Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life...
Fernando Pessor
The Book of Disquiet

last profile update: Friday: 22 August 2008 12:45am
last excerpt update: Thursday: 3 July 2008 4:30pm
recent activity: swashbuckling

WARNING: Evil Green Enabler Here...Approach with Caution

The Enabler's Song
The Enabler went down to Shelfari
She was lookin' for a soul to steal
She was in a bind 'cause she was way behind
And she was willing to make a deal

When she came across this young man
Sittin' round and readin' Dickens real fast
And the Enabler jumped up on a hickory stump
And said, "Dude, let me tell you what..."

"I bet you didn't know it
But I'm a reader too
And if you'd care to take a dare
I'll make a bet with you..."

"Now, you read pretty good writers, boy
But give the Enabler her due
I bet a book of gold against your soul
That I read better stuff than you..."

Just Finished: My Name is Red...Orhan Pamuk, American Pastoral...Philip Roth, To Each His Own...Leonard Sciascia
Finishing Up: The Changing Light of Sandover...James Merrill
Currently Reading: The Magic Mountain...Thomas Mann, The Three Musketeers (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)...Alexandre Dumas, Richard Pevear, trans., David Copperfield...Himself, Tales of Hoffmann...E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe...Douglas Adams, Night Watch...Terry Pratchett, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar...Paul Theroux, I Am a Cat...Soseki Natsume
Research Reading: The Templar of Tyre: Part III of the Deeds of the Cypriots...P. Crawford (trans.), The Real History Behind the Templars...Sharan Newman
On Deck: Picture Palace...Paul Theroux, A Stranger in the Earth...Marcel Theroux, Amrita...Banana Yoshimoto, The Quincunx...Charles Paliser
In the Bullpen: The Hidden Assassins...Robert Wilson, The Red and the Black...Stendhal
On the Backburner: Jane Eyre...Charlotte Bronte, The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy...Robert Anton Wilson
The Reread Pile: On the Road...Jack Kerouac, The Three Musketeers (Oxford World Classics)...Alexandre Dumas, William Barrow, trans.
Just Bought: Portnoy's Complaint...Philip Roth, Picture Palace...Paul Theroux, A Stranger in the Earth...Marcel Theroux, Asleep in the Sun...Adolfo Bioy Casares. Twelve Bar Blues...Patrick Neate, Midnight's Children...Salman Rushdie, The Fox in the Attic...Richard Hughes, Inverted World...Christopher Priest

Just for future reference since it seems to be necessary, 'rob' is short for 'roberta'...and the next person who calls me a 'he' or a 'sir' is going to have ALL of Dan Brown's books 'recommended' to them...and that's no idle threat.

Question: should you read (insert title here)?
Answer: Being a naturally mean and evil person, I really dont give a flying fuck what you read...now go away before I smother you w/ my plumed hat...

'If you hold the bottle against the light as you pour it into the glass, you will see what color Guinness really is. Just where the cheerful liquid flows over the lip of the bottle, you will see a beautiful deep color glittering like a jewel. It is a moment in time and it is called the ruby point...'
Giles Foden
Ladysmith

William Blake said he could see
Vistas of infinity
In the smallest speck of sand
Held in the hollow of his hand.
Models for this claim we've got
In the work of Mandelbrot:
Fractal diagrams partake
Of the essence sensed by Blake.
Basic forms will still prevail
Independent of the Scale;
Viewed from far or viewed from near
Special signatures are clear,
When you magnify a spot,
What you've had before, you've got,
Smaller, smaller, smaller, yet,
Still the same details are set;
Finer than the finest hair
Blake's infinity is there,
Rich in structure all the way-
Just as the mystic poets say.
Jasper Memory - Blake and Fractals

With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shared romance
Synchronicity
The connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincible
If we share, this nightmare
We can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act, as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity
We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity
A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity
Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity...
Sting...and Carl Jung

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails...and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever...
Anonymous 'curse' on book thieves from the monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Stephen Crane

In his autobiography, 'Confessions', written about ce 400, the philosopher and theologian St. Augustine quotes an answer he has heard to the theological equivalent of 'What came before the Big Bang?'
'What was God doing before He created the universe?'
'Before He created Heaven and Earth, God created Hell for people like you who ask this kind of question!'
Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe
Simon Singh

THE POEM OF PANGUR BAN
(proof that cats, books, and writers have always kept company...)

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
Irish, 8th century
Written by a student of the monastery of Carinthia on a copy of St
Paul's Epistles.

I grew up in a family of possessed readers, my mom and older sisters were seldom seen w/out a book in their mitts. It took me a while to catch up. As a teen I preferred magazines, mostly music mags, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Musician, and several that are extinct now, as well as Time, Newsweek, Life, National Geographic, and Smithsonian which were always in the house...high school had turned me off reading books...it wasn't until I was out that I realized what I didn't like was being TOLD what to read, worrying about tests, or writing book reports, an exercise that always seemed utterly pointless to me...but once out I caught on, and it's been full-speed ahead ever since for the past couple decades...

...as for what I like to read, I'm both picky and not very...mostly I judge books on whether or not they bore me...I love good rich historical novels, but I love junk too, and kid lit, contemporary fiction of most sorts, and epic poetry, and I read much history, and dabble w/ books on physics, astronomy, and math...I'm not awed by most 'literature'...much of it I find tedious, overwrought, repetitious, pretentious, and manipulative dreck, just like I did in high school...the ones I've included on my shelves are works I've enjoyed a lot, but others I've read, that I only got through w/ a lot of teeth-gritting, are not on there, (and some I never got through at all and just gave myself a monster headache trying) i.e Steinbeck, Faulkner, Salinger, Nabokov, Rand, O'Neill, Joyce...ick, ick, and ick...Gone With the Wind, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn...ick, ick, and ick again...(okay I caved - the ones I actually managed to finish, after much painful and unrewarded effort, are up, but I still hate them...a lot.)

But it's not just the reading I love, the stories, I love books themselves, seeing them pile up on my shelves here at home, grouped by writer and subject...heavy hardbacks, glossy paperbacks, new or used, mass-market or trade...it's very satisfying...

*shelves are currently undergoing renovation*

And since Shelfari has now made it extra easy to assign ratings, and since I have now come up w/ an idea to deal w/ the disparity of so many books and genres, I'll start assigning stars as I start filling up my 'own' shelf...
Since it's simply not at all possible to compare Dante to Nora Roberts, or Milton to John Grisham, I'll assign ratings based on one single criteria only: How much did I enjoy it? Since it IS possible for me to enjoy both Dante and Nora immensely, if not on the same level or for the same reasons, then this is the only way for me to rate books and not rip my hair out in frustration...the minute I start judging by writing, plot, dialogue, story, literary importance, readability, so on and so forth, it becomes work, which I have an allergy against...and I really like my hair and dont wanna be bald...

5 stars: completely loved it to pieces
4 stars: liked it immensely
3 stars: was okay-liked it
2 stars: ick
1 star: burn it

A Few Bookish Lyrics...

It's no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov...
Sting

Well, it was Neal Cassady who started me to travelin'
All the stories I was told, I believed every one of them
Well, it's a wild road I'm on, you understand
With no time to worry 'bout tomorrow
When you're followin' the sun...
Patrick Simmons

There's a moon over Bourbon Street tonight
I see faces as they pass beneath the pale lamplight
I've no choice but to follow that call
The bright lights, the people, and the moon and all
I pray every day to be strong
For I know what I do must be wrong
Oh, you'll never see my shade
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
It was many years ago
That I became what I am
I was trapped in this life
Like an innocent lamb
Now I can never show my face at noon
And you'll only see me walking by the light of the moon
The brim of my hat hides the eyes of a beast
I've the face of a sinner
But the hands of a priest
Oh, you'll never see my shade
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
She walks everyday
Through the streets of New Orleans
She's innocent and young
From a family of means
I have stood every day outside her window at night
To struggle with my instinct in the pale lamplight
How could I be this way?
When I pray to God above
I must love what I destroy
And destroy the thing I love
Oh, you'll never see my shade
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street...
Sting - written in the summer of 1984 while sitting in a hotel room on Bourbon Street in New Orleans with a full moon glowing over the city after reading Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire

Hey Jack, now for the tricky part
When you were the brightest star
Who were the shadows?
Of the San Francisco beat boys
You were the favorite
Now they sit and rattle their bones
And think of their blood stoned days.
Natalie Merchant

When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School
It's a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall...
Paul Simon

Roses have thorns
Shining waters mud
And cancer lurks deep
In the sweetest bud
Clouds and eclipses
Stain the moon and the sun
And history reeks
Of the wrongs we have done...
Sting/Shakespeare

Dear Sir or Madam will you read my book?
It took me years to write will you take a look?
Based on a novel by a man named Lear,
And I need a job,
So I want to be a paperback writer,
It's a dirty story of a dirty man,
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job,
But he wants to be a paperback writer,
It's a thousand pages give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two,
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round,
And I want to be a paperback writer,
If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight,
If you must return it you can send it here,
But I need a break,
And I want to be a paperback writer...
Lennon-McCartney

I also write now...I'm working on a novel about the last years of the Knights Templar...and no, it's not about their myths or the legends attached to them, those both bore and annoy me, there's no Dan Brown or his ilk on my shelves (ick)...it's a novel based on their history only...and if you look, you can see many of the books I've used as research on my shelves...

Everything can be told. It's just a matter of starting, one word follows another...
Javier Marias
A Heart So White

I thought I'd stick the synop here for considered perusal...

The Betrayal of Peter
The Crusades were a turbulent episode in our collective history–-the violent shocks of which still reverberate though to our own time. But when they were over, the two most powerful religious Militant Orders found themselves at loose ends; the very soul and purpose of their existence cut away from them forever. Only one managed to adapt to the changes round them–-and survived. The other, led by a brave, yet curiously naive Grand Master, would cling to its true purpose–-to win back the Holy Land for Christendom. He would fail–-and the Order would find itself at the mercy of a greedy French king and his vengeful lawyer.

Amidst all this intrigue, are three young knights–-two who joined the Order in the wake of Acre, when and where the Holy Land as a Christian place of worship ceased to exist, and one who grew up there among the Knights and the Muslims, and witnessed first-hand its bloody demise at the hands of the military might of Islam and their ruthless leader.

First ripped from their homes by the differing forces that would guide them–-calling, destiny, and duty--and then from everything they had learned to love and cherish, they would–-just barely–-escape the fate of their brother Knights in France, join the cause of a young and desperate Scottish king who believed his people had the right to be free from the whims of a foreign and ruthless monarch who wanted its land and its people to bow to his hegemony–-a cause the three young men would make their own–-marry, have children, and live the lives they thought would forever be denied them.

Their loyalty and sense of honor, however, would eventually call them back to France as their Grand Master met his courageous demise at the stake amid flames that, in the end, did not silence him...

___________________________________

well, since a few lovely people have shown a bit of interest and since I wont likely be finishing this book until sometime in the 2030's...heh...I thought I'd put a little excerpt here to join the synop...I'll change it periodically, showing bits and pieces...putting a whole chapter here would take up too much space, I'd think...though that seems to be unlimited on our profile pages so far...

(note: please excuse the fact that there's no indention for new paragraphs and dialogue...posting here doesnt allow for it, and if there's a command for it, I have no idea what it is...)

Setting the Scene: Rambouillet Forest 1295

They talked of many things,
Of war, of love, of hounds, of hawks,
Of Tournaments and personal combat--Chastelain de Coucy

In the Middle Ages, hunting was not just a necessity, but a elaborate sport, particulalry for the nobility, and King Philip was a great practitioner of its art, almost to the point of obsession, which was most unusual given his personality...in any case, in this scene we leave off where the previous scene between the king and his lawyer ended...much has happened in the interim, and this they discuss briefly while the king indulges in his passion, but in his own peculiar way...Rambouillet Forest was one of the great Royal hunting parks, half a day's ride outside Paris...

The hunt.
It was his passion. His release. The only time he forgot himself and became one with nature’s many creatures.
There were times when he loved the ostentatious pageantry of a full-scale hunt with baying hounds, screeching hawks, colorful banners snapping in the wind, the musical tones of the horns blasting their instructions and dead calls, and the exhilarating ritual of the curee when his lovely, faithful hounds received their well-earned blood-soaked reward.
But there were other times when he wanted to be alone. To hunt and stalk without the help of his hounds. To feel all his nerve-endings a-tingle in the whispering silence of the fog-enshrouded forest. To feel the rain on his face, and the chill damp air, smelling of pine and wet grass, in his lungs. To feel the soggy earth under his boots, and to feel the thudding measured rhythm of his heart beat in synchronized communion with his prey.
It was all quite pagan and heathenish, which only heightened its appeal to Philip, the Church’s ‘Most Christian King.’
From a distance of about two hundred yards, mounted on a placid bay courser, de Nogaret, impassively, but hardly patiently, waited for his king to sight his kill and be done with it.
The lawyer would never understand this inane obsession Philip had for hunting. Standing round in the freezing wet waiting, waiting...and waiting.
Sighing, the lawyer ran one hand through his thick, damp black mane as he gripped the bridle of the king’s black war charger with the other, wishing for a warm fire and a glass of cognac. He thought grimly of Flote, who always managed to avoid this duty by citing various maladies and pulling rank on his younger partner, and he watched, bored out of his mind, as Philip, wearing nothing on this frigid morning but a white long-sleeved linen tunic, which was rolled tightly up both arms, tight black trousers and boots, stalked his prey, a huge stag moving at a dignified walk through the trees, staying downwind and keeping his distance on silent feet until he was certain of the kill.
The king crept closer and closer, his distinctive human smell somewhat muted by the rain, by careful degrees. But when hardly more than thirty yards remained between them, the magnificent beast suddenly lifted it’s antlered head, as if sensing danger. Reacting instantly, Philip sighted his already nocked longbow and let loose its deadly fletched bolt.
It was a perfect shot, just below the beast’s shoulder, and even de Nogaret had to admire it, as it immediately took down the huge beast, sending it to the leaf-strewn turf with a plaintive bellow and powerful kicks of its hind legs. Then it was still, and Philip approached it with reserved confidence, sharpened dagger out and ready.
It lay on its side, its huge chest heaving, and its mouth flecked with blood and foam.
Philip sunk down on one knee and quickly, expertly, lifted its heavy head by the muzzle and slit its throat, severing the jugular vein and other main arteries, and then watching with satisfaction as the animal died instantly, its deep brown eyes glazing over, and its warm steaming blood soaking the earth and the king’s black-clad knee.
Only when de Nogaret was certain that the stag was dead did he approach the king, and the closer he got, the more nauseated he felt. The whole forest reeked thickly now with the metallic, copper smell of fresh blood. He swallowed it though and eyed the king speculatively.
Philip had risen from his knee and now stood silently, absently wiping his dagger slowly and deliberately on his blood stained pants as he gazed off, his sapphire eyes dilated and opaque, at some distant point, a thin, almost beatific, smile on his lips. His slender hands and white shirt were also stained crimson, and he did not seem to care. He never cared, not when he hunted. Normally he was a fussy king, always taking pains to keep his person, and those round him, as clean as possible. Philip could barely stand to talk to people, let alone smell them.
But on the hunt, he was...different.
While others of the party liked to compete to see who could remain bloodless while butchering. Philip did not care. In fact, de Nogaret thought the king went out of his way to get as bloody as possible. Perhaps because it was some sort of pagan idea he liked to indulge in, but the lawyer privately thought that the king simply knew how much it enhanced his already forbidding appearance.
Philip dragged his bare arm across his sweaty brow. The rain had eased somewhat, but the sky’s iron-grey clouds held the promise of more to come.
Having dismounted, the lawyer wrapped his black wool cloak more tightly about himself. Warm fire, cognac, warm fire, cognac, he chanted in his head like a litany, but that was not what passed his lips.
“Quite a kill, Philip. I hope that you do not expect me to drag the filthy, flea-ridden thing all the way back to the Cite,” he said.
The king’s serpentine smile grew a bit wider. “No, I will send the berners for it.”
“Well, I am quite relieved,” de Nogaret said mildly.
Philip’s answering chuckle was coldly sardonic. He was well aware of just how much his lawyer disliked this sport, which was why the king invited him on occasion just for the satisfaction of watching the lawyer’s lip curl in disgust. It amused him.
De Nogaret sighed like an impatient schoolboy. “Can we go now, Philip?” he asked, almost testily.
“‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God’,” Philip murmured, ignoring his lawyer’s peevish impatience and still staring off into the distance. “Did you know that they say that a white hart is immortal?”
De Nogaret arched an eyebrow. “Indeed? And if you kill one and eat its heart raw do you become immortal yourself?”
Philip chuckled again. “They cannot be killed, for they do not exist.”
The lawyer grunted. “Pity.”
Philip turned finally to face his lawyer, his odd smile still intact. “Yes...truly.” He bent briefly to shove his dagger into the top of his boot, his eyes clearing somewhat as he slowly reclaimed his spirit from the hunt and came into himself once more. “Has the old hermit been found yet?”
“No,” de Nogaret replied laconically.
“And what, pray, is Charles doing? Waiting for the old man to show up on his doorstep and hold his hands out to be chained? Granted, he has shown more spine, by abdicating Peter’s Throne, than I ever would have given him credit for, but Charles is behaving as if our little hermit were Merlin and has vanished with a puff of smoke.”
The lawyer’s lips twitched. “According to his dispatch, he says that the old man is quite wily, eluding them like a fox.”
Philip tried very hard not to roll his eyes--and barely succeeded. “Then mayhap he would like to borrow my hounds. I think ‘tis time we joined this hunt. Have a small contingent–-foot and horse--sent to Italy. Have them try looking somewhere near his little cave on Mount Morrone. He is not so dense as to go back to the same cave, but he might try to escape Italy from there by crossing the Adriatic...or his little flock might have squirreled him away somewhere in the vicinity.”
De Nogaret raised an eyebrow. “And if we find him, what will we do with him?”
Philip grinned viciously. “We will put him on display. Martyrs make such interesting spectacles, yes?”
The lawyer grunted again. “Gaetani will not be pleased. He wants that old man dead.”
Philip flicked his hand impatiently. “Yes, yes...I am well aware of what he wants, and I do not remotely care. Either we find the old man and use him as a thorn in Gaetani’s side or Charles’ people do, whereupon that viper will no doubt have him killed, and we charge His Holiness with murder. Either way it works in our favor. Now, come,” he said, grasping hold of, with rough solicitude, his sodden, shivering lawyer. “Let us dry you out so that you may get busy.”


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