On Hiatus.

Hiatus.
-- “a period when something is suspended or interrupted.” –
I love that word.
And I am about to take one.
A hiatus I mean.
From what will I be hiatusing?
WORK!
Oh! glorious days of non-work stretch out before me in their vacationary splendor.
Beginning right now... right this minute. The freedom is exilherating.
The downside [for me, if not you] is that I may not be around here, splashing around in the ol’ bookpuddle as regularly as I have been wont to do.
Instead I will be splashing in and/or around the Pacific Ocean!
Tramping the shoreline and inner forests of Vancouver Island.
On hiatus.
Cyber-wise, I am not sure if I will be able to be around to service the hundreds... no, thousands.... no, hundreds of thousands of faithful and hopefully addicted Puddle readers who depend on me daily to fill their world with meaning and silliness.

Being on hiatus is no excuse however, to neglect books and/or things literary.
In fact, it is the best time to indulge in the finer things of life.
[Note: In my opinion, the only time a thinking person can avoid books with impunity is when they are in a coma.]
Hence, tomorrow morning I will begin the reading of Jose Saramago’s novel entitled Baltasar and Blimunda. Oh yes. Where I go... the books go.

And by the way.... I KNOW what you are thinking.
You think that I have chosen my holiday destination based on my love for The Toucan.
[see Love-Blog entitled “Still Smitten” of June 18th].
But no.... well... maybe.
There may be some truth to that theory.......

aloha!
_____

Splash du Jour: Friday

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) --
"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."
Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

“...nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter – as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter to his daughter. –
Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that success (in writing) was not to be found in original themes. In his own view, there were “but two basic stories of all times – Cinderella and Jack the Giant Killer – the charm of women and the courage of men.”
Have a great Wednesday!

CHICK LIT. BOOM!

I was rather looking forward to writing an essay today about the history of the American Bestseller. However, my work was fairly dependent upon a certain book being here at the Chapters bookstore (my personal research center). Now I am here... have my coffee in front of me. I am set. But the book is not in stock!
Rats!
Now I am just staring into space.....
The book is called Making The List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900-1999 and it is written by Michael Korda. It is an excellent resource. I am familiar with the book because a few years ago, I wrote the very essay I wanted to re-write today. And when I wrote it I made great use of Korda’s data. I submitted my essay to a website which no longer posts that particular section, and not having saved it in my personaI files, I’ve ended up losing the original work. It was just a sort of survey of the way bestsellers have grouped themselves over the past twenty to thirty years or so.
The amazing thing is observing how certain authors have really dominated the bestseller lists in our modern times. I am thinking primarily of authors like Danielle Steele and Stephen King.
The reason why I wanted to rewrite, and re-examine the data is because female authors are really muscling out the men on bestseller lists as of late, and I find this interesting, in a noteworthy sense of the word.
One need not even mention the phenomenon of J.K. Rowling’s stories [reportedly, she made $44 million in the first 24 hours of the new Potter book being on sale] but Danielle Steele continues to sell books like crazy also.
A recent study, which examined 50 years of the New York Times bestseller list has found female authors rising to take half of the top spots in the past 20 years. One newspaper (The Telegraph) claims the jump in popularity for woman authors has been due to the proliferation of book clubs which tend to consist mostly of women.
A gallery of Oprah’s favorite books from her website, which has long been a popular resource for book clubs, lists ten female authors to seven male.
There was a time when women had to assume fictitious male names in order for a publisher to consider their work! There are so many examples, but I guess I think most readily of “George” Eliot or “George” Sand or the Bronte sisters, who assumed male names. Of course, back then there was nothing hilarious about that, but today?
Hah!
YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY BABY!
The reverse scenario is about to emerge!
My prediction is that if current trends continue, male authors will soon be forced to assume feminine identities in order to boost sales.
Our store shelves will then be filled with stuff by...

Stefania King.
Thomasina Clancy.
Donna DeLillo
Daniella Brown.
Gillian McEwan
Jamie Patterson
Roberta Ludlum
Deanna Koontz
Joanna Grisham
Raylene Bradbury
Louise de Bernieres
Michelle Crichton
Yolannda Martel
Josephine Saramago

....I think you get the idea.
The amazing thing is that the phenomenon of the bestseller has always fascinated me in an almost inverse proportion to how much I read them.
Because I don’t. I really don’t read too many bestsellers, but I do think about them a lot, and I always wonder WHY people are reading them.
One day I will re-write my essay, and present it here.

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

“Mostly, we authors repeat ourselves – that’s the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives – experiences so great and so moving that it doesn’t seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories – each time in a new disguise – maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, in an article entitled “One Hundred False Starts” - Saturday Evening Post (March 4th, 1933) –
Have a great Tuesday!
Good Luck, Cape Canaveral!

Witchflight.

All day long I’ve had one question rolling around in my head and it simply will not let me alone. Now I am sitting here at Starbucks, drinking a coffee, and still thinking about it. If for no other reason than to exorcise the quandary of it all, I will here elucidate my current thoughts on the matter.
The question is this:
What happens when a witch falls off her flying broom?

At first glance this may seem like merely a whimsical question concocted for an extremely brief moment of possible hilarity, a question for which no real answer is intended or expected.
But no. Nothing of the sort is going on. I don’t even think the question is very funny, to be honest! I am asking it in all earnestness and want to submit it to the due process of valid interrogation.

Let us imagine that next Hallowe’en, you are pretty much minding your own business, doing what you usually do on the evening of October 31st, namely, answering the door for all the hobgoblins and Frankensteins that are out trick or treating.
True to form, this year you yourself are again dressed as Chris Farley’s SNL persona, motivational-speaker Matt Foley, as can be observed in the midst of his trademark gyrations at the top corner of this blog! The scary part is that this is not a costume. The resemblance was not intentional. It is the real you in that light blue blazer!
So... a small flock of trick or treaters have just arrived on your doorstep and are holding forth their pillowcases and plastic pumpkins in hopes that you do not give them something that falls into either one of the two most dreaded categories: anti-Hallowe’en religious propoganda and fruit.
You have flicked the porch light on, adjusted your glasses a bit, tugged on your belt a few times and bellowed out in a loud voice.... “Well... la-de-frikkin’-DAAAA! What have we here?”
The small assemblage of ghouls and Saddam Husseins laugh as you turn to get more handfuls of candy from the big bowl in the hallway.
Just as you turn back towards the kids, the witch flies by.
A real one though.
There she is, just over their heads and a few blocks distant.
You freeze.
You pee your pants a bit.
The kids see the instant terror on your face.
Just as they all turn to see what is causing such concern, the witch lets out a raucous cackle and kicks her heels. The broom lurches forward in a wild spurt of speed and she topples backwards.
Boots over nose-wart, she falls from the broom.
Thinking you’ve staged the event, the kids turn back towards you and applaud.

But what happens next?
There are only a limited amount of possibilities to consider, and I intend to do so.
At what point, and to what degree, does normal gravity over-ride the powers of witchery?
Does the witch plummet to the ground, in which case all of the magical power of flight must be supposed to reside in the broom, which, (one would think), would still be buzzing around in some sort of blindly erratic witchless flight path in the sky until it (what?) crashed into something?
Or when the witch falls, does the broom fall also? Simultaneously?
In other words, is the broom merely a normal broom, vested with aeronautic power only when the hands of the witch are upon it? Can it fly at all, without the witch at the helm?
Herein lies a problem though. If they BOTH fall, then it would seem to me that both are subject to an outside power that has simultaneously failed them both. As though a spell were suddenly broken.
Is witchery subject to gravity?
The fact that she was flying around at all (prior to falling off) would seem to answer that question “No.”
But if, upon falling from the broom, she merely floats in the air and does not plummet, we must wonder what the hell she needs the broom for in the first place! Perhaps for greater speed?

Let’s say she does fall. Like a screaming bag of rocks and hair!
Well, if the witch has her own magical powers which she can conjure at will, certainly she would conjure some quickly, to save herself prior to hitting the ground. However, if she in fact does this in this instance, then one must inquire once again as to the purpose of the broom in the first place. If she is now sort of still flying (as it were)... broomless, prior to hitting the ground, surely she could have flown in this fashion earlier, when she initially set out from her lair, and prior to the accident which we have observed.
If the role of the broom is merely to provide something to sit on while in flight, might the witch not have been better off to select one of those plush La-Z-Boy recliners, with the pump-action footrest thingy on the side there? Wouldn’t she rather fly around town in that? I know I would.
Perhaps recliners and sofas do not steer as well as a broom?
Is maneuverability the thing?
[I am not being sarcastic, and in no way am I ridiculing the principles of witch-flight... I really and sincerely would like to come to some conclusions in these matters....]

Here is yet another scenario which is entirely possible. As the witch accidentally falls from her broom, it swoops down quickly and catches her up before she reaches the ground.
Hmmmmm.
This is not a satisfactory answer for me. It seems too cartoonish. Remember, we are talking about a real Hallowe’en witch here, not some trumped up thing. Anyone who believes this latter scenario [the Swooping-Broom Theory] to be a valid possibility, probably also believes that WWF wrestling on TV is real. Or that Tom & Katie will spend Christmas together this year!

At any rate, I think that I have exhausted at least a few of the possibilities.... I feel a lot better for just having talked it out a bit, you know? Thanks for hearing me out.
There are inherent problems in specifics, related to witchflight and sudden effects of gravitational pull. There is just no way around it. Like other things in life, there are no easy answers.
For now, I am going to pacify myself with unsettled vacillation [is that even legal?] between the only two possible (mutually contradictory) conclusions I can maintain as being currently tenable.
They are this:
1) Witchflight is a myth. Witches exist, but do not fly on brooms.
2) Witchflight is real. Witches exist and fly on brooms, but never ever fall from them.
_______________

Splash du Jour: Monday

This week, I would like to focus the Splash du Jours on the words of the great American writer-icon, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the first flush of success at the appearance of This Side of Paradise in 1920 –
How magnificently – if sad to say – posthumously – he fulfilled that ideal. His all too brief literary career, consisting of a dozen years of commercial and critical success followed by distractions and disappointments, ended in 1940 when he suffered a heart attack at the age of fourty-four.
Now, sixty-five years later, more copies of Fitzgerald’s books are purchased each year than were sold cumulatively throughout his entire lifetime.
Have a great Monday!

ALL SPACESHIPS WELCOME!

A few days ago during on my lunch break I swung past the Library to return a book.
While I was there, I logged on to one of the public computer terminals to email a friend.
Afterwards, just as I turned to leave, I noticed a table laden with a display of children’s books, and the theme seemed to be Space Travel. All manner of books with rockets or Martians or random aliens on their covers, Madeleine L’Engle stuff sprinked throughout.... and I paused for a second glance.
One title seemed to jump out at me and literally abduct something from deep within me.
I stared at the cover. I stared at the title. I was looking at an old friend who had changed in every way except name. It was wonderful, the nostalgia that poured into me as I repeated the name of the title over and over in my mind.... “Mushroom Planet, Mushroom Planet” still without having yet touched the book.
Then it hit me.
Not the book, but my recollection of it.
The memories. My brain finally located those one or two enzymes assigned to the far-distant memory of perhaps one of the very first books I had ever read as a child.
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron.
So what did I do?
I scooped it up. And signed it out!
And I have just now finished re-reading it, after an interval of thirty-some years.

It is an absolutely wonderful story, yes, even in my old age, it is.
The original cover is the one displayed at the top of this blog. Having been re-issued many times now, current versions have a new, updated cover. If I had seen the original version, I would have recalled the book immediately, for my childhood Mushroom book had that cover.
In the story, David Topman and Chuck Masterson (don’t they just sound like astronauts?) are two boys that build (out of random pieces of aluminum sheeting, plasti-glass and old boat parts found in Cap’n Tom’s garage) their own spaceship!
They do this in response to an ad that David’s father saw in the paper, placed there by a Mr. Bass, who is promising “an adventure and a chance to do a good deed” to the boys who build the best ship.
The mission is to go to Mr. Bass’s home planet, Basidium X.
Mr. Bass is (of course) a Mushroom-Person who has somehow drifted to earth, travelling as a spore, many eons ago. He is the only person on earth who can observe Basidium X from its orbital position 50,000 miles from earth (one-fifth as far as the moon) because he has invented the Stroboscopic Polaroid Filter which, when attached to the lens of his telescope enables him to see the otherwise invisible Mushroom Planet.
The boys create their ship, and they present it to Mr. Bass. I just love the sign in front of Mr. Bass’s place, when they arrive.... “5 Thallo St. ALL SPACE SHIPS WELCOME!”
It is not only the best, but apparently the ONLY submission, and so they are immediately thrown into plans to leave earth for Basidium X that very night! At midnight.
The premise is so wonderfully crazy that I love it.
They are to arrive at Basidium X promptly at 2 a.m. (25,000 miles per hour, in case you are keeping track of gas mileage and all).... and while there they are to see if they can discover what the current state of the planet is by retrieving a “canning jar” of Basidium air.... and then they are to leave promptly at 4 a.m., and to be back home in bed by a little after six! Landing safely on their beach in Monterey California, a few blocks from their actual house.
When the boys tell their parents about this upcoming trip, of course, they are not believed. And so there is no panic. In fact, David’s mother sets out the appropriate clothing that he has requested for the journey.
Little do the grownups know that these boys ain’t playing games!
They are actually going. And they do. Right on time. David, as commander, has been given a little folded up piece of paper which he keeps in his wallet and periodically checks, to see if they are on course, and stuff like that! (I love it!)
Everything is going to schedule, right to the minute. NASA could learn a lot from this Mr. Bass guy!
When the boys get there, they meet two of the Mushroom People (the planet is covered in tree-tall mushroom growth, and the inhabitants look very mushroom-y too)... these natives are called Mebe and Oru, and the boys soon learn that these two are doomed to be beheaded if they cannot find a solution to the current environmental/ecological problems regarding their essential food supply on Basidium X.
The very authoritative King Ta has ordered these executions, and the boys are soon pleading with him to allow them the allotted two hours to solve the mystery. They are taken on a quick tour, given a quick historical de-briefing, and led to The Place of the Hidden Water. Here is where the dying vegetation, essential to the Mushroom People is located.
The boys are initially stumped. They are grossed out at the overall sulfuric smell of the place.
Later, when they are just about to leave, Chuck begins to eat a bit of his lunch, and herein the mystery is solved. I won’t say more because I know that all of you want to run out and buy this book today and read it.
Suffice it to say though, that just before they left earth, Mr. Bass reminded them that they needed to bring along a mascot, and (pressed for time) all that David could scrounge up was an old hen in the chicken coop by the name of Mrs. Pennyfeather. So they took along this.... chicken, into outer space.
Mrs. Pennyfeather ends up saving the entire race of Mushroomites, Mebe and Pru are spared, the boys are planetary heroes, King Ta rewards them by giving them his ceremonial necklace, and they return to earth safely, whereupon, the next day they prove to their parents that the whole thing was real.

There are many moments of doubt, whereupon the reader wonders if the boys are dreaming this whole adventure up. (I’m sure I wondered this much less with the first go-around, thirty-some years ago).
But it is really so well-written. So fanciful. I consider it a children’s classic.
The fact that it, and the whole Mushroom series is still in print, attests to its classic status.
Originally published in 1954, this book of 195 pages still can speak to a generation of kids, I really think it can. In fact, I hope that it can.
It is written for age levels 9 to 12, if I am reading amazon.com correctly, and the author does not talk down to her readers. Here are some of the words I noted, to show that the author respects the brains of kids....
-- Cogitating, elliptical, polarization, stroboscopic, azimuth, fluid resinoid silicon, tarsier, viridian, verdigris. –
It is filled with poetically descriptive moments.... like this one, where the crazy tin ship is bringing them home, and the boys are observing the earth’s curve, surrounded by the deep, deep black of space.... “Far, far off swam the sun, a blazing ball sourrounded by its flaming corona, and so terrible in its brilliance, uncurtained by earth’s atmosphere, that they could not look at it at all. On the opposite side of the sky, still in sight, hung the round, silvery-shining orb of the moon.” (146).
The poetry is in words like “terrible” and “orb” and the phrase “uncurtained by earth’s atmosphere” is an example of wonderfully respectful language in a book for kids.

And here is something interesting... I cannot say that I truly RECALLED too many specific moments in the book. Reading it now, so many years later, it was for the most part, new to me. However, for as long as I can remember remembering, I have always felt that I would love to see the earth from outer space.
I’ve never stopped to really wonder where this seemingly ingrained desire comes from. But here in the book, right at page 7, David asks his father (who has just read to him Mr. Bass’s ad in the paper) “What would the earth look like from way out in the sky, thousands of miles away?”
I wonder now, if reading this thirty-some years ago, was perhaps the genesis of my own fascination with that question.
Again, in the first chapter, David tells his parents he would like to find a planet just his own size. Then his father says to him... “But I’m afraid that’s not possible David. Not for ten or twenty years yet, or maybe even fifty. Might be something to look forward to though.”
Well, it is now roughly fifty-one years since David’s dad, Dr. Topman said that to his son.
For kids, it is something to still look forward to.
When I was just a kid, I was once rooting around in a box of my elder brother’s old school projects. One was a sort of pictorial essay about outer space. And I remember reading his words.... “Man has not yet gone to the moon, but there are plans that he may do so in the very near future.”
I remember reading and re-reading that line he had written, because at the time I was reading it, man had already been to the moon and back! And so I remember having this little kid’s sense of having a place in history. This for-so-long elusive event had happened in MY LIFETIME. In the lifetime of my brother. It was something that had not happened yet, in both of our lifetimes, and now had! We were living in exciting times. And we still are. In many ways, our current times are very much more exciting, more momentous and monumental even, than were the days of the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s, to which I am referring.
However, because of so much modern-day information overload, so much data, so little anticipation of what’s next on the technological agenda, I think we may be in danger of losing our ability to be amazed.
Nowadays, the youngest of elementary schoolkids can tell you that even a few inches of unprotected surface-area WILL spell disaster for any spacecraft and crew upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
It was so nice to read Cameron’s book and suspend my imagination for a wee bit. To believe that a dang old chicken can save the fate of an invisible planet hovering between here and the moon. To not worry about the logistical problems of a space ship constructed of Cap’n Tom’s random odds and ends. To just climb inside the thing and believe in it as much now as I did the first time around.

The Mushroom Planet Series, consists of:
-- The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
-- Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet
-- Mr. Bass’s Planetoid
-- A Mystery For Mr. Bass
-- Time and Mr. Bass

I want to read them all.... sometime between now and age ninety!
___________

Splash du Jour: Friday

"I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building. "
-- Ian McEwan –
Have a great Friday!

Poetry Week: Day Four

Here is another few wordsworth, from Cipriano’s Poem-Vault...

The Rider

A sparrow turns its head.
Quivering, the vigilant forest edge
Yields to a gathering unease
The thump of approach.
Hooves stamp the hilltop.
A triumphant tossing of mane, a steamy huff.

The Rider, wheeling the great beast about,
Surveys the foggy terrain he has crossed.
Silence reclaims itself.
He thinks.

This man knows nothing of Parliament or Congress,
Matches or ballpoint pens. Electricity is gibberish.
Air the exclusive domain of feathers.
Television, centuries hence.

Yet the Rider knows two things
As well as you and I do.
Love and the lack of it.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005

Splash du Jour: Thursday

I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Have a great Thursday!

Poetry Week: Day Three

Here is a poem that I wrote so long ago that I can’t remember the date.
At the time, I was just beginning a part-time job as a gardener. (No, just kidding).
But it was back in the days when everything I wrote came out in King James Version.... and it even rhymed, and stuff.....

To All Slugs In The Grass

My gardening debut will be on morrow morn
when this field and thy home shall together be shorn.
At seven precise, while dew on the grass
still glistens, my rotors will merciless pass;
And if you would escape the unfeeling blade
where ‘tween lawn and slug no distinction is made,
Then heed thou this edict, my slippery friends
for on vacancy then your existence depends…

And publish it wide, from Slug King to Slug Peasant
that shunning advice would be naught but unpleasant.
Be blessed, I have oft been acquainted with pain
and I have no desire to render thee twain,
As groundsmen before me who came without warning
and clogged up their mowers with thee in the morning.
Now leave slimy trails, and freedom pursue;
Make haste, lest at seven, thou be snipped in two…

And forgive in advance my disturbing your sod.
I pray for thy safety, commit thee to God
Who alone knows I have no intention to kill…
and as for my own soul, I pray that I will
Receive His forgiveness, if any be torn.
Now “Away, get thee hence!” and with these words I warn.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005.

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire."
-- François de la Rochefoucauld –
Have a great Wednesday!

Poetry Week: Day Two.

Thus far, the response to my request for poetry submissions has been underwhelming!
So, here is another one from me.
A few months ago I was having lunch in a food court in the mall and a nearby table of fun-loving, laughing kids inspired me to write the following words on the back of a napkin.
This is one of those times when I would LOVE to explain to a reader what is being said in the white spaces, between, and around the letters that make up the words.
But I won’t. Authorial explanation always devalues a poem. Denudes it.
To some readers it may seem that this poem is an admission that I need to see a good psychotherapist, and while that may be true enough, putting these words out here on display is at least a good sign that I am not in denial! Right?


Oblivious

Three kids are in love with their sandwiches.

The one in an olive-colored shirt alternates between
cookie and sandwich and pop and laughter while
cramming it all into his freckles he marries a monstrous
beast develops liver disease plastic tubes keep him alive until not.

The one with thick glasses and mustard on his laughing lip
secures a fortune in the stock market loses it all
night watchman finds what he was on the sidewalk.

The one in the red jacket with the laugh like
rain falling her only child dies in the womb after a long
bout with cancer she too succumbs to life.

It is beautiful to watch them with their sandwiches.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005.

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The first part of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was published on this day in 1954. In this passage from his 1938 essay "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien says that he took the saga-path early and above all others:
I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them merely amused me. I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the Vˆlsungs, and the prince of all dragons.
Have a great Tuesday!

Poetry Week!

I am inaugurating Poetry Week. Starting right now.
We’ll see how it goes.

Given the heat and humidity as of late, I am feeling a bit more perspirational than inspirational at the end of the work day. So, I will reach into the vault and extract a few of my original poems and present them here.
Ahhhh.... that’s easier than sipping iced-tea!
One downside is that the original indentation does not translate into the blog format. In other words, no matter what, everything becomes left-justified.
Do you have any of your own poems that you would like to see bookpuddled?
Send them to me. Obviously, they must be 100% original works.
If I post them here, I will ask your permission first.
And this next thing is very important: Who is the JUDGE of whether they are "good" or not?
My cat and me.

I will definitely send you a reply if you send your stuff to:
always_reading2000@yahoo.com

I’ll start.
I wrote this poem about 640 years ago.

Good Poetry

Imagine the centuries of eyes
Herrick’s To Anthea, or Jonson’s To Celia
have seen
cast down, scanning right to left,
lower, licking vowels.
Loitering at the left ankle
upon the final thee of each.

Spread open, the poem yields itself
naked
watching as we gaze.

The while, it asks for two things:
that we Hear and Listen.
Perhaps thirdly, for Time –
Let time sharpen our dullness, as
only time can.
For this is poetry’s only promise, that
we will never return
to find it gone.

Oh, to possess the better ones.
Yet, indiscriminate and wanton
these favorites seem unfaithful.
But remember this:
Good poetry never marries.
It retains the right to court.
To romance.

To grant, never spurn, attention.
To lend, never criticize, understanding.
To love, never ask, to be loved.

No wonder good readers fall.
Convinced that they were in some way
worthy of the charms
of good poetry.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005.

Splash du Jour: Monday

“I told her she wouldn’t make any money at children’s books, and she should get a day job.”
-- Publisher Barry Cunningham on telling author J.K. Rowling she shouldn’t be relying on Harry Potter to build a future for her and her daughter. –
[Today, Rowling has a personal fortune roughly TWICE that of the Queen of England....]

Of other literary significance: On this day in 1817, Jane Austen died, at the age of forty-one. She had been increasingly ill over the previous year and a half, probably from a hormonal disorder like Addison's Disease.
Have a great Monday!

Hell Freezing Over?

Fellow Bookpuddle-ites!
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the
following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.
Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:

1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2) If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having an affair with her, then #2 above cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze over."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A".

Dust.

I am once again having a coffee at Chapters.
A different one than last evening, but a Chapters nonetheless.
And the evidence of Potterdom is everywhere. There are pallets of books, I have counted at least three of them.... you know, those big boxes that are sometimes used to display watermelons in the supermarket? Full of Harry Potter. On skids.
It is hard to truly fathom the amount of books that were sold, and that continue to be sold today, and into the future. In the paper there are stories of post-midnight lineups, 300 and 400 people deep, at local bookstores. Waiting in line. Eager to buy a book. I love it.

Strolling though here today, on my way to the Starbucks, I casually picked up a novel called Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. He is an award-winning Bombay-born Canadian writer. If I recall correctly, one of his books, A Fine Balance, was an Oprah Book-Club selection.
As I was waiting for my coffee, I was reading the back dustjacket of Family Matters....
“His books will be read long beyond his lifetime.”
-- Montreal Gazette –

That really struck me.
Can you imagine?
I mean, can you imagine being the author, and seeing this written about your work, and displayed right there on the back of your work?
His books will be read long beyond his lifetime.
Mistry seeing this, would read it: My books will be read long beyond my lifetime.
That, to me, is truly an incredible thought, but obviously (given that the horrors of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, or Orwell’s 1984 don’t come to pass).... it is true.
His work will outlive him.
On shelves, in libraries, in bookstores, he will live.
Ninety years from now, a young man can go into his grandparent’s basement and glance at an old lopsided bookshelf down there in some spidery recess of the room and find this very book (the one I am holding in my hands perhaps) and flip it open, and read it.
The words that speak to me now (for instance) can as loudly speak to him, then.
This is the magic, and the power, of the written word.
As long as there is the combination of availability and comprehension, the book is eternal.
This is why what the writer writes, is even more important than what the writer says, or even says about what he/she writes.
The writer will die.
The writing, will not.
Writing, vis a vis, the written word is like the actor that survives his own performance, even though partway through he is called upon to die. And to die convincingly.
The writer may change as a result of mixed reviews, but the writing will not. Here too, it is permanent, once set down.

I imagine the following conversation which is not at all real, yet I hear it:

I think that there is a connection between writing and the fear of impermanence. It [writing] is borne of a need to perpetuate THOUGHT. If I do not write it, it will die. More correctly, it will not LIVE.
Does it not live if I keep it within, here where the thought itself is gestating, and developing?
Yes, but it will not live in any separate sense. The thought dies with the thinker, and the thinker will most certainly die. But set the thought down, and it more than lives. It runs. Set it free. Set it loose.
On its own?
Yes, on its own. If left in its embyonic stage [the thought of the thinker] it will die as surely as a fetus would, were its yet pregnant mother to perish. The cord must be cut, and only when ready, and only by writing. To write is to detach the best of yourself from yourself.
This seems to suggest that our grandest thoughts are MEANT to be transmitted to others. Not witheld, in other words.
Agreed. In my opinion, it is sad to contemplate the books that went to a coffin, unwritten.
And what of our basest thoughts? Are they meant to be transmitted also?
Perhaps, yes. One thing is certain though. It is the grander thoughts that are the most difficult to transmit in writing. We are not as prone to desire transmission of our baser thoughts, as we are our grander. And that is why it is so difficult to write. We want to be worthy of ourselves. The “masters” are those who have broken through this specific barrier in human communication, using the written word as their vehicle. Trusting....

This imaginary conversation was broken up as I went to get another coffee.....

Now I am back.
And I hear you say to me...
“Ahh Cipriano, your little pseudo-dialogue as recorded above.... do you not see it for its elementariness? Really, all that your imaginary friends are suggesting in their little tete a tete is that if we do not write something, it will not be written.”

“Ahh yes dear reader of such things, it is very elementary, I agree. But do any of us really realize how serious it is? Do I myself? I must not, for I have never been read by others, and have never published anything to be purchased on a single obscure shelf, much less by the watermelon skidload after midnight in stores. But, were I to die today, oh, the stories, oh the poems that would turn to dust.....”

Someone who was one of the “masters” said it like this:

When a man in a melancholy mood is left tete a tete with the sea, or any landscape which seems to him grandiose, there is always, for some reason, mixed with melancholy, a conviction that he will live and die in obscurity, and he reflectively snatches up a pencil and hastens to write his name on the first thing that comes handy.
-- Anton Chekhov, in his short story “Lights” --