In Need of Opinion

Think of the following as an assessment of my artistic sanity!
Or lack, thereof!
Recently, I bought a big huge painting, thing. For my main wall!
The old Van Gogh print [Starry Night] just was not cutting it anymore, for me.
So, I shopped around. Yes, I did.
And I got the painting that you see above.
It’s called “Prelude” and it is by Canadian artist [one of the infamous Group of Seven] A.J. Casson.
I love the thing.
From the moment I saw it, among others of his work… I loved it.
And I am not sure why!
It is wonderfully framed [in my opinion]… a real cherrywood look to the frame… plus my favorite color is navy blue [which is prominent in the thunderous sky of Prelude]…… but, can I be honest?
What I loved most was that guy walking down the boardwalk thing. The guy in the foreground. I don’t know. I just identified.
The salesperson told me the history of the painting… how that Casson was attempting to portray the plight of the miners somewhere or other [I forget] but I loved the angles… I loved the coloration… I loved the scene.
After I got the thing, I realized that from either the extreme left or the extreme right, as you look at the picture, that man in the foreground, and his entire boardwalk, is coming towards you! Even if you are totally sober! Now that in itself has got be worth a few bucks, no?
I loved the detail of the house in the foreground set against the abstractity of the houses in the middle-ground…. I don’t know. It just [of a piece] resonated with me and I shelled out many hundreds of slave-earned dollars for it.

One person looked at it, in my apartment, and condemned it.
Said it was not worthy of “the garage”!
Did that phaze me?
No.
I still loved the thing.
Yet the comment, and the surety with which it was delivered, startled me.

So here is what I want to know. It is very simple.
Would you, yourself, have such a painting in your house?
Would you?
And furthermore… select among the following options, regarding your opinion of my devotion to such a piece:
A) I love it, too. Would hang it!
B) I don’t like it. But do not think you are retarded.
C) I don’t like it. And I think you are retarded.
D) You wasted your money. Should have stuck with the Van Gogh.

No need to elaborate. A simple letter will do, one of the four.
Thank you, dear readers.

***********

Splash du Jour: Friday

It’s not funny!

This actually happened to me, yesterday!
Have a great Friday!
********

Late Nights On Air

Let’s face it. Few things in [Canadian] life possess the sheer, unmitigated potential of being more innately boring than CBC Radio, anywhere.
So. → How about tuning in to CBC Radio….. in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories! In the year 1975! Exactly.
The mere thought of it is enough to send a muskox into premature hibernation.
But enter the literary genius of Elizabeth Hay, for the above-mentioned is the exact setting of Late Nights On Air, a novel that is never for a moment, boring.

She peoples her book with fascinating, somewhat eccentric yet believable, transients.
Harry Boyd is a castaway from the Toronto television scene, now working the late shift at CBC Yellowknife and obscurely living out his banishment in the far north. One night he falls in love with the “low-pitched sexiness” and “elusive accent” of a new voice on the airwaves.
The voice belongs to Dido Paris, a novice, literally “hired off the street.”
Harry begins immediate flirtations with her, and is immediately rebuffed.
Dido comes from who knows where and is as mythical as both her names. An ethereal, commanding presence throughout the book, even though in the last half of it, she is largely absent, having run off with the technician, Eddy Fitzgerald.
She seems to be the benchmark against which other female characters in the book assess themselves, one being Gwen Symons, another novice broadcaster.
Gwen does not have the natural skills that Dido enjoys. In fact, Gwen needs a lot of patience and understanding, and the new interim manager [Harry Boyd] is able to nurture and encourage her toward a realization of her own skill and proficiency.

The novel gravitates toward the discovered mutual interests of four co-workers at the radio station, these being Harry Boyd, Gwen Symons, Eleanor Dew, and Ralph Cody. Together they embark on an arduous six-week canoe journey through the Arctic wilderness known as the Barrens.
None of them could have prepared adequately for how arduous it would indeed, prove to be. All are changed, marked for life, and for death, through the experience. Loves are gained, and [tragically] lost.
I would describe the author’s attention to landscape as being downright Urquhartian. You sense the rippling waters and crackling ice, hear the tinkle of Northern Lights, and slap yourself for mosquitoes, as you read.

← Elizabeth Hay, receiving the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

I found the book evocative of a bittersweet play between disclosure and reticence. Between characters being drawn and attracted to each other but for diverse and understandable reasons, unable to acknowledge it in time.
Harry’s feelings for Dido are denied, withheld, temporarily assuaged, and then returned to a state of numbing unrequitedness. Dido herself suffers the pain of unrequited love, while maintaining a sort of second-best relationship with Eddy Fitzgerald. Similar frustrations occur in several pairings of relationships, culminating in the heartrending shattered dreams of Ralph and Eleanor.
The last few pages offer the reader a beautiful redemptive reversal to this trend.

Hay, herself an intrepid canoeist, former Yellowknifer, and radio broadcaster, is obviously in her element here in Late Nights. And not on these levels alone, but also on yet another, very important one → superb novelist.
I look forward to reading more of her work.

To read an excerpt → CLICK
To purchase → CLICK

*************

Splash du Jour: Thursday

There is a place for mind and mind knowledge. It is in the practical realm of day-to-day living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.
-- from The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle --

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
-- D.H. Lawrence –
Have a great Wednesday!
[I’m on vacation. Living it “hot” right now!]

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Keep on rockin’ in the SPIDER world!
Did you hear?
← Veteran rock and roller Neil Young got a new species of spider named after him.
Seriously now, I read about this in the lunch room yesterday. An East Carolina University biologist discovered a new species of trapdoor spider and named it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi.
You can read about it → HERE.

Wow!
I was immediately fascinated with the entire concept!
Does this mean that if I can just come up with, for instance, a new breed of cat… like say I open the screen door and let Jack “mingle” with some of the balcony riff-raff that is strutting around out there, that I can have the honor of naming the resulting hybrid after my own favorite rock star?
Is the free world ready for such a mutant beast as the dreaded Pigeoncattus ericclaptoni?

Have a great Tuesday!
And, “keep on rockin’ in the free world!”

************

Splash du Jour: Monday

← “When the views advanced by me in this volume… or when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history…
When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!”
-- Charles Darwin –

Referring to the above quotation, Kenneth R. Miller, in Finding Darwin’s God says:
Well, the views contained within The Origin have now been “generally admitted,” and the study of natural history has indeed become, as Darwin understated it, “far more interesting.” Together with the other makers of modern scientific reality, Darwin lifted the curtain that allowed us to see the world as it really is. And to any person of faith, this should mean that Charles Darwin ultimately brought us closer to an understanding of God.

Amen! I so totally agree!
Have a great Monday!

************

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

A Rare Thing: A Saturday Poem

A Rare Thing

On a park bench it happened.
And telling you now seems an injustice.
Yet I must tell it.
Please, it is not at all you, or me, but words
That fail us both.

I was so down, so down.
You know when your eyes are so closed
That you forget your own name?
And then realize that no one is asking
For it?

Feeling a presence, I opened one.
And there it was, a sparrow.
This is not yet the rare thing.

The bird stayed.
Walked to and fro, and chirped once.
To offer my silly hand would be foolish
But I did.

None of this is yet the rare thing, but
Into it, my hand, the sparrow hopped.
And as I encircled its life, closing my fist
It stayed. It…

As I watched, closed its eyes.
It is the one thing birds do not do.
And in shame, I closed mine again.

I knew then that my sorrow had vanished.
Taken wing. But for confirmation,
I raised that sparrow up to my ear.

Will I tell you that it spoke to me?
No, for it did not. But even if the bird had
Counseled me, that would not have been as
Rare as what happened next.

I opened my hand, and it stayed there,
Soon hopping back to its little perch.
Refusing to leave,
Until I did.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

A "funny little book."

What John Steinbeck does so well, time and again, is show us real people, living real life. Nothing really fantastical, yet just a bit out of the ordinary. But real as dirt.
Reading him makes me wish I did not have to use the past tense when speaking of how he writes.
I just finished his 1945 novel, Cannery Row.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The book is not so much about plot, as it is an evocation of time and place. Almost, at times, a panoply of connected vignettes.
Short, economic chapters; never a suffocating moment.
The “cannery” district of Monterey California comes alive, as we meet people like Lee Chong, the shrewd, yet good-hearted general store owner.
From aspirin to zippers, if Lee Chong ain’t got it, you ain’t need it!
Then there's Mack, the self-appointed ringleader of a veritable posse of down-and-outers. These guys don’t work. [I envied them all the way through…] They just sit around all day and cause unintentional mayhem for the whole town, the main victim being Cannery Row’s one seeming intellectual, the marine biologist known as “Doc.”
The central thrust of Steinbeck’s novel is that Mack and his boys want to throw Doc a party. Doc is such a “nice guy” and he is always out there helping others, Mack figures it’s time to repay him with a bit of a shindig.
Amazing how such good intentions can go awry!
The first attempt at a party is a complete disaster. The second attempt, this time the event being Doc’s alleged birthday, is not much better, but by now Doc has taken precautions. Getting wind of his own party plans, he himself does most of the organizing, and feigns surprise when people start arriving.
But what’s the use?
At the end of this second party, his front door is again knocked off its hinges, and by now even the police have given up on arresting these well-intentioned hooligans!
It’s a terrific little novel [almost a novella] in which my lasting impression shall be the fact that all friendships, indeed, all human relationships, must be willing to embrace imperfection. Not just in the other person, but also in our own self.
In a subtle way, Doc learns through his bumbling friends, that he is not an island. In fact, he may even need these guys, from time to time.
Even he, self-sufficient Doc, may be in need of someone!

I often look into Steinbeck’s Letters [a book] to get a better appreciation for the time frame of some of his writings. Of Cannery Row, he said, back in 1943, to a friend… “I’m working on a funny little book and it is pretty nice.”
I concur.
It is funny. It is nice.

The character of “Doc” was based on Steinbeck’s real-life friendship with a man by the name of Ed Ricketts.
I read Cannery Row in preparation to reading a new book I recently picked up, entitled Beyond The Outer Shores: The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts, The Pioneering Ecologist Who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell.
It’s by Eric Enno Tamm, and I look forward to beginning it, next week.

I highly recommend Cannery Row, to all and sundry.
It’s not East of Eden.
It’s not Grapes of Wrath.
But it’s definitely Cannery Row!

************

Splash du Jour: Friday

"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
-- Doc, in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row –

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

My cat, Jack

When God made the world, He chose to put animals in it, and decided to give each whatever it wanted. All the animals formed a long line before His throne, and the cat quietly went to the end of the line.
To the elephant and the bear He gave strength; to the rabbit and the deer, swiftness; to the owl, the ability to see at night; to the birds and the butterflies, great beauty; to the fox, cunning; to the monkey, intelligence; to the dog, loyalty; to the lion, courage; to the otter, playfulness.
And all these were things the animals begged of God. At last he came to the end of the line, and there sat the little cat, waiting patiently.
“What will YOU have?” God asked the cat.
The cat shrugged modestly. “Oh, whatever scraps you have left over. I don’t mind.”
“But I’m God. I have everything left over.”
“Then I’ll have a little of everything, please.”
And God gave a great shout of laughter at the cleverness of this small animal, and gave the cat everything she asked for, adding grace and elegance and, only for her, a gentle purr that would always attract humans and assure her a warm and comfortable home.
But he took away her false modesty.
-- From The Cat’s Pajamas, by Lenore Fleisher –

Have a great Thursday!

***********

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.
-- John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row –

The above passage makes me want to stay home from work today….

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Happy Belated Birthday, Audrey!

You fox!
Have a great Tuesday!
***********

Splash du Jour: Monday

When the 13th century mystic, Meister Eckhart was asked, How then should I love God? he replied:
You should love God non-mentally, that is to say the soul should become non-mental and stripped of her mental nature. For as long as your soul is mental, she will possess images. As long as she has images, she will possess intermediaries, and as long as she has intermediaries, she will not have unity or simplicity. As long as she lacks simplicity, she does not truly love God, for true love depends upon simplicity.

Have a great Monday!

The Power of Now

This will be a first for me.
Asking the opinion of other readers BEFORE I read a certain book. A while ago, a friend sent me a Youtube videoclip of Eckhart Tolle, being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. I was immediately interested in a lot of things that Mr. Tolle had to say.
← The next day at the book store I flipped around in this book, shown here.
The Power of Now.
I then responded to my friend by saying, “Let’s read something by him. Let’s see what this guy is all about.”
Since then, another friend has been added to our discussion group and in about ten days from now, the three of us will be going through the book.
I now have the book with me…. we all do.
And now, flipping through it more casually, I find that it seems to be even more “radical” [if that is the word] than I first thought it to be.
And I do not use the term "radical" in a negative connotation, per se, only in the sense that some of Eckhart Tolle's ideas seem.... quite unique!
My question is this:
Have any of you read this, or any other book, by Eckhart Tolle?
If so, what is your general impression of his ideas?

Here is the videoclip I mention above → CLICK!

*************

W and H: A Saturday Poem

W & H

I think the sign, on the way in
Said Mello.
Either someone here has the surname
Or a “w” fell off last rainstorm.
Dishwater coffee, chipped ashtray,
And three a.m.
Whatever the case, I feel the latter thing
Mellow, just as a young whore looks my
Way. Maybe she isn’t one, and again
What’s with the “w”?
It’s not needed.
Why doesn’t it start with “h” and for
That matter why does “why” got one right
In the middle of it? My God. Here she is.

Perfume intoxicating, “I don’t, no…”
I mean, “Know the city,” I stammer.
“I do,” she says. Then, “Heloise.”
I shake her hand. “William,” I tap my ashes.
No silence was ever so quiet.
But oh, the things we exchanged, as I asked
“Where?”
“Here,” she smiled, her eyebrows pointing
To a staircase.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

He is Marquez!

Just recently, I finished a terrific book.
Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera.
Really, does one need to even say his first two names?
He is Marquez!
We all know who he is.
But truly, this is a book that one wishes, upon setting it down, that it had more pages. And not because it is inconclusive, [even though it is, in many ways inconclusive] but moreso, you want more pages because you want the two characters at the end to sort of fall through the rabbit hole, be reborn or something… see life over again. Have another try at the novel’s final word, “Forever.”

It is set in some nameless Caribbean seaport city, human topography being more important to Marquez, in this novel, than geography.
Takes place between 1830 and 1930.
This is how I am going to do this… this is how I am going to begin to speak of an impossible to summarize, sprawling epic.
I will speak of the three main characters:

Florentino Ariza:
As a young telegraph officer, delivering a message to the Daza household, he observes the precociously beautiful Fermina Daza. He obsessively [to put it mildly] falls in love with her, at first sight.
Complications arise [← no pun intended]… Fermina’s father forbids any sort of relationship, and so the two [Fermina is, for the time being, equally enamored] communicate by way of clandestine letters.
Fermina is banished to a foreign land, and in this meantime, Florentino develops into an increasingly [physically] unappealing young man.

Fermina Daza:
Partially described above.
But this is because she can only be partially described, by anyone. She is the "crowned goddess."
She is everything as beautiful as poor Florentino is forced to only imagine!
A Caribbean Juliet, about to meet her Romeo.
Ahhh.... but it shall not be Florentino, after all!
When she returns from her banishment, she still feels that she loves her young suitor.
That is, until she meets him one day in a crowded street, and, upon seeing him, she instantly feels that it was “all an illusion.” She is no longer in love.
Florentino is understandably devastated. [Romeo to the core! Would gladly stab himself if he could find a sharp enough dagger...]
And things are about to get worse for him, because soon, due to a sickness, Fermina meets….

Dr. Juvenal Urbino:
Dr. Juvenal is easy on the eyes! He is everything Florentino is not. Striking, handsome, debonair, and RICH! He too, falls for Fermina’s charms, and she, for his. They marry. Florentino, now wishing himself dead, imposes a self-banishment upon his own life, in an attempt to forget his love for Fermina. Distance from her [as is all distance from true love] is futile. So, he opts for displacement! Since he cannot have her, perhaps he should sleep with half of the entire female world, instead.
He attempts to do just this…. sustaining 622 illicit affairs, until…. until… an aged Dr. Juvenal tries to rescue his errant parrot from a tree…. and…
I SAY NO MORE.
It is too good of a story for me to say anything else about it.
If you have not yet read Love In The Time Of Cholera, I urge you to do so.
Get a copy!
The only other Marquez I have read is One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I declare this book [Cholera] as being much better!
He is Marquez!

Oh, and one more thing.
As I said of the movie version of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, I say the same for Marquez’s Cholera…. The movie is FABULOUS!
Really, amazingly, close to the book.
A wonderfully accomplished movie.
Read the book.
Watch the movie.
[In that order]!
And that’s an order.

He is Marquez!

**********

Splash du Jour: Friday

Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am -- my friends get round me -- we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories -- and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I've been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.
-- Toad, in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind In The Willows –

Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
-- e.e. cummings –
Ooops!
Wrong image!
Sorry!

Have a great Thursday!