Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which I will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh...And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new

-- e.e.cummings --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.
-- W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn --


Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Every room I've lived in since I was given my own room at eleven was lined with, and usually overfull of, books. My employment in bookstores was always continuous with my private hours: shelving and alphabetizing, building shelves, and browsing-- in my collection and others-- in order to understand a small amount about the widest possible number of books. Such numbers of books are constantly acquired that constant culling is necessary; if I slouch in this discipline, the books erupt. I've also bricked myself in with music--vinyl records, then compact discs. My homes have been improbably information-dense, like capsules for survival of a nuclear war, or models of the interior of my own skull. That comparison--room as brain-- is one I've often reached for in describing the rooms of others, but it began with the suspicion that I'd externalized my own brain, for anyone who cared to look.
-- Jonathan Lethem, The Disappointment Artist --

Have a great Monday!
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No Choreographer

Most of the time I like to have a book of non-fiction on the go, along with a novel. As the mood takes me I can then switch from one to the other -- I'm sure many of my readers do the same. I find, however, that fiction usually wins the day [or night] and for a long while now I've seemed to abandon a truly remarkable piece of non-fiction entitled The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins.
I stopped reading it at about 3/4's through and have yet to finish it, much to the chagrin of a friend of mine who continues to remind me of my tardiness. He is wanting to discuss the latter stages of the book with me -- but I seem to always have my nose in a novel.
I love how Dawkins writes, he makes scientific knowledge accessible to the common reader. In the 8th chapter of this, his latest book, there is a subsection entitled No Choreographer and I found it immensely fascinating. Dawkins [an atheist] argues that there is always a lengthy and intricate process behind what we observe as a 'designed' end product. This end product [for instance, the human body itself] "emerges as a consequence of rules being locally obeyed by individual cells, with no reference to anything that could be called an overall global plan."
Of course, not everyone would agree with a lot of what Richard Dawkins says -- but it seems to me that to do so [to disagree] is to elevate myth and fantasy above science and reason.
At any rate, I was impressed with his analogous reference to the flocking behaviour of starlings, to illustrate his point. Every day in the winter season at Otmoor, near Oxford England, the spectacle of the starlings occurs. Thousands upon thousands of birds fly in their broiling, roiling swarms, and yet they never collide with one another.
The edges of the swarms are sharply defined, they come to an abrupt boundary.
And "the density of the birds just inside the boundary is no less than in the middle of the flock, while it is zero outside the boundary."
Dawkins notes that "What is remarkable about the starlings' behaviour is that, despite all appearances, there is no choreographer and, as far as we know, no leader. Each individual bird is just following local rules."
I located the exact clip on YouTube from which Dawkins extracted the still photos for his book, and it is really an amazing scene to watch.
Beautiful.



I am aware that someone could watch this and conclude that there is indeed a choreographer [or Choreographer] at work here, and at one time in my life I would have arrived at that conclusion. But when you really stop to think of it, such a conclusion is foolishness, and actually detracts from the real beauty of what is taking place.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.
-- Philip Pullman --


Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.
-- Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist --


Have a great Thursday!
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Hitchens Update

As many of you know, there are few thinkers I admire more greatly than I do Christopher Hitchens.
From time to time I am reminded of the progress [if that is the right word] of his condition.
His struggle with esophageal cancer.
Apparently he has now lost the use of his voice -- and in inimitable style, has written the most profound little treatise on that very oft-unappreciated aspect of being human. The voice. Please take the time to read these two pages from Vanity Fair magazine. Thank you to my friend for making me aware of this latest little update.
Christopher Hitchens, it is breaking my heart.
Sincerely,
Cip.

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito.
-- Jeanette Walls --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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On The Balcony

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

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

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


Have a great Monday!
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Sloe Gin: My Great Loss

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

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

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

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

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

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

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

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

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

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

Have a great Monday!
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The Glass Castle

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

Splash du Jour: Friday

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


Have a great Friday!
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