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Love in Excess - Eliza Haywood
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1663
Now it is of the period - 1719 - 1720, and adheres to almost all of the ridiculous conventions of the time - disguises, secret rendezvous, the replacing of one party with another in bed, coincidences and mistaken identities, in terms of plot it is not even slightly plausible - not even for the period.
But such is the time.
On the other hand Eliza Haywood was the first novelist to endow her female characters with the same motives and desires as the male ones. Which makes it exceptional. And, add to that her way of putting the most eloquent speeches in their mouths and you have some curious speeches indeed:
"And are you that dull, cold Platonist, which can prefer the visionary pleasures of an absent mistress, to the warm transports of the substantial present?" The Count was pretty much surprized at these words, coming from the mouth of a woman of honour, and began now to perceive what her aim was...
Curious. File next to Chesterfield, Laclos and Casanova...
Jewelry Stash in Hollowed Out Book
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1965
Like many of the stories in this section, the surprise isn't in the finding of the treasure, it's in the bookseller "Doing the right thing" and returning the jewelry to it's "rightful" owner.
Think, then, of how often this occurs (and everyone knows the hollowed out book trick); and yet how seldom we hear about it. This is probably up there with the "reported" treasures found by builders when doing renovations on homes (practically nonexistent, yet rest assured there's a large underground traffic in antiquities and art recovered from properties where the owner is never made aware of it's existence).
Link: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/143459/jewellery-stash-first-secondhand-book-seller
The Character Waiter
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1889
We've got dinner theater tickets and so I take the boy. It's one of those musical productions where every waiter has a part and between courses gets up on stage. This evening's production is a "Rock and Roll" themed event, so there's Madonna, Boy George, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, the Beatles, there's dozens of roles and no matter who you are you'll have a turn on stage.
We're watching this and I think I recognize someone. Someone I went to elementary school with, one of the 'luminaries', as it were, a smart kid, I grew up in a small town, there weren't many 'smart' kids and so I marked him from the crowd, everyone did, as being destined for great things.
Now I think I recognize him because in the wee hours one evening a couple of years ago I googled his name, curious as to what had become of him. and had found that he was playing in a touring show playing at this theater, and I had meant to drop around and say "hi" but circumstances didn't permit.
So he's serving, he brings me my wine, he's a big "AC-DC" type wig on his head but there's something about the face - the accent, the voice is all wrong, not what I remember at all, but the height - that would be about right, and the face...
The boy has dropped his spoon, character waiter picks it up, talks about spoons falling from the ceiling, this must be the worse job in the world - not really "serving", you're more an "entertainer", it's somehow as if you couldn't get a job as a waiter or as an actor and so ended up being the character waiter.
I'm filled with sympathy for him, ridiculous given my own situation of being a waiter-slash-unemployed, and he's made eye contact with me a few times and I'm not sure if he's recognized me....
I confront the waitress - she breaks character for a moment to confirm my suspicions, the boy is watching. He's just applied for the performing arts program and I tell him this could well end up being his career. He's not too enthralled with my vote of confidence.
The show goes on and eventually he drops by, the character waiter, and we talk. How long has it been? About 30 years. In fact, almost exactly 30 years, and you realize how old we're getting. And we talk briefly, catch up, he's now in "Arts and Entertainment" and I'm - well, I'm overwhelmed with compassion (and this only because there's an inability to recognize or acknowledge my own predicament...). He gives me his number, we'll go for coffee and catch up another time, he's working now, and so he walks away between the tables talking loudly to himself so that everyone can hear:
"It's OK to look at me, I'm famous...."
Motorways and Pyramids
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1926
(3 dreams in one night, and a heap of illegible notes on the nightstand in the morning)
I'm trying to get out a big city - ish, driving, but the roads circle and loop about mountains and I'm forever coming back to where I started from. I'm at the top of a mountain, it's night time, or close enough, the sun is setting in the mountains behind me and in front of me are the Great Pyramids. They're huge, like mountains themselves, ruined, were it not for the obviously opened tombs on the tops of them, and the obvious "Pyramidal" shape of them you might not recognize them. They're lit in that orange glow of sunset, pink, almost as if they're on fire. My mountain, the one I'm on, it's cast into shadow and in the shadows there glows the phosphorescence of rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, coyotes, and there are vendors trying to lure you forward with the promise of tacky souvenirs but I know better and go back to the car ...
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