I am considering updating my video rental page. A daunting task. I was down in Bellingham last week bookshoping, and with the money I received from my aunt in California for my birthday (April 1), I picked up a couple of leather Easton Press books — The Decameron by Boccaccio; The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. I adore beautiful books, the look and feel of them. I also found a couple of books I had been looking for, the aforementioned The Book of Embraces and The Horseman On The Roof by Jean Giono. I also bought Jazz by Toni Morrison.
A nasty tempest yesterday and scintillating weather today. Writing briefly about fantasy literature yesterday stirred my desire to read some and possibly write some (I must must must begin working on my novel's second draft), so I hunted down Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara and began to read it. It's a little cliche and the prose is quite simple but his use of active verbs and dynamic description both make the narrative move smoothly. His action scenes are particularly smooth which draws the reader in by being almost invisible. A net friend sent me the Webster Dictionary on CD, but it won't load properly.
Am I the only one who cannot stand the Los Angeles Lakers? Get this, I could not find one channel that carried the Philadelphia/Milwaukee basketball games so far. It's the NBA semifinals for crying out loud. I could not believe it. Go Sixers.
Tuesday, May 29, 2001
Monday, May 28, 2001
Reading | The Evils of Christianity
I updated my reading page with some of the titles of books I've been reading the last couple of months. It's a rather eclectic list, I'm afraid. But if anyone has any questions about them, please do not hesitate to ask since books are a large part of my life, an important part.
I've always been a strong fantasy literature enthusiast ever since I was old enough to understand Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and other similarly fantastic stories. I remember devouring Howard's Conan the Barbarian books and the other authors that kept the character alive, notably Sprague de Camp who had a beautiful way of describing violent settings and characters. Then I fell in love with Tolkien and CS Lewis and the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. So when Terry Brooks comes out with a new novel, I usually read it.
The Le Carre book was an experiment, my dad admires him and I wanted to see what was the big deal. I still don't know.
And you're probably thinking, "three Stephen King novels?" -- well, I think he's a pretty good writer but beyond that he is one of the few authors that can really make me laugh. I appreciate that. Maybe I relax more reading his work, and it makes me more receptive to humor, I'm not sure.
My browser, Netscape, does not seem to want to translate the two spaces I place after each sentence, so I apologize for the density of text. I'll keep trying to change it. It's probably one of those bobby traps set by the Microsofts of the world designed to make you use their hypertext editors.
This friend of mine and I went out to a coffeehouse today. First, we went to the video store, because I wanted to rent a couple of movies for the coming week (the weather is miserable today). I rented the following -- "The Big Kahuna," "The Cradle Will Rock," and "Deuce Bigalowe: Male Gigolo." I know, I know, it's shameless.
At the coffeehouse, my friend started to rant about all the evils Christianity and religion have provoked over the years. I'm not sure if I incited her or what, but it took me aback. Like slow down and chill, it's not Jesus' fault psychotic people over the years have found in religion and its misinterpretation a handy excuse to kill, rape and pillage. The "good news" in the new testament is that love saves and has saved. Anyway, I didn't know what to say. Gentleness will penetrate the hardest substance, as the ancient Chinese proverb goes.
I'm in a baseball fantasy pool (Yahoo) this year. Earl talked me into it. Ironically I began the season not knowing anything about the game, and frankly finding the game quite boring. But after just a couple of months, I have become fairly knowledgeable, and I have been in first place in the pool almost from the beginning. I was in a basketball fantasy pool last year, and I ended up in next-to-last place, just above Earl. It was a pathetic showing certainly, but next year will be different.
Now, of course, I like baseball.
I've always been a strong fantasy literature enthusiast ever since I was old enough to understand Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and other similarly fantastic stories. I remember devouring Howard's Conan the Barbarian books and the other authors that kept the character alive, notably Sprague de Camp who had a beautiful way of describing violent settings and characters. Then I fell in love with Tolkien and CS Lewis and the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. So when Terry Brooks comes out with a new novel, I usually read it.
The Le Carre book was an experiment, my dad admires him and I wanted to see what was the big deal. I still don't know.
And you're probably thinking, "three Stephen King novels?" -- well, I think he's a pretty good writer but beyond that he is one of the few authors that can really make me laugh. I appreciate that. Maybe I relax more reading his work, and it makes me more receptive to humor, I'm not sure.
My browser, Netscape, does not seem to want to translate the two spaces I place after each sentence, so I apologize for the density of text. I'll keep trying to change it. It's probably one of those bobby traps set by the Microsofts of the world designed to make you use their hypertext editors.
This friend of mine and I went out to a coffeehouse today. First, we went to the video store, because I wanted to rent a couple of movies for the coming week (the weather is miserable today). I rented the following -- "The Big Kahuna," "The Cradle Will Rock," and "Deuce Bigalowe: Male Gigolo." I know, I know, it's shameless.
At the coffeehouse, my friend started to rant about all the evils Christianity and religion have provoked over the years. I'm not sure if I incited her or what, but it took me aback. Like slow down and chill, it's not Jesus' fault psychotic people over the years have found in religion and its misinterpretation a handy excuse to kill, rape and pillage. The "good news" in the new testament is that love saves and has saved. Anyway, I didn't know what to say. Gentleness will penetrate the hardest substance, as the ancient Chinese proverb goes.
I'm in a baseball fantasy pool (Yahoo) this year. Earl talked me into it. Ironically I began the season not knowing anything about the game, and frankly finding the game quite boring. But after just a couple of months, I have become fairly knowledgeable, and I have been in first place in the pool almost from the beginning. I was in a basketball fantasy pool last year, and I ended up in next-to-last place, just above Earl. It was a pathetic showing certainly, but next year will be different.
Now, of course, I like baseball.
Sunday, May 27, 2001
Last Temptation of Christ
I'm going to try doing it by hand. I'm not enamored with hypertext, but I feel compelled to keep my journal going. Several visitors have come by and emailed. Not to mention the self-expression factor. Writing about myself, people, and ideas I care about always feels good, like settling down into a big chair in front of a fire with a good novel you're dying to read, like getting into a zone during a basketball game.
A lot has happened and not happened in the last few months. I of course finished the course, the philosophy of mind, my last entry talks about. I ended up with an A, quite unexpectedly, but pleasantly received. With that, I graduated with my Bachelor in English Literature. This spring I've done quite a bit of tutoring in writing and literature comprehension. I started to rewrite my fantasy novel with a new angle in mind. I've read about 10 or more books, not including the continuation of my mission to read all of Shakespeare's plays -- I've completed the Histories and Comedies, and I'm now halfway through the Tragedies (starting Hamlet) -- and also not including poetry and short stories. I've rented and have gone to see a plethora of movies. I was severely sick the last two weeks of March and most of April with a bladder infection (see the movie "The Green Mile" for a visual of what that feels like) which was at first mis- diagnosed and mis- prescribed. I'm fine now. And I've handwritten about 7 or more long letters, which to be honest has been my principal form of self-expression the last few months, for even my personal journal has suffered abandonment.
I had a dream the other day that I hadn't thought about until I was just outside reading The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano, an enchanting book comprised of a different prose poem on each page accompanied with an illustration. The book was indirectly recommended by a friend of mine, Graeme, who lives in Chicago and with whom I correspond regularly. Anyway -- the dream. I should contextualize it by saying that in the last month I've twice seen a coyote run past my window when I've been on my computer and that coyotes are common around this area despite its suburban location mainly because the yards are still quite large, mostly one or two acres.
The dream starts with me going out the open front door in my wheelchair (making this dream already notable since I usually am not in wheelchair in my dreams). Outside the front, I look across our large, green front yard and see a huge coyote, so big and so rough looking, I thought, in the dream, that it had to be prehistoric. As soon as I saw it, it looked at me and stared. It crouched slightly then began to bound across the yard towards me. My father appeared at the doorway and saw the coyote running towards me and then ran back inside. I remember thinking that he wasn't abandoning me. He was getting help. But I wasn't sure about my assertion. I had seen his face, and it had registered terror and cowardice. I turned back to the coyote. Then it lunged with its paws outstretched and teeth bared. I close my eyes and lifted my arm to defend myself, but the coyote mis- judged the leap and it jumped over me. As it passed over, my arm hit its hind legs and I heard it yelp. I turned around and saw it stop, turn around, and leap at me again. I knew it was going to kill me, and I wondered, just before its teeth sunk into my neck, if my father was coming to help me or not. I woke up immediately, I think.
It was a very strange dream. Very Native Indian, I suppose. The coyote plays a principal role in their mythology. I wonder if dreams are just dreams, or if they are a product of our subconscious desires and fears, or if they are a message from beyond the invisible bubble that envelops our reality. But supposedly we dream several times a night. I don't think each could be a message. I don't know, it's a mystery, as Mr. Henslowe says so appropriately in the movie "Shakespeare in Love".
I finished a book yesterday. The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis touched me deeply as it engaged in many of the ideas that I struggle with in my journey towards death, ideas like the reconciliation between the terrifying God of justice one sees in the Old Testament and the God of gentleness and mercy one sees and Christ. The book is very expressive in the literal and esthetic sense of that word, and in the characters and their intense striving, I can see how Kazantzakis' study of Russian literature and existential philosophy influenced his fictional writing. The physical book itself has some history. My late grandfather read the book decades ago, and when he died, my father inherited several of the books that were in decent enough condition to keep. I can just see my grandfather reading this book, arguing, as I did, with the ideas it puts forward, struggling with the tension between the historical and the fictional, laughing at the expressive humor and humanity of the too human disciples and apostles so similar to himself, and feeling the tenderness and melancholy of sacrifice and the inability of humanity to shed its earthy cloak and flower without light. Yes, reading the same book that he did made me think of him, and this morning, after church, my father and I took our traditional drive down to the coffeehouse, and while we were there I brought the conversation around to his father. We talked about the different families. I could see my sadness in his eyes. I wish he was still around.
A lot has happened and not happened in the last few months. I of course finished the course, the philosophy of mind, my last entry talks about. I ended up with an A, quite unexpectedly, but pleasantly received. With that, I graduated with my Bachelor in English Literature. This spring I've done quite a bit of tutoring in writing and literature comprehension. I started to rewrite my fantasy novel with a new angle in mind. I've read about 10 or more books, not including the continuation of my mission to read all of Shakespeare's plays -- I've completed the Histories and Comedies, and I'm now halfway through the Tragedies (starting Hamlet) -- and also not including poetry and short stories. I've rented and have gone to see a plethora of movies. I was severely sick the last two weeks of March and most of April with a bladder infection (see the movie "The Green Mile" for a visual of what that feels like) which was at first mis- diagnosed and mis- prescribed. I'm fine now. And I've handwritten about 7 or more long letters, which to be honest has been my principal form of self-expression the last few months, for even my personal journal has suffered abandonment.
I had a dream the other day that I hadn't thought about until I was just outside reading The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano, an enchanting book comprised of a different prose poem on each page accompanied with an illustration. The book was indirectly recommended by a friend of mine, Graeme, who lives in Chicago and with whom I correspond regularly. Anyway -- the dream. I should contextualize it by saying that in the last month I've twice seen a coyote run past my window when I've been on my computer and that coyotes are common around this area despite its suburban location mainly because the yards are still quite large, mostly one or two acres.
The dream starts with me going out the open front door in my wheelchair (making this dream already notable since I usually am not in wheelchair in my dreams). Outside the front, I look across our large, green front yard and see a huge coyote, so big and so rough looking, I thought, in the dream, that it had to be prehistoric. As soon as I saw it, it looked at me and stared. It crouched slightly then began to bound across the yard towards me. My father appeared at the doorway and saw the coyote running towards me and then ran back inside. I remember thinking that he wasn't abandoning me. He was getting help. But I wasn't sure about my assertion. I had seen his face, and it had registered terror and cowardice. I turned back to the coyote. Then it lunged with its paws outstretched and teeth bared. I close my eyes and lifted my arm to defend myself, but the coyote mis- judged the leap and it jumped over me. As it passed over, my arm hit its hind legs and I heard it yelp. I turned around and saw it stop, turn around, and leap at me again. I knew it was going to kill me, and I wondered, just before its teeth sunk into my neck, if my father was coming to help me or not. I woke up immediately, I think.
It was a very strange dream. Very Native Indian, I suppose. The coyote plays a principal role in their mythology. I wonder if dreams are just dreams, or if they are a product of our subconscious desires and fears, or if they are a message from beyond the invisible bubble that envelops our reality. But supposedly we dream several times a night. I don't think each could be a message. I don't know, it's a mystery, as Mr. Henslowe says so appropriately in the movie "Shakespeare in Love".
I finished a book yesterday. The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis touched me deeply as it engaged in many of the ideas that I struggle with in my journey towards death, ideas like the reconciliation between the terrifying God of justice one sees in the Old Testament and the God of gentleness and mercy one sees and Christ. The book is very expressive in the literal and esthetic sense of that word, and in the characters and their intense striving, I can see how Kazantzakis' study of Russian literature and existential philosophy influenced his fictional writing. The physical book itself has some history. My late grandfather read the book decades ago, and when he died, my father inherited several of the books that were in decent enough condition to keep. I can just see my grandfather reading this book, arguing, as I did, with the ideas it puts forward, struggling with the tension between the historical and the fictional, laughing at the expressive humor and humanity of the too human disciples and apostles so similar to himself, and feeling the tenderness and melancholy of sacrifice and the inability of humanity to shed its earthy cloak and flower without light. Yes, reading the same book that he did made me think of him, and this morning, after church, my father and I took our traditional drive down to the coffeehouse, and while we were there I brought the conversation around to his father. We talked about the different families. I could see my sadness in his eyes. I wish he was still around.
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