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Blaise Cendrars - The Astonished Man (2)
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 344
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: 687
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: 394
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...
November 14, 2024
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 299
Today, again rainy, foggy, wet, how many days now? My nose starts pouring from the moment I step outside. Morning, get groceries, then the bus-stop, to Balfour, to hunt arrowheads, all this rain must have turned up something new ...
Cash is there, the Mother-in-Law's brother from the last restaurant, holding his dog. It's a cute dog.
We're catching up, he likes rocks, knows a few things, has ideas, about rubies, sapphires, etc, that he's found, local, only - well, he's unfortunately a junkie. Which is not a slur but it does somewhat mean you got to put things into context a bit.
But we're talking and he's realizing the importance of getting off the junk, just got subsidized housing up lake, wants to make some changes, it doesn't get him high anymore, does nothing for him, and fuck, the amount he needs, his prescription, it'd kill 10 people...
I know what he's talking about. It takes me a mickey to get sober, pass for sober, fuck how well do I know.
SO we chat, bus comes, I confirm a bus will be returning (because damned if on this cold and rainy day I want to be trapped up lake for hours and hours on end).
I was right. The wash-out has grown, some large flakes/scrapers/micro-blades, and further up the shore a couple of scrapers, (maybe, hard to tell, odd bits of stone regardless), and a couple of rude arrowheads.
From loonie, left - a scraper, (I think, oddly shaved to a sharp edge from both sides, bilateral), above left, oddly shaped rock out of some sort of tourmalinated schist, oddly shaped and out of place on a washout. Above loonie, arrowhead, hard to see but to handle it becomes obvious, knapped both sides to a symmetrical point, otherwise mostly debitage, a couple of "micro-blades" (or debitage, again), and to the right, a carefully worked flint, dark grey, knapped both sides, almost as if it were an arrowhead that lost it's head, then got repurposed.
So, given the rain and chilly day, my nose draining me perpetually, no box of Kleenex could keep up, my bag filling with water, not at all unsuccessful, given my last day out there a positive victory, the rain, despite running off my nose, jacket, hands, despite freezing to death and getting soaked through and through, if you keep on looking you'll keep on finding.
Worth noting, while most of the rocks above would be invisible in any other setting, but the distinctive green/grey of the Kootenay Argillite does stand out in the fog and the rain. it's obvious, the paler examples especially. The scrapers on the left, well, that's just intuition, for once not discarded....
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