Splash du Jour: Friday

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.
-- Frank Sinatra --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.
-- Robert Orben --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!

*****

Vacation Time -- FINALLY!

Hi, Everyone.
Well, tomorrow will kick in a week of much-needed holidays for me. No work.
Am I excited about this?
Yes.
I'm already in full-swing with it as I am hosting my sister and her husband here at my place. This is something very unusual for me -- having people at MY place.
Even Kennedy [my cat] is a bit confused!
So… I'm being the Tour Guide in my lovely city. Last night we sat in the grass on the front lawn of Parliament Hill and watched the light show display on the buildings. It was FANTASTIC -- really impressive. It's a 40-minute audio-visual display that traces Canada's history -- I can't believe I've lived here this long and have never seen this nightly event myself.
It is so well-done. It made me truly proud to be a Canadian.
Tomorrow we're off to see a Blue Jays game in Toronto and whether they win or lose [against Los Angeles] the most important thing will be this:
I WILL NOT BE WORKING!

Here is a brief clip of the "Mosaika" presentation on The Hill. 
It had the three of us singing Oh Canada by the end of it, in a moment of "true patriot love." 

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The Extra Ones
   
We are told that he chose five smooth stones.
Young, and ruddy faced, in 1 Samuel  17:40.
I would have imagined jagged ones to cause
greater cranial damage, but who am I?
This sling was not even the type you draw back on.
It was the kind you whirl about your head.
I know, because there was an artist’s rendition
in the book my mother read, as my eyes fell shut.

So an army cowers, as the boy runs forward,
taunting this oaf! This day the Lord will hand you
over to me. He kicks the dirt and spits, And I’ll
strike you down and cut off your head. Shaking,
he shouts at a helmet that weighs more than him,
The birds shall eat you, placing a stone in the pouch.
Philistine laughter shakes the very rainclouds
loose over the heads of Israel, as the air sings.

And what I love most is not the part where he cuts
off the head. Nor even the part where Saul asks,
Whose son are you, young man?
I love the fact that David took four extra stones.
Ones he did not know he did not need.
The scene that is not illustrated in any bedtime book,
and the sound, ping-ping-ping-ping, denting helmets
as the Philistines run for the hills.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2008 --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Bayswater Road.
-- Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Some Thoughts on a Passage

Today I am sitting out on my balcony on the most beautiful day in history, reading a book called The Visible World, by Mark Slouka.
Sometimes when I am zipping along in a book, a certain passage, or maybe even a sentence, will cause me to stop and muse upon what I've just read. Hopefully, all good books will cause all good readers to do this.
It just happened.
Let me set the scene.
In The Visible World, the narrator, a young man -- tries to find out more about his mother's experiences in Prague during the Second World War. He knows that she had an affair with a man while courting another man who would one day become his father. As an adult, after his mother's death, he tries to find out more about this situation that so profoundly would influence her for the rest of her life.
He revisits Prague to search for clues -- but is stymied at every turn. Just as he is on the trail of new information, it seems to evaporate. In the end, [the latter half of the book] he composes what amounts to a largely fictional account of the love affair.
At one point in the story, these two freedom-fighters [Ivana and Tomas] are hiding out from the Wehrmacht in the forest -- surviving on wild raspberries, wild mushrooms, and wild lovemaking -- and Ivana returns to a little village alone to send a telegraph to her parents, and thus [killing two birds with one…. telegram] also inform the other man [the future father of the narrator] that she is OK.
The passage that made me really stop and think, was this:

Walking down that long, straight road, silent except for the wind in the high trees and the tired insects in the hedgerows whenever it died, she noticed with a kind of wonder how strange to herself she had grown. She was the same person, holding the same conversations inside her head -- wondering how much farther it was to the turnoff, or whether she should stay on the road or cut through the pastures -- except that now it was as though she were talking to him as well, as though a third person had entered the room that only she and herself had shared. She wanted to talk  to him, think aloud with him. His entrance had displaced something essential, she knew, then realized with a kind of voluptuous sorrow that she had been waiting for this displacement all of her life, that things would never again be quite the same and that she didn't care and wouldn't miss them.

For one thing, I think this is just marvelous writing.
But secondly, I think that it beautifully encapsulates so many aspects of what should be essential to any true love.
Firstly, I believe that when you are in love, you do indeed become "strange" to yourself. Whatever walls are in place [and we all have them, though the heights and thicknesses may vary] you know those barriers have now been breached. But this time, not by the enemy. You are willing to forego the usual doubts in place of the overall composure you feel in what is so often a fearful predicament.
Secondly, I do believe that you now begin to hold conversations with the other person even when you are not with them. Notice how the author puts it. As she walked, "it was as though a third person had entered the room that only she and herself had shared."
She wanted to talk to him, think aloud with him.
And also, he represented a "third" person -- not merely a second person.
That is significant.
Because you can only have a proper conversation with anyone else, or for that matter listen to them speak to you, when you have had the prerequisite conversations with yourself. To know another, you must first know yourself.
Vis a vis, to love another, you must first love yourself.
Is there anything more wonderful than to "think aloud" with someone you love? When we think to ourselves, we [essentially] hear what we are thinking. But no one else does. How wonderful to let everything within fall through the sieve of what so often stays on the inside… shifting around, and clattering -- trying to get through.
Thirdly, the use of the term "displacement".
Displacement is different from overflow. For displacement to occur, something else has to leave. There is not room enough for everything, or in this case, everyone. The thoughts of the truly beloved not only add to the storehouse, they push out what can no longer be there, simultaneously.
"She had been waiting for this displacement all of her life", the author tells us. 
I think we all do. I think we all have.
Fourthly, "voluptuous".
Let me focus on that adjective a bit, and the use of it here. It denotes something shapely, seductive, full-figured, alluring, sensuous -- in a word, desired. But who desires sorrow?
A lover does.
She realized with a kind of "voluptuous" sorrow that this is what she had longed for.
Lastly, you don't care.
Things aren't going to be the same anymore and you don't care.
I think in this one paragraph, these five points I've illuminated [and there surely exist more that you see, and I don't] Mark Slouka has nailed, in literature, what true love consists of.
I think of the title of the book, The Visible World, and marvel at how he shows us that what matters most about living in it, isn''t.
I might have come close once, in a poem.
*****

Spring Cleaning in July

I inherited a certain element of pack-ratism from my dad! 
For sure. He saved EVERYTHING!
I find it very difficult to throw things away. But every two years or so I go on a purge of apartment cleaning, and find stuff that is so…. useless! Especially old empty boxes from things I have bought in the interim. It's crazy how it all stockpiles! Then, there I am, making trip after trip down to the cardboard recycle bin in the garage of my building.
Today is one of those cleaning days. Purging.
So --- I reached into the nether-regions of my closet and retrieved this huge file box containing every essay I ever wrote in my college days. Some of you may be aware that I [in the late '80's] studied for four years full-time and received, in 1991, a bachelor degree in Theology [of all the incredibly non-practical things one might have studied]! 
I graduated with honours.
I was dang serious about it.
But, I am realizing today that I am never going to consult upon, or really use the information stored in this box. My first clue was the fact that it has sat there in that corner of the closet for 20 years now, without me once ever thinking about it. I would rather have back the space it all occupies! 
So, it's going down to the recycle bin tonight!
As I looked through it all for the past hour, the thing of most interest to me was finding all the notes passed back and forth between myself and Heather, a wonderful girl I flirted with for four years to no real effect. For some reason I kept those notes. She gave up on me and my reticent ways, and ended up marrying a fellow student.
Apparently my procrastination issues apply to more than spring cleaning!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts - but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. Myth tells you what the experience is.
-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth -- 

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

This is always central to old fairy tales, the prince's tendency to forget. But then maybe charm and forgetfulness always go together. Maybe forgetfulness allows you to be charming because people don't register enough to be a burden. And so the Prince Charmings forget their true loves until something reminds them, a shoe that fits, or a ring they recognize, or a wave of water in the face. Certainly in those heady days after his return, Norma Joyce did her best to be unforgettable.
-- Elizabeth Hay, A Student of Weather --



Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

[To write superb lyric poetry] First, the writer must have something of a gift: she must be able to make music, command metaphors, compress sense, write melodiously when the situation demands and gratingly when need be.  She must be versed in irony; she must have control of tone.  But there is more -- a second requirement.  There must be some region of her experience that has transfixed her and that she feels compelled to put into words and illuminate.  She must burn to attack some issue, must want to unbind a knot, tighten it, or maybe send a blade directly through its core.
-- From Mark Edmundson's Poetry Slam --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

And then he only had eyes for the pie. Watch any man, he could be ninety years old and drooling spit, but at the sight of homemade pie every last one of his wits will spring to attention.
-- Elizabeth Hay, A Student of Weather --

Have a great Monday!
*****

The Mangan Inheritance

This is the twelfth book I have read by this author.
So, to use one of Hemingway's common words, I'm a bit of an aficionado.
Previously, my favourite was called An Answer From Limbo. 
And a close second was The Luck of Ginger Coffey.
But The Mangan Inheritance is the new best.
I love Brian Moore's writing. My next comment is so cliche, but "I could not put it down." I read it in a whirlwind of expectancy and anticipation. 
And suspense!
Originally published in 1979, this is the story of James Mangan, struggling and semi-successful poet -- married to a famous Hollywood movie star. She dominates his life. When he walks into a room, people wonder where SHE is! And I won't reveal what happens to their marriage, but suffice it to say that Mangan is rather suddenly afforded the possibility of seeking out his family heritage in Ireland.
He discovers a daguerreotype of what he believes to be a distant relative -- a man who was also a poet, and resembles him in an uncanny manner. The likeness is nothing short of a doppelganger scenario. Mangan travels to Ireland, and this is where the novel really takes off.
[Not since reading Donna Tarrt's The Secret History has a novel so captivated my interest.] 
So…. Mangan in Ireland meets some very interesting [ahem!] relatives. One, the young vivacious Kathleen, he becomes very sexually involved with. [Sorry for ending with a preposition there, but how else does one say it?]
Some of the bodice-ripping in the book may bother some readers, but perhaps to my shame, it did not bother me. Mangan is sincere, at least. He would like to take Kathleen away from the squalor of her rural nothingness steeped in alcoholism and bad memories -- take her back to New York where they can live on his fortune. His "inheritance".
But that very word in the title is the key to the entire book. When Mangan finds out more about his actual family's history he is disillusioned. He reconsiders his initial infatuation [and connection] with the ancient poet, and even with poetry itself.
A more current and pressing need calls him back to his native Montreal -- where he is forced to make some hard decisions that lie just beyond the last page of the book.
This thing is a gem, really. One of those books I call a "sleeper" -- meaning, unless someone recommends it to you, you will probably not ever run across it, in your travels.
So, let me be that person.
The thing was out of print, but New York Review Books Classics has recently re-issued it, HERE. 
So --- you know what to do!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

I don’t want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn’t mean anything? What then?
-- Neil Gaiman, Coraline --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

We have to remember how to invite and receive the words and insights we can’t force to mind.  We have to relearn how to muse, drowse and stare into blankness, adrift, dormant, even bored, especially now when our various screens are always present – firewalls between us and the reality of dreams.
-- Steven Heighton, Workbook: Memos & Dispatches on Writing --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Two Recent Reads...

First of all, Happy Canada Day, to all my Canadian friends. All I can say is, it is so nice to not be at work today!
Just a few words about two books I've recently read, prefaced with a proviso:
I've been criticized from time to time [M, you know who you are!] for "ALWAYS" gushing about how much I loved a book! 
So... let me diverge from such alleged predictability by saying I did not really care that much for Peter Carey's latest novel, The Chemistry of Tears. 
And I hate to admit that, because I really love Carey as an author. But this one failed to really resonate with me.
It's the story of young Catherine, a museum conservator, who finds out that her boss has died. They were lovers. Understandably, the news is devastating, especially as she cannot fully express her grief since the affair was unknown [or so she assumes] to her co-workers. Her new supervisor, Eric, gives her a special assignment in an attempt to assuage her grief. She is commissioned to basically reconstruct, with the help of an intern, an automaton of a duck. It turns out to actually be a swan. Catherine becomes obsessed with the history of the original story of the duck/swan, as discovered in journals that accompanied the shipment of the unassembled pieces. 
I found the novel to be a bit confusing and unrewarding. Perhaps the fault is in me, but nevertheless, I would say that reading everything else by this author [which I almost have done] will be more fun than reading this one.
Then there is Don DeLillo. Another author I generally revere.
This book, The Angel Esmeralda contains nine short stories written between 1979 and 2011. Most of them are really terrific, but [CAUTION] all of them are a bit depressing. Not uplifting. DeLillo is a master at communicating, through his writings, the difficulties of human relationships. The tension between anonymity and familiarity, and these stories almost without exception deal in one way or another with that struggle. They are the work of a genius. So understated, so spare.
Thing is, as always with Don DeLillo -- put your thinking cap on. If your brain is on auto-pilot you are going to go careening right into the nearest wall.
Now, having said all this, I close with a very short videoclip of Canada's flying team, The Snowbirds -- zooming past my apartment earlier this afternoon. I was on the phone at the time and missed a previous flypast that nearly went right through my actual apartment. It was so awesome. Kennedy is still under the bed somewhere wondering if WW III is over. Poor boy! He still has to deal with the trauma of the fireworks tonight!

                         HAPPY CANADA DAY, CANADA!
                                            Thank you for a much needed day off!
                                                                      

Woodsburner

Ever hear of a guy by the name of Henry David Thoreau?
Author of Walden, and Civil Disobedience and many other philosophically laced writings on natural history and environmentalism, etc?
Advocate of the simple life -- as in, living in a cabin in the woods?
Of course you have.
But did you also know that on April 30, 1844 [a year before he hermeticized himself in the woods of Massachusetts to focus on his career as a writer] he made the mistake of striking a single match and burning down 300 acres of trees?
Yep. He is the "woodsburner" of John Pipkin's [2009] novel.
Let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which has all the potential of being as boring as watching branches turn to sticks, for a great majority of readers out there. For me it had the opposite effect -- but that's because I love well-done character sketches, and digressions in novels do not bother me much.
In a strictly linear sense, the entire 366 pages of this book take place really over that one-day period, April 30th, 1844. So, if you need a lot of plot to get you through the night, this may not be the book for you.
Thoreau and his friend Edward simply want to make a chowder of some freshly caught fish. It's a windy day, and once the fateful match is struck -- the flames take over. And so does Pipkin. 
The author digresses, but in an ingenious way [in my opinion]. He introduces us to a handful of diverse characters that will be profoundly affected by this out-of-control wildfire. We learn of their own personal histories and present situations -- and one by one they are all drawn to the inferno, either in a fight to lessen the damage [to put the damn thing out] or to re-adjust their lives [move on once it is extinguished].
For me, this book was what I call a "sleeper". And by that I mean it was better than I thought it would be, early on. But then again, almost any book that ends with an admirable character running off with the girl of his dreams is good enough for me!
[Ooops. Spoiler.]
Based on an actual incident in the life of Thoreau, Pipkin has really created something worthwhile and rewarding for the serious reader out there.
I would rate it at four entirely burnt trees out of five.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

The Talking Salmon

What if there was a salmon that could suddenly speak?
Express rather clearly what it was experiencing.
And not salmon plural -- but just one salmon.
The first thing he would realize is that water, the medium itself, is not conducive to the verbalization of anything.
Secondly, he experiences loneliness. Try as he might, every other salmon only notices an uncommon amount of bubbles.
Thirdly, he finds that certain words are not pronounceable. His salmon-lips cannot form them, yet he longs to say them. For instance, he wants to tell other salmon 'This is water' -- and the last word cannot be formed. His brain has evolved beyond his lips. They do not bend, yet.
He swims. He wanders a bit, from the group. The sheer anxiety of knowing something foreign to others bewilders him in that moment. The current is calmer under a large rock, and there he finds himself -- swaying -- struck by an unfathomable thought.
And yet the words are so clear:
Animals on land.
Never before has such a thing occurred to him. The words have created it. Surely this must be.  Else why would I be thinki…?
The salmon digs his snout into the riverbed, grains of it in his mouth. He scratches onto the stone - images of what he is imagining. And the others swim past, some casting a brief glance, but none really heeding the message. At least for the time being. At least for now. But a few, they do seem to linger a bit longer, before moving upstream.
 
-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2013 --

*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls -- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?
-- Donna Tartt, The Secret History --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Eagerly Anticipated...

Every so often you hear of a new book by a favourite author and you have to say "Oh my God!" or whatever other phrase might apply to your own personal exclamation of impending joy. I think I said something profound like "Holy Moly" last night when I found out that Donna Tartt will have a new novel released somewhere around September or October of this year. I've read her other two novels and loved them so much, especially her first one, The Secret History.
So I'm really looking forward to nabbing The Goldfinch off the bookstore shelf as soon as it's available. One blurb describes it as "a haunted odyssey through present-day America. It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art."
She's an exquisite, quality-over-quantity author I feel I can trust.
Three books in what… a quarter of a century?
Donna Tartt takes her time to produce literature that is definitely worth the wait.
I love how she put it in an interview: "William Styron said, when he was about my age, that he realized he had about five books in him, and that was OK. I think I have about the same number. Five."
All I know is, however many she writes, I will be buying them!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.
-- Umberto Eco --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby --

Have a great Monday!
*****

The Name Of The Rose

If you are like me you sort of have this idea of Umberto Eco as though, Wow -- you are really going to have to do some thinkin' if you read him!
It's true. But now I realize this is a good thing.
I finally picked The Name of the Rose off my shelf and opened it up. 
What a trip!
The bulk of the story takes place over a seven day period in November of the year 1327. William of Baskerville [an English monk/detective] along with his novice assistant Adso, set off on a diplomatic mission to a Franciscan abbey in the hills of Italy.
From day one, the mission shifts gears quite a bit -- because a string of mysterious murders begin to take place. And the abbot wants William to figure out what the hell is going on. Naturally, in such a cloistered environment, everyone becomes a suspect. And soon William discovers that the real issue involves the secrecy of the abbey's library. 
At night, this section of the place is off limits to everyone except the librarian himself. There are connections that are too suspicious to ignore.
William, a rationalist by nature, finds himself following leads that are religious and superstitious -- and this throws him off course. The bodies start piling up, and his time there is running out.
The book is ingenious in its depiction of the mayhem that can result in religion's [insane?] desire to suppress knowledge and free-thinking inquiry. Ultimately, someone is trying to keep one single book from being read -- and is willing to murder others in this quest to quench philosophical introspection.
If Dan Brown is your man -- leave this book alone. You will only throw it at the wall at some point. In things I have read since, Eco deliberately designed it with a certain sort of reader in mind. The first 100 pages are constructed in such a way as to deter the average thriller-reader. If you can get beyond page 100, Eco will have you in his thrall. It's a design every bit as surreptitious and sneaky as what is going on in the abbey itself.
I loved this book. Written in first-person narration [by Adso] it will be a rewarding whodunit caper for anyone who loves true, timeless literature.
Is it a beach read? I don't know. I don't think so. I can't quite imagine pina colada rings anywhere on these pages as you try to hold them open in the sun while a stray beachball is bouncing off your head. But if you want to immerse yourself in a truly engrossing tale… one where yes, you have to think a bit -- this novel is a beauty, for sure.
It's my first journey into this brilliant author's crawl space -- it makes me look forward to sealing myself away into yet another Eco-chamber one day!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!

*****

Anyone Want A Cat?

Has your cat, [or dog, for that matter] ever done something that just made you say, "ARRRRRRGH! You little bugger!" [??]
Tonight I returned to my apartment to shards of glass on the floor.
Apparently my cat Kennedy thought it would be highly reasonable to break my favourite beer glass.
My beloved Duvel glass! The last of its kind [sort of].
You can only buy these things on places like eBay, at exorbitant shipping rates! For well over a decade I have been getting drunk out of this very glass… and really enjoying it!
But no. It's not good enough for Kennedy that I pay the rent here, and feed him, and ensure that his bathroom is clean every morning before I leave for work! No. He has to push my all-time favourite and one-of-a-kind beer glass from the edge of my desk and shatter the thing.
Mind you, I did have him neutered EXACTLY a week ago, last Thursday.
Maybe this is his way of saying, "Hey, thanks a lot, Dad! You know, I did have plans to actually put those things to use one day! So... every seven days I'm going to do something like this! 
Or worse!" 
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.
-- Stephen King --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

What is Beautiful?

The topic was human relationships. Not sunsets.
Or rabbits. Or cuteness. Or the full moon at night.
One said That surety of each other. Trust. Faith.
The campfire gave a little burst -- as if agreeing.

One looked away. The ability to laugh together.
Far off an owl hooted -- several heads nodding.
Quiet. A ubiquitous goofball mumbled Good sex.
I bent forward to kill flames from a marshmallow.

And I felt it in the exhalation. The perfect answer.
In the distance a clattering train let loose a moan.
Still holding hands when you are old and grey?
Pretty good I must admit. But then I said the word.
Forgiveness.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2013 --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
-- Chuck Palahniuk, Choke --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.
-- George Orwell, Why I Write --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splasg du Jour: Thursday

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.
-- Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

The Satch Comes To Town...

Well, I haven't been around much here lately -- I know. Just thought I'd drop by to talk about my second-favorite thing, besides books.
Music.
I'm real excited because I just got my tickets to an upcoming Joe Satriani concert which will be taking place just blocks away from where I live. Mmmm… I can't wait. It's not until October though, but you can never get tickets too soon, right?
These ones are in the seventh row, middle. I will probably lose my hearing. Oh well!
For those of you unfamiliar with Joe Satriani's stuff -- umm -- how can I describe it?  
You have to love guitar. Because really, that's what it's all about.
And. I. Love. It.
Here's a little taste of The Satch, in action:

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.
-- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird --


Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!

*****

Jack Maggs

I read a truly great novel, recently.
Jack Maggs, by Peter Carey, my fifth of this author's books, and he has rarely disappointed me. I think Oscar and Lucinda was my favourite, and this last one, the second in line. He has won the Booker Prize twice, quite an accomplishment, and you need to read this one. Jack Maggs.
Jack is an ex-con from the brutal penal colonies of Australia, returned to London in 1837 to re-connect with, and explain himself to, his adopted pseudo-son Henry. And in the process he becomes the [honest to God, my cat is sitting on my back as I write this and I am painfully contemplating the necessity of getting him de-clawed]…. he becomes the footman to the neighbour next door to his son's residence. As it says on page 14, "Jack was not a footman." "Not", is an understatement. 
He is to footmen, what kings are to kings, in the movie starring John Goodman, called King Ralph. Basically, he has no clue what he is supposed to do. All his actions are pretence, at best.
His real mission is to re-connect with his son while remaining incognito, and in the process, he is thoroughly psychoanalyzed by a Charles Dickens-like author named Tobias Oates, who performs "magnetism" [hypnotism] on unsuspecting Jack, and finds out all his subconsciously held secrets -- for the sole purpose of writing a novel about the criminal mindset. The maid, Mercy Larkin, informs Jack of what is going on while he is all looped out.  Do they fall in love with each other or anything? Like as if I am going to tell you!
But I will tell you this -- the 91 chapters of this book -- almost deliberately short, will have you flipping the pages to see what happens next.
I loved it, and I highly recommend Jack Maggs to all my own readers. Especially if you like all that foggy old London-stuff [which I do]… people always walking around in a fog, and more things happening than any one person can see at any one time -- unless you have a really good narrator, like Peter Carey, guiding you through the mist.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

....life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions -- we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.
-- Amor Towles, Rules of Civility --
Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Books are not meant to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.
-- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar --
Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Spl;ash d Jour: Tuesday

Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.
-- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.
-- Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Shadow Days

Everyone knows I am in love with John Mayer, right? I mean, hell -- I even wrote a poem about him a few weeks ago. I just love his music so much -- somehow he is just always able to speak to my situation, both in his lyrics and his music.
Lately, I've been experiencing recurring bouts of really being down. If I was a person of just a few percentage points less of a strong constitution, I would be in a state of clinical depression, really.
But once again -- just listening to my iTunes on a damp, dreary [lonely] Saturday night, Mayer is yet able to speak to me through a song -- and give me some hope. Make me stay on this side of yonder balcony, if you know what I mean. 
After all, shadows mean there is light somewhere, right? So -- thank you, John Mayer.
The significance of his first line is not lost on me tonight -- 
Did you know that you could be wrong, and swear you're right?

Splash du Jour: Friday

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.
-- Roald Dahl, Matilda --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

It is, as you know, very, very rude and usually unnecessary to use profanity, but the Baudelaire orphans were too terrified to point this out to Stephano. Taking one last look at their poor Uncle Monty, the three children followed Stephano to the door of the Reptile Room to get in the damn jeep.
-- Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Reading: Innate or Acquired?

As far back as I can recall -- far back into my early childhood -- from the moment I began to experience what printed words did to me -- I loved to read. One of my teachers in elementary school [Grade Two] even told my mother, in one of those parent-teacher interviews, that she did not believe I read the amount of books I claimed to read. I was devastated when my mother informed me of this -- because the truth is, I was reading even more than my teacher was aware of. And I still do it today -- approaching my [dare I say it] 50th birthday.
 
But WHY am I this way?
Why are YOU this way?
If you are frequenting this Bookpuddle blog you are probably an insatiable reader, too. 
Why do we do it?
I am thankful that neither of my parents discouraged my early reading habits, but neither can I look to them for inspiration. Neither of them were "readers" per se. Nor were any of my siblings.
I do recall how much I looked forward to my mother faithfully reading Bible stories to me when I was a child, at bedtime -- and if I were to extrapolate upon my thoughts at the time, I think I would have been saying to myself, "Wow! When I am able to do this on my own, I am going to go hog-wild over it!"
Something happens to me when I read, that does not happen when I watch movies.  And I have found that when people get to know me, they too, sometimes acquire a passion for reading that they never previously had. As though it is a bit infectious.
But the reason I myself acquired that same passion, so early on, remains a bit of a mystery to me.
And so tonight I ask the question of you. Was your own passion for reading something that you acquired later on in life? Or are you like me, and can not really recall a time when the picking up of a book never appealed to you?
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
-- Elie Wiesel --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****