There’s always been this hunger for fantasy. The world has always been awful, the world’s always sucked, mostly because of the things people do to one another. All you have to do is read the Bible. Just read Job. . . A mind is blown when something you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge. -- Micahel Chabon --
There you are, washing the egg-flipper. No. Not somewhere else, but right here, same world I inhabit. Same walls. Same bills. Same toilets. Same children.
A few strands of your hair fall forward. Others remain tied. Rinsed forks clatter like castanets, defying anything domestic. Strutting a fandango -- you aren't here.
I lean in closer to hear you humming, nearly falling in the sand at your feet. I know that song goddammit -- a piece of sunset made you squint. And I remembered.
It is always exhilarating to "discover" an author one has not read before. I've mentioned this concept of "discovery" before, in my bloggations. The author was doing perfectly fine long before I came along to "discover" him or her. By discovery though, I guess I mean -- you know how there are certain books that you have seen time and again, and something about the book has intrigued you, but you just never picked it up? Well, I finally "discovered" Michael Chabon. Have wanted to read this book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for a long while now. And recently I snagged this book for next-to-nothing at a used book sale. In one morning [I priced it all out] I managed to nab almost a half-a-thousand dollars worth of books......... for $57.00. Gotta love those used book sales!
I am only one-sixth into Chabon's world here, but I think I am involved enough in the story to say this thing is going to be a dandy worthwhile adventure. Tonight at my local Starbucks, certain portions of the novel had me spewing coffee through several of my facial orifices.
It's New York, in 1939. Two Jewish yoots [<-- as Joe Pecci might say]... Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay, are trying to come up with an innovative new comic book character. Something to top this upstart Superman fellow, who has every kid in America hurling their hard-earned dimes at whoever will provide them with the latest installment. [Apparently, at this early stage in his career, Superman did not yet fly, he just jumped real good. His initial reaction to free-basing kryptonite, perhaps?] Anyhoo, Joe and Sammy are fledgling artists with a few connections to the publishing world, and they have a deadline. They must come up with a plausible, yet incredible new superhero... They laughed. Joe stopped laughing. "I think we have to be serious," he said. "You're right. The Lion. I don't know. Lions are lazy. How about the Tiger. Tigerman. No, no. Tigers are killers. Shit. Let's see." [They go through a panoply of potential animal-based super heroes, even Mandrill-Man -- "with his multicolored wonder ass that he used to bedazzle opponents."] You can hear the synapses firing, as they walk down 25th Street -- you can smell the brain cells burning -- "He turns into ice. He makes the ice everywhere." "Crushed or cubes?" "Not good?" Sammy shook his head. "Ice," he said. "I don't see a lot of stories in ice." "He turns into electricity?" Joe tried. "He turns into acid?" "He turns into gravy. He turns into an enormous hat. Look, stop. Stop. Just stop." [They stop] It dawns on Sammy [he is the brains of this dynamic duo...] it dawns on him that, when it comes to super hero creation, the "why" is more important than the "what". [They resume walking...] "How? is not the question. What? is not the question," Sammy said. "The question is why." The question is why." "Why," Joe repeated. "Why is he doing it?" "Doing what?" "Dressing up like a monkey or an ice cube or a can of fucking corn."
Right about then an impressive display of nostril-forced Grande Americano created an eerie mist around me and my table. I felt it was time to mop things up and move on. Time to come home here and write about this wonderful book that has already proven to be worth more than it's full price, never mind the two measly dollars I doled out for it.
Hmmmm.... if I were a Super Hero -- what would my special power be? Super-Miser! Unwilling to pay anything more than 1/10th of the bar-coded price! IN A SINGLE BOUND!
If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own -- the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple -- a few plain words -- "My Heart Laid Bare." But this little book must be true to its title. No man dare write it. No man could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen. -- Edgar Allen Poe, 1848 --
Everyone's talking about the election results in Maine. They voted for medical marijuana, but against gay marriage. I think voters were worried that guys would get so high they'd accidentally marry each other. -- Craig Ferguson --
Al Gore, winner of the Nobel Prize, is on the show. I wish he were here last night. I could have used the help. During the show, the climate went from bad to worse. -- David Letterman --
Truthfully, I have never really been a fan of Michael Jackson. Until last night. I went to see this movie. Now I want ALL of his music on my iTunes! If "This Is It" is playing anywhere near you, go see it. Seriously. It is incredible. You will see a side of Michael Jackson you did not know existed. And if, unlike me, you already knew it existed -- well you probably saw This Is It on opening night. Last night convinced me, he truly was The King of Pop. Not was. IS.
Not just the clanging of the dinner bell. Difficult as this is to forget. Or her shrill call. The walk-in-and-wander food pantry. None of this brings her back as clearly to me as that squint she had, sun or no. Nothing to do with light.
That narrowing of the eyes meant laughter, sadness, punishment, linoleum repairs, change the channel, chicken heads to be cut off, storm tomorrow, I had too many children, or most of all, most of all -- open yours as much as you can, while you can.
I've been sick all day. I think I am coming down with the H1N1 swine-thing, actually. My first hint was that my nostrils all of a sudden are sort of upturned. Very Kevin Bacon-ish. But still, between sneezing and puking I have had occasion to do some of my near-useless musing about things that no other human beings think about, ever. I happened to hear Ella Fitzgerald singing a Christmas song. 'Tis the season! I forget the song, honestly -- what completely intrigued me though, was the vibrato at the end of every line. What kind of medical problem is this?
Now, let's face it, Ella can [could] sing, I'm not disputing that. I'll never forget this one interview with Amanda Marshall [and I somewhat worship Amanda] where she cited Ella as her absolute vocal mentor and idol. I think that part of Ella Fitzgerald's fame has to do with the youthfulness of her voice. It never ever got old. But the vibrato! It makes my eyelids flutter.
And today, for the first time ever, I asked my favorite question -- WHY -- and directed it at the phenomenon of vibrato. Not only why do singers do it. But why do we WANT them to do it? Because we must want it, right? Or else they wouldn't do it. What I mean is, statistically speaking, we must LIKE vibrato.
Well, I just want to go on record here and say that I myself do not like it. I find it highly superfluous. This is not a natural throatal reaction to the action of singing. It is contrived. It is -- I don't know, just one of those human things that have evolved God-knows-why!
She was singing away, and I closed my eyes. Instantly I envisioned a peacock. Have you ever watched a male peacock when they are really strutting their stuff? I have. It's wild. They fan out that magnificent tail...... they wait a bit, and then, the sort of -- shake it up! Rattle the feathers. They rattle that thing. They SHAKE that peacock booty!
It's the equivalent of the vibrato idea. The peacock throws that tail out there, and then probably.... just at the right moment contracts a peacock-sphincter muscle and it's like.... "OK, my tail was all fanned out but check this out Oh-my-God now it is wicked sh-aaaaa-aaaaa-kkkkk-ing like crazy!" [The hyphenated stuff, that's the peacock-sphincter tightening up right there.]
It's like Ella Fitzgerald, honest to God. OK, it's all coming back to me now...... Let It Snow! "Let it snow let it snow, let it snoowwwwwwowwwwowwoww!" Yeesh. A few more verses of that and all my fillings would have popped out. I guess it all hearkens back to a time when we really had to shake things up to attract a mate?
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. -- Tim O'Brien, in The Things They Carried --
Last night I finished this amazing book. An incredibly moving, significant novel. It is phenomenally good. ClickHERE.
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman. -- John Berger --
So I was walking down the street. I've walked down this street [Dalhousie Street] perhaps 18 million times. Give or take a few hundred. And there is this one building I really like, and I'm not sure why. It is directly across from my own apartment building, where I live. You know you can walk past a building 18 million times and never once stop to wonder how long it's been there. But the other day I wondered. I looked up and saw at the very top of the thing, a date. 1899. I stopped and stared until I was dizzy. 1899? That's like PRIOR TO ----- the last century. My own building where I live, where I am typing this from, was built in the early 1970's. A mere YOUNGSTER compared to this venerable brown brick building across the park. This 1899 building WATCHED my building grow up! But as I stood there and looked up I did some contextualizing. My spell-checker warns me that this is not a word, but I don't care. I am going to use it anyway, because it is exactly what I am doing. I am contextualizing.
My father was born in 1926. And, while he lived, he loved to tell me stories about his childhood... and so I am standing here on the corner of Dalhousie and Cathcart, looking up, and I'm thinking -- before even one of my father's stories existed, this building was standing here on this corner, being a building. I think that is so neat. My father's father was born somewhere in Austria in 1897. So -- when my paternal grandfather was 2 years old, this building was busy being a building. The first tenants were all exited about renting the space. Prime real estate. Yonder, where my building now stands -- a crow was perhaps flying right through the very space where I now sit typing by candlelight in my penthouse suite. [Ooops. Spell-check again. Apparently "penthouse" is some sort of magazine!] But -- I think you get my drift right?
Thomas Hardy was just then taking pen in hand, to write The Darkling Thrush. My father's every story was decades distant. His father was still not proficient with the toilet! Hell, the toilet itself was not invented yet! And this building, this one right here.... was...... was --
So I walked across the street, and I touched a few of the lower bricks. Spoke to them. Proportionally speaking, I spoke to a few of the bricks between the ankle and knee of this building. And I said, "Remember me, building." And I hugged that building that will be standing, right here, long after I am permanently horizontal.
There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought. -- Tim O'Brien, in The Things They Carried --
In honor of Halloween I am reading a scary book, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. So far there have been no witches in the book, but for some reason [maybe it is the combination of having recently read the life of Einstein]... all morning long I’ve had one question rolling around in my head and it simply will not let me alone. It involves witches and gravity. 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 tonight, this very Hallowe’en night, 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. 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 propaganda and fruit. In our current scenario, you have flicked the porch light on to see a small assemblage of amateur ghouls and vampires and whatnot else. 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 number of possibilities to consider, and I intend to consider them. Here is the real issue: 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 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....] Would a workable formula be something like F = bw2? [Flight = broom X witch, both?]
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.
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, until some of you may come up with better suggestions, I am going to maintain that there are only two possible (mutually contradictory) conclusions I can theoretically consider 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.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. -- George Orwell, in Politics and the English Language --
I listen to talk-radio more than I listen to music radio. The main reason is because I hate repetition. I hate when the latest hits get played right into the ground over the course of a workday. Repitition irks me! <-- Unless what is being repeated is Nelly Furtado. Whoa Nelly! So there is this new song by James Morrison and it's called Broken Strings. I could listen to this song a million times and still love it because it is just so well-written, well-produced, and [like Nelly] flawlessly put together. I think it is one of the best duets I have heard in a long long time. The perfect blend of voices. This James Morrison guy is fantastic, but I think the song just goes crazy as soon as Nelly gets in there at about 1 minute and 35 seconds. It just takes off from there and pretty much goes into orbit. Once in a blue moon a song like this comes along and restores my faith in good music. To hear it for yourself, CLICK on Nelly, above! Turn it up good and loud! Whoa Nelly! *********
There’s always been this hunger for fantasy. The world has always been awful, the world’s always sucked, mostly because of the things people do to one another. All you have to do is read the Bible. Just read Job. . . A mind is blown when something you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.
