Splash du Jour: Monday

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
-- e. e. cummings --

Have a great Monday!

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
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TOO MUCH LARD!

Once again folks. A blog-posting NOT about books. I was sitting there at work -- lunch-time -- reading my Shakespeare [damn, that guy can write…] and eating Cheese-Doodles© .
Cheese-Puffs© .
Whatever they are called. My fingers were all cheesy and they cheesy-ed up my book, getting it all…. lardy.
It got so bad that I began to wonder….What the hell is IN these things?
Petroleum?
Are they like 99% grease?
What follows, my friends, is a disheartening and yet entirely scientific answer to that question. I looked over at this one bin we have. Full of paper to be shredded. Thing weighs 1,600 pounds. I looked at the cheese-doodles. Then I looked at this monstrosifically heavy bin of paper. That’s it there at the top of the blog!
So…… I took two of the cheese-doodles…

-- folded them in white paper and set them UNDER that monstrous weight! That colossal skid of paper!
Yeah! Like right there!

Then I let down the pallet-jack and crushed the Sam-frigging-Hell out of those two cheese-doodles.
Mother Mary and the saints!


Look at the profound amount of lard [or whatever] came out of those things!
And we eat this crap?
No wonder I can’t breathe all that great, after my lunch breaks!
If this sort of scientific data intrigues you, I encourage you to click onto the following link, where I learned that if you fold the paper only twice instead of four times, you can end up with some really neat → Cheese-Grease Rorschach Tests!

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Where's the BEEF?

“Aww! Get SERIOUS!”
That’s what I said.
That’s the first thing I said last night after packing away all the groceries I had just bought.
← Where’s the roast beef?
I cannot LIVE without the sliced roast beef stuff, for sandwiches!
My God!
It is not here…. was not there!
Then I noticed a few more things were missing. Like shampoo. Bread.
But the essential thing, the beef… no, this cannot be happening.
So I got in the elevator and went back down to my car, 150 feet below me.
Nope.
It’s not there.
The only thing in the trunk of my car is the broken umbrella that I shoved in there over the weekend when it would not close properly. I busted some of its tines…. the thing is busted. And I had piled all my grocery bags on top of this upside-down still-OPENED umbrella. But no.
There was no missing bag of groceries.
All four of the missing items on my bill [a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheddar cheese, a bottle of shampoo, and the BEEF] were the last 4 things run through by the cashier.

So I called the store from work this morning. While my stomach growled from lack of roast beef, I asked the person on the other end if perhaps they might have my missing bag of groceries from last night.
Amazingly, I was told that there is actually some sort of “department” that handles such emergencies!
I was given another number to call.
When I was patched through to the right people, things started to happen.
They have a book.
And in that book is recorded the stuff that people like me leave behind.
I had no idea such a thing existed.

The girl on the phone made me recite my missing items. When I mentioned one or two things I figured that would be enough.
But no. There was only a silence.
She was waiting. [“My God, these people are serious about this,” I thought to myself….] Like what? Is there ANOTHER bag of groceries there that contains shampoo, beef, cheese and…….. some OTHER kind of bread, rather than my 100% whole wheat?
Is that what we're doing here?
Oh, well.
Only after I had correctly named all four items did she inform me → “Yeah. We have that bag of groceries here. Come and pick it up.”
And so I did.
AND SO I DID.
Hey, just because I won that $30 million Lottery last year doesn’t mean I am going to just abandon a $15.00 bag of groceries!
And especially not when it’s got nice sliced cow in it!

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

I have known a number of intelligent philosophers and a vast multitude of poets, novelists, storytellers, playwrights. No one should expect them to talk as well as they write, yet even the best of them, on their best day, cannot equal those men made out of words, Falstaff and Hamlet.
-- Harold Bloom --

Have a great Monday!
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Consider It Forgotten

Summer is long gone, we all know that.
And every October the death knell of the impending funeral of autumn is heard in my neighborhood. It is the sound of hammers on wood. The annual construction of the skating rink across the street, in the park.
This morning I left my apartment building and started out across that park.
Along the length of the near side of the newly erected rink, a couple were exercising their gorgeous Golden Retriever.
Back and forth this beautiful beast tirelessly ran, as the man threw a ball the length of the boards, to his partner. The dog would always meet the bouncing ball in the leaf-strewn grass long before it met either human. Then he would bound over and place the spit-laden missile in the waiting hand. As the woman fired the ball back to the man, the tireless dog was already halfway there.
You get the picture?

Well, just as I approached this scene, the dog was in full flight on its way to that ball, his tail to me.
And the woman got the idea to hide on Rover!
She crouched and ran along the hidden side of the boards, in other words, out of sight of the dog who would, in about two seconds, begin its mach-3 run back to her.
She would not be there. But guess who would be?
Yeah.
ME!
And I was!
The congruence of my proximity could not have been more felicitous!
The man fired the ball hard and high and the dog was already on his way.
Our eyes met.
Here was this golden flying beast, the ball sailing over its head and its tongue flapping clear to his ribs and an amazing thing happened. Even in that flurry of motion I could instantly see the profound dog-confusion in those eyes.
“Hey, hey, HEY, HEY! Where’s what’s-her-name what is going on here I don’t know who that is but the deal is I keep running because I’m a dog….” and then CLOMP the ball was in his slobbery jowls.
Rover dead in his tracks as I kept right on walking.
Sound or scent caused the dog to look to his left where his rightful ball-partner crouched behind the boards, giggling. And with a triumphant bounding frolic he leaped to her side, positively overjoyed that whatever metamorphism it had just imagined was not permanent!
I kept on walking, filling my lungs with autumn air and wondering if anything in the history of the world had ever been as quickly considered and forgotten as I myself was, in that dog’s mind.

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Like Clove: A Saturday Poem

Like Clove

Around one I hoped you would be the last to leave.
I had never talked to anyone like this, like we did,
and you were still there at two. I watched as you
quickly gathered your things, girlfriends tugging.
Longing in your eyes as we shook hands?
A feeling of not wanting to open mine ever again.

When I finally did, there was your scarf left behind,
and me wanting to hang myself with it. Fearfully,
the myth of you mingled with this scent of clove.
Thread and fiber I shall keep, one day wrapping
the back of your neck and drawing to my lips
yours. Giving to you what is not mine anymore.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Splash du Jour: Friday

As a reader I've always been drawn to the “Big Question” book. Philosophical, difficult, set in their particular time -- the kind of book that isn't afraid to ask tough questions. In the same way I'm put off by books that pretend to answer the questions they raise. There can't be answers -- not sincere or meaningful answers -- to the questions raised in a great book.
For me a novel doesn't try to solve riddles, but instead simply lays them out, exposes, or states those riddles in new, arresting, and entirely crucial ways. In raising those questions -- by positioning your characters, building your setting and your drama -- you approach the heart of what it is to be human. Cliche, I know, but what other reason could there be?
-- Dennis Bock –

Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The Coopers were shown into the dentist’s office, where Mr. Cooper made it clear he was in a big hurry. “No fancy stuff, Doctor,” he ordered. “No gas or needles or any of that stuff. Just pull the tooth and get it over with.”
“I wish more of my patients were as stoic as you,” said the dentist admiringly. “Now, which tooth is it.”
Mr. Cooper turned to his wife, “Open your mouth, honey.”

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Long Live AC/DC

Yesterday [Oct.20th] was the North American launch of the new [long-awaited, much anticipated] CD from AC/DC.
← Black Ice.
I will never forget the first time I realized that I was in love with AC/DC. It was about 68 years ago now. I was stoned. Just this side of comatose.
The perfect state for a lifelong musical epiphany, right?
I was playing billiards with my friend Warren Zimmerman, in his basement.
We weren’t really “playing” billiards, we were…. we were too amazed at the physics involved in the process of hitting this one white ball and then it hits this other colored one and…. no wait, not that one you idiot, you’ve got to sink a red one first and… and then… [groundless laughter] – "Did you hear that?"
"Whut?" ← [Yours truly, at his most eloquent.]
"I heard…. was that the front door?" -- [the combined paranoid-laden circumference of our dilated pupils is somewhere around three square metres]… Warren goes over to the turntable and drops the needle on Sin City.
From the Powerage album.
Epiphany!
Oh, yeah – I’ve gotten older. Soberer.
Cut my Frampton hair. I got a job and stuff.
But…. I’ve never really recovered.


← Click on these lads!
AC/DC.
You’ve just gotta love ‘em.
[‘Specially if you’re a guy].
If you are a man, you need not respond [I don’t even want to know if you don’t like this band…] but I would be especially interested in hearing from any womenfolk that agree with me.
According to the above video-excerpt, the love of AC/DC has male-bonding connections.
My question, girls, is simple.
Is AC/DC not the greatest invention since the... since the pool cue?

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The question to bring to any of the stories of the Bible, once we no longer see it as TAWOGFAT [the authoritative word of God for all time] is: What do you make of it? not What is the meaning of the story? You bring the meaning to it. It's not there without you reading it and getting something out of it. You are the context in which it will be figured out and lived, if it's worth it. You might find that much of it is helpful to you as you move, headlong, into the next stage of your life. Or you might find that you shouldn't have wasted your time. Every story is different, and everyone's perspective is different. For that matter, once the Bible is set aside as the spiritual resource, you can be fed by many sources. Use whatever it is you're reading -- William Blake or Mary Oliver, Maeve Binchy or Thich Nhat Hanh, Dean Koontz or Phillippa Gregory. Seek out the deep spiritual wisdom that your perspective might find there.
-- Gretta Vosper, in With or Without God --

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

Q. The Crimson Petal and the White was recently serialized in the British newspaper The Guardian, which posted each episode on the web. Did it feel odd to send your work out into cyberspace in this way?
← Michel Faber: I haven't traveled into cyberspace to see it. I wrote it for myself, on paper. And I'm sure that if my work is destined to survive, it will survive on thin slices of tree, not as digital impulses flitting around in computers. Giving people a taste of my novel on the Internet is fun, but Bill Gates' dream of a future where books no longer exist is the sort of folly that only someone who doesn't appreciate literature could conceive. Books are meant to be held and taken to bed.

Have a great Monday!
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Thoughts on Love --

← Just hours ago I finished reading this sprawling 900-pager.
Oh, such a tremendously worthwhile novel.
Definitely one of the best reads of the past year for me, perhaps the best.
But at the end, so unbearably sad at certain parts that I very nearly wanted to hurl it at the [Starbucks] wall!
The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber.

It took him 20 years to write it, and nearly as long for me to read it, but seriously, trust me friends… if you love great Victorian-era fiction, this one has a money-back guarantee!
So many of its main themes, not the least of which is the idea of “rescue”… so many ideas of the book have not only resonated within me at a deep level, but also have accompanied me in my mind, as I walked home tonight along Sussex Street in the cool autumn air.
It is a real thought-provoker.
The book makes me think about love. The mechanics of it. What is it?

Not the kind of love we have for our pets, or for our country, or our friends, family members and parents, etc. No.
I mean that kind of exclusive love we reserve for another person. The kind that leads to all of the best kind of intercourses, and I don’t mean just of the sexual nature.
The love we mean when we say to someone, “I am in love with you.”

Nothing of what I am about to say is meant to be pontificating on the topic.
Nothing ex cathedra.
Fact is, what the hell do I really know about it? Love, I mean.
But I am convinced that we very often get whatever it is -- wrong.
And that concerns me, and should concern everyone.

I feel that very often the error lies in a misinterpretation of The Displacement of Loneliness.
We find ourselves in the presence of another, and loneliness seems to evaporate.
Is this the criteria by which we measure the depth of our exclusive love?
No.
Or rather…. hopefully not.
This feeling of foundness and belonging is one aspect of a healthy love relationship, but it is not what love is.

I anticipate that what I am about to say will not set well with a lot of readers, but I will say it just the same → If we say to another “I am in love with you” I would seriously hope that what we are meaning is something greater than “I am less lonely when I am with you.”

I don’t know about you, but I myself personally would feel quite cheapened and maybe even duped, were I to find that this was the greatest extent of what my lover meant when they declared such a thing to me.
Secondly, never would I myself say those words to another, if that were the greatest extent of what I meant by them. Because it would cheapen their [the beloved’s] worth.
I am convinced, as I walk down the lamplit street tonight, that part of the problem [the seedbed of misconstrusion] lies in that initial perception of loneliness in the first place!
Loneliness is good at inventing many things. And one of those things, is “love”.

“Are you lonely?”
“Yes. At times, very much so.”
“Does being with this other person make you feel less lonely?”
“Yes. At times, very much so.”
“Do you believe this to mean that you are in love with them?”
“Yes.”

I would seriously counsel the above Thrice-Responding “Yes”-Person to consider the degree of stock they are placing in their experience of the alleviation of this disconnected feeling we call “being lonely.”
Is there something worse than being lonely?
My answer would be “Yes, → believing that someone else can ultimately relieve you of it.”
The argument to this response is [in my opinion] the great lie of the ages.
We all have heard the rhetoric on this – “Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”
Perhaps.
But there is one thing that is for sure better.
And that is to love and win.
And I believe that our best shot at doing such a thing is to deal with our “loneliness” issues before we are tempted to abandon them with the next flash of cute eyelashes we encounter, be they male or female.
Let’s deal with our loneliness issues before they deal with us.
Then, perhaps we can be part of the following scenario, instead of the former one:

“Are you lonely?”
“No.”
“Does being with this other person allow you to continue feeling as good about your identity as you do when you are without them?”
“Yes. At times, better.”
“Do you believe this to mean that you are in love with them?”
“Not necessarily, but it’s an encouraging sign. My concept of love is not directly linked to how someone else makes me think about myself.”

For further reading, an old poem of mine may be in order → [CLICKEROO]
Cheers!
-- Cip

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What Is A Book?: A Saturday Poem

What Is A Book?

Ten thousand lifetimes.
Best thoughts of a best person.
An experience sandwich.
Vicarious intelligence.
The only proper moral education.
Living beyond oneself.
The surest reason for eyes.
My favorite walls.
The opposite of exaggeration.
Three thousand lifetimes.
An innate obsession.
Reason for a lunar landing.
Terminus of potential.
Potential of terminus.
Terminus ante quem.
Published power.
Vapor trail of what matters.
What keeps me, me.
Impossible to exaggerate.
More than one life.
Time.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Splash du Jour: Friday

For the fuller story, click → HERE.

Have a great Friday!
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Just Wondering...

Hey, have any of you ever sort of marveled at how perfectly round the moon is?
Yesterday, as I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot after work, the moon was low on the horizon… it was not even dark out yet, and WOW!
The moon was the size of about three of four normal moons.
AND SO ROUND.
What I mean is – if it is supposed to be a cast off of Earth [which in itself, is pretty severely round also, am I wrong?] like… how is it that it is so PERFECTLY ROUND?
I mean... don't get me wrong. I'm not asking Sarah Palin here.
But seriously, it is a question I would like to put to someone like Richard Dawkins when he and I get to heaven.

In my [pseudo-atheistic] imagination, I would think it should have some aberrations to it, some jagged pieces and whatnot. This perfect roundness really floors me.
I could see if maybe one side of it was squared off a bit. Or looked like an ostrich.
But my God, it’s so PERFECTLY….. as in FLAWLESSLY round.

Hey, speaking of roundness – have you ever seen this kid that can draw a PERFECTLY round circle on a chalkboard? It’s pretty neat.
If you are as bored as me right now… → CLICK HERE!

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