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A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 165
Found in a "Books Everywhere" pile, everywhere but here, an ex-nun (8 years) writing about the history of world mythology, breaking it into eras of hunter/gatherer, agrarian, axial and post-axial, until finally we reach the "Great Western Transformation".
She's good, not - as you might suspect of a nun, obsessively "religious", she seems to have come to a reasoned understanding or series of epiphanies that explain world mythology.
These books aren't as common as you might think.
Nothing I didn't know, but - she does refer me to an abundance of myths and sources I haven't read. Worthwhile.
And I'm always curious - like minds we always are, we see things the same way, but divide and weigh them differently,
Blaise Cendrars - The Astonished Man (2)
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 221
In no ways did this disappoint, and I am thrilled there are yet a dozen books left out there by him to find...
(***N.B. I've ordered 4 more already, shipping, US Pricing, makes him an expensive addiction, but...)
Anyways, a couple of other scenes of interest (the whole damned book was fascinating), his description of Gustave Lerouge (and his domestic arrangements), his stay with Paquita, a Mexican Patroness who puts him up in an disused observatory filled with sexually ambiguous automatons and wax dolls of her own invention, furnishes him a library: "...contained nothing but mystical works on the left, and, on the right, illustrated works of eroticism..."
And - of especial amusement - one last description:
"I remember riding on horseback through the Cordillera of the Andes, searching for the ruins of an Inca Temple (or a fortress ?) in Western Bolivia, in a region where the mountains are most desolate, the most crumpled, the most barren, and the country is the most backward and desert-like in the world, and for a whole week watching a grand piano being manoeuvered across the terrain,"
And now he comes to the Piano, and the ruins of an Inca Temple are left far behind.
Fortunately he's several autobiographies, that each run different themes through his life, his style, his poetry, prose, characters, situations, well, first rate. 5 Stars. I'd retype the entire goddamned book here for your pleasure, only we value those things most we search out for ourselves...
(Note: those books ordered, well, Canada Post's Strike means I'll be waiting a while. An-tic-i-.......PATION!. And on that note the ferry strike is ongoing, 3 runs a day, the entire East Shore now forced to confront a voluntary exile they bought into and now are protesting. This will be the state of the US in a couple of years, the infrastructure crumbles, is sold off, cancelled, like the provinces with healthcare and any number of other public services, the times, they are a changing...This is not the beginning of the end, it's the beginning of our recognition of it...)
Soylent Green
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 443
Everywhere they're pitching this stuff, advertising, at the stores, it's all you can get, there's nothing else...
And I'm in a room trying to explain to a group of men - business men, from the looks of it, their age, their suits, don't they know what this stuff is? Did none of them ever see the movie with Charleton Heston? I mean, I never did but I know the gist of it...
They didn't, don't know, don't care....and I wonder if anyone will remember the taste of fresh fruit and vegetables...
***
Next dream, waiting on a ferry. Not the local ferry, one I've never been on, half hour crossing each way, I'm waiting both for my daughter and I have a date, prospects, not sure how this is going to work out, the pains of being a single father...
The Ferry arrives and I see someone on the shore, she's looking to the ferry as well although I suspect she's waiting for me, looking out, looking exactly as she did so long ago and she is not - not at all, who I was expecting...
****
Strange dreams, The second, the person - well, exactly that person, but why her? And no place in it I recognized, not home, not the ferry, strange dreams indeed...
The Library Book Sale
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 179
I had forgotten, then saw a handbill up advertising it and headed up...
Hope against hope, reading Cendrars and Bloch have given me a whole pile of other books and authors I want to read.
This, of course, doesn't happen, but the Library Book Sale, well, it has everything else. Books on self help, grieving, potboilers, divorce, best-sellers, sections on the Titanic (a legitimate topic if so much of it weren't inspired by that insipid movie), history, War, Governer-General Awards, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, the usual suspects, NY Times Recommendations, the Guardians Best Books, books of recipes, a veritable library of art books, covering every artist, style, technique, medium..., books on religion, spirituality, relationships, science fiction,
I really don't need more books, but at $2 each I can't resist. A handful to tide me over until the midnight order of Cendrars begins trickling in, another month before I break down and search out some more targeted reading...
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