Bookish Thoughts Part Two

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

(click to enlarge) Book With Wings Anselm Kiefer Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Yesterday I sussed out my first three Desert Island Books – I’ll finish out the list here.

I started out making a list of possibilities: LOTR, The Riverworld Series, Sputnik Sweetheart, The War of the Rull, Jealousy (by Alain Robbe-Grillet)….

As I was thinking, number four popped into my mind.

4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A slam-dunk – although I liked Love in the Time of Cholera almost almost as much.

And that’s how I completed the ten. I kept listing books and every now and then one would jump out at me. I wrote: Lolita, Pale Fire, Under the Volcano, Absalom, Absalom, Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Waiting for the Barbarians, 1Q84, The Brothers Karamazov, A Clockwork Orange… – all worthy candidates, but the ones that I selected (and will change constantly):

5. Moby Dick

Of course

6. Dune

Of course

7. Crash

The J.G. Ballard novel

8. The Sound and the Fury

One of my Difficult Reading Book Club selections – the second on the list.

9. On the Road

10. Catch-22

So, What do you think? What have I missed? What have I not read?

Bookish Thoughts

You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

Kindle
Call Me Ishmael

I just finished a book last night… finished one for a Science Fiction Book Club that meets this Saturday. It wasn’t very good – though, in the end, I sort-of liked it… interesting… all though it wasn’t very well written.

So I was thinking… make a list of my favorite novels – maybe ten… ten Desert Island Novels. Right off the top of my mind, three stand out.

  1. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

I love McCarthy and this is his Magnum Opus. I’ve been working through a five hour YouTube summary/review of the book, it reminds me how amazing and horrible the thing is:

2. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

I have written about this novel often – for example, It was the first novel I read with my Difficult Read Book Club

3. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

This one took me by surprise – an innovative structure – it packs a wallop over time. It really resonated with me. I remember when I read it, I thought it was unfilmable – then they made the movie and I discovered I was right.

Three down… seven to go. I have two pages of notes… I’ll edit them down and type them up tomorrow.

Sky Mirror

What interests me is the sense of the darkness that we carry within us, the darkness that’s akin to one of the principal subjects of the sublime – terror.

—-Anish Kapoor

Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor, Arlington, Texas

Monday the whole family went to the Cotton Bowl – my son Lee graduated from Tulane and a bunch of his friends were in town to see them play USC (Roll Wave).

I wanted to leave The Death Star from the east entrance because I wanted to see the Sky Mirror, a sculpture by Anish Kapoor (the guy that did The Bean in Chicago).

While not as cool as The Bean – it was a pretty impressive hunk of reflections. It was a perfectly gray sky, so the other side, the one that reflects the heavens – wasn’t too impressive. I would love to see the thing at sunrise.

Cthulhu?

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H. P. Lovercraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

Cthulhu

From the 2022 Cedars Open Studios Tour.

I saw this window displaying the back side of James Allen Tucker Rodriguez’s work at Good Coworking during the Cedars Open Studios tour.

I thought to myself – cool – that looks like Cthulhu – the giant head with horrific tentacles. It’s hand was cradling a shark with a laser gun.

But from the other side – it was a portrait of a woman – the tentacles were just hair.

I’m sorry , I was a little disappointed. The art is way cool, though.

James Allen Tucker Rodriquez Instagram

Yella Balls

“Ol’ man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin’ comin’ up glowin’ Fruit of jewels all shinin’ in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin’ in the shade, just ready for the squeezin’ into green jade wine. Pure gold corn there, Blowin’ in the warm air. Ol’ crow nibblin’ on the amnythyst seeds. In between the diamonds, Ol’ man Simon crawls about pullin’ out platinum weeds. Pink pearl berries, all you can carry, put ’em in a bushel and haul ’em into town. Up in the tree there’s opal nuts and gold pears- Hurry quick, grab a stick and shake some down. Take a silver tater, emerald tomater, fresh plump coral melons. Hangin’ in reach. Ol’ man Simon, diggin’ in his diamonds, stops and rests and dreams about one… real… peach.”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Yella Balls Grapefruit

From the 2022 Cedars Open Studios Tour.

Hole To Another Universe

“Things aren’t like this,” he kept repeating. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

As if he had access to some other plane of existence, some parallel, “right” universe, and had sensed that our time had somehow been put out of joint. Such was his vehemence that I found myself believing him, believing, for example, in the possibility of that other life in which Vina had never left and we were making our lives together, all three of us, ascending together to the stars.

Then he shook his head, and the spell broke. He opened his eyes, grinning ruefully. As if he knew his thoughts had infected mine. As if he knew his power. “Better get on with it,” he said. “Make do with what there is.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Hole To Another Universe

From the 2022 Cedars Open Studios Tour.

Reserved Parking

“When Armageddon takes place, parking is going to be a major problem.”
― J.G. Ballard, Millennium People

my Xootr Swift folding bike, plus helmet and gloves

I had a great time riding around (although the actual riding was not too great – about ten miles) on the 2022 Cedars Open Studios Tour. I’ll write and post some more photos over the next few days.

This is at the stop at Good Coworking on Good-Latimer Expressway, a very cool place. I guess my folding bike counts as a “Low Emitting & Fuel Efficient Vehicle”

What I learned this week, November 18, 2022

The Time Traveler of Paranormal Percussion, with Clyde Casey New Orleans, Louisiana

Physics explains why time passes faster as you age

The chronological passage of the hours, days, and years on clocks and calendars is a steady, measurable phenomenon. Yet our perception of time shifts constantly, depending on the activities we’re engaged in, our age, and even how much rest we get.


Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s

A new study finds that people today who eat and exercise the same amount as people 20 years ago are still fatter.


Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive

How To Teach Your Brain Something It Won’t Forget A Week Later

Cramming got you through college, but it’s probably paying diminishing returns in your career. Here’s the scientific reason why.


The Universal Flow has led you to this exact moment in time and space.

Mind-altering South American brew causes adverse side effects, study says.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive, or hallucinogenic, plant-based tea native to the Amazon, where it has a centuries-long history of healing use in traditional medicine, according to the article.

But contemporary ritual use of ayahuasca has been expanding worldwide for mental health purposes and spiritual and personal growth.


Loving Oil and Gas, Dallas, Texas

Tap Oil Fields, Not Our Emergency Reserves, to Lower Energy Prices.

Our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is running dangerously low. New statistics released indicate our national emergency oil stockpile, which is intended to protect the United States from unexpected and severe supply disruptions, has hit another historic low. It’s a dangerous point for the United States, and even worse, it’s self-inflicted.

‘No more drilling,’ Biden makes apparent pledge to end fossil fuel extraction in the U.S.


Massive flock of sheep has been walking in a circle for 12 days straight in China.

Dozens of sheep have been eerily walking around in a circle for 12 days straight in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region.

The bizarre behavior, captured on surveillance video, shows the large flock continuously marching clockwise in a nearly perfect circle on a farm.


detail from the LIghtning’s Bride – Elliott Hundley

The Lightning Rod

After having done her stalwart best for the Covid Crusade for more than two years – demonizing those who refused to get the vaccination or wear masks everywhere, or see our children locked out of school, or who suggested that ivermectin or chloroquine might alleviate the symptoms – Professor Oster now is suggesting that … really, it was all just a silly misunderstanding, she and her pals just got carried away but they meant well and didn’t know anything for certain, and why can’t we all just all forgive and forget?