Splash du Jour: Tuesday

It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
-- Graham Greene --

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

Splash du Jour: Friday

It doesn't matter whether a sequence of words is called a history or a story: that is, whether it is intended to follow a sequence of actual events or not. As far as its verbal shape is concerned, it will be equally mythical in either case. But we notice that any emphasis on shape or structure or pattern or form always throws a verbal narrative in the direction we call mythical rather than historical.
-- Northrop Frye --

Have a great Frye-day!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby --

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

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

If you are in a book store and can't find the particular book you are searching for, you are obviously in the…














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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a blast today!
Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Sometimes it’s a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, "Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further," and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it’s not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It’s a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going.
-- Daphne du Maurier --

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

Splash du Jour: Friday

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that.
The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.
-- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go --

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

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

"The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed."
"I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self."
"You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good."
-- John Fowles, The Magus --

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.
-- Harold Bloom --
Have a great Tuesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Monday

The president of the United States [Bush] has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
-- Sam Harris, Letter To a Christian Nation --
Have a great Monday!
*******

The Three L's

As I explained a while ago, I'm experiencing a bit of a dry spell when it comes to blogging. And even, reading.
A mixture of laziness, lethargy… and lager.
But I would be remiss if I neglected to mention that last night I went to the Joe Bonamassa concert. It was NOT disappointing.
He is one of my favourite guitarists ever -- his genre is mostly blues a la straight-ahead rock. I took a ton of videos with my new iPod and there are so many to choose from… such great music -- but instead of music at all, I've chosen a brief clip of one of the rare moments that Mr. Bonamassa actually spoke to the audience.
Since he mentions one of my own most favourite establishments in the Universe, I felt I must share this with you…



I am the guy screaming "Yes" right after the word "corner".
And I feel compelled to say that I am NOT the guy that yells out "I like chai lattes!"
Every moment of this concert was incredible. But here is a clip I uploaded to Youtube today. It's from his acoustic solo set.
It may be a bit of an exaggeration to be calling him The Greatest Guitarist in the World -- but if Joe Bonamassa isn't… I wonder who is?

Splash du Jour: Friday

From authors whom I read more than once I learn to value the weight of words and to delight in their meter and cadence -- in Gibbon's polyphonic counterpoint and Guedalla's command of the subjunctive, in Mailer's hyperbole and Dillard's similes, in Twain's invectives and burlesques with which he set the torch of his ferocious wit to the hospitality tents of the world's colossal humbug . . . I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.
-- Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's Notebook, Nov., 2010 --

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

The End

The End

It was the walking away.

The footsteps of it all, the sound
heels on floor, steps, street, clouds.

A sorry kiss on your knees, ankles
toes. Soul. I realized.

North and south can meet again.
East and west -- never.

It was the walking away.
The setting sun.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?
-- Sigmund Freud --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
-- Franz Kafka --
Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

It turns out that time doesn't heal the wound, but in its so merciful way, it blunts the edges ever so slightly.
-- Al Pacino --

Have a great Monday!
******

What Richard Dawkins Believes

This means that the next few pages are inevitably somewhat intricate -- not difficult, just intricately detailed. It would probably be best to not read this section of the book when tired, at the end of a long day.

The above is from page 117 of Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution.
I followed his advice… I was not tired, and it was not the end of a long day.
But he never said anything about drinking beer!
Perhaps that was where I erred.
Because see, I just [burp!] read this section he is pre-warning us about, where he goes on to expertly delineate a multi-decade experiment that was conducted in order to fast-track the evolution of a certain strain of bacteria.
I read it as though my life depended on it.
And don't get me wrong, I very much love the way Dawkins writes. The book in the background here, The God Delusion -- is one of the best things I have ever read.
No, the fault cannot possibly be his. He is so clear in the way he explains things.

As a result of tonight's intense lager-induced experiment in reading I have come to the conclusion that there is a disparity -- yea, a great gulf, if you will -- between my interest in science, and my understanding of its methods.
I find that when it comes to my own limited and semi-evolved brain power, I tend to understand a general overall gist of a thing, but most often I could not put the book aside and clearly paraphrase what I have "learned".
Some would say that this means I have not learned anything at all.
That may indeed be the case.
All I can say is, this book is extremely….. convincing. And after I finish it, if someone asks me what I believe about evolution, I will give them a big Neanderthalic grin and say, "I believe what Richard Dawkins believes!"
Cheers!
-- Cip
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright... Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?
-- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary --


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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin --

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

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

An Intermittent Case of Writer's Block

There were times when friends of mine would say, "Come on, man! Give me a break. That thing you blogged about did NOT happen to you today!"
And I'd say, "No, it did -- I'm not kidding."
And I wasn't. Kidding. Seems like I always had something to write about.
You know what? I know that it is not the "things" that have changed -- but I myself feel less in the mode of writing.
Life is still good and exciting and charged with things to write about. I've been having a lot of fun -- I've been enjoying my work life in a whole new way -- I have gained some terrific friends. I've been drunk a lot.
THINGS ARE TERRIFIC.
And yet -- it boggles my mind. My desire to blog of my adventures has waned a bit.
Why have I not written of the fact that I spent last Saturday night with some terrific friends watching a classic movie [2001: A Space Odyssey] and not understanding the thing at all?
Wow!
Back in the day, this would have elicited a blog of astronomical proportions!
I would have even had something to say of the pizza we ate! And the awesomeness of meeting a beautiful black cat, named Batman!
By the way, I am convinced that there are probably only two living people on earth that could really understand the meaning of that movie -- and they are:
1) Stephen Hawking.
2) Not me.

At any rate, my dear faithful friends. Hang in there, I encourage you.
Barring early onset Alzheimer's, I think I'll be OK soon.
I'll be back.
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"They are all beasts of burden in a sense," Thoreau once remarked of animals, "made to carry some portion of our thoughts." Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.
-- Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide To Getting Lost --
Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in 'contact' with extraterrestrials. I am invited to 'ask them anything'. And so over the years I've prepared a little list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, 'Please provide a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem'. Or the Goldbach Conjecture… I never get an answer. On the other hand, if I ask something like 'Should we be good?' I almost always get an answer. Anything vague, especially involving conventional moral judgements, these aliens are extremely happy to respond to. But on anything specific, where there is a chance to find out if they actually know anything beyond what most humans know, there is only silence.
-- Carl Sagan --

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

Perfect People

Perfect People

Spent a night in a forest
looking for a flawless tree.

Somewhere around three a.m.
I wondered about criteria.

Height? Girth? Bark texture? Leaves?
Root dispersion? Affinity to others?

Does this tree provide a natural habitat for animals or at least timber for homes for animals that pay taxes?

I got weary, and fast.
Leaned against one that made me sleep.

My last thought? The next time I do this
I'll set out in the daytime.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Splash du Jour: Friday

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?
-- Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty --

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
-- Robertson Davies --


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

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
-- Daniel J. Boorstin --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid’, let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.
-- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion --


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

I Broke My Spine --

-- of my Barney's Version.
It's not funny.
My book needs a chiropractor gifted with the healing properties of…. Jesus!
Never mind the horrors of the Japan earthquake today. Can we talk?
I was at Starbucks tonight. Reading away and somehow lost my bookmark.
So, when I got up to get a refill of coffee I flipped the book over and [horrors] I broke the spine of the thing. It was agonizing. I felt it in my deep heart's core!
I am not all that picky about books, really. Torn covers, bent pages, previous marginalization. I take it in stride!
But a broken spine?
It really will not do.
And so I am chagrined.
Will I quit reading this book because of its new vertebrae problems?
No.
However -- I recall a time when I actually did abandon a book because of its spinal deformity.
It happened around 25 years ago.
I was reading Martin Gilbert's The Holocaust in the back yard of my home, way back on Argyle Street North. My dear Aunt Evelyn, who was visiting at the time, came outside and asked me what I was reading.
When I handed her the gargantuan volume she grabbed it and CRACKED ITS SPINE RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE.
Where the section of photographs were.
I nearly vomited.

She said, "Hmm. Looks interesting," and handed it back to me as I gasped for air, sweating great drops of blood all over dad's lawn.
<-- Look! You can even see the line down the middle, the evidence of injury!
I not only still have the book, I even have the bookmark in it, at page 436.
Here's the kicker -- To this day I have never read another page of that book.
Something about paraplegic books -- I just lose interest.
How about you?
Does it really bother you when you irretrievably crack the spine of a book?
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.
-- Ian McEwan, Atonement --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

My parental role had largely been confined to providing a good life, teasing the kids at the table, leaving Miriam to settle disputes, and, oh yes, putting together those libraries after I had consulted Miriam. "When a child is born," I once explained to the kids, "some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent."
-- Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version --

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

A Fine Balance

I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader Friends -- but no.
<-- This is not going to be a blog about the book by Rohinton Mistry.
First, my apologies for not blogging much, as of late. I blame a sudden onset of laziness. Actually -- not so sudden. I've been lazy for a long time now. At the end of the work day I usually only have time for coffee, a bit of reading, and late-night hamburger ingestion.
Also, I've been involved in a new hobby -- leatherwork. Basically, I spend some time each evening punching extra holes in my belts to contend with my burgeoning waistline -- or, as I like to refer to the situation in more geographical terms, Equatorial Expansion©.
I've read some terrific books and failed to discuss them here.
Things like Stephen Greenblatt's new one, Shakespeare's Freedom.
As I read it I realized that I think I have read more books about Shakespeare than books by Shakespeare. If you have not read Greenblatt's biography of the Bard, I strongly encourage you to --> CHECK IT OUT!
Currently I am reading an incredibly good novel [hilarious] -- Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version. Have any of you seen the new movie based on this book?
And before this I read Alissa York's newest book, Fauna. A worthwhile novel about animals, and their effect on people.
I love animals. There's no need to convince Bookpuddlers -- you know I love animals [some of them, between slices of bread, or slathered in gravy…] but no, seriously, I love animals -- even when they are, at times, exploited by humans.
Like this goat-thing in the following video clip. Plus, there's a monkey in there, too.
It's worth watching to the end. Extra points to anyone that can interpret the running commentary of the cameraman. Please… enlighten me.
This -- this, my friends, is a fine balance….

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
-- Zadie Smith --

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

Splash du Jour: Monday

Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. We can’t tell if it will survive us. But we can be sure that it’s the last thing to go.
-- Martin Amis, The Second Plane --
Have a great Monday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

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

Bonamassa In The House

I'm usually quite a slowpoke, really.
If you don't believe me, take note of how long my "Currently Reading" books stay on the sidebar, yonder. I average about ten days on one novel.
No one who knows me would say "He gets things done, quickly."
But I set a new speed record for myself today.
FASTEST BUYING OF CONCERT TICKETS!
I was just leafing through the newspaper on my lunch break at work -- taking in the articles and ads when "What the hell?" my eyes nearly fell out of my head. As soon as I saw this ad for an upcoming concert [see photo] I cut it out with a pair of scissors and calmly, but energetically, walked to the phone and ordered tickets!
Good Lord!
Joe Bonamassa is coming to my town! And soon!
I got two EXCELLENT tickets -- and now all I have to do is sit back and play his stuff on repeat mode until April 1st.
Joe Bonamassa is one of the finest blues guitarists in the world today. If you need a bit of a refresher in Bonamassa 101, click --> HERE.
And be sure to watch the clip, below.

Splash du Jour: Thursday

I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.
— Saul Bellow, Henderson The Rain King --

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

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I am easily moved to tears and rarely survive a visit to the cinema without shedding them, racked, as I am, by the most perfunctory, meretricious or even callously sentimental attempts at poignancy (something about the exterior of the human face, so vast and palpable, with the eyes and the lips: it is all writ too large for me, too immediate for me.)
— Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir --
Have a great Wednesday!
********

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

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

Splash du Jour: Monday

People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all.
-- Sebastian Faulks, A Week in December --

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

I Went To A Movie...

I did something rather unusual for me today.
<-- Went to a movie.
I really do not go to movies all that much -- but I saw some things about The King's Speech on TV -- and it looked so interesting I decided I'd go to a Sunday matinee.
This movie was FABULOUSLY good. Colin Firth is simply amazing, as is Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. And so I post this just minutes away from the Award for Best Picture category at the Oscars. I hope The King's Speech wins.
[Colin Firth just won Best Actor -- he is saying his acceptance speech right now...]
And if you have not seen this movie yet, you r-r-r-r-really sh-sh-should -- go to…. [pause] s-s-s-s-ee. It.

The Phantom Cat: REDUX

A snapshot in that moment would have revealed what seemed to be a stunned ostrich. A beakful of worms. [Do they even eat worms?]
But looking closer -- hey, that's no ostrich. That's me. With spaghetti hanging out of my mouth. [The "stunned" part is totally accurate though.] Just minutes ago, I was innocently sitting yonder, shovelling a plateful of pasta into my yapper, with the novel Fauna propped up in front of me.
The book is mostly about animals -- I'm really enjoying it -- as can be evidenced in the fact that I continue reading even when it's feeding time! Anyhoo -- this one character, his name is Guy, and he imagines he is visited by his dead cat, named Brother… [this is the part where I nearly spewed noodles through my shnozz]:
Ghost-Brother, by contrast, comes in silence, swimming through the darkened room to find Guy lying on his side. The living Brother would wait for a groggy Guy to pat the mattress -- that springy-soft, welcoming sound -- but the phantom cat needs no such invitation. He knows that the space between Guy's body and the edge of the bed belongs to him. [p.156]

The reason why this so freaks me out today is that I have experienced it before, myself! Some of you may recall me talking about it several years ago.
My experiences with The Phantom Cat. And today, the author, Alissa York is even using the very term -- "phantom cat."
So -- maybe I am not insane?
Or -- maybe I am?
At any rate, while I clean the half-eaten al dente off my walls you can read my original discussion of this feline phenomenon, by clicking --> HERE.
********

Splash du Jour: Friday

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world.
-- Georges Simenon --

Have a great Friday!
******

Looking Behind: A Poem

Looking Behind

I

Especially on quiet, satiated evenings it will happen.
Walking down the street I will suddenly stop
And turn toward a sense of myself approaching me.
Not of being followed or stalked, but quite the opposite.
The impossibility of pursuit. As though I alone exist
And my steady apparition.

II

Some say this is evidence of a deep disconnect.
Others, of over-connection. Various studies conclude
I exhibit the first sign of lunacy. Bollocks to them all!
Researchers will never understand until they do it.
The looking behind thing.
But they won’t.

III

For the record, my premonition has never proven false.
Believe me, I am quite wary of acquiring
An obsession with emptiness.
Just know that if you laugh I may join you,
Smiling. For I am never looking behind
Seeing nothing.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2008 --

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
-- Anais Nin, Diaries, Vol.1 --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Think of this -- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
-- A.S. Byatt, Possession --

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

Possession: A Romance

For the past ten days I've been immersed in this 1990 Booker Prize-Winning novel, by A.S. Byatt.
<-- Possession.
Just finished it, minutes ago -- and I shall now add it to my list of Books I Read That No Other Man on Earth Would Read.
The subtitle alone [A Romance] surely disqualifies it from any male-owned library shelf on this, or any other planet. And I'll admit, [as a colleague at work pointed out to me] even the cover of the book looks a bit light on the loafers! He said to me, in a noticeable tone of concern, "Umm, it looks rather effeminate."
I really enjoyed the book. I think it's superb, on many levels.
So, what does that say about me?
I think it says that I appreciate good literature, no matter what sort of appearance the book may have.
Or, perhaps I am possibly…….. no, never mind.
But enough about me! Let me say a few words about Possession.

While researching the [fictional] Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, modern day [1987] scholar Roland Michell happens upon some obscure snippets of amorous undelivered correspondence. Curiosity leads him to suspect that these scandalous amorations [<-- this should be a word, but isn't] were meant for Christabel LaMotte, a contemporary poet of the day. Michell consults with several LaMotte experts to cross-reference his own data, and foremost among these is the lovely Dr. Maud Bailey. Together, these two begin to unravel a seemingly endless trail of previously unknown intrigue -- they unearth a biographer's treasure-trove of documents, and as they pursue information about this century-old romance, other scholars emerge from their dusty hallways -- fighting for their own right to scoop the story. Does this sound exciting as all hell? If it doesn't [and it shouldn't, really] it's because it isn't.
The power of this book does not lie in anything dazzling or spectacular.
No cliff-hanging. Or even sex, really.
But for brilliance and depth, this book cannot be beat. It's a novel for people that love when a writer is writing so well, so intricately, that you know the gist of the tale will live with you forever.
In a way, it will possess you. The power lies in the vividness of the characterizations.
The author has done something that, in my experience with reading, I have never seen before. She has created a literature beyond her own novel. She has not only created the characters of of Ash and LaMotte, but also has managed to compose their works for us. [Essentially] books, within a book. Their poetry, their writings are here in Possession, and in such a real way that early on I looked these characters up on Wikipedia, because I thought they must be real personages.
But they aren't. They're Byatt's creations.
It's a gorgeous novel -- which I know shall remain for me in a category labelled "Timeless."

So, what's next on deck for me to read? Well, I already have it in my backpack to take to work with me tomorrow. As you can see by observing my "Currently Reading" sidebar, it's an equally masculine-entitled tome!
And if you'll excuse me, [the timer is "dinging"] -- I've got a late-night quiche that's ready to come out of the oven…
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
-- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism --

Have a great Tuesday!
******