Classical Trumpet, Anyone?

I did not know how much I love the trumpet, until today.
Yesterday my brother-in-law Darryl sent me a link and said something about how I needed to hear… well, his exact words were "this may give you a love for trumpet players all over again… OK, for the first time…!"
Trumpet players? I admit I was curious, but somehow I never watched the clip until today. And -- he was right.
I now have acquired a new fascination with…. trumpet players.
In all seriousness though, this is some very beautiful -- music.
The trumpeter is Alison Balsom.



To hear an amazing piece, performed on Late Night with David Letterman a few months ago, click --> HERE. To learn more about Alison Balsom, click on her very trumpetty shoulder at the top of this blog.
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Simple Things

I love hamburger. And beer.
Pizza. Lack of debt.
Breathing.
Ragdoll cats. [And none better than my own...]
Shakespeare.
Central heating in winter.
A/C in summer.
A car that gets you there.
Camaraderie in the workplace.
Writing a good poem. I love reading, and time to do it. The Simpsons.
Hamburger! [<-- Ooops, already said that…]
I love simple things.
I love when you are walking down the street on a cold winter night and you smell someone's fireplace giving off that wondrous scent of burnt forest, and it reminds you of something from a long time ago but you can never quite tell exactly what it is.
I love the profound feeling of satisfaction you get when you pick that piece of apple rind from between your teeth. Oh God, yes!
I love gravy on things.
A pillow that is just right. Undiluted maple syrup!
And, speaking of gravy [were we?] -- today, this very Sunday -- I experienced much that was enjoyable, in fact, superb. Off the scale. Real good. And yet, so simple.
First, I met with some great friends at a high-end poutine emporium. If you do not know what "poutine" is, I only have two things to say to you:
1) I feel sorry for you, and
2) You are probably healthier than I am.

I met some co-worker friends at Smoke's Poutinerie. This place ONLY makes poutine.
What is poutine? It is french-fried potatoes with lots of gravy and cheese curds mixed in there, but wait -- here's the heart-rending [and heart-clogging] beauty of it….. they put tons of OTHER lethal stuff in it!
There is a poutine menu!
I got the Green Peppercorn Chicken.
It was an epiphany. [see the following video evidence…]
Same day -- in a used record store -- still with the same delightful people -- I happened across a DVD-movie I have wanted for a long time [above photo]…. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I spent the rest of the day reading a really good part of Possession by A.S. Byatt in Starbucks, the poutine floating higher and higher on a veritable tidal wave of good coffee. [I need medical attention, yes….]
Later, I walked home in lightly falling snow, pressed the elevator button that might as well say "Penthouse" and ever since, I've been drinking so much beer that I am rather amazed I was even able to type this blog out.
Life is good.
Good is simple.
I love simple things.

Splash du Jour: Friday

I cannot bear not to know the end of a tale. I will read the most trivial things – once commenced – only out of a feverish greed to be able to swallow the ending – sweet or sour – and to be done with what I need never have embarked on. Are you in my case? Or are you a more discriminating reader? Do you lay aside the unprofitable?
-- A.S. Byatt, Possession --

For my own answer to that last question, click --> HERE.
Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
-- A.S. Byatt --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
-- Richard Dawkins --

Have great Tuesday!
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Critical Backfire -- Does Anyone Have a Corkscrew?

I did something entirely out of character yesterday. Sunday.
I went to church.
It's probably been something like seven years since I have been [willingly] in a church service -- other than the occasional time back home, at Christmas.
Or at weddings. Or funerals.
But -- to wake up early on a Sunday and go to a church service? Well, since my radical de-conversion -- it is an unheard-of event. Some of you may know, I once was a minister in the church. And then I experienced an extremely radical shift in my umm……. how does one say this…. ministerial status?
[The above image is an actual photograph…. do you see how this was doomed from the get-go?]
And then what followed was an entire re-organization of my core beliefs.
The place I am at today? I would describe it as AWQ.
Agnosticism With Qualifications©.

I work with several non-believers, and at work we often discuss our various perspectives on the theological/religious spectrum. It has been very stimulating for me to be able to share my own journey along these lines, with people that I respect, and work with on a daily basis. Some are very critical thinkers -- and I consider myself to be among that designation of…… thinker.

Yesterday I ended up in a pew with one of them… an avowed atheist.
Hard-core.
I must admit -- we attended this prominent Pentecostal church [my background] with the intention of having a good laugh -- we intended to go out afterwards and tear to delightful shreds every absurdity after absurdity.
We were foiled.
Or…… let me speak for myself here, I WAS FOILED!

As we sat in a Swiss Chalet afterwards, gnawing on legs of chickens like two unsaved Neanderthals -- groping for constructive criticism of the church service we had just attended -- neither of us was really able to come up with anything solid.
We looked down [at our plates]… and behold…… it was good.
Again, -- I speak for myself and not my co-worker -- I was flabbergasted at the fact that I think the "church" -- at least the one we visited -- has perhaps done a bit of a 180, in light of the fact that most bookstores have entire sections now devoted to what might as well be labelled "Religious Bullshit Detection."
The church we attended was relevant. That is how I would describe it.

The format?
Well, in light of Valentines Day -- the topic was marriage.
The pastor and his wife sat on Starbucks-style chairs, around a Starbucks-type table, with Starbuckian kinds of cups on it… and sipped from these, as they had a chat about what it means to live the married life -- half the time it was so candid that myself, as a congregant, felt I was intruding on a private moment.
It was relevant. Non-preachy. Non-judgmental. Wonderfully applicable [even though I am not married, I've noticed that my relationship with my cat has already greatly improved….] -- overall, I was impressed.
Even shocked.
Hundreds of people listening, and you could have heard a pin drop.

My critical intention had backfired, at least in this instance. And left me with the thought that, although I no longer subscribe to the literal beliefs as held by everyone else in the building [except the person next to me] -- I am going to quit blindly criticizing everyone of faith.
Some of them know what's going on. Some are living profoundly relevant lives, filled with love and joy and…….. filledment. [<-- This should really be a word].
Some of them have found a way to consistently believe [in a literal sense] in what amounts to a really good cartoon -- but have translated and applied this in a way that has the potential of making my own life look like a fairly bad one.
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
-- Victor Hugo --

Wishing you all, a HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
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I Blame Tess

For as long as I can recall being alive [which is quite a while, and sometimes feels like an entire lifetime] I have loved reading.
And books.
I differentiate between those two words -- reading, and books.
They are related, but distinct, loves.
Many people involve themselves in the act of reading -- but do not have a proper lust for books.
Others acquire books, and never read them.
A while back now, a good friend bought a mansion and asked me if I knew where he could purchase a pile of classic-type books so that it would lend his estate the appearance of being owned by a connoisseur of literature.
Many people don't have the time to read the stuff, but want it around.

I am rather hard-core about both reading and books. I make time and expend energy and money, for both. I would feel my life to be just this side of not-worth-living if I became too busy to pursue my "leisure" reading.
Tonight I am wondering though -- how much of this passion is innate?

Recently, a co-worker asked me when it was that I realized I could not live a happy life without a book in front of me. And the truth is -- I had to realize that in my case, the passion for reading was pretty much always there.
When I was a kid -- basically as soon as I learned what printed words were trying to do -- I was fascinated by their power. My discovery of typeface was like seeing God.
Immediately, when I understood the concept of what a typewriter could accomplish, I began typing recipe cards for my mother. Even before I could read what I was typing, I was typing -- identifying each individual printed letter with the key on dad's ancient Olivetti.
In Grade 2 of elementary school my mother showed my teacher a listing of books I had read that year, and Mrs. Okrainetz [she rode to school on a broom] did not believe I was telling the truth. I devoured the works of Enid Blyton, and even several volumes of non-fiction. I recall crying in a store [I could not have been more than nine or ten years old] until my mother bought me The Gulag Archipelago.
And yet -- even though I always was a reader -- I point to a time in college, when I had some free time after exams were over. I wandered in a Mall and picked up a discount copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy.
As I sat in my dorm-room and devoured that book, something went crazy inside of me, and I knew that I would never be the same. I had reached some sort of higher level of addiction.
Unending, incurable and insatiable.
And so this is how I answered my co-worker. I blamed Hardy.
I blame Tess.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Q: Do you have many mental fans? People disguising themselves to get close to you?
A: Not really, but when Taylor was playing in Alanis Morissette's band, some guy made his way backstage saying he was Hootie from Hootie And The Blowfish. Everyone believed him until someone said, "Wait a minute, there's no-one in Hootie And The Blowfish called Hootie!"
-- Dave Grohl --


Have a great Thursday!
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The Pretender

Sometimes certain songs really arrest my attention and I can't help but play them over and over again, usually in my car. But also sitting here at my desk.
Something about the artistry especially moves me until finally I feel I must say something about it.
It helps me get over it, and move on!
If you generally do not like Foo Fighters -- what I have to say about the current song on my Obsession List© will not mean much to you. The Pretender.
I think this song has so many levels of musical genius to it.
How can it not? It's all about Dave Grohl -- the guy is INSANE!
Whether or not this particular type of song is your style -- just entertain me for a moment and let me ask you to notice how the initial melody, the slow thing at the start -- full of subsequently revealed cello-like sounds -- that entire progression is a constant throughout the whole song, no matter the current time signature.
This is most evident between 3:50 --> 4:11 of the song, when Grohl reverts [underdubs] back to that initial prelude while the foreground of the song continues on 98-speed!
In my opinion, this entire thing is sheer genius!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.
-- William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Discovering Sleepers

I am so NOT a morning person.
I'm a night person. The night is when I come alive!
I like staying awake till all hours, sleeping like a dead rhinoceros -- and my perfect day is when I can awaken due to natural causes. Like…… sunlight. Or Jack's lovely mewling. Or the sheer desire to read, with a coffee steaming away beside me. I like sleeping until then.
And when it comes to reading, I like discovering sleepers.
Books that are surprising in that, for all their obscurity, they turn out to be quite good -- these are what I call "sleepers". I'm in the midst of a real good one, right now.
It's called All Will Be Revealed, by Robert Anthony Siegel. [2007]. The fact that you have never heard of this book is my very point here. It's too bad that for whatever reason it does not have a greater readership, because really it is a terrific read. Dealing with the subject of the dawn of pornography -- and how one of its early moguls gets involved with the phenomenon of the seance, the occult practices that were so prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century.

As any reader of Bookpuddle knows, I am not a follower of the bestsellers.
I'm a bit of an Ibsenite, I'm afraid.
Old Henrik said "The majority are always wrong" and I tend to agree. I like finding that underdog book -- the sleeper that is a real keeper.
Over the years I've unearthed a few real dandies.
Books that no one has read, like:
The Ash Garden, by Dennis Bock.
Some Things That Stay, by Sarah Willis.
Slammerkin and Life Mask, by Emma Donoghue.
The Doctor's Wife and An Answer From Limbo and The Great Victorian Collection, by Brian Moore.
The Watch That Ends The Night, by Hugh MacLennan.
The Way The Crow Flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.
Afterlands, by Steven Heighton.
Or, the ultimate Book That No One Has Read… Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis.
I've read this last one about four or five times.

What is your ultimate Sleeper Book that you have read but you are quite sure no one else in the world has read but yet you have a feeling that it should be read by everyone in the world?
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Splash du Jour: Monday

There is an epidemic of scientific ignorance in the United States. This isn't surprising, as very few scientific truths are self-evident and many are deeply counterintuitive. It is by no means obvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with both the housefly and the banana. It can be difficult to think like a scientist (even, we have begun to see, when one is a scientist). But it would seem that few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than an attachment to religion.
-- Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape --

Have a great Monday!
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Another Angle

Hey, this is so neat. Here is a shot of the same fireworks going off [see my former blog-posting] but from the vantage point of the beginning of the World's Longest Skating Rink.
I love where I live! It's so beautiful here, and there's always something going on!
Apparently, the cause of all the kafuffle [kudos to Shark's guess of it being Chinese New Year] was the launch of 2011 Winterlude.
Well -- I am off to a SuperBowl Party soon -- GO PACKERS GO!
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February Fireworks

Wow, this just happened like minutes ago... I was just sitting here reading, and innocently drinking a Carlsberg when all of a sudden BING BANG BOOM! I launched out of my chair to see this conflagration taking place right outside my kitchen window. I'm not even sure yet just what it is my city is celebrating -- maybe the release of the new IKEA© catalog?
Jack is traumatized!
He's under the bed somewhere, probably for the next two days or so!

Splash du Jour: Friday

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.
-- David Hume --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
-- Jerry Seinfeld --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

existence

existence

i would like to watch a stream descend
its babbling course between mountains
before ever a human eye was in a head
and whether you choose the book of
genesis or darwin as your text surely
there was such a time in history for no
doubt the inanimate came first either way.
secondly, to hear the first bird clear its
throat and sing would be nice and whether
you believe in god or not it is just
another way of saying that being around
when existence started happening would
be something i am totally interested in.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2006 --

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark?
Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
-- Steven Spielberg --

Have a great Tuesday!
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What's The Recipe?

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the throes of a fabulous book. Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.
I'm learning things from this book that I would not discover in four lifetimes, without Mr. Harris's help. But I find myself longing for fiction.
At different periods of my life I have established and followed a variety of reading regimens.
One part fiction <--> two parts non.
Equal time for each <--> reading both simultaneously.
Three parts fiction <--> one part non.

Lately I have been reading things at a rate of maybe fourteen parts fiction <--> one part nonfiction. And even then, while I am immersed in a book that is fascinating, I find myself longing for fiction.
If reading is a chemical rush for some, as I believe it is for me, I think I am getting my most powerful fix from books of fiction.
At times it causes me concern. The same kind of concern that might be healthily applied to my eating habits!
Lately I've been ten parts hamburger <--> one part….. nonhamburger.

I'm not equating the reading of fiction to the ingestion of grease… no, no.
Nor am I outright assuming that reading fiction is somehow less valuable than reading non-fiction. Some people thrive on movies, others on documentaries. For most people it's a little [or a lot] of both.
But what is the perfect recipe? Or is there one, at all?
Are there as many recipes as there are people?
How do you do it?
It's just that, more often than not, when I'm reading non-fiction I feel as though I'm nibbling on uncooked broccoli, surrounded by shelves of pizza.
********

Splash du Jour: Monday

[Introducing the best adapted screenplay]
I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87.
-- Steve Martin at the 2003 Oscars --

Have a great Monday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

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

Some Crazy Hate-Email

Those of you more familiar with my taste for atheist writings will know that I love to read anything by The Four Horsemen of No-Nonsense: Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins.
This evening as I was innocently sitting here drinking a snifter of beer I happened upon a videoclip from the Grand-Daddy of them all -- Mr. Dawkins himself. It is a brief clip of the scientist-author reading some of his Hate-Email. I laughed so hard that I felt I must immediately share this with you all.
One warning though -- Dawkins drops the ol' F-Bomb here a few times -- there is some swearing from time to time -- you may not want to have impressionable children nearby!
And yet, this is one of the very things that made me laugh about it all -- it's the inimitable smirk of the man -- he even pronounces all of the spelling errors of his illustrious respondents.
I find it delightful -- I hope you do, too.
And go figure -- I'm not even an atheist, per se. I think I am more what one might call an agnostic. --> a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Whatever is true about us, ethically and spiritually, is discoverable in the present and can be talked about in terms that are not an outright affront to our growing understanding of the world. It makes no sense at all to have the most important features of our lives anchored to divisive claims about the unique sanctity of ancient books or to rumors of ancient miracles. There is simply no question that how we speak about human values -- and how we study or fail to study the relevant phenomena at the level of the brain -- will profoundly influence our collective future.
-- Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Some fun for you, this Wednesday morning.
This year we will experience 4 unusual dates.... 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11.
And check this out.... take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be on your birthday this year. Did you do it?
Now click --> HERE.


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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

But I want to understand in such a way as to be brought to the inevitably inexplicable. I want to realize that all that is inexplicable is so, not because the demands of my intellect are at fault (they are correct and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I can recognize the limits of my intellect. I want to understand in such a way that everything inexplicable presents itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable and not as being something that I am under an obligation to believe.
-- from Tolstoy's Confession --

Have a great Tuesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelist's discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
--Milan Kundera –


Have a great Monday!
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The Credence of Awards

I will begin by answering the very question I shall pose, later.
When it comes to books, I'm not a big follower of Awards, and definitely not a crowd-follower. In other words, I rarely succumb to that most unreliable of indicators --> SALES! Whether a book is a bestseller or not means little to me. I would just as soon read it because it had a great cover.
When it comes to Awards, I must admit that there are times when I am influenced by a book winning a prestigious Award, say the Booker or [in Canada] the Giller. The same can be said for a book being short or even long-listed for either of these. But I would not say I am a BIG follower of the Awards.
I know of one woman, an acquaintance from my current residency at a Chapters bookstore, every year when the Canada Reads nominees are selected [consisting of five novels] she promptly buys and reads all of the books.
I myself have never been so dedicated to any sort of book award competition.
In fact, it is almost a random thing -- when I happen to be reading an award-winning book.
Currently I am reading one -- the Booker Prize winner from 2004.
And truly, seeing that gold crest "Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction" -- that does not hurt, as I roam through a used bookstore…
My question tonight is a simple one.
Are you a big follower of Book Awards?
Followed by:
In your experience, are award winning books noticeably "better" than other books in any significant way?
If you are a follower of book awards -- which ones are you partial to?
The Booker, The Giller, The Pulitzer, The Nobel Prize?

Splash du Jour: Friday

Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that’s what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity.
-- Anatole Broyard --

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

…the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.
-- From Great House by Nicole Krauss --

Have a great Thursday!
*******

Charles and James

After work I went to The Rideau Centre [a Mall] and grabbed a Second Cup coffee.
Sat down and read a bit in this excellent book, the 2004 Booker Prize Winner, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.
After about an hour of reading, a man walked toward me and asked, "Are you Charles?"
"No," I replied and turned back to my book as the guy walked a bit further and then leaned on the counter facing the escalators of the Mall. From time to time I looked over at him, but soon he was gone.
A little while later, as I myself was gathering my stuff together to leave, another guy, much younger, walked up to my table and asked, "Are you James?"
"No," I replied -- and just as he said, "Sorry" and began to walk away I called out to him, asking, "Are you Charles?"
"Yes," he replied.
I said, "James was here just a few minutes ago, looking for you!"
The guy thanked me and as I walked away I saw that he borrowed a girl's cellphone and was calling someone, presumably James, while looking at a business card.
So there you have it. Even as I am out and about living my life in complete urban anonymity, I'm somehow managing to bring complete strangers together!
********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
********

Splash du Jour: Monday

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live. If commitment is seen as a group of eggs, then to commit oneself to the present is to risk putting all one's eggs in the present basket, rather than distributing them between the baskets of past and future. And to shift the analogy to love, to finally accept that I was happy with Chloe would have meant accepting that, despite the danger, all of my eggs were firmly in her basket.
-- Alain de Botton in On Love --

Have a great Monday!
********

Splash du Jour: Friday

I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina --

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

Remembering

Earlier this evening [at Starbucks] I began reading The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year by Jay Parini -- and it put me on to a dear memory.
Many years ago, before my mother became increasingly ill with leukemia, I was visiting her and decided to take her out for coffee.
We ended up at a Chapters bookstore -- in the Starbucks.
It was such a cute time, chatting with her… it was very much like a date.
As we were about to leave she told me to go and pick out a book so that she could buy it for me. I protested, "No no mom -- you don't need to do that, I'm all fine for books, I have too many books," etc.
None of my arguments worked on her. She insisted. And I realized that this was an important thing for her to do, she really wanted to buy me something. I relented.
My mother was a deeply spiritual person, and so we found ourselves in that section of the bookstore, where I spied this book by Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You -- and as I thumbed through it -- I felt it was something I would be interested in reading one day. My mom paid for this book with cash, and I can still see her doing so. She was so pleased to hand it over to me.
The whole memory is just so 100% adorable to me tonight.
As soon as I got home I picked this currently unread book of mine from the shelf and held it in my hands -- remembering this sweet gesture of my dear mom.
I shall place it on my To Be Read List for 2011.
********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
-- Willa Cather, My Antonia --


Have a great Thursday!
********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
-- Aldous Huxley --

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I find TV very educating. Every time someone turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
-- Groucho Marx --

Have a great Tuesday!
********

Surprised by Dickens

I am not finished the book yet… I will be as soon as I post this blog, I've only got a few pages to go but I already want to say that I have been surprised by Dickens.
I've wanted to read Hard Times for years -- always kept putting it off.
I bet that a lot of you are the same, there are books on your shelves that you've been meaning to "get to" for the last 24 years. Usually these are the "classics".
Things like The Odyssey or Ulysses.
Occasionally you take one of these down and note that there are fossils embedded in the sedimentary layers of dust.
And you put it back -- to accumulate yet more paleontological data!

Well, a few days ago I took Dickens off the shelf, blew off the pre-Cambrian mould, and opened the crackly covers.
Lo and behold! This thing is GOOD!
It's bursting with humor and suspense and Victorian grime!
Granted, I am well aware that Dickens was the Stephen King of his day -- pumping this stuff out according to a restrictive timetable -- but I cannot deny -- I am enjoying it.
It's a grand story, wonderfully predictable at times, and at others, not so much.
Which reminds me, I've got a few pages to go...
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
-- Thomas Hardy --

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

For A Million Bucks Would You...

Today at work we were playing this game called For A Million Bucks Would You….
The way it works is, someone would start with those words and then suggest a certain thing [sometimes it was real crazy] and we'd all have to say if we would or we wouldn't.
At one point Kelsey left the room just as Matthew asked this one:
"For a million bucks would you never read another book?"
As I hesitated with my answer he clarified that in the scenario you would still be allowed to read magazines and newspapers, but you could not read a BOOK!
I am thoroughly ashamed to say I was still hesitating with my answer as Kelsey walked back into the room.
Matthew restated the question and she instantly answered, "No!"
That's when it hit me -- What the hell am I hesitating for?
Of course my answer would be "No" as well!
And so I echoed Kelsey -- "No, I'd have to say no, too!"
But, the thing is, she led the way for me.
It was such a lesson in… betrayal. How could I have even envisioned for a moment that I would trade such a passion for any amount of money, much less a measly million clams!
How about you? What would your answer be?
An instant no? A hesitation… followed by a carefully considered no?
A carefully considered yes?
Or -- [God forbid]… an instant yes?
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes matters worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.
-- From Great House by Nicole Krauss --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.
-- Thomas Hardy --


Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Some of my darkest moments generally have to do with hearing something about the polar bears or the whales or whatever flagship species are endangered and going next. The thought to me of a world without wild tigers, which we’re on the brink of now — I mean, a world without tigers? Of course tigers are terrifying, but do you want to live in a world where there’s no such thing as a tiger?
-- Alissa York --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

"…though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another."
-- Nicole Krauss, in Great House --

Have a great Monday!
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