Milton

Total Eclipse of the Soul
Originally uploaded by Time Grabber

"I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night." - Milton

Exactly

our destinies passed each other like strangers
Originally uploaded by clinton grobler

"Sometimes what you need is the company of strangers." - Amy Ray

Lost

Goodmorning Amsterdam
Originally uploaded by Bеn

"Most people think of life as a puzzle to which pieces are constantly being added. My life started as a completes puzzle, but I've lost too many pieces along the way for it ever to be that way again." - Carolin Yawn

old favorite

it's a long long road
it's a big big world
we are wise wise women
we are giggling girls
we both carry a smile
to show when we're pleased
both carry a switchblade
in our sleeves.
- Ani Difranco

Clever

Devil's Dyke Crows
Originally uploaded by tommy martin

"If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows." - Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

soon-choked

"But each day brings its petty dust our soon-choked souls to fill, and we forget because we must, and not because we will." Matthew Arnold

Poor disillusioned, Vincent

"Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does." - Edna St. Vincent Millay

A while back, I read and reviewed her biography - Savage Beauty. Her tale is quite remarkable.

Advice for your inner writer

"Here, write it, or it will be erased by the wind." - Isabel Allende

the only meaning

"And we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten, but the love will have been enough, all those impulses of love return to the love that made them, even memory is not necessary for love, there is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." - Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything. From the Interstate, America is all steel guardrails and plastic signs, and every place looks and feels and sounds and smells like every other place. We stick to the back roads, where Kansas still looks like Kansas and Georgia still looks like Georgia, where there is room for diversity and for the occurrence of small miracles." - Charles Kuralt, On the Road

beautiful and brave

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths
that are at the beginning of all peoples,
the myths about dragons that at the
last moment turn into princesses;
perhaps all the dragons
of our lives are princesses,
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being,
something helpless that wants help from us.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

What It Is

An artist friend of mine recommended What It Is to me, and I rarely can resist a book recommendation (ermmm... unless its 1,000 pages of Ulysses S. Grant! A dilemma that has yet to be solved).

This book is a lot of things - a work of art, an autobiography, a workbook for creative impulses, and a graphic novel. It's a treasure trove.

My favorite bit was the following:

There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it.

I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.

They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.

This is a book you could open a thousand times and still find something new each time. I'm giving it an 8, and declare it well worth a read especially for all you dreamers and artists.

That moment

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan is a slim little novel. I must admit that I'm a bit hooked on McEwan's work. His very exact way of describing things would probably drive me crazy were it anyone else's novel, but he does it so skillfully.

The book is about a man learning about his in-laws and trying to get to the core of a single day that drove them apart even though they never stopped loving eachother. The story is told in bits and pieces as he learns more and more from either side.

I really liked how firmly in place this was set. It bounces a bit from England to France and the time frame changes swiftly in places. Each time, I felt firmly anchored in what was being told.

The story hits on two particular points that really reonated with me. The first was that a single turning point in anyone's life is an odd thing and its more likely that they've grasped at one thing to help them explain their changes. This really struck me since this was coming from a novelist who as far as I can tell specializes in telling how a single moment can change the lives of several people. This is his thing! My thought is that single moments can change our lives, but that we never recognize them as such - certainly not while they are happening and even rarely in looking back. We pick what we want to be our moments more so than what they really are (just my two cents!)

His other point was about evil and how its always out there. I admit that this aspect gave me such a chill. It was so very well done.

My quibbles? The dogs. I loved the imagery of them. I loved how they became a family thing. I didn't really think their background story worked. We learn a bit more about them right near the end, and what we learn feels off to me - like it didn't fit the story. Also, the cover, while striking and beautiful, annoys me cause its showing the wrong kind of dogs. They appear to be dobermans, but the story describes the dogs as huge mastiff type dogs. Little details like this bother me.

All in all, it was an interesting read. I can give Mr. McEwan a 6 on this one.

Oh and I had to share this quote from it:

It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turne dout after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.

I love my Sun subscription

For good reason. Check out this poem from their December issue:

"Christmas Eve, Almost Midnight" by David Denney

Driving through the mist after delivering
packages, I come upon a family of deer
palking down the middle of the street.
I cut my lights and engine and coast
behind them awhile. They are cruising
the neighborhood, nibbling the frosty lawns,
looking for nasturtiums. I glide behind them
around a corner and down another street,
the only sound the crunching of newly formed ice
beneath my tires, until they disappear onto the dark,
soggy soccer fields of the middle school.
I tell you I can count on one hand
the number of times I’ve been happier.

Hunt a dream through rain and thunder

One of my favorites:


"For It All" - Emma Bull

Fantasies of violence, breaking bottles on the wall
Hungry for the motion, for the action, for it all.
Road noise on the night street, see the taillights through the blinds
Out there where your dreams slide toward the night side, for it all.

For it all, for it all, what you’re aching for
When the magic’s real and like a fire in the sky
When the deal calls for a sacrifice and you know you cannot die
For the edge the best ones live on, for it all.

You want to be a hero, with the ax about to fall
You’d buy it for the love and for the glory, for it all.
You want to dress in black and lose your heart beyond recall
Hunt a dream through rain and thunder, on your honor, for it all.

In your head, no car is fast enough
In your heart, no love is true
Would it ruin all your solitary fancies
If I tell you that it isn’t only you?

Keep your ankles off the tailpipe, keep your bootheels off the street
We’ll hit the throttle, we’ll hit the redline
We’ll find the edge
We’ll make it sweet
We’ll go for it all.

See enough of life

The street looked like a woman who'd seen enough of life and wanted to sleep it off, push the guy away from her, go home, except she couldn't. She was home. - - - Lynne Tillman, No Lease on Life

determined by necessity

The Things They Carried is composed of snippets of tales and thoughts about the Vietnam war. It begins with the most mind-blowingly good few paragraphs I've read in a long while. Here's a bit of it:

“The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots - 2.1 pounds - and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. School’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchel Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught at Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and becauses the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost 2 pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.”

You're reserving the book right now, aren't you? Seriously good read. 8.5 on the Claire scale.

How true

an idle wanderer
Originally uploaded by KarensJilly

I wanna be a bookaneer!

Un Lun Dun is so extremely fantastic that I'm insisting everyone I know read it. So thoroughly imaginitive and unique! The London that isn't is marvelously described and the characters are so unexpected and interesting. If you liked Harry Potter or His Dark Materials, read this immediately. Even if you didn't like them, read this immediately. Fan-freaking-tastic and so much fun! (I have so used up by quota of exclamation marks here but its so worth it).

"I'm Margarita Staples." She bowed in her harness. 'Extreme librarian. Bookaneer.' "

Farewell Studs.

May 16, 1912 - October 31, 2008



"I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it. "