- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 426
A Desk...
Small, but it holds all the books I've read the past couple of years.
Which leads to some choices, and I begin the cull today:
Mark Twain, letters...gone
Anais Nin....gone
Henry Miller...gone...
Nabokov...gone
Now, my removing books is not necessarily an indication of quality, it's indicative of whether I will possibly in time return to them.
These are books I have no need to revisit.
And so, all in all, at the end about 30 books, culled from the shelf. The bookstore takes all but three: "6 Fictional Walks in the Woods" - Eco, "Republic of Whores" - Czech, and "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" which I never read but probably picked up for someone at work and failed to give to them. Clearly I didn't give a f*ck.
And this, the lightest of purges, I could go again, go deeper, I mean, there is not enough life left to revisit every book I've read, and while there are those I want to keep - eg: Bernal Diaz - "The Conquest of New Spain", and I have a copy already, but damn, as sideways as my adventures go I've got nothing on him.
And there are others, and I can see a slight unconscious process at work, clear the debris of my learning and the path becomes clear, this is where I am, this is where I'm going, the shelves are due a few more scourings, but it's a start.
Otherwise, the desk, it lends a nice wooden tone to an apartment completely lacking in character. Oak, small, but suited to the space, it lights the fire under my ass to get rid of the rocks cluttering the living room and make the space "livable", after a fashion, it would help a great deal to make some commitment towards entertaining...
As for my writing, it's taking a bit of a hit, I'm out of internet for the month, a week to go before the new plan kicks in, so as time and the library permit...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 422
And, checking my data usage, finding that whereas I used to use about 8 GB a month, having updated to 45 GB find that I've almost used it all.
It seems my Internet usage is a balloon that will expand to fill up any vacuum.
So back online, a new promotional plan, double my usage on full 5-G for a mere $5.00 more.
I'm down.
Now I'd better not use this up...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 454
A new show, finally, at the local art gallery. Long overdue, these shows occupy the mind for maybe half an hour - tops, then hang around town another 3-4 months afterwards.
We need a quicker turn-around.
Anyways, I'd tried to go on Friday night, the shows opening, possibly of interest to me as the artist made mention of "local geology" which, as you might expect, got me going.
But Friday night it's packed, to the gills, and moving through the the hoi polloi, all of whom are too busy hob-nobbing to make way or for easy passage through the gallery. It's impossible.
So I return Saturday, when the gallery's empty, and ....
Well, it's discouragingly "modern", by which the artist is simply using words like "geology" to drag me in, there's very few rocks, and the rocks she's used are boring, and instead of being lovingly sculpted she's simply added shapes to them with modelling clay (I'd had the same idea, but imagined it carved from the living rock...). A few curtains dusted with mica, a few map-type thingies which are hardly art, this is bollocks.
The other gallery opening is tomorrow, and I'm not sure I want to invest any hope in this...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 431
The past week, two even, low and lowering clouds, rain and more rain, and now, with daylight savings time, 8 hours (roughly) of daylight obscured by fog & rain, the tones of grey diminishing and then advancing throughout the day, 8 AM until 4 PM.
And then it's dark.
All this made worse by the fact that I have a flu, or the Covid, I'm not sure which, or if it matters, a low level headache, cold, from time to time coughing up white frogs and spawn that stick in the sink...
Going to swill them down with boiling water and they cook up like eggs, whites fluttering from around and under the drain.
Try and sleep, to no avail, try and get up, to as well no avail, read books, drink, coffee, tea, soda, whatever...
Cook, food, don't forget to eat, the same pasta with sausage day after day, breakfast a hard-boiled egg, some cheese & cranberry, yogurt and blueberries, some seeds, sunflower, pumpkin, flax, days pass and the flu/Covid hangs in there, not so sick that I want to be inside all day, not so nice out that I want to be outside all day, and nowhere's social can you be in the land of the un-vaxxed unless you'd inspire suspicion and paranoia...
Anyways, it must be reaching the end of it's run, almost 2 weeks in, a slow slide in, and gradual climb out, rubbing tiger balm on my chest, lying on my industrial back massager, gonna shake the phlegm out of my lungs...
I'm in need of some joy, and if I can recover enough there's an event next weekend...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 433
Still on Facebook, far too often, checking Marketplace for a very few pieces of furniture that will complete my apartment.
And I end up on their videos. Treasure videos, because sometimes I look at the ones where they're looking for gold in the outback or digging up giant quartz crystals in the Mt. Blanc, Alabama and Mohawk Valley.
There's a lot of good stuff to be found.
The problem, I'm guessing, is there's just not enough of this going on, and so a whole pile of Tik-Tokkers have gotten in on the trend, making increasingly outlandish videos, some of which I watch, because, well, I just have to...
This girl is great, Asian, I'm guessing somewhere in China, she wades into the stream, looking for clams, when she finds one opening it to find no end to preposterous treasures. The happy face tattooed on her middle finger suggests some cultural alliances...
Of course the green heart shaped diamonds weren't enough, other clams gave were filled with pink heart shaped diamonds, brilliant blue diamonds, green pearls, blue marbles or bath beads, I mean, if you ever wondered where Dollorama got it's craft supplies I think I've figured it out...
These can become addictive, with the mental consequences somewhat akin to the physical consequences of a diet of only McDonalds.
I mean, there are metal detectorists that have no idea how to use a metal detector, people hauling up - what if were real - 1000lb gold bricks and vases with one hand, there are the "Cross-Cultural" vocalizations like "Wow" and "Oh My God" and "200 Kilograms" (as he's lifting it out with the claw of a hammer), the heavy breathing, the breaking open of a 200 lb gold nugget only to find that it's in fact a giant sapphire, giant clams filled with colored pearls that have already had the holes drilled...
And given the dispersal of the videos, there are content farms from Russia to Asia and Africa, and, given the numbers of views (some in the millions) these are clearly where the real treasures are.
I find this curious, my own tastes, there are perfectly real videos of people digging up Smokey Quartz points on Mount Blanc, gwindels, as well as on Pikes Peak and in Alabama, but they have the merest fraction of views, the real treasure lies in the generating of mindless content, monetizing it, dragging out the length of the video for "maximum engagement", not a "get to the point mentality", or "this is how / where we do it and what we find", it's appealing to an innate deep seated desire to find treasure and become rich beyond our wildest dreams.
Anyways, I had to share, my tastes are seriously being dumbed down by the internet and I'm greatly not getting out and digging up more treasures this summer. Although, looking around the apartment at all the rocks and I'm realizing I've dug up quit enough...for the moment at least.