Home
The Annual Inspection
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 404
And an email, the annual unit inspection, and - as if I didn't already know I'm being confronted with my shoddy housekeeping and the hoarding up of artist materials. I need to find a way to make this all work.
I pop by the office, try and bribe the building manager with some of the tasty kimchi I made the other day, but she's having none of it...
It's good, it's gotten a bit much this mess that sees me heading to the library rather than deal with all the skeletons I've pulled from the closet and laid out upon the floor, and while I'm rebelling against at what at most amounts to 2 or 3 hours work it will - once accomplished - ease my soul.
The Fastest Brick in the World
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 406
MacBook Air Yosemite, this morning, writing, all artistic on my Apple. I think to go to Chat GPT, I have some questions, and I discover that like tinyMCE it won't load. I get "Site security" issues, apparently Chat GPT is feeling insecure. And upon ignoring those, proceeding with caution, at my own risk, am confronted with a blank screen.
This, of course, is BS, and I'm getting rapidly annoyed with what is proving to be the fastest brick in the world.
Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid - Malcolm Lowry
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 335
This took far too long to read.
It's autobiographical, the author simply swaps out the lead character for himself, returning to Mexico after a long hiatus, with a new wife, afraid of confronting old people, situations, trying to put right a past that can't be put right or in any sort of order.
He's an alcoholic, forever struggling against the temptation of another drink, and - for a book containing relatively little action, it's a masterpiece of the interior life of the chaotic and suffering artist.
Now - a masterpiece is true, and his prose is magnificent, the directions his mind takes - unravelling memory, experience, sleep, the perpetually neurotic over analyzing of the minutiae of life, the failure to take both remedial and obvious steps, well, I get it. I get it too well. And so it's uncomfortable, we've a great deal in common, if only I possessed a teaspoon of his talent, and so it took forever to read and now, now, finally it's done.
Ghosts and Tornadoes
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 763
That I am at a hotel, resort, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. That someone I don't know has a child and she is off to some sort of bogus awards ceremony, there is another kid there as well...I don't know anyone here.
Someone brings me a diet coke, they must have shaken it because when I open it it fizzes and gets all over the carpet, more than was in the can, but I don't care...
I'm busy, making notes, I have a notepad but some of the pages have dark pictures & ink on them, my notes, they disappear into the ink, illegible, and then in places they are visible, writing into the darkness...
It doesn't matter. I'll make out what I was writing later.
I'm obsessed, I'm trying to remember a book I wanted to read, or maybe I had read a long time ago, a slim book, beautifully written, about two people. And I'm making notes of the title, I'd been unable to find it back then, but now, in the age of the internet, I should be able to find it, there would be no reason why I could not...only I can't remember the title and am trying to guess as to the plot, the events, and these notes are my attempts to recapture, remember it...I'm not having a lot of luck...
This resort in the middle of nowhere, mountains maybe, trees, it's getting dark outside.
It's time for the awards ceremony and I'm left with the child I don't know and so I concede, promise that we'll go as well, I'll be the good parent to this unknown waif, and we head outside to walk up to the building where it will be held.
South of us, great tornadoes are churning up the landscape, black funnels across a dark sky sweeping across the landscape...
Turning to watch I at first think it's a movie, then realize it's not, it's happening...
And turning back to the direction we're walking I see hundreds of tiny tornadoes, windstorms, whirlwinds making their way south through the rain, amongst us, beside the road, and as they get closer I see them briefly in color, they're the innumerable spirits of the dead, talking and walking, when they are close they faintly glimmer in color, I can see a Hawaiian Shirt, when they move away they again turn grey and disappear into the rain.
I'm filming this with my phone, incredulous...
Hastening up to the rest of the group to show them, ask breathlessly if they've seen what I have, the group now ignoring me, I turn and see to the side of the road an older kindly Mexican lady, she's sitting at a table, calling me over, only she can see me, and I understand but I'm not ready, I have to find that book...
(This dream woke me, disturbed me. It's exactly the dream I'd expect to have to prepare me for crossing over, and reminds me to get my affairs in order. The tornadoes, I'd spent the day watching F5 videos on YouTube - the storm warnings over Oklahoma, the Mexican Lady, perhaps from Malcolm Lowry's "Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid")
Page 82 of 877