“One wants to be the needle in the haystack. Not the haystack.” – Don Draper One sister wants to be the needle. The other sister doesn’t want to be either one. My friend DE would prefer being the needle. Me? I would like to be the haystack.
Personal
Third childhood
“For people of my age,” she thinks, “the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist … And if their outer form has been preserved, it’s all the more painful, like a shell with nothing inside(…)
A*n*o*s*m*i*a mia.
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.” Erich Fromm Before it happened to me, I’d only known one person with it. This was an older/almost(…)
‘Twas the night before Cavafy
You said, I’ll go to another land, I’ll go to another sea. Another city will be found, a better one than this. Union Station, Los Angeles, California >> Fullerton >> Riverside >> San Bernadino >> Victorville >> Barstow >> Needles >> Kingman, Arizona >> Williams Jct >> Flagstaff >> Sedona Any new lands you will(…)
Cap in hand in Arizona
In the same way that the source of the Nile River is Lake Victoria, I (by accident) stumbled on the source from where all clichés arise. Common places, banalities, platitudes, all matter of cliché bubble up gently in this location. How was I to know during a recent holiday after ordering huevos rancheros on Red(…)
Not so new addiction VII
“Life is painful, nasty and short – in my case it has only been painful and nasty,” Djuna Barnes 1978-1981 by Hank O’Neal The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katherine Smyth Normandy Stories by Guy de Maupassant Molloy by Samuel Beckett Herman Melville by(…)
Not so new addiction VI
– continued – A Way in the World by V.S. Naipaul Burmese Days by George Orwell Death in Venice by Thomas Mann At the Edge of the World by Jean-Vincent Blanchard Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell The Ordeal of Gilbert Finfold by Evelyn Waugh(…)
Not so new addiction V
– continued – Staying On by Paul Scott The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster Where Angels fear to Tread by E.M.Forster Mother’s and Sons by Colm Tóibín A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren New Ways to Kill your Mother by Colm Tóibín The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy(…)
Not so new addiction IV
– continued – The life and times of the thunderbolt kid by Bill Bryson Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Going where by Olga Medvedkova Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano The Door by Magda Szabo The Master by Colm Toibin Watch me: a memoir by Anjelica Huston The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy Heart of the Matter(…)
What was left behind
Twelve days after the death of Gustave Flaubert in May 1880, the official death seals were removed from his door and an inventory of the contents of his rooms was made. Here are a few of his possessions left behind: In the bedroom on the first floor, panama hat top hat red silk cravat 5(…)
