice of a child by a parent.
Almost all religious faiths incorporate the myth of such a sacrifice, and some have actually made it real. Lucretius had in mind the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon, but he may also have been aware of the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac and other comparable Near Eastern stories for which the Romans of his times had a growing taste. Writing around 50 BCE he could not, of course, have anticipated the great sacrifice myth that would come to dominate the Western world, but he would not have been surprised by it or by the endlessly reiterated, prominently displayed images of the bloody, murdered son.
-- Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How The World Became Modern --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theatre is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?
-- W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Recently I sat in on a master class given by the filmmaker Luc Dardenne. He spoke of how viewers of his films should not assume they understood everything about the characters. As members of an audience we should never feel ourselves wiser than they; we do not have more knowledge than the characters have about themselves. We should not feel assured or certain of their motives, or look down on them. I believe this. I recognize this as a first principle of art, although I have the suspicion that many would not.
-- Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table --

Have a great Monday!
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Raven Bringing The Sun

I'm in the final moments of a truly great week away from work, and even home.
During my retreat away from reality, I visited an art gallery. As I wandered around the place I observed an artist in progress. He was carving a section of wood and at his feet was a much larger unfinished work. We struck up a conversation and I began to truly admire the finished stuff on display, specifically the centerpiece.
To make a long story short -- I bought it.
It's entitled Raven Bringing The Sun, and the artist is Peter Paylor.
A sampling of his work can be seen -- HERE.
I'm looking forward to the return to my apartment where I have a special area in mind for this raven wing. It's always so neat to meet local artists, truly gifted in their craft. Peter was able to tell me not only of the origin of this specific piece of cedar, but also the birthplace of the rock that serves as its pedestal.
My friend and I have since tried to count the rings in this piece of wood, and it's somewhere around fifty. I will continue to age, but the artist has taken this medium and created something timeless out of it.

Thanks, once again, to Alyce from At Home With Books for hosting this wonderful Saturday Snapshot meme.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.
-- Michael Ondaatje --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Proof that Kermit The Frog watches porn!

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

But I tell you one thing, I don't want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you while you stay the same, and that's just sad.
-- Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Imagination

Today I woke up earlier than I would have liked to, but for a better reason than usual. This day, my early rising was to get out onto the freeway in the opposite direction of work. My first day of a week of holidays.
I drove toward Toronto, but not all the way there.
As I drove, I was having these…… musings. I began to think that the element that most separates us from other animals, other primates, even -- is imagination.
In other words, I was struck by the idea that human beings [homo sapiens] have the ability to actually think of things that do not exist. And perhaps this is what most gives them not only the primacy of triumphing over other life forms, but also allows them an element of progress within their own species. I wondered…. do other animals dream? And if they do, would their dreams be limited to what IS [in existence?] and would this differ from the way in which humans "dream" in their subconscious thought, and "imagine" in their moments of consciousness?
I am not familiar with any scientific data on any of these questions -- my speculation was based entirely on personal musing.
I arrived at my destination before noon, and told my friend what I had been thinking. He instantly told me that their dog, Scruffy, [before a garage door killed her]... dreamed. Vivid dreams. He and his wife used to watch Scruffy twitching in her sleep…… chasing imaginary cats or hubcaps or whatnot.
I felt my theory collapsing.
But then I reconsidered. I would not dispute that other animals "dream" per se -- but I would love to know if there is a way of asserting that what they "imagine", while dreaming, is unrealistic.
A fully conscious [or sleeping] human being has the ability to contemplate things that are not in existence -- if this were not so, there would not be such a thing as fiction. Fiction, which is not only a result of the human imagination, but also the result of an ability to translate this imagined perception through the utilization of an acquired language, is a sure signpost to evolutionary supremacy.
This, to me, separates us most, from other animals.
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Splash du Jour: Monday

I am on a week of holidays, starting…… NOW!

Have a great Monday, y'all.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

If a god showed up every time you put a quarter in the prayer slot it wouldn't be God, it would be a puppet that you could control by doing that...that would make the deity subservient to you. So it wouldn't be a deity would it?
-- Margaret Atwood --


Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

A pirate walked into a bar, and the bartender said:
"Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. What happened?
"What do you mean?" said the pirate, "I feel fine."
"What about the wooden leg? You didn't have that before."
"Well," said the pirate, "We were in a battle, and I got hit with a cannon ball, but I'm fine now."
The bartender replied, "Well, OK, but what about that hook? What happened to your hand?"
The pirate explained, "We were in another battle. I boarded a ship and got into a sword fight. My hand was cut off. I got fitted with a hook but I'm fine, really."
"What about that eye patch?"
"Oh," said the pirate, "One day we were at sea, and a flock of birds flew over. I looked up, and one of them shit in my eye."
"You're kidding," said the bartender. "You couldn't lose an eye just from bird shit."
"It was my first day with the hook."

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"You are what what you eat eats."
-- Michael Pollan --
[Hmmm! I guess this makes me a patch of grass and a saltlick?]

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character—for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible, in novel writing, to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers, is a narrative which interests them about men and women—for the perfectly obvious reason that they are men and women themselves.
-- Wilkie Collins --

Have a great Monday!
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I Love Lamp!

So yesterday I worked a Saturday.
Overtime.
In the past twelve days, I've worked eleven of them. I hate work, but I sorta could use the extra dough.
Jack needs a lot of gourmet cat food. I need… burgers. And I won't even mention the rising cost of beer!
After work, my boss took us all out to this pizza joint and footed the bill. Needless to say we all ate like a herd of Neanderthals. Across the street was a HomeSense store and so I worked off some of the mozzarella by walking over there. I had no specific purchase in mind but became enamored of a certain lamp.
About a year ago now my favorite reading lamp went on the fritz and me being a cheapskate at heart, I kept the thing standing in its place for... well, for over a year!
I even had my electrically-inclined friend take it apart and try to fix the wiring, to no avail.
So I left the store with this new lamp which is now perfectly stationed next to my favorite reading chair. The thing throws out the perfect wattage for my failing eyesight.
BRING ON THE BOOKS!
I find myself continually looking over at this lamp and just admiring it.
I think I love lamp.
The whole adventure reminds me of the character, Brick, in the movie Anchorman. It's played by Steve Carrell, who, in my opinion -- should have won an Oscar [or at least a really nice lamp] for his searing portrayal of lamp-lovers everywhere…

Tears of Joy: A Saturday Snapshot

I ate this thing last night.
It's my latest downfall -- The Angus Third-Pounder© at McDonald's.
It almost makes me cry, it's so good.
You can get 'em in two styles -- Cheddar & Bacon, or Swiss & Mushroom.
I always choose this second format because I'm convinced that when it comes to the proper preparation of bacon, well, it's sort of an art form. Its got to be done right, as in, not too crispy. I hate over-cooked pig.
But [trust me] McDonald's has this Swiss cheese and mushroom business really figured out, down to a science. It's truly a fantastic burger. And they've really up-scaled the bun on this one. Plus it comes in a real nifty carrying case, as you can see.
Mmmm…. "I'm loving' it" as they say on TV.
They could have chosen a better name for this burger though.
Angus Third-Pounder is just so… anti-climactic.
It sounds a lot more -- gourmet -- if you say it in French:
Tiers De Livre.
Which, being interpreted, means Tears of Joy…. [I think].

So, this is my Saturday Snapshot. Thank you Alyce, for hosting this wonderful meme at your awesome site, At Home With Books.
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Olfactory Memories

My [work] day began earlier than usual as I had to start off at one of our satellite warehouses, doing a monthly fire extinguisher inspection.
[God! Your life is so exciting, Cipriano!]
I know. It really is.
I've done this inspection every month for years and years. And there are… MANY extinguishers to check, somewhere around a hundred or so. It involves walking through the place, clicking on all the timered lights as I go -- by the time I do the first round on the first floor [of four] everything is lit up, but at the start, wow -- it's real creepy.
Total darkness and silence.
As I made my way to the far end of the first floor, just beginning my rounds, I was literally stopped dead in my tracks by a smell. I still don't know what the smell was, I mean, from whence it originated. I narrowed it down to about a ten foot square area. I had been walking, initialing all the tags as I went, and then BOOM -- this smell, eliciting a memory from my childhood days, hit me.
Instantly I was in the Public Library in the small town in which I was raised. It was uncanny. As soon as I ever found out what words were, I was an addict, and I went to the Library every chance I got. This morning, well over forty years later -- a certain smell that existed in that old library met me in the dark passageways of our warehouse. It was so startling. There was nothing "general" about it -- in fact, nothing could be more precise. I stopped, retraced my steps, and there it was again. It reminded me of this one raised platform where you actually signed out the books at my childhood library.
We store hundreds of thousands [a million and a half or thereabouts] of boxes of paper documents where I work -- and so the smell was definitely that of paper. But not only paper -- somehow the exact same unique paper smell that I used to inhale at the library. For the rest of my hour-long circuit through the warehouse, I was a little kid again -- signing out books. Eager to read them.
Has anything like this ever happened to you?
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Splash du Jour: Friday

Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
-- Norman Mailer --


Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
-- Ernest Hemingway --


Have a great Thursday!
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