Bookpuddle

Tears of Joy: A Saturday Snapshot

2012-03-03T03:08:00.012-05:00

I ate this thing last night.
It's my latest downfall -- The Angus Third-Pounder© at McDonald's.
It almost makes me cry, it's so good.
You can get 'em in two styles -- Cheddar & Bacon, or Swiss & Mushroom.
I always choose this second format because I'm convinced that when it comes to the proper preparation of bacon, well, it's sort of an art form. Its got to be done right, as in, not too crispy. I hate over-cooked pig.
But [trust me] McDonald's has this Swiss cheese and mushroom business really figured out, down to a science. It's truly a fantastic burger. And they've really up-scaled the bun on this one. Plus it comes in a real nifty carrying case, as you can see.
Mmmm…. "I'm loving' it" as they say on TV.
They could have chosen a better name for this burger though.
Angus Third-Pounder is just so… anti-climactic.
It sounds a lot more -- gourmet -- if you say it in French:
Tiers De Livre.
Which, being interpreted, means Tears of Joy…. [I think].

So, this is my Saturday Snapshot. Thank you Alyce, for hosting this wonderful meme at your awesome site, At Home With Books.
*****

Olfactory Memories

2012-03-02T22:30:00.008-05:00

My [work] day began earlier than usual as I had to start off at one of our satellite warehouses, doing a monthly fire extinguisher inspection.
[God! Your life is so exciting, Cipriano!]
I know. It really is.
I've done this inspection every month for years and years. And there are… MANY extinguishers to check, somewhere around a hundred or so. It involves walking through the place, clicking on all the timered lights as I go -- by the time I do the first round on the first floor [of four] everything is lit up, but at the start, wow -- it's real creepy.
Total darkness and silence.
As I made my way to the far end of the first floor, just beginning my rounds, I was literally stopped dead in my tracks by a smell. I still don't know what the smell was, I mean, from whence it originated. I narrowed it down to about a ten foot square area. I had been walking, initialing all the tags as I went, and then BOOM -- this smell, eliciting a memory from my childhood days, hit me.
Instantly I was in the Public Library in the small town in which I was raised. It was uncanny. As soon as I ever found out what words were, I was an addict, and I went to the Library every chance I got. This morning, well over forty years later -- a certain smell that existed in that old library met me in the dark passageways of our warehouse. It was so startling. There was nothing "general" about it -- in fact, nothing could be more precise. I stopped, retraced my steps, and there it was again. It reminded me of this one raised platform where you actually signed out the books at my childhood library.
We store hundreds of thousands [a million and a half or thereabouts] of boxes of paper documents where I work -- and so the smell was definitely that of paper. But not only paper -- somehow the exact same unique paper smell that I used to inhale at the library. For the rest of my hour-long circuit through the warehouse, I was a little kid again -- signing out books. Eager to read them.
Has anything like this ever happened to you?
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-03-02T01:45:00.002-05:00

Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
-- Norman Mailer --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-03-01T08:23:00.003-05:00

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
-- Ernest Hemingway --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Mac or PC? Which R U?

2012-02-29T23:09:00.008-05:00

Tonight, after work, I went to my new hotspot for coffee-drinking.
It's this one fairly obscure Starbucks situated basically in a Best Buy parking lot at the junction of Coventry and Lola. I've frequented it for a few evenings now and I really like it. They play nicer music in there than at most places. Plus, tonight the barista girl gave me a free blueberry muffin to go with my Grande Bold coffee -- so, I'm liking it all the more!
When I say "hotspot" though that's a bit of a misnomer -- there is a bit of a chill that wafts in from the big plate glass window I happened to be sitting against. Doesn't help that a bit of a blizzard was happening on the other side… anyhow, I digress.
What I really wanted to ask of my dear readers was whether you are a Mac or a PC user. I may have asked this question before [I'm not sure] but I'm nothing if not redundant here at Bookpuddle.
At one point as I sat there sipping coffee for hours and reading The Woman in White, I looked around and did a bit of a cyber-tally. There were only six other people in the place. I made it seven. [Wow, Cipriano, you are so good at math!]
Thing is, there were six Apple products in use on the various tables. The only exception was a non-techie guy yonder reading a newspaper!
It made me realize the growing popularity of Mac usage.
More and more people are biting into the forbidden fruit, it seems.
I myself am a die-hard Mac addict and devotee. Recently my laptop was dropped from a table onto the concrete floor of a Starbucks, much to my immediate horror and subsequent cardiac arrest. Most other products [including an actual apple] would have had to be discarded after such a tragedy. But my MacBook Pro shrugged it off and I think it works even better now!
And speaking of popularity itself -- Apple is about to approach the 25 billionth App download -- at their website a frantically ticking counter tells the story.
Just minutes ago I made the little video clip, shown below.
So -- my question to you -- the short and sweet of it is this -- what are you viewing this Bookpuddle blog on, dear friend?
A PC? Or, the thing that is better --> a Mac?

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-02-29T02:48:00.001-05:00

Find a nice quiet place to spend time with a book.
This is my wish for you, today.

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-02-28T05:31:00.003-05:00

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 Tuesday!
*****

Those Crazy Victorians!

2012-02-27T23:09:00.005-05:00

Those of you familiar with my somewhat free-range reading choices know that I don't shy away from the Victorian-era novels. I'm a fan of Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, the Brontes etc. You know? The writers so well-known they don't need first names?
Currently I am in the midst of a real doorstop of a massive tome.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. First published in 1860, apparently an age in which razors, electric or otherwise, were yet to be invented.
<-- Look at the rat's nest on the guy!
I loved his other famous novel, The Moonstone, and this one is also a dandy.
Thing about these Victorians that always throws me for a loop is how long it takes them to say stuff.
I mean… the excessive verbiage. Trollope is a fine example.
For instance, here in my current book, the sweet heroine Laura Fairlie has been betrothed to this guy Percival, but in the meantime she has fallen in love with another guy, her art teacher, Walter Hartright. So she figures she should tell Percival of this complication prior to any actual nuptials taking place. White-knuckled, poor Percival grips the table and hears --

"I have heard," she said, "and I believe it, that the fondest and truest of affections is the affection which a woman ought to bear her husband. When our engagement began that affection was mine to give, if I could, and yours to win, if you could. Will you pardon me, and spare me, Sir Percival, if I acknowledge that it is not so any longer?"

Say what?
The wild thing is that Percy totally GETS the message.
If that was me I would have said, "Darling… umm, me no understandee!"
It just so cracks me up how these crazy Victorians say things.

So -- I'm going to start talking like this, I think.
Next time I idle the ol' Mazda up to the Drive-Thru I'm going to say:
Salutations! sincere disembodied voice that hearkens from yon speaker grill. Prithee forgive my voluble pangs of hunger, but I beg of thy comrades, perhaps mingling thine own ministrations in said process, yea, in consort with thy various scullery-bound hair-netted culinary youthservants, thou wouldst together provide me victuals in the manner of two buns betwixt which lie fulsome layers of roasted bovine avec fromage!
Then I'm going to floor it to the pickup window where the kid will probably be checking his headset for interference from outer space!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-02-27T04:07:00.003-05:00

I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
-- Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago --

Have a great Monday!
******

An Update on my "Life"

2012-02-25T19:57:00.023-05:00

<-- Firstly, is it wrong for me to think that the image shown constitutes a well-rounded, and even nutritious, meal?
It's hitting all the four main food groups:
1) Cow.
2) Potato and/or derivatives.
3) Grease.
4) Plastic.
Secondly, I want to beg forgiveness from Faithful Readers who may have noticed that I am not nearly as... bloggerific as I have been in the past. I hereby officially want to blame, in descending order of relevance:
1) Overwork.
2) Resultant lethargy due to point #1.
3) Lack of energy due to points #1 and #2.
4) My recent liposuction surgery.

In all seriousness now, what exactly is going on at Bookpuddle©? A site that was once so full of…. book stuff.
Has the guy quit reading altogether?
Has he finally died from burger consumption?
None of the above.
The truth is, 95% of my life is given over lately [energy-wise] to:
1) Work.
2) More work.
3) Eating.
4) Reading very slowly, while yawning due to points #1 and #2, and possibly #3.
I recently worked up some steam and blogged about Middlesex, which was such a terrific book that it actually granted me some energy that was sadly lacking.
I don't have an actual physician's documentation on this, but I feel that just reading the thing actually may have unblocked a clogged artery or two! But aside from this brief spurt of inspiration, I concur with you that Bookpuddle has been in arrears. Tonight, having eschewed a day of suggested overtime at work, and breathing from a bag of oxygen at my side, let me say a word or three about the book I read prior to Middlesex.

Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel. [2005].
I was a bit disappointed.
I love novels that deal with the occult world. And so I was really looking forward to Mantel's take on it, not having read any other of her works. And overall, I think the saving grace of this book may lie in her vivid depiction of the two principal characters, Alison the psychic, and Colette, the avid devotee who becomes her assistant. They do remain unforgettable to me.
It is the blurring of the physical and non-physical world that I had trouble with. In a world of phoney psychics Alison seemed genuine, someone truly given over to being the full-meal deal. [Again, see image at the top of this blog].
Alison seemed to possess the "gift"… if gift it is. Or at least she was more genuine than the others, foisting their haphazard prognostications at the many Psychic Fairs that were a part of the story. The troubling part for me was not being able to really enter in to the reality [or not] of what were Alison's mediums. The enigmatic nature of Morris, her "spirit guide". And not only this, but also his cohorts, who seemed to bridge the gulf between the living and dead in too blurred a fashion. They were invisible to the living, yet were able to affect the living in tangible ways -- taking up space in the real world [creeping their hands up skirts] and in the next instant -- you know, beyond the realm.
I began to wonder… if they had farted, would anyone have smelled it?
Any answer to this was inconsistent.
Along with this, I was also disheartened by Mantel's seeming insistence that the dead retain aspects of their individual identity in the world "beyond black." This is a concept I cannot abide by, even in my fiction.
I am Tolstoyan, at heart. I love art that mirrors reality, yes, but without obliterating it, too much. For me, this book failed in this respect.
I may have had too great of expectations, being over-enamored of Sarah Waters' Affinity, which remains for me the best novel of the occult world, ever written.
But I fear being unfair to Hilary Mantel as I know she is a force to be reckoned with.
I don't want to be haunted by her in the next world.
So I will extend my two stars to three, pending nightmare.
In the meantime, dear friends, I close with yet another four points:
1) Please keep reading Bookpuddle. [Keep the faith!]
2) I may one day win the Lottery, and have the time and energy to be erudite.
3) I am currently accepting all McDonald's coupons in lieu of cash donations.
4) Should I have read Wolf Hall instead?
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-02-24T03:20:00.001-05:00

Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.
-- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-02-23T03:20:00.001-05:00

Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.
-- Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-02-22T02:37:00.002-05:00

Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you?
-- Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-02-21T02:03:00.001-05:00

It is of interest to me that in my life I have received sixteen death threats. None came from an atheist! None came from a Buddhist! All of them came from those who claimed to possess "the true faith" or to be "born-again Bible-believing Christians." It is amazing that rude and even potentially murderous behaviour can so easily be justified with appeals to God. The scriptures may well point to the reality of a transcendent God. The scriptures, however, do not, cannot and will not ever capture the truth of God. It is into that limitless truth of God that we walk. The one essential prerequisite for being on this journey is that each of us must relinquish the popular religious fiction that we already, in our religious systems, possess that truth.
-- John Shelby Spong, Re-Claiming The Bible For a Non-Religious World --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Middlesex

2012-02-20T20:52:00.012-05:00

So many times I wanted to say a pile of stuff… twenty pages in... a quarter of the way through, then half-way through… then three quarters -- but now I am done the book and I'm going to try and find the adequate words to express how much I've enjoyed reading Middlesex.
Who says Oprah© doesn't know how to choose a good one? Middlesex was one of her "picks" back in 2007.
What an amazing book.
I am reeling from how much I loved it.

I respect my Bookpuddle readers enough to know that a long and drawn out excursus of Middlesex is probably unnecessary -- most of you have already read the book. You know what it's about.
For those three or four other people, Middlesex is the epic, sweeping, multi-generational story of the [Greek] Stephanides family, and their journey from Mount Olympus to Detroit. Well, mostly it's Detroit, and onwards.
The book begins by kicking you square in the gonads with one of the most craziest [and multi-comma-colonized] first sentences I have ever encountered:
I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Wow.
That is the narrator speaking -- the ever-interesting and erudite, Callie Stephanides.
Some people favor books written in first person. Others don't mind the third-person. In this narrator you have both, and an author that is an expert in alternating between the tenses like no one I have ever read before.
Jeffrey Eugenides [praise be His Name] starts by having Callie recount the incestuous history of her grandparents, in Greece. They migrate to America and…. no, wait. Now I am doing what I said was unnecessary. You've all read this book.
Let me fast-forward to my impressions of it.
>> The thing is perfect <<
It's perhaps the best book I have read in the past five years.
Callie is a hermaphrodite. Hey, the first sentence sort of gives that away, so I'm not spoiling anything here for the three or four of you.
But the important thing that this book addresses is that gender identity sometimes is neither biologically determined nor even conditionally or culturally determined.
It can remain a mystery. Callie was born with a body that was not quite… the norm.
Not only this, but the aberration was not immediately recognized. Callie was raised as a female. But this caused all manner of confusion, along the way. "Her" journey shows us that no matter what sort of identity issues we face, the only person that can truly know their own self is the one that lives under their own skin.
No one else is able [or should be able] to decide who you are.
And this is not saying the half of what the book does. Because Callie's own story, focused on in the latter half of the book, is but a periphery to the first half of the book. Ancestry, in other words, plays a major role in our specific, one-lived, life.
Callie only truly finds this out in the very final pages!
It's one of the most well-rounded, and I'm going to say it, flawlessly written books I have ever read.
To give it a five-star rating [out of a possible five] I would feel guilty of limiting myself to just one galaxy of twinkling lights in my own night sky. I want to give it a full Big Dipper, which is seven stars!
This is my first journey into Eugenides. I look forward to reading every single word this guy has ever written, or ever will.
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-02-20T01:28:00.002-05:00

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
-- Ernest Hemingway --

Have a great Monday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-02-17T08:21:00.000-05:00

The Rider

A sparrow turns its head.
Quivering, the vigilant forest edge
yields to a gathering unease
the thump of approach.
Hooves stamp the hilltop.
A triumphant tossing of mane, a steamy huff.

The Rider, wheeling the great beast about,
surveys the foggy terrain he has crossed.
Silence reclaims itself.
He thinks.

This man knows nothing of Parliament or Congress,
matches or ballpoint pens. Electricity is gibberish.
Air the exclusive domain of feathers.
Television, centuries hence.

Yet the Rider knows two things
as well as you and I do.
Love and the lack of it.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2006

Have a great Friday!
******

A Weird Habit Revealed

2012-02-16T22:33:00.012-05:00

The saving grace of this blog posting will be its brevity.
I will not belabor or travail over it. I'll cut the umbilical cord really quickly.
It's just a trivial thing I wanted to mention, with the main purpose of perhaps seeing if there is a single person out there that is as weird as I am.
OK -- here's the deal -- when I begin reading a book, especially one written by an author I have never read before, and I am in the midst of reading that book, and I find myself in a bookstore [which I do nearly every single day of my life]……… "Hey, Cipriano, I thought you said you were not going to belabor the point and….."
Shhhh… I'm just about to say it now --> I find that I love to GO to the place on the shelves of the bookstore where the author's stuff can be found. I love to look at their other books, as though these are as yet unsought by anyone. And [go figure, cheapo that I am] usually, my own copy is a used one, to boot.
I don't know why I do this.
But I do.
For instance, I was a virgin to my last two authors -- Hilary Mantel and Jeffrey Eugenides. With each, I went to the shelves of the bookstore and drooled all over the other books I was not reading at the time. I was swooning, anticipating further adventures before I was done with the current one.
Is this what is referred to as being a "bookslut"?
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-02-16T02:49:00.001-05:00

Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you.
-- John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-02-15T01:35:00.002-05:00

Part of the post-apocalyptic, dystopian trend is that it seems to go hand in hand with young adult novels. Maybe that's because it's not simply the adults who are aware of the current crisis. Teens are the ones who are being told, again and again, that their futures are in jeopardy. The teen years can feel dystopian even in the best of times. But I don't think we realize how much pressure and feeling of doom we're passing down to our teens.
-- Julianna Baggott --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-02-14T05:40:00.001-05:00

I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.
-- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-02-13T03:17:00.001-05:00

Historical fact: People stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.
-- Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Aren't They Adorable?

2012-02-11T00:43:00.008-05:00

I've missed participating in the Saturday Snapshot for a few Saturdays now because… because I just ain't taking any good pictures of nuthin'!
So, here is a snapshot of my best friend's twin daughters.
Aren't they absolutely adorable?
This was taken when they were on an east-coast vacation in Halifax, and of course, I've obtained permission from him to post this shot. I spent Christmas Day 2011 at their place and at one point while a Wii tournament was in progress on the TV, these two were climbing all over me and I remember thinking, "My goodness, combined they are lighter than my cat!"
They. Are. So. Cute.
So, if you leave a comment, you must mention how cute you think they are, from one to ten. And be warned, anything less than 9.6 or thereabouts -- I'll have to delete that comment, as it shall clearly be lacking in good judgment.

Many thanks to Alyce for hosting this excellent meme at At Home With Books.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-02-10T03:45:00.001-05:00

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-02-09T08:17:00.004-05:00

From earliest childhood I was charmed by the materials of my craft, by pencils and paper and, later, by the typewriter and the entire apparatus of printing. To condense from one's memories and fantasies and small discoveries dark marks on paper which become handsomely reproducible many times over still seems to me, after nearly 30 years concerned with the making of books, a magical act, and a delightful technical process. To distribute oneself thus, as a kind of confetti shower falling upon the heads and shoulders of mankind out of bookstores and the pages of magazines is surely a great privilege and a defiance of the usual earthbound laws whereby human beings make themselves known to one another.
-- John Updike --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-02-08T07:52:00.002-05:00

We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.
-- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking --

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-02-07T02:49:00.002-05:00

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-02-06T03:36:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking of incorporating this little routine into my own daily morning workout.
But not today. Not just yet.

Have a great Monday!
******

Why Is The Sky Blue?

2012-02-05T13:16:00.009-05:00

While browsing through the bookstore, as I am wont to do, I happened upon a really interesting book.
It’s called Why Does A Ball Bounce? 101 Questions You Never Thought of Asking.
It’s written by Adam Hart-Davis and published by Firefly Books (2005).
So I bought it.
It's filled with really neat one page explanations of stuff.
My favorite page, thus far, is this one entitled Why is the sky blue?
It's a question I have wondered for a long time. The following is not my paraphrase [can I go to jail for doing this? Because seriously, jail does not appeal to me one bit] but in fact, it is the actual verbatim words:

This question was first answered by John Tyndall (1820-93), who in 1867 took over the running of London’s Royal Institution from Michael Faraday (1791-1867). A keen mountaineer, Tyndall was one of the first people to climb the Matterhorn. Before he attempted this, he calculated that the energy needed for the climb would be exactly the same as he would get by eating a ham sandwich; so that was all the food he took.
Back at the Royal Institution, he filled a glass tank with filtered, dust-free air, and noticed that he could not see a beam of light passing through it. He could see a beam of sunlight slanting across the room, and he realized it was visible only because the light was scattered by dust particles in the air. In his filtered air there was no dust to scatter the light.
He experimented by filling another tank with water and adding a teaspoonful of small particles (milk powder works well). A beam of light shone through it appeared bluish – the small particles scatter blue light. With a leap of imagination he realized that the sky is blue because small particles in the atmosphere – actually molecules of air – scatter blue light from the sun.
The sun lights up the whole of the sky during the day, and because air molecules scatter blue light in all directions, the whole sky looks blue. The light from the sun looks yellowish because although it is really white, some of the blue has been scattered away, and white minus blue makes yellow.
At sunrise, as in this photograph, [NOTE: the image I have attached above is not the same as that in the book, but it is similar] the sunlight arrives at a low angle and has to travel through much more atmosphere than later in the day. As a result more blue light is scattered, the sky looks deeper blue, and the sun looks yellow, orange or even red. At the same time it lights the clouds pink or orange.

It’s an interesting book.
Go buy it.
You will learn tons of interesting things, like (for instance), did you know that a million sugar cubes, piled vertically, would be 10 kilometres high? Yep, higher than Mount Everest. [No doubt, I’ve probably plopped a few kilometres worth into my coffees, over the years!]
If I were to ask the 102nd question though, it would not have to do with sugar cubes.
My question would be addressed to Mr. Tyndall, and it would be.... “Tell me John, was that ham sandwich enough?”

Note: For a more poetic and Biblically-inspired version of why the sky is blue, written at a time when I was more... Biblically-inspired, click --> HERE.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-02-03T04:40:00.002-05:00

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-02-02T02:40:00.002-05:00

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
-- Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Good Endings?

2012-02-01T23:57:00.012-05:00

Recently I had a discussion with a friend who was advocating the reading of non-fiction over against fiction. In his opinion, reading novels does not educate the reader in anything near as valuable as what could be gained by reading non-fiction. An investment in fiction does not add to a person's storehouse of intelligence. [I am paraphrasing].
And I did concede him a few points, along these lines -- proceeding to defend my approximate 80% to 20% fiction-to-non-fiction ratios by saying I read novels for entertainment. The chemical rush I get, etc.
But thinking about it afterward -- there is so much more to it than this. For me, it is much more than merely a different way of watching a movie. By reading fiction, I believe we actually do "learn" things in ways that we could not otherwise know [in our limited experience] and sometimes we gain this "knowledge" in ways that would be impossible by learning facts.
Anyhoo -- my friend also said that he does not like to read novels because "not a one of them has ever ended well." To summarize, he feels that all novels have poor endings that only serve to exemplify an author's frustration with the requirement of a last page, at some point.
I sort of disagreed, but when he asked me to provide an example of a novel that satisfactorily ended, I was a bit mute, I must admit.
But then I thought of Anna Karenina, and so I offered that one as my choice of a well-ended novel. I've read it twice, and it's probably my favourite novel ever. It merits a third reading. I'm a bit of a collector, the three copies shown above are mine, and I have a misplaced fourth one around here somewhere.
Both times, I remember finishing Tolstoy's Anna and thinking, "Damn, that is a good novel!"
It ends up zeroing in on the character of Levin, rather than Anna. All though the book, Levin [some say a representation of Tolstoy himself] holds out for real love. His love for a woman named Kitty. This calm pairing is pitted against the tempestuous one of Anna and Count Vronsky all the way along. And in the end Tolstoy focuses his attention on Levin's spiritual regeneration, showing this to be much more a novel of ideas than a book fixated on romance. The very last paragraph is so amazing -- my favourite in all of literature. [Don't read it if you have not read the book, don't peek!]
But the very final line is this:
…my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.
I love that.
It emphasizes the very thing the suicidal Anna was unable to accomplish in her own life.
Do any of you have any further arguments I can offer my friend, as to the merits of fiction? Any favourite well-ended novels?
Books with a last page that can justify having read the first one?
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-02-01T02:55:00.003-05:00

I’d hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that’s as good as you’re going to feel all day.
-- Dean Martin --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-31T03:16:00.003-05:00

Science is not only compatible with spirituality;
it is a profound source of spirituality.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Serendipity Happens...

2012-01-30T22:37:00.012-05:00

Have any of you ever had a sort of peaceful, fun interim period of your life that you like to look back upon from time to time?
I have many!
But today, for some reason [maybe because it was a Monday and I did NOT want to be at work] I was thinking of a particular few months of my life -- back almost twenty years ago now. I was living in beautiful British Columbia. My career path at that time had taken a sudden turn for the… obliterated. I found myself simultaneously unemployed and heartbroken. A bad combination.
When does this story get "fun" Cipriano?
Right now.
An old college friend happened to roll through town just in the nick of time. Because I have not gained permission to publicly speak of this story I will not use his name. So, in Kafkaesque anonymity, I'll call him K.
My dear friend K had found his place in this world as an itinerant seminar speaker. And so, he rang me up while he was doing a gig in my town.
I went to hear him speak that night.
The topic was Stress and Anxiety.
I sat and listened to him that night speak to a roomful of about a hundred really stressed out people. He was humorous, engaging, dynamic -- really knowledgeable and well-spoken. I was impressed.
Afterward, we had some drinks in the hotel lounge and I proceeded to fill him in on how horrid my own life was.
He then asked me if I would like to travel with him and assist in the sale of merchandise at his seminars. Would I like to do this?
I think my instant answer was something like, "Is the Pope Catholic?"
I was ecstatic. This seemed the perfect thing to get me out of my near-suicidal doldrums.
I packed up some clothes and the very next day headed out with him on the road.
For the next several months we were everywhere! Well, OK -- all over British Columbia and Alberta. Traveling in a rental SUV loaded with stress-related materials, we criss-crossed those provinces from Vancouver to Lethbridge, and everywhere in between.
My function was to wear a suit and welcome the stressed and anxious humans as they arrived at these venues, sit around reading a book over yonder while K disbursed his experiential wisdom, and then after the seminar, while he answered questions from a never-ending line of anxiety-sufferers, I handled the financial side of making sure that the forking over of extreme amounts of money was done correctly. People would line up and buy the tape series and instruction booklets, videos, and binders of whatnot.
Later in the lounge or hotel room, tallying up the results, I was amazed to find that some nights would bring in $10,000 to $15,000 in sales. Sometimes more.
A most hilarious side-effect of these adventures is that a few weeks into it, I myself began to counsel people. K being too busy, they would come to me and ask all manner of real serious questions. I would tell these people straight-up that I had never once suffered from any of their symptoms.
Never had a panic attack in my life. But they didn't care.
They still wanted advice -- so I gave it.
Thing is, it's true that I had become a sort of pseudo-expert in the subject, having heard K's speeches so many times I could have almost delivered them myself in his absence. Even so, I'm afraid that a lot of my advice was about as "deep" as the words shown in the image at the top of this blog posting!
Of far greater importance to me was the fact that K paid for all of my expenses on this hiatus, including meals and much boozing, plus an additional stipend on the side.
I would have gladly done it for the rest of my life, I think. It was such fun. It was just what the doctor would have ordered for me at the time, had I gone to see one.
The magnitude of his own expense account hit me one time when we were trapped by a snowstorm in Fernie, B.C. on our way to far-off Medicine Hat for a gig that very night. As we we were rolling across a treacherous mountain pass in the wake of a white-out blizzard, authorities literally CLOSED the highway behind us. In town, a similar roadblock on the western side caused us to return and grab the nearest hotel room, as were the rest of any travellers, that blustery day. In the room I rustled through my luggage to see if I had anything resembling swim-trunks, as there was an indoor pool in the place. But soon I overheard K on the phone with his employers. They were arranging for a helicopter to pick us up there and fly us out.
My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
When he finally hung up the phone I looked at him and said, "Who the hell are you? James Bond?"
As it was, no helicopters were available. So we had a night off. We ate non-Chinese food in a nearby Chinese restaurant, played billiards back at the hotel and drank ourselves into a delightful stupor. In the morning -- we set off in yesterday's direction to our re-scheduled event.
I was sad when all of this ended. But I'm over it now.
Why am I even relating this story in the first place?
I really don't know.
Except maybe to say the following:
Sometimes in life we can be going through a truly rough time. Things can be looking blacker than the tenth plague of Egypt. But then… serendipity happens.
As it did for me, that time way back when.
If any of the people that bought K's product received half of the benefits I got from selling it to them during those idyllic months, they got one hell of a deal.
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-30T01:56:00.004-05:00

Birds

One thing about birds.
Not a one of them smiles.
Not ever.

Yet, give me wings
and I imagine my face ripping
off from the smiling alone.

Not to mention the wind itself
hollowing out my jowls
as I swoop and dive.

Defying what I know about gravity
in a macabre smile
thinking thoughts

no bird, anywhere, has
ever thunk.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-27T08:22:00.002-05:00

Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes; you have no idea how important it is to be acknowledged. Even if it's an angry stare, because it's when they ignore you, when they look right through you, that you should start worrying.
-- Cecilia Ahern, in If You Could See Me Now --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-26T02:11:00.001-05:00

I've never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This is all part of the superstition, the folklore, the mania of the business, the fetishistic fuss… dying in the middle of a word, or three-fifths of the way through a novel. My friend, the novelist Brian Moore, used to fear this as well, though for an extra reason: "Because some bastard will come along and finish it for you." Here is a novelist's would-you-rather. Would you rather die in the middle of a book, and have some bastard finish it for you, or leave behind a work in progress that not a single bastard in the whole world was remotely interested in finishing?
-- Julian Barnes, Nothing To Be Frightened Of --

Have great Thursday!
*****

Terrorist

2012-01-25T23:10:00.008-05:00

I just finished another book by John Updike.
Did I like it?
Yes.
Should you read it, too?
Yes, I think you should.
So far I've read three books by this author, and I have liked them all.
In The Beauty of the Lilies [<-- fabulous] Gertrude and Claudius [<-- a behind the scenes look at Shakespeare's Hamlet characters, very very good]… and now this one. Depth-wise, perhaps the weakest of the three, but still -- I find Updike to be an author that deserves my continued attention. And I have many others of his on deck here amid the Bookpuddle shelves.
Terrorist tells the story of young Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy. The second surname is that of his red-haired all-American-Irish mother. Ahmad is the product of a brief liaison she had with a man of Middle Eastern descent. Growing up in post 9/11 [I hate that truncated phrase but use it here for brevity, as we all tend to do] New Jersey, Ahmad embraces the faith of his absentee father, and becomes as devoted as any high-schooler can be, to the stringent dictates of the Muslim faith. He exceeds the devotion of his imam-tutor, learning fluent Arabic, and constantly reciting the Holy Qur'an in his heart and mind.
When he graduates, Ahmad takes up the profession of truck-driver for a furniture company and becomes embroiled in, umm… a bit more than the mere delivery of sofas and ottomans.
Updike weaves together a thread of diverse, believable characters, some of them intent on hindering Ahmad's faith, and others -- very much urging him onward toward more than anyone should ever ask of another human being. Namely, the giving of their own life, for a religious ideal. Behind those willing to be martyrs, there is a long line of others that shrink not only into anonymity, but, continued life.
This last point is, I think, the real unique thing that Updike achieves with this novel. He shows us that those that we may call "terrorists" are not necessarily inherently evil people.
They are just deluded, as is anyone of any religious faith that succeeds in becoming convinced that others would be better off dead than alive, if different while living.
Well worth reading. The final pages keep you riveted until you finally exhale and say, "Holy shit. I think I understand a lot more about how this happens, now."
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-25T03:45:00.005-05:00

I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe ‘Sky Above Clouds’ canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally.
-- Joan Didion, The White Album --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-24T04:55:00.002-05:00

When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything.
-- Jack, in Emma Donoghue's novel, Room --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-23T02:45:00.003-05:00

The young people in the library talk out like they're in their own living rooms, it's the same at the movies, there are no manners any more, television has ruined everybody's.
-- Beth, in John Updike's novel, Terrorist --
Have a great Monday!
******

Wherein He Still Does Not Answer The Question...

2012-01-22T16:42:00.010-05:00

Often, people will ask me what I love to read. Happens at work, even.
Co-workers always see me reading there, on my lunch breaks.
And it is amazing that I have never been able to adequately answer that question. I get all.... verklempt.
Yet, the question itself should be easy to answer.... hell, I almost LIVE to read. I desire to spend most of this day, as I did yesterday -- reading and thinking. And thinking about reading. Interacting with what I have read.
I often answer the question by saying "I like to read what I consider literature!" Or sometimes I will say "I like reading stuff that seems timeless." Or, "I like the classics." But all of those answers are not really hitting at what I truly love to read, or why I do it at all.
The truth is, I like to read stuff written by authors that are able to transcend their own limited place in this world.
I think of Margaret Atwood, for instance, and the way she can dabble so freely in the genre of dystopia, and then also write something like Alias Grace. I gravitate toward authors that have a broad scope of subject matter [like Updike, or Saramago] authors that give you that sense that they've tapped into something [the "something" is, I think, a wondrous fascination with life] and are able to speak beyond their own experience [isn't that what fiction should be, anything else being a memoir?] while giving us something that we all know to be true. A good author, I think, leads us along the path that he or she has chosen for us and all the while makes us feel like we have been here before. But we know that we, in fact, do need them to guide us. If they were to leave all of a sudden, we cannot finish the journey alone. Yet in a subtle way -- we've seen this path before, and we know it.
I think of this picture that I have hanging in, of all places, my bathroom. [Hey, I do some great reading, even in there!] I asked for it once as I was walking through a bookstore that was being run out of business by one of the new conglomerates. The proprietors were throwing everything out -- and I saw that picture and I asked if I could have it. The woman said, "Sure, take it." I was ecstatic, because I just loved that phrase, "I will go with thee and be thy guide." [photo, above]
I think that exemplifies what a good author does.
If you are reading this Bookpuddle blogpage, you are probably what I would call a true and genuine reader. With people like us, there is the added feature of what I would call cumulative understanding, when it comes to literature. One may not be able to recount every nuance, or even properly relate a plot outline from a book one read five years ago -- but there are actual cells in the brain storing that information and subtly drawing upon those memories with the result that a current read is illuminated by the faint flickers of the past. In this sense, reading [true life-long reading] is a journey, not a destination. This is why you and I will never finally read a book and say "Aha! This is it! I can now stop plodding through all these pages. I have arrived!"
It is also why novice readers cannot really appreciate the better books. There is not the wealth [the framework] of prior reading experience to buttress the interest level. It's like trying to paint the upper portions of a three-story building without having the scaffolding to climb the hell up there. It's why Shakespeare and DeLillo are not read as much in America [or the world] today as are Stephen King and James Patterson. Or Sue Grafton, working her way through the alphabet, A to Z.
I am not dissing these other writers -- I'm just suggesting that it's refreshing to see someone reading Robertson Davies, or W.G. Sebald, once in a while.
Nor am I suggesting that a good reader has to always be immersed in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky!
For instance, some of you may be aware of my own penchant for delving into what I call juvenalia every Christmas time. I truly love those times -- because, in keeping with the holiday season, it's sort of like throwing an extra scoop of gravy on a pile of mashed potatoes [stay with me, we're talking about Cipriano-fantasies here, which nearly always involve food…..] it's like a "treat" is what I am saying. Reading Winnie-the-Pooh or Wind In The Willows or Peter Nimble, etc.
But even there, in these gluttonous moments, astute readers like you and I can read such books with one eye on the nutritional value of things without which we would not be healthy, the rest of the year.
To sum up -- it is evident that I still do not quite know how to answer the question in any simple fashion.
******

The Winter of My Dickenscontent

2012-01-21T20:03:00.015-05:00

No, this will not be a blog about a newly found posthumously published Steinbeck novel. Rather, I thought I would say a few words about a certain fantasy of mine.
But first, I digress.
I would describe myself as being somewhat of a loner.
And all the people who know me would say, "Amen!" [Followed by, "Did he really say, 'somewhat'?"]
OK, I am an extreme loner.
I've always been introspective, since birth, really. Sometimes I feel it's as though I've spent a lifetime trying to rationally comprehend the fact that I was born at all!
Being introspective does not necessarily lead to being an introvert, but in my case I think it has. I enjoy people for the most part and I don't think any one would describe me as being socially inept, but overall, I have become somewhat of a hermit. And again, the word "somewhat" is a bit of an understatement.
Returning to the main subject matter [my fantasy] -- for the longest time now I've entertained in my mind a vision of what would constitute a sense of peace and happiness for me.
The scene is quite simple:
A deep winter's night, snow silently falling outside. There are houses nearby, little wisps of smoke exiting their chimneys, but these houses are as quiet and self-contained as my own, where I'm ensconced in a comfy chair before a fire in the grate, a cat purring next to me, deeply engaged in a novel by Charles Dickens.
[That is to say, I am reading the novel, not the cat].
A vital component of this fantasy is that I have all the time in the world to keep doing it. No agenda, no curfew, no interruptions. And an endless supply of coffee.
Some interesting things emerge from this.
Firstly, why is it, in my fantasy, that I am always reading Dickens?
I have no idea. I am not an aficionado of the author, having read only three of his books in my life. Maybe it's because most of his books are so lengthy? And they always seem so… Dickensian?
Secondly, [and with apologies to my feline friend] I admit that being alone is not the best scenario possible. Not by far. For even in my fantasy there does come a time when, satiated, I put the book aside.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-20T03:19:00.002-05:00

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
-- Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Be Still My Heart

2012-01-19T22:08:00.004-05:00

So tonight at Chapters I discovered the magazine of my dreams!
<-- It's called [be still my heart, be still…] Ground Beef.
I grabbed it off the rack like a wolf nabbing an injured rabbit, and trotted back to my table with the thing. Let me say the words again -- GROUND BEEF! Arguably the greatest invention since sliced buns, which, incidentally, were invented so that we could put ground beef between them!
I sipped my coffee and leafed through this magazine. Feeling guilty about the drool stains I left on the pages, I bought it.
The recipes in here are amazing -- and the magazine as a whole is just so… frigging comprehensive. And you should see the centerfold!
It's everything a domesticated carnivore could ever want!
I love it so much I've already cancelled my subscription to Better Homes and Burgers.
The only problem? One day ground beef probably will "still my heart" -- in a way that has little to do with recovering from former excitement levels.
But in the meantime, my rallying cry shall remain, "Bring on the condiments!"
*******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-19T08:18:00.002-05:00

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-18T02:24:00.002-05:00

He read political books. They gave him phrases which he could only speak to himself and use on Shama. They also revealed one region after another of misery and injustice and left him feeling more helpless and more isolated than ever. Then it was that he discovered the solace of Dickens. Without difficulty he transferred characters and settings to people and places he knew. In the grotesques of Dickens everything he feared and suffered from was ridiculed and diminished, so that his own anger, his own contempt became unnecessary, and he was given strength to bear the most difficult part of his day: dressing in the morning, that daily affirmation of faith in oneself, which at times for him was almost like an act of sacrifice.
-- V. S. Naipaul, A House For Mr. Biswas --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

What Books Do At Night

2012-01-17T20:17:00.011-05:00

Have you ever wondered what books do at night? For instance, when the bookstore closes for the day and everyone goes home?
I have.
Admittedly, I'm afflicted with a few fairly serious mental issues, but I've always imagined that books left to themselves have little parties -- or at least conversations. A few years ago, I even wrote a poem about the phenomenon. I guess it's hard for me to imagine that something that brings such joy to my own life can have no joy or life of it's own.
There's probably a little shindig going on right now in my apartment, books running around all over the place. I just hope they don't drink all my beer.
I'm sitting in a bookstore as I write this, and I'm just looking around, imagining the mayhem that will ensue when the humans leave and the lights go out.
Recently a fellow Ontarian blogger [Melwyk from The Indextrious Reader] solved the mystery once and for all by posting on her site some actual footage of what goes on after closing time.
This particular party, captured by multiple video surveillance cameras, took place at Type, a bookstore in Toronto. It's well worth watching.
NEVER UNDER-ESTIMATE THE SHENANIGANS OF UNATTENDED BOOKS!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-17T03:21:00.001-05:00

Heaven and hell are nothing more than the assertion that the mind of God, as we human beings have created it, is still operating to reward or punish us after our death. Religion almost inevitably creates God in the image of the human being and then tries to force all of the reality into that frame of reference.....That is why there is no religious system that is eternal. That is why when human experience can no longer be interpreted adequately inside the traditional religious framework, the framework itself begins to die.
-- John Shelby Spong, Re-Claiming The Bible For a Non-Religious World --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-16T04:28:00.001-05:00

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
-- Agatha Christie --

Have a great Monday!
******

5 Things That Shall Outlive Me

2012-01-15T20:36:00.003-05:00

Recently I've taken notice of certain possessions of mine.
More specifically, the unaccountable longevity of their existence.
Admittedly, I'm a person that loathes change, in general. And I figure if something ain't broken -- why fix it. Why replace it?
But certain things of mine...
OK, let's start with my alarm clock.
I have had the same alarm clock -- how do I even describe the thing… I'm almost sure that Noah received his summons to build the Ark just after being awoken by the very same Candle© alarm clock.
I've been rudely awakened from slumber by this damn thing my entire adult life. I've had it for over 30 years. Even the very store where I bought this clock does not exist any more. [Consumers Distributing. You ordered stuff from a catalog and then went and picked it up! How ancient is that?]
Secondly, my tooth brush holder. I've had the same one for about 30 years. Thankfully, I change what it holds a bit more frequently.
My wallet? Pushing 30. It is like legendary. [I've written about it before]. Certain parts of it are held together with tape. Still, I do not buy a new one.
Fourthly, my favorite comb. I stole it from my girlfriend when I was just out of high school. I still use this same comb. [and have much less hair to sweep through it, nowadays].
Fifthly, my coffee scoop.
My first coffee maker was a Melitta. Circa 1986. It came with a plastic scoop thing [see image, above]. Since then I have had many many coffee makers…. but I have never abandoned this one scoop thing. I've kept it around.
Who does these sort of things?
What is wrong with me?
Should I see a therapist?
For a horrid example of what I hear every weekday morning, long before I myself want to hear anything, click --> HERE!
******

Where I Live...

2012-01-14T17:36:00.005-05:00

Hey, is there still time to get in on the Saturday Snapshot?
I'm afraid my entry this week is not only late, but also -- not all that super-exciting or anything. It's a moonlit picture of where I live. Not really, but almost.
In all seriousness, I spend so much time at this particular bookstore, [mostly in the Starbucks inside it] that well, yes, I might as well live here. I've considered getting my mail forwarded. When it comes down to it, my cat is the dominant tenant in my apartment, time-wise at least! [I wish he would help with the bills!]
For those who may not know, Chapters / Indigo is Canada's biggest bookstore chain. It's the true north Walmart of book-buying.
This particular store opened in 1996, and I've been here pretty much every day since. It's my hangout after work. Over the years I've gotten to know so many "regulars" -- people that also frequent the place.
But I remain, by far, the regularest of them all.
They come and go -- but I have outlived even all of the staff! Many times over!
I'd love to know how many thousands of gallons of coffee I've consumed here.
How frequently do I visit? Well….. I'm writing this blog from the place.
And you can't be more here than that!

Many thanks to Alyce from At Home With Books for hosting this Saturday Snapshot meme.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-13T08:03:00.001-05:00

Have a great Friday!
******

Re-Thinking The Bible

2012-01-12T23:05:00.006-05:00

I am in the beginning stages of reading what is turning out to be an absolutely fascinating book about the Bible.
John Shelby Spong, a decade into his retirement as an Episcopal Bishop in New Jersey, shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, in one footnote he refers to a subsequent book, scheduled to be published in 2014. This current one is called Re-Claiming The Bible For A Non-Religious World.
My initial reaction? One word --> Wow!
For those of you who may not already know, I myself have a bachelor degree in Theology. I studied full-time in college, for four years, [1987-1991] and graduated with Honors -- which is to say, I took it fairly seriously. Since then, though, all I have really excelled at is…. being a bachelor.
All that aside, my interest in the Bible has not waned. But my focus has shifted, largely in part to authors like Spong, who have taught me that the Bible is a book that is not meant to be interpreted literally. In my opinion, only when that fact is fully understood can the Bible become a relevant text, worthy of true study.
One would have to be fairly ostrich-headed to have not noticed in the past decade or so the plethora of books that have been written about the Bible and/or the Christian religion in general. Writers like Tom Harpur, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens come to mind. I've read them all.
The difference with Spong is that he is someone who still considers himself a "believer." But his perspective is so astute, so NOT nonsensical, that he succeeds in bridging a gap that these other writers seem only to widen, at times, with their own brand of fundamentalism.
Spong says, on page 15 -- When I read books written by the new breed of militant atheist writers, who have become both best-selling authors and household names, I find myself perplexed as to how to respond to them. I have no desire to attack them or rise to God's defense. The religion, the Christianity and the Bible that they reject are the same religion, Christianity and Bible that I reject. My problem with such writers is not located there. It is rather in the apparent fact that they do not seem to know that there is any other way. Why should they, since the church has worked so hard not to allow other possibilities to become visible? My desire is to work in that very arena and to close that gap in knowledge at least in regard to the Bible. I am not the enemy of the Bible. I am the enemy of the way the Bible has been understood and the way the Bible has been used. I do not think for one moment that the Bible is in any literal sense the "Word of God."

Having read many of his books, it is not the slightest exaggeration to say that I have learned [infinitely] more from John Shelby Spong than I've learned in all the years of my formal study.
This book is a gem. It begins, just like God did, in Genesis, and finishes off at Revelation. Thing is, with every chapter, Spong respectfully shows the reader how incredibly foolish that phrase "just like God did" really is.
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-12T03:01:00.002-05:00

Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.
-- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22 --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-11T07:57:00.002-05:00

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Warmth

2012-01-10T22:55:00.005-05:00

Warmth

Not that I saw them, but I felt them. Ice crystals
on my upper lip. Steam preceding me, wrapping
‘round my frozen thoughts -- boots breaking an
endless row of bones against a dog’s distant bark.
That’s how warm it was, walking home tonight.

“Warm”?
The coldest we have ever felt, is warmth.
Lingering effects of an atomic blast, without which
we walk few steps further. Have the sun go out.
Speak to me eight minutes later, about cold.

The shaking key let me in to the building’s glow.
Pressing 14, I melted in the elevator. How
vulnerable we are -- how utterly dependent upon
things none of us fathom, much less think about.
The door opened, to ever-increasing warmth.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-10T03:45:00.003-05:00

The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.
-- John Shelby Spong, Eternal Life: A New Vision --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-09T08:24:00.001-05:00

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

Have a great Monday!
******

My Saturday Snapshot

2012-01-07T02:02:00.008-05:00

I received a terrific book (t.y.L.i.I.) for my birthday in December, and I've finally gotten around to reading it.
How To Live or A Life of Montaigne: In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.
That's quite the subtitle, I know.
Montaigne was a French philosopher/essayist of the 16th Century, and this biography by Sarah Bakewell explores his life and ideas. For Montaigne, learning to live "appropriately" (a propos) is the "great and glorious masterpiece" of human life.
I took this photo with my little statue of Rodin's Thinker, looking on -- as this is most exemplary of my own posture and attitude as I turn these pages.

Many thanks to Alyce from At Home With Books for hosting this great meme called The Saturday Snapshot.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2012-01-06T04:30:00.001-05:00

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can... Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.
-- David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2012-01-05T02:30:00.003-05:00

Something tells me this guy is still wishing he had checked the height of his trailer, sooner.

Have a great, accident-free Thursday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2012-01-04T02:41:00.004-05:00

The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
-- Tim O'Brien --

Have a nice Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2012-01-03T03:09:00.001-05:00

Sorry the man, to my mind, who does not have in his own home a place to be all by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to hide!
-- Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592) --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Better Than Hamburger

2012-01-02T20:35:00.009-05:00

Well, here we are at the beginning of a New Year.
When I was a kid, if someone had talked about life in the year 2012, I would have thought the story should include riding around in spaceships on a daily basis.
But here we are. And we still have cars!
Looking back on 2011, I acknowledge it as a fairly un-prolific year for me, as to both my reading and my blogging about reading.
I blame three things -- Firstly, a bit of emotional turmoil that took my mind away from pages for a while. Secondly, early-onset senility. Thirdly, hamburger.
Too much hamburger in my bloodstream, resulting in abject laziness.
All in all, I read only 39 books in total -- considerably down from my usual 50+.
Even so, there were so many memorable books among those. I'm going to try and choose five here as the ones I would most recommend to my friends.
And once again [I can literally feel hamburger clogging my valves…] I'm going to be customarily lazy and just sort of mention them without going into much of a defence of my reasonings. In other words, no reviews, nary a dust-jacket blurb.
In no particular order, here are the best five novels I read in 2011:

1) The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.
2) Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.
3) In The Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike.
4) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
5) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.

As soon as I place those five books there I feel guilty, because…. what about The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor? Or Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien? Or Rules of Civility by Amor Towles? Or Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler?
Choosing is such a fickle business.
But in all seriousness, let's narrow it down to the one criteria of…. when you set the book down you literally are dying to pick it up again? The book that can make you forget your need for another burger?
For that I must say that The Line of Beauty by Hollinghurst, read back in a prior January, was all of that and more.
Wishing you all a terrific year of reading great books!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2012-01-02T03:03:00.001-05:00

As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror… And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue.
-- Virginia Woolf --

Have a great Monday!
******

Old Acquaintance

2011-12-31T04:26:00.009-05:00

As the New Year of 2012 inexorably approaches I am reminded of something I recently read in a fabulous novel by Amor Towles. In Rules of Civility, there is a passage as follows:
Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Sometimes, it sure seems that's what life intends. After all, it's basically a centrifuge that spins every few years casting approximate bodies in disparate directions. And when the spinning stops, almost before we can catch our breath, life crowds us with a calendar of new concerns. Even if we wanted to retrace our steps and rekindle our old acquaintances, how could we possibly find the time?

My answer to the initial question is quickly answered:
No.
Old acquaintances should not be forgotten.
Just because we have moved on in our life to other things, other people even, doesn't mean we should forget what someone has meant to us -- I think that the New Year is a terrific time to rekindle those memories.
If any of us were to make one resolution, this should be it.
To say hello to someone overdue of our acknowledgment.
I immediately know who I want to say "Hi" to, and I bet you can think of the same in your life.
It's true that time seems to constrain us, at every remove. But I encourage you to make [invent, if you must] the time to say "hello" to someone who has not heard it from you, in a long while.
Wishing you, my Dear Acquaintances, all the best in 2012.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-30T03:10:00.002-05:00

But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.
-- Zadie Smith --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-28T02:38:00.001-05:00

It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all of you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.
-- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall --

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T10:55:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas to one and all!

Dabbling in Juvenalia

2011-12-23T21:23:00.012-05:00

Every year around this season [of Christmas], my Reading Partner© and I partake of a children's book. We indulge.
"Children" is the wrong word though.
A younger person's book might be better phraseology. I prefer to think of it as "dabbling in juvenalia".
In 2011 we've chosen Jonathan Auxier's Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes.
Terrific book. I can't wait to get back to it as soon as I write this blog. It would be almost impossible for any book to top Philip Pullman's series His Dark Materials, or Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, but this one is right up there in its own right.
Peter Nimble is this ten year old orphan who had his eyes pecked out by a raven.
He becomes a master at thievery, utilizing the resultant attenuation of all of his other senses.
But, in the process of his… thievery -- he manages to pilfer a box of magical eyes.
Three pairs of 'em.
When he plugs these things into his empty sockets, he is immediately transported into adventures beyond the realm of… well, it is just bizarre. It's worth a look.
One thing I love about Auxier's style is the lack of "dumbing down" -- I mean, the story is even crazier than anything we have read before -- but I just love how Auxier refrains from being child-friendly. There's quite a bit of violence here.
And it's not just the violence I admire, but also the vocabulary.
In one scene an unconscious Peter Nimble is shackled and imprisoned, an empty flour sack tied over his head. He awakes amidst some rather major nasal convulsions, and we read:
With each sternutation came a sharp pain in the back of his head, which was still sore from the ambush outside the Eating Hall. [p.201]
Excuse me?
Sternu…… what?
I had to look this word up. And I am not only 48 years old, but also, pretty much a linguistic genius.
Apparently it means "the act of sneezing."
Ohhhhhh…. right. I get it now.

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas season, free of the flu, or even a cold.
Which is to say... completely sternutationless.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-23T07:26:00.001-05:00

Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No, it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams."
-- Martin Amis, The Information --

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-22T08:20:00.003-05:00

Being wise, Professor Cake knew that any relationship not beginning with a punch or two would most assuredly fade over time: it is a well-known fact that brawling begets friendship. Already Peter and Sir Tode were planting seeds of mutual respect that might one day blossom into something far greater -- a friendship to rival the stuff of legends.
-- Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Terrarium: A Poem

2011-12-21T22:21:00.011-05:00

Relatively speaking, it's been rather a slow year for me and my poetry efforts.
"Efforts" is the wrong word to use though, because poetry should never be a struggle.
2011 was not exactly prolific. I'm OK with that, really.
Poetry, like love, cannot be forced.
I just write when an idea or a vision, or maybe an experience, takes over... and words form.
Usually I am dealing with a ratio of about 80% fiction to 20% reality, in my poetry. Sometimes it's 100% fiction. At other times, I'm at about 90% reality.
You can NEVER be at 100% reality, because as soon as you put something into words it is not what it once was. And that's not to say it is less.... most often it is more.
And you add a few percentage points for someone else reading it.
I think the need for language itself eats up that 10% of reality, no matter how close to "reality" a writer attempts to transmit an idea or a feeling.
A Robert Bateman painting [the epitome of detail, and I have one] will never be as true as a photograph. But neither is it meant to be. Thirdly, nothing beats a real tiger, staring you in the face. But the beauty though, of art, has nothing to do with reality. It's never about what is or was, but it is always about what could never be, until now. The beauty of art lies in its transferability.
I have a cache of almost 400 poems... or what I would call poems. Some people might just call them sentences strung together. If you were to study them in chronological sequence [not all of them appear in blog-format] you would find a movement from structure and rhyme scheme, to arbitrariness, free-verse, and abstraction.
I am thankful for this evolution in my writing, and I attribute my attitude of bravery to my exposure to Billy Collins [a master of the written moment] who taught me, without saying it in so many words, that everything is poetry.
I encourage you to try it.
Write about the difference between how your vaccination scar feels today, compared to the day you received the shot. Write one specific memory of a deceased loved one. Your grandmother's rhubarb pie. Your uncle's barn. The way a candle went out when you opened the window.
But most importantly, write about none of these things I have mentioned. Write about what matters to you.
Just write stuff -- it's fun. It's..... poetic.
One day you and I will not be able to do this, and so we should do it, now.
So many many things that you saw today, or that happened to you, or that you felt, or saw in your mind's eye -- are a poem, longing to get out.

Terrarium

As my father set the thing up I watched,
heart set on a bike, a Mizuno catcher's mitt.
Confusion trebled with the dumping of ants.

This will teach you about industry, production.
And it did, it did that. Day after day, tunneling
against the sides, they carried. Endless lifting.

A frantic community intent on thriving, thrived
under my gaze. But I hated the invisibility of
needless desire. The lack of leisure -- love.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

For more of my poems, click --> HERE.
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-21T03:02:00.003-05:00

A child lies like a grey pebble on the shore until a certain teacher picks him up and dips him in water, and suddenly you see all the colours and patterns in the dull stone, and it’s marvellous for the stone and marvellous for the teacher.
-- Elizabeth Hay, Alone in the Classroom --
Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-12-20T03:09:00.001-05:00

There is something wonderful that happens between true friends when they find themselves no longer wasting time with meaningless chatter. Instead, they become content just to share each other's company. It is the opinion of some that this sort of friendship is the only kind worth having. While jokes and anecdotes are nice, they do not compare with the beauty of shared solitude. It was a fact that as the days drew on, Peter and Sir Tode were spending less time talking and more time simply sitting side by side, listening to the sea.
-- Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-12-19T02:44:00.002-05:00

It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.
-- Martin Amis, Time's Arrow --

Have a great Monday!
******

Rules of Civility

2011-12-18T03:49:00.005-05:00

Surely the writing of legendary debut novels is not unprecedented.
[I think of Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, or Flaubert].
Amor Towles is in that camp.
I don't know what he's smoking, but I want a few puffs.
I just finished reading Rules of Civility and recommend it to all my readers, without reservation. The blurb on the back of the dust jacket is no hyperbole -- "a voice influenced by Fitzgerald and Capote, but clearly true to itself."
The bulk of the story takes place in later 1930's New York. In this era of fortunes won and lost, 25-year old Katey Kontent finds herself tossed into the currents of poverty and extravagance that were a hallmark of the time.
The author wastes no time at all in having Katey and her flat-mate Eve meet up with the dashing and debonair banker, Tinker Grey. Through this chance encounter in a bar on New Year's Eve [1938], the girls are thrown from worrying about how far they can make their three or four dollars stretch, to having not a care in the world.
Well -- at least one of them will be afforded this new worldview.
A tragic accident causes Tinker to follow his conscience -- he devotes himself to the glamorous Eve... and kudos to her, she was really "working it" not just that first night, but thereafter, as well.
Or…. was she? Because, later, when he…. no, I won't say it -- I hate spoilers.
Where do the deepest affections of Mr. Grey really lie?
Or, for that matter, which of these women truly loves Tinker Grey?
What an engaging, thoroughly satisfying, searing and poignant story!
Albeit bittersweet.
Aren't all the best stories at least a bit of that?
Once-upon-a-time meets happily-ever-after, happily or not?
This a witty, well-crafted, wonderful book.
Whatever Mr. Towles has to smoke to top this novel -- I want some of that, too!
I close with a representative citation, from the penultimate page:
....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.
Go get it. Do it, now.
******

One Big Spider!

2011-12-17T00:39:00.007-05:00

I live just down the street from The National Art Gallery of Canada, here in Ottawa.
In front of the Gallery stands a giant sculpture of a spider, created in 1999 by artist Louise Bourgeois, and installed in 2005.
I remember the very day, I watched them installing the thing with big cranes, and workmen countersinking the spider-feet into the stones.
Last weekend I was walking past just as a jet crossed the sky, leaving a vapor trail in perfect juxtaposition. I snapped this shot -- I thought the effect was as if the spider had just descended from outer space, on this slender white thread.
A couple more pics --> HERE.

Many thanks to Alyce for hosting this wonderful Saturday Snapshot meme.
*******

A Loss -- A Terrible Loss

2011-12-16T20:16:00.003-05:00

This morning I clicked on my computer and saw two messages informing me of what had happened during the night.
One was from a commenter on my blogpage, the other, an email from my Reading Partner.
I felt an instant shock on both counts.
Of course, I knew that the days of Christopher Hitchens were numbered.
I guess I was somehow hoping that he could beat the odds.
But this writer, this amazingly astute thinker, a man I greatly admire -- he has slipped away from us in the night.
Christopher Hitchens was someone I think I would never tire of listening to. Someone who would so gamely point out to me that the sentence I had just written was grammatically incorrect.
I wish that just once in my life I could have sat and had a drink with him.
Hitchens, an atheist, taught me more about my current concept of "god" than probably anyone else in the world.
And so, I thank you for that, Mr. Hitchens.
What manner of words can I arrange, to summarize -- to eulogize such a man?
The attempt seems blasphemous to me.
The very word so many levelled at him.
Hitchens once said that he and a friend, contemplating their demise, had mused that there would come a day when the newspapers would come out and they wouldn’t be there to read them. “And on that day, I’ve realized recently,” he went on, “I’ll probably be in the newspapers, or quite a lot of them. And etiquette being what it is, generally speaking, rather nice things being said about me.” He shrugged. “Just typical that will be the edition I miss.”
You've missed today's newspaper Mr. Hitchens.
But not as much as I already miss you.
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-16T08:21:00.001-05:00

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion -- whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment -- if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say.
-- Amore Towles, Rules of Civility --

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

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-15T08:11:00.002-05:00

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-14T06:23:00.004-05:00

Now, there is a wonderful thing in this world called "foresight". It is a gift treasured above all others because it allows one to know what the future holds. Most people with foresight end up wielding immense power in life, often becoming great rulers or librarians.
-- Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble & His Fantastic Eyes --
Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-12-13T05:06:00.002-05:00

Have a great Tuesday!
******

The Hundredth Meridian

2011-12-12T22:37:00.009-05:00

Can any good thing come out of Kingston, Ontario, Canada?
[John 1:46]
You bet it can.
Admittedly, a lot of bad things go in to Kingston for a bit of a stay, as it is home to Canada's most notable maximum security penitentiary, Canada's San Quentin, basically -- but one good thing has definitely come out of there!
The band Tragically Hip!
On the way home, I had to zap my radio up to full volume when this song came on -- it's an oldie, from 1992, [from the album entitled Fully Completely] but still as mindlessly relevant today as it was then. I remember when this song came out, I was living in British Columbia at the time. And I just loved this song, and still do.
So I couldn't wait to get home and hit my iTunes where I have a plethora of The Hip on eternal standby.
Funny story -- for a long while I always thought that Gordon Downie was saying, toward the end of this song, "get a RACCOON to sing my eulogy…." only a decade or so later did I realize he's saying, "get RY COODER to sing my eulogy."
I'd opt for a raccoon.
Think of how neat-o that would be!

To me, it's profound, that one line where he says, "It would seem to me, I remember every single * * * * in' thing I know!"
Because I do.
I do.

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-12-12T08:20:00.002-05:00

The notion of Florida brought mention of the Keys which brought memories to Tinker of reading Treasure Island as a boy and digging with his brother for backyard doubloons; which brought memories to both of us of Robinson Crusoe and daydreams of being stranded; which got us on the track of what two belongings we'd want in our pockets when we were eventually shipwrecked alone: for Tinker (sensibly) a jackknife and a flint; for me (insensibly) a pack of cards and Walden by Thoreau -- the only book in which infinity can be found on every other page.
-- from Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles --

Have a great Monday!
*******

'Tis The Season...

2011-12-10T01:35:00.004-05:00

Firstly, in light of the common exigencies of Disclaimer Etiquette I must say that the above photo is in no way endorsed by the fine folks at Alcoholics Anonymous.
This is a reoriented shot of me at last Saturday's work Christmas Party.
I rotated it to the left.
The photographer was much better-positioned than I was at the time.
Anyone who has even an amateur dabbling in physics will know that beer will not angle itself down like that into the gullet, unless there is some sort of internal force driving it stomach-ward, other than gravity alone.
Some sort of funnel-effect.
To get the ACTUAL perspective of the original photo, you, the viewer, will have to tilt your own head to the extreme left side of yourself… basically ear to shoulder, which is not too far from my own cranial latitude, by the end of this night.
This year my gracious employer provided us with taxi chits to get us safely there and back, so the only civilian terrorized on the way home was the driver himself.
If my memory does not fail me on this, my New York strip steak was done to perfection -- but wow, the baked potato to the side of it was not the only thing that was "loaded".

Many thanks to Alyce for hosting this wonderful "Saturday Snapshot" meme.
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-09T04:25:00.002-05:00

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 Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-08T08:27:00.003-05:00

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you'.
-- Saul Bellow --

Have a great Thursday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-12-07T08:22:00.001-05:00

You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.
-- Daniel C. Dennett --

Have a great Wednesday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-12-06T03:36:00.003-05:00

And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us from being swept away into the night.
-- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-12-05T02:58:00.002-05:00

I head down the steps to see if my mail-order copy of Catcher in the Rye is in the box. I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.
-- Kathryn Stockett, The Help --

Have a great Monday!
*******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-12-02T03:31:00.002-05:00

A personal library is an X-ray of the owner’s soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.
-- Jay Parini --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

2011-12-01T04:28:00.004-05:00

Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
-- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now --
Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

2011-11-30T08:21:00.002-05:00

Have a great Wednesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

2011-11-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

2011-11-28T03:31:00.003-05:00

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

2011-11-25T08:17:00.001-05:00

Have a great Friday!
******