Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
******

On The Balcony

This summer I've re-acquainted myself with my balcony.
Some people do their best thinking on the toilet, or while driving. Perhaps while the dog takes them for a walk. Or during a debate. Or in the hot-tub.
But I find that my best thinking takes place when I'm alone, on my balcony.
In the past, I have spent very little time out there, in fact, it became a sanctuary for pigeons. Some of you may recall my many Earlier Postings on this subject.
Seriously, I would walk home from downtown, look up and see that every other balcony was barren, but mine seemed to be hosting a Pigeon Amway Convention!
This year -- very few pigeons, because I am always out there.
Thinking.
It's so peaceful, and at night the lights of the entire city are very inspiring to me.
Many poems have been written out there. Many important decisions made.

Do any of you have a similar place where you go to think?
A retreat where you collect your thoughts, and find that your thoughts collect you?
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
– Albert Einstein --


Have a great Monday!
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Sloe Gin: My Great Loss

This blog will not be about books, but about my other great love. Music.
I sometimes have to wonder which is greater, my love of books and reading, or of music. And listening.
The great regret of my life is the fact that I, at one point, [I know it is insane]…. gave up on my career as a musician because of my love for God. I am a drummer.
Always have been… I was born with that gift of a knowledge of rhythm -- used to beat up all my mom's kitchen chairs… and she would have to re-upholster them until they looked like some sort of…. pregnant mushroom thing. In grade 3, my dad finally understood that we could no longer sustain the loss of furniture, I needed a set of drums, and he bought me one. Then I commenced with the shaking of all the kitchen plates from their shelves, upstairs.
I played in many bands, the great joy of my life.
But then I converted to Christianity at the age of 21, and felt that all music was "of the Devil."
Sold my custom-made Milestone© drum kit to Jesus [in the guise of some other unconverted guy] and sort of…. abandoned my desires. In the negative corollary of Joe Campbell's famous dictum, I UNFULFILLED my bliss.
It is without a doubt the great regret [and horrid mistake] of my life.
But -- here is the strange thing. As I have progressed through life, spending a tumultuous decade in the The Faith and then abandoning that nonsense, my love for music has not waned, but in fact, has intensified.
And here is the remarkable thing:
In the music I now love, it is not so much the drums that I most miss….. it is the idea of accompanying the guitar sounds! That was always what it was that gave me the initial impetus to drum. I find that of all musical instruments, I love [in an innate way] the guitar, best.
The music that most speaks to me nowadays, [David Gilmour, Joe Bonamassa, Collective Soul, 3 Doors Down, Joe Satriani, AC/DC, Eric Clapton, John Mayer] it is really all about the guitar.
The GUITAR.
Those interpretive moments between and within the beat of a song, that is where the [in my opinion] most remarkable talent lies.
For an example of what I am saying [listen to the silent moments where nothing is being played]…. click on the above image of Joe Bonamassa, playing my favorite of all of his songs, Sloe Gin.
A devotion to Jesus can give you a lot of great things, yes, but it can also take away too much.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Look at how cute I was when I was a kid.
What happened?

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
– John Lennon --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Don't you know that love isn't just going to bed? Love isn't an act, it's a whole life. It's staying with her now because she needs you; it's knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures -- when all that's on the shelf and done with. Love -- why, I'll tell you what love is: it's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.
-- Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.
-- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Today's Splash du Jour is simply to advise my readers of a new book out there in a bookstore shelf near you.
Small Memories: A Memoir
Jose Saramago.
I nearly fell over when I saw it. This is the final offering of one of the greatest writers who has ever lived, and if you feel as I do about Senor Saramago -- you will be right now ordering this book!

Have a great Monday!
******

The Glass Castle

It's pretty obvious that I haven't been blogging much lately -- for quite a while now I have not been reading as much, nor writing as much as I once did.
From time to time I do have a spate of Poetry happening -- but, among other things, work is wearing me to a frazzle. This I shall adopt as my current main excuse for the anorexic state of Bookpuddle.
Right now I have my nose in an intriguing memoir.
The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls.
The author had me at the first sentence: I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.
It's the story of an eccentric family making their way across America, apparently trying to break the Guinness World-Record for Most Locations Briefly Lived In. By the time Jeanette is six or seven she counts up nearly a dozen places they have lived. The Walls aren't exactly hippies, per se, but definitely anti-establishment. Both parents have severely unorthodox ideas about how to raise a family, but the father, Rex -- he wins the prize for craziness. Even Dr. Phil would run out of euphemisms counseling this guy!
Rex thinks he is going to strike it rich discovering gold……. somewhere. And his invention, the Prospector© is going to help him do it. If they would ever stay in one place for more than a few months, hell, maybe they would find gold!
But they don't stay. As soon as there are any societal complications [and there always is] they pick up and move.
Much like Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, it's the kind of story where you are really rooting for the kids, who often seem to act in a more mature fashion than the adults that are entrusted to them.
You may recall Frank McCourt's father [a chronic alcoholic and prolific baby-producer] who always filled his children with empty promises. "He'll give us a nickel for ice cream if we promise to die for Ireland and we promise but we never get the nickel."
Here in the Walls family, it is much the same -- empty promises involving the discovery of gold in them thar hills, which would lead to the construction of the family estate, known as the Glass Castle.
He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he'd pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms.
All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge of that. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he'd start work on our Glass Castle.
You read this and desperately want to instruct these kids to not hold their breath.
In fact, that terrific opening sentence of the book presages the fact that there ain't gonna be no castle!
And yet, there is not the sense of a pity-party or a whinyness in Jeanette.
Conversely, she loves her father dearly [at least so far] and fully trusts him… even though he does some real nasty things. Like throwing her cat Quixote out the car window as they are driving to their next destination, or repeatedly tossing Jeanette into the swimming pool until she nearly drowns -- to teach her to swim. Or dangling Mom out of an upper story window during an exceptionally heated argument. The children rescue her!
It's an enthralling story. Engagingly written in vignette fashion. Nice bite-size pithy segments that make you want to reach for the next one. Like potato chips.

Splash du Jour: Friday

If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.
-- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca --


Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.
-- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

There's always something you're not supposed to see but it is a condition of growing up that you will see it.
-- Don DeLillo, Mao II --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty."
-- Jeanette Walls, The Glass House --

Have a great Monday!
******

Bon Voyage, M & R

Some people have all the fun!
Usually I do not post personal sort of… blogs!
But tonight, as my friends M and R are even now this minute either boarding their plane or just freshly up in the air -- [they are off for a week in Italy and Tuscany and probably other places they were kind enough to not tell me about] -- I wish them a terrific time!
Am I envious? Of course I am! YES!
I hope you two lovebirds have the best time ever!
As for myself and Batman, we will miss you, and look forward to hearing, upon your return to reality, all of the juicy ribald tales of adventure and mayhem!
Bon voyage!
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer’s head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.
-- Margaret Atwood --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Aging

White at the sides, above the ears
I noticed them today. Wispy hair
Like snow fresh fallen appears
To have rested, unmelting there.

Should I fight it or become forlorn
Will neither matter, bye and bye.
I shall not fret nor have it shorn;
Shall calmly age, and never dye.

© Ciprianowords, Inc. 2008

Have a great Thursday!
******

I Didn't Have Time For This!

So this morning I was in a great hurry. Not only had I somewhat slept in, but only after waking did I remember I was supposed to go in early today. As I wolfed back some cereal the coffee finished brewing and I put together a lunch. It's called multi-tasking.
Into my trusty Tupperware bowl I put a big can of soup [still in the can, of course] and surrounded this with crackers. I grabbed an apple and a bag of Bar-B-Q potato chips, too. [I know, I 'm a veritable Nutrition Wasteland!]
All this went into a white plastic shopping bag. I've got style!
Coffee was brewed, I poured it in a to-go cup and was racing out the door when Jack meowed and I remembered I should clean his litter box. So I grabbed the garbage pail and scooped his cute little turd nuggets in there. This is how I ended up going out into the hallway with essentially two identical bags of….. stuff.
While waiting for the elevator I opened the garbage chute [I'm on the 14th floor] and promptly threw one of the bags in.
That's right. I threw the lunch bag in. I was sure of it.
Dammit.
I don't have time for this!
I picked up the other bag, got in the elevator and descended to the ground floor where I marched up to the superintendent's apartment. He is the only one that can get me into the locked room where the garbage lands! But there was a big sign on his door saying that he is not available.
I resigned myself to just buying a lunch somewhere today! But geez, I really LIKED that Tupperware bowl. You would not even believe the mileage on that thing!
I got back in the elevator and got out at the parking garage level. On the way to my car I tossed the other bag into the big public-access metal bin that is there in the recycling area. It landed inside the thing with a mighty reverberating clang.
Three steps later I realized what I had done.
I had just thrown my LUNCH into that garbage bin! There's no way that a few Jack nuggets and paper towels would have made that racket!
Dammit.
I don't have time for this!
I looked to the left -- looked to the right -- no one was there.
I climbed into that garbage bin, which was not at all easy, I might add -- and sure enough, when I opened that bag -- there was my now dented can of soup, a frightened apple, and some seriously injured crackers!
Getting OUT of the bin was now a concern -- this is the real part where you don't want to be caught by neighbours!
But I did it. I made it to the car, unseen. No one knows.
Except………….. you.
As I drove to work I laughed at the thought of what might have happened if I had succeeded in rousing the superintendent from his slumber. Can you imagine the look on his face [and mine] as, after letting me into the room and waiting for me to rummage around in there, I turned to him, opening the bag to reveal a wondrously rescued pile of cat sh...?
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
-- Ralph Ellison --
Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close --


Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.
-- Jeanette Winterson --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Sometimes you just like a certain picture.
I really like this one.

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

The Power of Place

I have always had some sort of innate feeling that I needed to be geographically connected to the place in which I reside.
But what does the word "connected" mean, as used in that sentence? That is something I would like to talk about tonight.
If you were sitting here having a beverage with me, I would ask, "Do you feel a connection with the place wherein you currently live?"
If you answered with a "No" I might go on to ask if you had previously experienced it, and are now an alien in search of home.
"Home" -- that is also a word filled with connotations. Inferences. Meanings.
But for now let's focus on this word connection.
What is it? What does it mean? How do we find it, if we don't have it?
Some people like to move around -- they may even anticipate relocation. As though they are adding tick-marks on a wall -- the way our parents measured our height when we were kids. In the past ten years I have lived here and here and here --- sticking pins onto a map of the world.
This may appeal to some people, well and good.
It does not appeal to me.
I want, and have always had a sense of wanting, to belong somewhere in a geographical sense. And belonging seems to include [for me] remaining….. putting down roots… setting up permanence.
Other people have never agonized over such a thing, choosing to remain in the very place in which they were raised as children. Hometown folks. They will be buried not too far from where they were born.
Again, this has not worked for me.
I have moved…. I have lived many places. I was born and raised on the prairies of Canada… a place so flat and straight that highway designers create deliberate curves so drivers do not fall asleep on their way to Winnipeg. When flying over the Canadian prairies, I imagine it as God's pool table…. flat, symmetrically perfect, possible corner and side pockets in the distance, but so far off that you have to be God to actually make the shot! As they say, you can watch your dog run away from home…… for three days! Near unobscured horizon.
Then I have lived in the very mountains of British Columbia. Remote. Bears may eat your garbage at night -- and raccoons definitely will. Did I feel connected there? For a while, yes, then it wore off.
Then I have lived at the ocean's edge, on an island, and nothing could be more interesting and beautiful and pure. For whatever reason, again -- I felt unconnected to the deeper parts of myself. Had to move.
I ended up here in Ottawa, Ontario…. Canada's 4th largest city at last count -- an urban setting. Not quite Montreal, and definitely not Toronto.
And from that time in the winter of 1994, I have felt a steady, and ever-increasing geographical connection. This, despite the fact that when I graduated from college in 1991, I vowed that the one place I would never live is Ontario.
Anywhere in Ontario, the idea was revolting to me.
I came here reluctantly, on a visit to a friend, and stayed!
It's been nearly 17 years, and the sense of connection has only increased.
Living in its very heart, I can walk the streets of this city, no mountains or ocean in sight, no celestial pool-table to be played -- and have a sense that every sidewalk, every city-sucking tree, is mine -- in some weird way.
Or, conversely, that I was meant to belong to them.
No explanation for it. I have waited for one to come. But no explanation arrives, only the feeling itself lingers and grows.
Just wondering if you can attest to anything similar in your journey.
We live in a global village. There is no reason that people cannot end up living in ten different countries in one lifetime, much less ten different cities within one country.
Have you experienced the power of place?
Do you feel powerfully connected to where you have ended up?
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there. On one level this truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language. I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence. The language of my books has shaped me as a man. There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.
-- Don DeLillo, Mao II --

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

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

******

Bloggage of the Arteries

Just as a side-note to my former blog -- [two in one night Cipriano? That's downright promiscuous!] -- that last one was #2,600 in the Bookpuddle© pantheon of [non] award-winning bloggage.
So that makes this one #2,601.
Wow. If I just keep gratuitously blogging about nothing, I can break 3,000 postings by August! It's all about number of episodes! Know what I mean? Like... Seinfeld!
So, this current blog is about what I am going to do tomorrow morning.
I'm going to get up early, make myself an artery-clogging breakfast -- and take the back roads out out to Kingston, Ontario [home of The Tragically Hip] and meet my best friend there and pick up a new TV that is even now sitting all quiet and turned off in a COSTCO store.
It will have the honor of being the first TV I have ever actually bought from an actual store in my actual [earthly] life. All others have been given to me, one way or the other!
I know only one thing about this new piece of furniture --> compared to all the others, it's going to be Texas-size!
******

Apocalypse [Not] Now!

Well, what better day than today to write of apocalyptic literature?
<-- I mean seriously, wasn't The Rapture© supposed to happen?
I must admit, at a certain point today I did feel a certain tug upwards, but then realized it was just flatulence.
Of all the doctrines that religious fanatics come up with, these End-of-the-World schemes seem to me to be the most doomed to fail -- you would think that they'd give up -- but no.
Mark my words, even this recent tardiness of Jesus will be again explained away, and summarily re-scheduled!
By coincidence [or prophetic predetermination, I am not sure] I'm in the midst of a sort of dystopian tome -- Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, White Noise.
In this book it's not the entire world that is threatened with extinction, but rather a localized catastrophe that affects a midwestern American academic town. A chemical spill forces the evacuation of residents as the noxious toxic cloud chases everyone from their homes. The first-person narrative focuses on Jack Gladney [a Hitler professor at the town's university] and his blended family.
I'm only halfway through the book [have not been reading much lately] but I already conclude that it is a wonderful story. In fact, I can't wait to quit typing this so I can get back to the adventures of the Gladneys.
I have always enjoyed these sort of books --> [CLICK / CLICK / CLICK] that deal with catastrophe or end-of-the-world scenarios. And reading this one already reminds me of why I consider Don DeLillo to be one of the best authors living and writing today!

As for the real life events [not] unfolding today?
Well, to give oneself over to such fancy is to truly involve yourself with something stranger than any fiction. It's hard to feel sorry for those disillusioned believers left behind today. Which, at last count includes……….. ALL OF THEM!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, "The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. Some things folks do is nice, and some ain't so nice. And that's all any man's got a right to say."
-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time...I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well...I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.
-- Emma Donoghue, Room --


Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

The thought arrested her and she pulled away from him just to stand there a moment and take in the strangeness of it all. Music drifted down to her then, an odd tinkling sort of music with a rippling rhythmic undercurrent that seemed to tug the melody in another direction altogether, into the depths of a deep churning sea, but beautiful for all that, and so perfect and unexpected. She felt languid and free--all eyes were on her, every man turning to stare--and it came to her that she loved this place, this moment, these people. She could stay here forever, right here, in the gentle sway of the Japanese night.
-- T.C. Boyle, The Women --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!
*****

Half a Haircut

I don't know what is wrong with me lately. The only thing I haven't been "putting off" is procrastination itself!
Case in point, I've known for a while that I desperately need a haircut, and just yesterday I drove directly past my usual hair place. Brigitte has been cutting my hair for years, I don't even need to say anything to her, I just sit down and she starts snipping away.
But today I was walking past a barber shop and [inexplicably] I went in there. The girl told me that haircuts are $25, which is way more than Brigitte charges.
Yet, into the chair I went. The random hairstylist could not have been over the age of 20. I informed her that I did not want a really drastic haircut, and no sooner had I said this than she hacked off quite a substantial slab of my rug.
"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" I ejaculated. [<-- I've been reading some Jane Austen lately.]
So, after some further instruction, she proceeded to err in the opposite extreme of things. Clearly, this was not a match made in heaven.
Where's Brigitte when I need her?
[Probably at the place where she works?]
The girl was all "Is this good enough?" but she was hardly cutting anything at all now. I was totally calm and everything but at a certain point [she had really only just begun] I said to her, "Umm, I know this is weird, but can we just stop? Seriously, I will pay you if you just stop right now and let me go."
She, a little less calmly said "Sure, no problem" as she whipped the tarp off of me.
She only charged $15 for my half a haircut, which is about what Brigitte charges for going all the way with me.
Oh well. Lesson learned. In the meantime, I look like a semi-plucked chicken.
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.
-- Don DeLillo, White Noise --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.
-- Daniel Dennett, Breaking The Spell --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story.
Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.
-- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game / Ender's Saga #1 --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Welcome To Her World

Every astronaut should quiver.
Entering a spaceship, you have every right to ask:

- Will I need an alternate oxygen source?
- When will I be back?
- Are the locals reasonable?
- Have others made this voyage and lived?
-………how many?

- The raised eyebrow. What does it mean?

Every astronaut should quiver.
Entering a spaceship, you have every right to ask.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Have a great Monday!
******

The Engagement

I spent part of yesterday and today with a novel.
The Engagement by Georges Simenon.
It was rather a different sort of read, for me. I guess the genre could be a sort of detective thriller… toned down on the "thriller" part.
Heavy on the detecting.
While reading it I kept reminding myself that it was first published in 1933. As John Gray says in the Afterword, it's "one of Simenon's most compelling psychological novels, and like others he wrote in this genre it contains very little psychology." I think that what he [partially] means is that characters are brought into action before we know anything about them -- before we have any anticipations as to how they should or should not act.
The story sweeps along fine, but I prefer knowing more about the inner workings and motivations of characters than I was allowed here.
The Engagement is about a reclusive nobody-type guy that just happens to live too close to a crime scene. A prostitute is found murdered nearby, and Mr. Hire seems the perfect suspect. His entire apartment building is 100% convinced of his guilt, and detectives are trailing his every movement. Not the most admirable of characters, by day Hire operates a mail-order scam, and by night he spies on his voluptuous neighbour as the window where she nightly undresses fortuitously faces his own.
Here's the kicker --> she likes it! She not only encourages his voyeurism, but befriends him to the point of revealing to him the identity of the prostitute's murderer.
Hire devises a scheme to run off with the girl. Afterward they'll reveal what they know, and live out their exiled life in love and innocence.
His plan, doomed to fail, miserably does.
I found the ending of the story to be quite crushingly poignant, and well worth the reading of a somewhat lackluster beginning.
The strength of The Engagement is in its portrayal of mob mentality. That is a bit too all-encompassing of a statement perhaps, but many times I thought of what I learned in Eric Hoffer's classic work The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
The Engagement is a great fictional representation of the idea that a man may be entirely blameless, and yet pay the ultimate price for the assumption of guilt that is forced upon him by others.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
— Steve Jobs --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.
-- Philip Roth, The Dying Animal --


Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Story has a mind of its own and tells things sometimes it might have preferred us not to know. Stories operate like dreams; both veil what is to be uncovered, neither is capable of the coverup.
— Lore Segal, Our Dream of the Good God --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
-- John Steinbeck, East of Eden --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Collecting My Soul

The past few weeks of my life have been tumultuous in many ways -- ways that I can't really go into here, on my blog. And a lot of times I feel down -- real down.
But recently I made one of the best purchases I have made in a long while -- I got a new iPod Touch. The thing is dynamite.
Welcome to the 21st Century Cipriano!
And my current work environment allows me to listen to as much music as humanly possible in the 8 or 9 hours day that I am there.
The only downside is that I think I am going deaf.
But I must say one thing about a band that has especially been lifting me out of the doldrums on a daily basis. I cannot get enough of them.
Collective Soul.
I have all of their albums on my iPod and I just keep listening to them exclusively -- they are for sure my favourite music right now. Listen to them and then just try and be depressed. It's almost impossible.
Cheers!

Collective Soul "Welcome All Again" from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

Splash du Jour: Monday

The Shape I Gave You

Water looks like what it’s in.
Else it’s flat, and spread too thin.
The shape of you is much the same.
It needs a cup, a house, a frame.

It wasn’t long before I knew
The very curve and slope of you
Belonged in me, to never part
My ever loving, beating heart.

© Ciprianowords, Inc. 2008

Have a great Monday!

Hey! GET OUT AND VOTE, CANADA!
Today's the day! Do the right thing!
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Beard Update

Today I was walking around downtown and passed by a barber pole.
Those all-American red, white and blue revolving deals.
I didn't even know they still had those things anywhere.
I badly needed a haircut, but an even more pressing issue was my facial foliage.
It's been about three weeks or so of untended [and unintended] growth, and, in all seriousness, it was getting a bit unruly.
When I sent a photo to my best friend, he replied "You look like a homeless person."
I've heard similar comments from others -- one co-worker said I looked like a grizzly bear. Admittedly, other people have had more favorable things to say about this experiment. And as for my own opinion of the matter, I was sort of liking this new habit of petting my own face. It was like having a constant puppy around.
But there I was today, walking past this barber pole.
I stopped and went inside.
A young girl approached the counter. I pointed to the Neanderthal situation on my face and asked, "Can you do something with this?"
Soon I was immobilized in a chair and she was fixing me up. She knew what to do, which is a good thing, because I didn't. [Ahhh…. sweet memories of losing my virginity just a few months ago!]
I was amazed at the amount of actual hair that was all over the place when she was done. [Again... memories, memories!] It looked like the mess after an actual haircut!
And as I walked down the street afterward listening to Collective Soul, I took the picture above. Click on it for others.
I regret that I did not take a BEFORE shot! It was grizzly indeed!
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Splash du Jour: Friday

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

If a person measures his spiritual fulfillment in terms of cosmic visions, surpassing peace of mind, or ecstasy, then he is not likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. If, however, he measures it in terms of enjoying a sunrise, being warmed by a child's smile, or being able to help someone have a better day, then he is likely to know much spiritual fulfillment.
-- Arthur MIller --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
-- Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness --


Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

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Splash du Jour: Monday

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself.
-- Miriam Toews, Swing Low --

Have a great Monday!
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Adventures in Fuzziness

I've been experimenting with not shaving my face.
It's a confusing enterprise -- some people think I am looking horrid -- others think the opposite. As for myself, I don't know -- I kinda like it.
At a certain point I guess I will have to start -- taming it. Or something.
It's kind of a bit of a spring lark a la mid-life crisis, maybe?
When I rub the side of my face I feel like I'm petting a dog.
Any thoughts on what I should do?
Save it? OR Shave it?
[For two more pics, taken last night, click on the above photo.]
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How I Spent Good Friday

It truly has been a "good" Friday for me.
I did two things that are just… awesome.
Firstly, I did not put on pants. I love it when I can sleep in, then walk around all day with just my jammies on [and by jammies, I mean underwear, basically] and get paid for it!
Secondly, I read an entire novel.
The Fire Gospel [2008] by one of my favorite authors, Michel Faber. In a word? --> TERRIFIC!
Two? --> Redonculously good!
The last time I read an entire novel in one sitting was five years ago. Bernard Schlink's The Reader. Rarely am I so captivated by a book that I finish it hours from starting it.
The Fire Gospel is part of the Canongate "Myths" series, and I've read a few of the others. In this one, the myth of Prometheus is satirically treated. If you recall, Prometheus brought fire to humans in defiance of Zeus and was summarily punished by having his entrails plucked out by an eagle.
Here in Faber's book, Theo, a Canadian scholar on assignment in an Iraqi museum discovers hitherto unknown scrolls when a bomb explodes and a busted statue disgorges its inner contents. Surviving the blast, he stuffs these documents into his briefcase and smuggles them back to Canada. Theo is the world's leading expert in Aramaic and these scrolls are serendipitously written in that very language.
Turns out these scrolls contain eyewitness accounts of the last days of Jesus -- they indeed constitute a fifth gospel, and one written prior to the other four biblical ones.
In that sense, they carry a weight and authority that the others do not.
The author is Malchus, a servant to Caiaphas, the high priest who is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus. This is almost crazy, but I actually gasped when I discovered that the author was Malchus -- just thinking of how valuable such a find would really be, in real life. This guy was present in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was betrayed by Judas [according to the Bible].
And the Bible says that one of Jesus' own disciples, in a fit of revenge, sliced off Malchus's ear with his sword. The biblical account has Jesus healing the amputation at the scene, restoring Malchus's ear to wholeness. However, in Malchus's own words, the wound was never really healed, per se, and his sliced ear sort of dangled from his neck the rest of his life, “like a woman's adornment.”
Malchus, present at the crucifixion, says that as Jesus is about to be affixed to the cross, he cries out and pulls his arms to his sides in fear, "in the manner of an infant tickled by its mother." The soldiers must place their knees directly on Jesus' arms as they pound in the spikes. Malchus says, "This was not cowardice. This is how the flesh behaves under such provocation."
Makes perfect sense to me, actually.
In Malchus's gospel, Jesus' last words are not "It is finished" but "Please, somebody, please somebody finish me." Again, seems pretty understandable to me.
He defecates and urinates all over, including directly on Malchus -- the new convert stays so close to Jesus as he dies. Birds pluck Jesus' eyes out.

All of this may seem downright sacrilegious for me to be even mentioning… especially as I am mentioning it on Good Friday, the very day that commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross. But The Fire Gospel, in its raison d'être, its construction, etc., is not at all about any sort of re-evaluation of what may have taken place on Good Friday. Not at all.
It's moreso about the emphasis we place on written accounts of anything, the reports of which, by the way, will contain varying degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy in the telling.
Theo's translation of the Malchus gospel becomes a smash success.
Millions of books are sold. And as Theo makes the rounds of the book tours, he is accosted by fanatics, offended at what he has unearthed. Undone by what he has done.
[Enter the Prometheus myth]… it is not long before some of these fanatics take it upon themselves to punish Theo, or at least undo the damage he has caused.
They do so, with their own brand of violence.
I don't want to give away too much of the action sequence of the latter stages of the story -- suffice it to say that I found it engaging enough to sit here, entirely pantsless, until the last page was read. And this is, as I said, rare for me.
What a terrific book. Faber has not failed me, ever.

Just the other day at work a co-worker of mine, a consummate Kidder-Arounder who shares a first name with an actual gospel-writer… he looked over at me and asked, "What exactly is Good Friday? Isn't that when Jesus was born?"
Again, not to be sacrilegious or anything, but this book has made me decry anew the level of [religious] ignorance at the root of many atrocities committed on behalf of "God"…. when ultimately, for most civilized people today, including Yours Truly, the real significance of religiously sponsored holidays is the fact that we do not have to go to work. We can stay home. In peace… at one with our undergarments.
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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