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Not, per-se, a destination of mine, rather keeping the vocabulary and the thought-patterns alive until spring.
It's inspirational, this, the abundant and rich history of Washington, and we have the same here...more even, but it's better concealed beneath 10, 20, a hundred meters of glacial till...
It's an exercise, reading this, and makes me realize how little I've scratched the surface of the countless possibilities of where we live...
Paleo-placers, diamonds, gold, platinum, and where are all the opals? With all the bentonite & sandstone layers in the province, opalized wood and fossils, there have to be opals someplace...
...but that's my job. Prove the theory. 2 months and counting...
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With cold and wintry days, and not enough gas to get back to prospecting, I begin to catch up on my reading. 2 books - Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov, a traditional Russian Satire, in the vein of Bulgakov (but some 100 years his predecessor), it's a masterpiece of characterization and a gentle satire on the Russian nobility. Nuanced, romantic, in an amazing translation by Ann Dunnigan.
And the other, Trilby, by George Du Maurier, a bestseller of the late Victorian era, as opposite in quality and temper as could be imagined, full of stereotypical characters (not all kind, the Jewish stereotypes are offensive, the English, absurd, the French, well, you get the idea. Stereotypes.), slight events, now only notable because it introduces us to the idea and character of Svengali.
Oblomov is by far the better book, take Trilby as a curiosity and colorful exaggeration of life in Bohemian Paris. But as good a way as any to while away those few remaining leisurely hours...
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Which is good, insomuch as I like the ideas of Joseph Campbell, and bad, as in the dialogue with Bill Moyers is a poor vehicle for expressing his ideas. A good book, possibly, that could have benefited greatly from a removal of the interview format and a whole lot of editing and proofreading. Not surprisingly it's an abbreviated adaptation of a documentary on Campbell by the same name. Overall, OK, not great. But inspiration in some of the quotes, for example the famous speech by Chief Seattle, which upon further research proved to be in itself a myth written by Chief Seattle's fans and admirers, fitting, perhaps.
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And having finished what proved to be the best book I've read in a long time, Bruno Schulz's "The Street of Crocodiles", introduced to it by the animation of the same name by The Brothers Quay, a rich, vivid, metaphorical description of the author's life in Poland around the turn of the century.
“There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are double, make-believe streets. One's imagination, bewitched and misled, creates illusory maps of the apparently familiar districts, maps in which the streets have their proper places and usual names but are provided with new and fictitious configurations by the inexhaustible inventiveness of the night.”
You can read it online here: http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops.htm, which may be easier than finding a print edition...
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And I picked this up at the Flea Market, a Graphic Novel, attracted by the environmental themes and rough graphic style, I can imagine that with a little (or probably a lot) of practice my style might approach it. "For the daughter" I tell myself - because, indeed, I think she'll like it, but as she's still a few months away I pass the time by reading it.
And it's brilliant. By brilliant I mean it uncovers and reveals the complex layers, motivations and consequences of the ecological abyss we are plummeting into. And it's a bit hard-hitting, but the truth is, and it doesn't satisfy itself with the conventional media platitudes of "reuse, recycle...", it attacks the corporations, governments and institutions that are promoting the destruction of the planet, and raises complex philosophical issues of how domesticated, indeed zombified, by corporate and consumer culture, we are, and how we rebel against doing small and necessary evils to prevent larger ones...
It tackles in uncomfortable ways our passive and impotent attitudes towards the destruction of our planet, and raises up a call to arms...Genius. It's not a happy book, but unless you've been on Prozac the past hundred years, it's not a happy world.
AS THE WORLD BURNS: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial - By Derrick Jensen & Stephanie McMillan. 5/5 Stars, and kudos for them for having the courage to write a book that calls it like it is and probably hasn't sold that well. I'm hoping the daughter loves it as much as I have.
