Splash du Jour: Monday

No, I was ignored. When anyone took any notice it was to point out what a twit I was, and laugh at me. This was the best possible preparation for the life of a novelist. If you have grown-ups fussing over you and encouraging you and taking an interest, you begin to think you're important, and furthermore that you need and deserve their attention. After a while you become incapable of working without someone else motivating you. You're much better off supplying your own energy, and writing in spite of the fact that no-one's interested, and even learning to put up with other people's contempt and ridicule. What do they know, anyway ?
-- Phillip Pullman, in response to the question: Were you encouraged to be creative?

Over the holiday season I have been reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I am now halfway through the second book, entitled The Subtle Knife.
Tomorrow [New Year’s Day] I intend on seeing the movie version of the first book, The Golden Compass…. starring my girlfriend, Nicole Kidman.
But before that, I must put in an honest day’s work.
Yes, work.
No rest for the wicked.
No rest for the horribly wicked!
Check this out!

Have a great Monday!

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WORTHWHILE READING: 2007

Well, here I am on the final leg of my holidays.
Still visiting. Still having fun. Still eating.
But come Monday, it is back to the coal mines for me. Tomorrow I will be boarding a plane and flying back home. Back to my meowing Jack, and the snowbanks I left behind in Ottawa.
At the end of each year I like to reflect upon the books I have read over the past 12 months. I reminisce about each one and see which come to the forefront as being especially memorable and worthwhile.
There are few things more disappointing to me than to come to the end of a book and think → “What a waste of time.”
Because time is precious to me.
So, here is my list of books that were especially worthwhile.
These are the Top 5 [Fiction] Books that meant the most to me, in 2007.

1) A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
2) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
3) The Pesthouse by Jim Crace
4) Death Of A Salesman by Arthur Miller
5) Immortality by Milan Kundera

I would love to comment about each of the above books here, but simply do not have the time to do so.
However, I would like to include a few more, deserving Honorable Mention.
Fall On Your Knees – Ann Marie MacDonald
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzakis
Landing – Emma Donoghue
The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

In the Non-Fiction department I have read many terrific books in 2007, and most notably, these:

1) God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything – Christopher Hitchens
2) The World Without Us – Alan Weisman
3) Clapton: The Autobiography – Eric Clapton
4) The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
5) Status Anxiety – Alain deBotton

To all of my friends, the dear people and fellow-readers I’ve come to know through this medium of blogging, I wish you a wonderful 2008!
May it be a year filled with health, prosperity, love, good surprises, fun, and not least importantly, WORTHWHILE READING!
Cheers!
-- Cip

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Wishing You All The Best

Just had to break free of the festivities here and wish you all a
wonderful Christmas holiday season!
So far I have gained three pounds.
And none of this from Drive-Thru hamburger joints.
No, this is real food. Real fun.
OK, gotta go. There's a turkey to eat.
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Skewing My Salingers

This morning, I received a personal email from a very astute Salingerian aficianado regarding my allusion to Salingerism in yesterday’s blog entitled I Like Airports.
In there, [and thinking myself witty as hell at the time of composition] I had said → I replied, as Holden Caulfield might have done, by saying, “Who doesn’t?”
My dear reader informed me that it was not Holden Caulfield that spoke in this particular idiomatic way, but rather it was Seymour Glass, the man that appears in several Salinger stories, and finally ends up killing himself during a vacation with his wife in Florida in 1948 in A Perfect Day For Bananafish.
This story appears in Salinger’s collection entitled Nine Stories which remains as one of my → all-time favorite collection of short stories.
So, thank you for setting me straight in this particular instance.
I would love to sit down with you and drink coffee and listen to you and talk books until way past closing time!
I love interacting with people that are this sharpened and honed when it comes to literature.
And hey!
Who doesn’t?

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I Like Airports

You know how I am always telling you stuff about myself that pretty much proves that I am basically weird?
Well, I am about to add yet another page to the story!
I LIKE AIRPORTS!

I know that does not make sense.
A normal person is supposed to abhor the hustle and confusion and racket and inconvenience of airports, but I actually LIKE all of that stuff.
My entire day yesterday was spent in either an airport or a plane. I made my way here to Saskatchewan, via a stopover in Toronto. And I really enjoyed the entire process.
Perhaps a part of it is due to the fact that it was the first time I flew in the Executive Class section. The first time I was on THIS side of the curtain!
When I stepped onboard, a gorgeous woman hung my coat up for me. No kidding. Then I sat down in my own private seat…. as in, no one next to me. And when we left the ground, the same woman asked me if I wanted some wine.
I replied, as Holden Caulfield might have done, by saying, “Who doesn’t?”
So she brought me some. And then some more. And then some food.
Other people, on the other side of the curtain, they didn’t get any of this sort of treatment. It was awesome.
But seriously, even before all this, I realized something.
I actually LIKE airports.
I like walking around in them. I like how big they are. Did you ever notice? They are like WAY oversized! The ceilings are always 40 feet away! I love that.
I like the souvenir shops. I like the bookstores.
I like the feeling you get when you pick a book off the shelf and it almost AUTOMATICALLY seems interesting. Just because you’re in an airport, like.
For instance, yesterday I picked this one off the shelf at a Watermark store. It was about the murder of film-maker Theo Van Gogh. I automatically wanted to read it.
But I already HAD a book to read! Buying the Van Gogh story would have been completely NUTTY! Then, when I walked away from the store, I realized that I was interested in the book because I have this feeling, come holday-season, that I all of a sudden possess this superhuman unlimited amount of time.
Hence, [since I am always flying somewhere for holidays], I tend to associate airports in general with this sense of freedom and relaxation.
I'm weird as hell.
I find that I actually LIKE when there are delays!
I don’t care that the moving sidewalk thing is out of order.
I like the fact that the shoe-shine guy asked me if I want my hiking boots polished!
I don’t mind at all when they have to de-ice the plane’s wings.
And I LOVE occasionally looking at my watch. Not because I am tense about the time!
Hell, no…. I look at my watch because I love thinking about the fact that I am supposed to be at work right now! But I’m NOT at work….. [too good to be true…] → I’M ON HOLIDAYS! AND I HAVE A BOOK TO READ!
What do I care if it takes me way longer to get where I am going, than originally planned?

When I arrived here and was greeted by members of my family, I found that only half of my luggage had arrived. So I went up to a little complaint kiosk to report the missing stuff. They had already known of it, showing me a slip of paper with my name already on it. The guy told me the missing piece would be delivered to me next morning.
And it was.
It was couriered here before I had even gotten out of bed today!
Which makes me want to ask the airline if they can misplace BOTH pieces next time… so I don’t even have to carry either portion of it from the airport!

All this to say that Day One of my holidays is turning out to be fabulous!
I am [leisurely] reading Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and finding it to be a very engrossing read, indeed.
Cheers,
Cip

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Splash du Jour: Friday

…I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them, like President Clinton giving evidence to Kenneth Starr about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, just to make sure I'm not technically lying - 'All things bright and beautiful, the hmmm hmmm made them all.' Religion provides believers with two contradictory things. It gives them answers. And it celebrates mystery. It reminds them that they are a vanishingly small part of a vast cosmos. And it shows them how they are intimately connected to every part of it. Science and literature do this for me. They give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer. This is the nearest I come to what other people might call a religious experience. First, when I'm trying to get my head round string theory or the evolution of the human eye. Second, when I open a book and find myself sliding effortlessly into the mind of someone who lived on the far side of the world and died long before I was born.
-- Mark Haddon –

Have a great Friday!
My holidays begin today. Hence, the extremely late Splash du jour posting.
I am on the first day of my Radical Sleeping-In© stint!

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Contemporary Elf Woes

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Snow in the Suburbs
by Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Have a great [snowy] Wednesday!

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realize that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities.
And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with. This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.
Genre fiction says: 'Forget the gas bill. Forget the office politics. Pretend you're a spy. Pretend you're a courtesan. Pretend you're the owner of a crumbling gothic mansion on this worryingly foggy promontory.'
Literary fiction says: 'Bad luck. You're stuck with who you are, just as these people are stuck with who they are. But use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.'
-- Mark Haddon, in interview --

Have a great Tuesday!

Me, at DollaRAMa

Wow!
Umm… that was an easy fix!
My computer was not as ruined as I had thought it was.
I admit. I panicked.
And who can blame me?
There is nothing funny about a black screen!
But what I have to say about the recovery of my computer may be of profound importance to other Mac-users out there. So, listen up!

But first… just a little story that once again proves I am “mentally challenged.”
When I first panicked over the breakdown, I called my friend, the computer expert. He lives over a hundred miles away, so he tried to offer some long-distance trouble-shooting advice. However, I did not have the proper little jeweller-size screwdriver to get the middle panel off, on the underbelly of the Mac PowerBook.
So, today after work I went to Dollarama©.
They had two blister-wrapped versions of the tools I needed. One was a 12-piece kit, and the other was a 6-piece. Neither one had a price-tag on them.
Hmmmm…. do you see where I am going with this?

I brought both packages up to the girl at the checkout.
Set them down and said, “I want whichever one is cheaper than the other one, please.”
She looked over at this other cashier, then looked at me, and said nothing.
So I flipped both items over and said, “Look, there is no price tag on either one.”
She is still staring at me. And there are other people in line, behind me.
She says, “Sir, you’re at Dollarama© .”
And just as I was almost getting the message all on my own, she said, “Like, everything here is a dollar!”
And no one was laughing.
So I did.
Then I looked to the left of me, where EVERY AISLE has a big sign saying “One Dollar” and a big old red arrow pointing down every aisle.
I announced to everyone within range of my voice, “Wow! I’ve never been here before, I swear to God. Whoa! Wow! That is WILD! Everything’s a dollar.”
She was waiting for my decision.
“I guess I’ll take the 12-piece one there, then. Hell…. that’s six extra pieces for the SAME DOLLAR,” I said, winking at everyone else in the lineup.

When I got home I called my friend again and he told me what to do with my new screwdriver. After removing the RAM chip, and spraying the area with compressed air [which I stole from work today] I simply snapped the chip back into place and Bob’s your uncle!
The Mac fired up like it just left the store today!

So there you go!
If your Mac ever shuts down on you and then offers three plaintive beeps when you try start up again… let it be known that this is a problem with how your RAM chip is seated in its little home there. Do not pull your hair out [like I did] or get up on the balcony rails [like I did]!
My entire repair bill was..... ONE DOLLAR!

The only downside to this story?
A guy from the lineup at Dollarama© chased me out to my car. I had to jump in and lock the doors.
I think, misinterpreting my wink, he thought I was interested in a little more than screwDRIVERS!

I’m back in business folks.
This is what I am trying to say!

***********

COMPUTER CRASH

Well, friends!
That which I hath most greatly feared has happened, as I guess it must inevitably happen, now and then.
My computer, my wonderful Mac PowerBook has... committed suicide or something.
Happened just a few minutes ago while I was sitting at Starbucks happily clicking away.
Screen just went gray and then black and all hopes at re-starting are not working. I am only hearing plaintive beeps when I try.
So, I trod on over here to this Internet Cafe, where I currently sit, surrounded by gamers and their six-shooters and space ships and stuff. Lots of noise. Plus it does not smell good!
Through the banks of snow I hath trod, to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Whatever Else you may be celebrating over the Holiday season!
I may be out of commission for a long while. I have far too busy of a week to be buying new computers, and then I myself go away for holidays. So... simply put, I am very, very sad.
A black-screened, plaintively-beeping computer is never good news.
But I feel especially sad about it right now.

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

On Being Ferried

Is there even one more straightforward thing you can do in this life?
You drive your stupid vehicle on board and you are instantly free of a whole lot of responsibility, pretty much.
You can’t help this thing float a minute or move an inch, so you might as well relax.
Who stays in the car ever? Nobody.
You get out.
You stretch yourself, pull your shorts out of your crack, [well, at least I do], yawn like a Bengal tiger, and find the stairway to one of the upper levels so you can look at people.
Look at that guy over there. He’s an obvious walk-on! You can tell by his dreads and by the way he’s leaning against that backpack the size of Rhode Island.
There’s a family yonder, jabbering foreignly, infants rolling all over the floor like a litter of dachshunds yipping and yapping.
Just next to them, on a bench seat, Kate and Leonardo are necking like this is the doomed voyage. Maybe these two should have stayed in the car, a la that one scene in Titanic.
You step into the souvenir shop where, among other things you don’t want, they are selling all the books that should never be bought. And people are buying them! There’s a smell of old breakfast from the snack lounge.
And whether you want to or not, you step out onto the outside deck where the wind, day or night, is fierce enough to rip your wig off and toss you naked as your birthday into the broiling sea.
You stare at the wake and the churning bubbles make you dreamy.
Then you hope to see a dolphin, and never do.
But all in all there is no peace quite like the ferry ride. I love it when the whole deal bumps itself safely on the other side. Here you are briskly vomited or shat, and it matters not which.
All that matters is that you, clanking your way off, and perhaps waving at the bored attendant in the florescent “Don’t hit me” vest, are wonderfully dry, and a bit closer now to where you need to be.

*********

Splash du Jour: Friday

When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go.
-- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 6
--
Perhaps Holden needed to read Carnegie!

Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

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

Haddon Hits A Homer

Just a few words about the book I am currently reading.
→ THE THING IS TERRIFIC ←
Granted, I am not even half-through Mark Haddon’s newest novel, A Spot of Bother [lately, I only have about an hour a day to read…. so busy am I] but the thing is fantastic.
One wants not to set it down!
Short pithy chapters. Hilarious stuff. No… serious stuff.
No, → the perfect mixture of funny and not-funny.
Just like real life!
Great book. People in a struggle to understand how much they want to invest in their maintenance of long-term relationships!
Mark Haddon hit his first one over the fence, and this one is sailing high.
I have a feeling the ball is going to land outside the park! It will probably smash my own damn windshield!
Cheers!
-- Cip

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

The First Time

What would you say to my
I love you?
For the first time.
We once wondered.

Tell me to take it back?
Rewind the tape? Or
Say it again? Louder?
As I recall, there was indeed
An echo, but never louder.
Not once did you hear it
Louder, than the first time.

When the rock goes in
The splash comes.
After that, the ripples, silently
Move outward, trying.
Failing, as they thin and flatten,
To make sense of the intrusion.
They never do.
And ever, the rock sinks.
The commotion settles.

With indrawn curtains as witness
We know that something
Something that never said
A word, spoke three.
That best time.
The first time, when, flung
From me, they came to rest.
Drowned, on your bed.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2007

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"Mere life" is not enough to satisfy an artist. It must be shaped, molded, into something that - in its very shapeliness, its ordering - is GIVEN meaning. This is the vision, the end, of art. Yes. I believe that is what art does...it transports us for a while. Frost calls it a "momentary" stay against confusion. No one thinks of it as "reality." Whatever that is, good God, we have more than enough of it in our lives.
-- Anonymous –

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation…
-- Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1 –

Have a great Monday!

Two White Horses

I hope that everyone is enjoying a wonderful weekend.
As for me, I’m taking it easy, sipping a home-made Starbucks French Roast coffee, and talking with Jack.
← Listening to the brand new double-disc Eagles CD. Thing’s got 22 songs on it! It’s called Long Road Out of Eden, and it is EXCELLENT.
Trust me on that. [Did you know that today is the 31st Anniversary of the release of Hotel California?]
The other day I wrote a poem.
I was shuffling through Vienna, via Merisi’s great virtual-tour photoblog. By the way, if you ever want to go to Vienna [and who doesn’t?] but you a) don’t have enough gas in the tank, b) are afraid you will eat too much once you get there, or, c) cannot afford the plane fare in the first place, [← my excuse] well, clicking on Merisi’s Vienna For Beginners is the next best thing to being there. The combination of eclectically chosen subject matter and crisp, clean resolution make for a photo-journey that one either wants to jump into, or downright EAT. I think I have gained at least 15 pounds just from “devouring” the decadent restaurant photos.
But enough about her.
When I saw Merisi’s photograph of the two bridled horses, I instantly clicked on the comment section of her blog and wrote out verbatim what the one horse [the nearest one] was saying as they both strode away, hauling a new tourist-load over the cobblestones.
Only later did I realize, “Hmmm, that might be a poem.”
If I were to teach a course on poem-writing [Poemetry 101] I would say to my class [of students that all look like Nicole Kidman for some reason]… I would say, “Girls… write what you are thinking. Worry about whether it is a poem or not, LATER. You will throw away more than you keep, but just keep doing that until you begin to answer yourself favorably. Be honest. Seek the opinion of others, but do not rely on it. Meanwhile, read the great poets, and hone thyself, thereby.”
And then, if they seemed perplexed, [perhaps they don’t quite know what “hone” means…] I would encourage them with something like, “I know you can do it.”
Then, I might flick on the overhead projector [or cue the Powerpoint] and show them the following poem, saying, “Think about it, girls. A HORSE wrote this one!”














Two White Horses



You think we are the same.

Perhaps [clippety clop] from where you sit

We are. But I assure you...

This one? Yeah, Buddy here?

Doesn't like oats!

Hates apples. 

Allergic to sugar.

Me? I like all three. Can't get

Enough sugar. [Clippety-clop, swish...]

Me? I hate only one thing.

Reins.

Buddy? Loves 'em.

Can't get enough reins.

The only thing about us the same?

Color.

Color.

The least definitive thing, if you

[clippety-clop] wanna know...

Yet, what does everyone say?

"Look.

Look at the two white horses."



© Ciprianowords Inc. 2007

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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