Archive for the ‘Words’ Category
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005
Today’s swim was as meditative as Tuesday’s was strenuous. Before I came home I walked over to the Jones Center and looked over the exhibition of sculptures. Standing in the painting studio among the half-finished canvases, I breathed in the vapors of turpentine and tried to get the Paul Watkins story out of my system (it made matters worse). Last night I listened to a 1993 radio interview that helped me gain a greater sense of the young man. The interviewer used the word “precocious,” but I must say I didn’t have that impression after having lived with David Halifax for a week. Well, I suppose most contemporary artists tend to squander youth before getting their act together, so any disciplined person who hits the ground running by the age of 20 is now considered prematurely developed.
I was talking to Marty about the novel and immediately he thought it would translate well as a motion picture. He chose Tobey Maguire as Halifax and Sean Connery as Pankratov. Not bad. I’d go with Michael Gambon or Brian Cox as the gruff, mysterious Russian myself (but who besides Cox could be Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring?). The character of Guillaume Fleury is trickier. John Turturro could have played him early in his career (maybe a bit too tall). Perhaps Jason Schwartzman would be a good match today, but I’m not familiar enough with his work. The likeness of Fluery that I picture in my mind is similar to a self-portrait by Pierre Bonnard. Marty suggested Adrien Brody—not bad again. He asked me how one gets to be a casting director in Hollywood, and I’m ashamed to admit that I came back with a snide reply inappropriate for a fourteen-year-old lad. Needless to say, it doesn’t please me when I witness a pocket of cynicism erupt from below the surface, like looking in the mirror to discover a conspicuous pimple.
Speaking of Marty, I had to pick him up from school yesterday when he was feeling too sick to wait for a bus ride home. I told him to stay warm, rest, take some vitamin C, and, so he wouldn’t miss any class time today, not to be “outside playing football after your friends get home.” When I talked to Terie later she said that he was fine. “Really?” I asked. “Yeah, he’s playing football,” she said.
Posted in Art, Exercise, Family, Fiction, Marty, Movies, Personalities | Comments Closed
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
Thoughts—more than that—expansive, deep-breathing celestial amalgamations inspired by a magnificent story of smoldering suspense, defying containment by mere intellect, taking possession of my imagination, filling it and spilling over like Champagne poured too quickly, and I’m wondering who happens to control the film rights to The Forger, and whether he is a typical Hollywood son of a bitch, and I’m certain that I could design the production, fixated on the idea that Brendan would play David Halifax, and totally convinced that Andrew was born to make this movie…
Yes, I know—these are the outrageously soaring notions one has after finishing a Paul Watkins novel.
Posted in Art, Brendan, Fiction, Friends, Personalities | Comments Closed
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
I’m not sure why, but I have this notion that reading a very good novel is a lot like my ideal bike ride. I only feel the effort when I start out, until I hit a smooth rhythm, and then I become oblivious to the process, taking in all the pleasurable sensory details, pausing now and then to rest. There’s always the clear sense of a turning point, usually after a satisfying exertion, and then all I want to do is speed onward, with no desire to stop—not to reach the end, but to experience the pure enjoyment of moving fast.
Posted in Exercise, Fiction, Words | Comments Closed
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
My admiration for Charlton Heston is enormous—the actor, the activist, the man—and so I find it almost impossible to watch the last few of his movies I haven’t yet seen, such as The President’s Lady, Antony and Cleopatra, The War Lord, and Khartoum. Thinking about why this might be so brings to mind a conversation I had several months back with a librarian. I was lamenting the premature demise of James Clavell, and that there were no more of his novels left to read for the first time. She suggested I find an author who wrote in a similar manner, but that struck me as an unappealing solution. I wasn’t searching for a substitute. Instead, I yearned for a contemporary writer with an entirely different style to enjoy every bit as much, who would connect with me in a compelling and exceptional way. Have I now found that person? As I get deeper into
The Forger by Paul Watkins, I find myself wanting to read everything he’s written. I suppose that’s a reasonably good sign I have…
Posted in Fiction, Movies, Personalities | Comments Closed
Thursday, October 20th, 2005
I usually know exactly when I’ve reached a point in a book when the writer has me in captivity, and I’ve learned to be more patient before rejecting an author who imbeds that turning point deeper in a work. This phenomenon is out the window when a writer hooks you on the first sentence, as Paul Watkins did to me with his outstanding memoir of traveling in Norway. I can be nostalgic and even a bit melancholy at times, but I don’t think of myself as an overly emotional person. Nevertheless, when I got to the end of his book I wept. Paul Watkins is an extraordinary writer—and a very dangerous man. He makes me want to go climb a mountain.
Posted in Nonfiction, Personalities | Comments Closed
Monday, October 17th, 2005
Someday it would be fun to draw—no—I SHALL create a comic strip version of Bridget, and I’ll begin now if you agree to buy it. Metal frame or wood? Next Day Air or standard ground?
Posted in Art, Brendan, Fiction | Comments Closed
Sunday, October 16th, 2005
Dana and I were heartened to see a vast improvement in Bruce when we spent most of the day with him, including a trip to one of the hospital courtyards, where he used his wheelchair as a “walker” to get some good exercise in the sunlight. His progress over the past week gives us reason to believe the topic of his going home may be under discussion before long. On the way back, Dana read aloud to me from “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” as did I while she was driving, selecting a chapter from “The Fellowship of Ghosts,” the evocative account of a journey through Norway’s nearly inaccessible mountains by novelist Paul Watkins. As a massive sunset peaked, we passed a caravan of mobile homes with FEMA emblems heading south. The cloud pattern filled half the sky like glowing lava splashed against a field of robin’s egg blue.
Posted in Dana, Family, Nature, Nonfiction, Personalities | Comments Closed
Monday, August 22nd, 2005
I can’t get “Gates of Fire” off the front of my mind today. It’s at times like this I could use a basic intellect boost (remember that Krell device in “Forbidden Planet?”) and coalesce all my fragments of thought to produce a single, coherent insight. To be more specific, I keep thinking of Thermopylae, and what it meant, and, beyond that, the place it holds in our history. How many times has it inspired those who faced impossible odds, or given meaning to sacrifices that would serve no immediate purpose other than to lay the groundwork for a subsequent overcoming, or compelled strivers to place the welfare of the many over life itself? And if so, it must be true that knowledge of the heroic feat was present in the mental quiver of an educated person. Is that still true today? If you asked a hundred Americans old enough to vote, how many of them would recognize the word “Thermopylae?” And of those, how many would know what it meant? And of those, how many could explain its significance to Western Civilization? And of those, how many would believe it was a positive contribution to the world that followed? And who among them might speculate with me about how the event had perhaps influenced Wallace and his Scots? Washington and his Rabble? Houston and his Texicans? Churchill, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower and the ordinary men they motivated to storm death’s sanctum on both sides of the planet?
—may contain spoilers—
I wish I had the capacity to take Pressfield‘s premise—that Leonidas hand-picked the 300 Spartan warriors, not for their own character, but for the character of their wives, mothers, and daughters, knowing that the ultimate victory would come to pass when the embattled Greeks took heart from the conduct of the Spartan people, which would in turn be based on the Spartans observing the conduct of the women who would survive their slain husbands, sons, and fathers—and apply it to the national dilemma we face today. I wish I had the ability to write cogently about our collective response to the public posture of American women such as Cindy Sheehan, Evelyn Husband, and Shannon Spann, and what it may indicate for our future as a society, and the longevity of the institutions we inherit from the ancients—from that time when the very survival of human freedom as a concept balanced on a spear point called Thermopylae.
There now. If you managed to wade all the way through that swirling, whiny muck above to reach this point, dear reader, all I can do is kiss you lightly on the forehead and say, “Thank you. Now, please go hose yourself off…”
Posted in Current Events, Fiction, History, Movies, Personalities, Time | Comments Closed
Sunday, August 21st, 2005
We were with Bruce on his birthday today. Delivered a package of cards, my Cosmosaic (the fourteenth), and a memory-foam pad for when he gets to go home. Perhaps that will be soon; he looked good. Brandon caught his flight to NC, wrapping up his Indiana summer. On the way home, Dana and I finished listening to “Gates of Fire.” I hope there’s truth to the rumor that Michael Mann has signed to develop the novel as a screenplay. It would make an incredible motion picture under his meticulous leadership. (Armand Assante as Leonidas?)
Posted in Dana, Family, Fiction, Movies, Personalities | Comments Closed
Sunday, August 7th, 2005
After yesterday’s race, I had lunch with David in Lexington and hit the gun show, where we bought supplies for our deer ammo project and I bought a soft case for my Marlin. Dana and I made a connection, drove to Indy, and visited with Bruce until late. Today he mostly wanted to sleep, so we headed to Ohio. I read the conclusion of “The Sparrow” aloud, and the two of us discussed its themes for quite a while. When we got to Sydne’s marriage celebration in Bellbrook, it was a surprise to see her in a wheelchair She’d almost lost a big toe in a freak picture-hanging accident (that’s our Sydne!).
At the reception I struck up a conversation with a local couple, and found it hard to believe that they were of the World War II generation, since they looked younger than that. After about an hour, Ruth got Barney to open up a bit and I found out that he was personally decorated by President Truman. He’d been wounded three times—once by a sniper—and had successfully stormed a Japanese pillbox with a flame-thrower before being captured and sent to a POW camp on the Malay Peninsula, where he’d been tortured for information. I could see that his fingers were permanently disabled. I felt honored to have met him and he just averted his eyes when I expressed my appreciation for his service and the sacrifices he made. His attitude was made clear when he reminded me that he’d lost a lot of buddies and then told me this story: When he met Truman he said, “Mr. President, I don’t think I deserve this.” According to Barney, Truman replied. “I don’t give a damn what you think. Your commander says you deserve this.”
Before we left, Ruth said to me, “He’s been through a lot.”
Bruce… Barney… What have I ever been through?
Earlier in the day I’d read in the newspaper about a staff sergeant from Indiana who’d been injured in Iraq during the invasion and was now on his second tour, having just single-handedly taken out a suicide car bomber before his convoy could be harmed. He was recovering from shrapnel wounds to his face and head.
My Lord… may this nation continue to deserve such men.
(Josh is due to arrive home today for his two-week leave.)
Posted in Current Events, Dana, Family, Fiction, Firearms, Friends, Gratitude, History, Prayer, Presidency | Comments Closed
Thursday, June 23rd, 2005
I guess I was somewhat familiar with the actor Derek Jacobi, but it took listening to the audio version of “Gates of Fire” (Steven Pressfield’s riveting story of life among the Spartans), for me to recognize the supreme awesomeness of his abilities. Since I liked “The Islands of Unwisdom” so much, the time is right to finally partake of the 1976 mini-series I, Claudius, which brings Graves and Sir Derek together.
• “Derek Jacobi is brilliant—his soldiers are terrifyingly gruff, and his breathless account of the fighting is so vivid that one can almost smell blood. With a lesser reader, the novel’s structure might have been confusing, but Jacobi’s ability to subtly alter the timbre of his voice and the style of his delivery to differentiate narrators makes it perfectly clear.”
—AudioFile
Posted in Awe, Fiction, History, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Thursday, June 9th, 2005
I saw Dr L at the Whitehouse opening, and he told me that he’s seen patients with two normal kidneys lose all renal function dealing with hemorrhagic pancreatitis. So I guess I can’t be too discouraged about
Bruce’s ongoing struggle. Tomorrow adds up to 12 weeks, and that’s enough to test anyone to their core. Danny D loaned me his copy of Dark Night of the Soul. If he thinks I need to better understand this level of suffering, he’s right.
Posted in Art, Family, Friends, Verse | Comments Closed
Friday, June 3rd, 2005
By adolescence, our collection of evolving characters and plot-lines had detached itself from playtime notions or other childhood limitations. We made an effort to shed not only elements of fantasy, but anything out of conformity to the “historical accuracy” of our invented world—the land of “The Pirates.” We used the term in its broadest sense. The band of half-brothers central to our story were not the classic “Howard Pyle types,” but true corsairs from the standpoint of their disregard for societal constraints or prevailing authority. Their adventurous conduct was governed by a common code of mutual survival and respect for each other’s keen abilities. That our story had no fixed beginning or end was well accepted by us all, and we felt free to add new personalities, ethnicities, and anecdotes, as long as they seemed to fit within a narrative continuum that was constantly pushing forward and backward in time. Revisions in service to coherence would pass muster and shape the new legacy. It’s hard to describe the shared excitement and the satisfaction of knowing that we could never be bored if we were together, because the joy of adding to our open-ended chronicles was just a collective daydream away. A mere suggestion could trigger a new layer of creative integration. I’m not sure when it happened, but we started to document a few things here and there, and before long it was apparent that there was no end to the depth and richness of the mosaic. I can’t say it was clear to us at the time that it would prove to be a lifelong pursuit, but we did appreciate its staying power and understood that it was certain to continuously improve. It’s no surprise to any imaginative individual that youth is often fertile ground for an enduring artistic vision. I just recently listened to Ron Howard explain that the premise of how he’d create his motion picture about the Great Depression derived from ideas he had in high school. By the time the oldest of us were settled into college life, we had quite a head of steam with our own story project, but we didn’t anticipate the explosion of development that was about to take place in “The Legend.”
Olden…
Posted in Creativity, Family, Fiction, Movies, Personalities, Pirates, Time | Comments Closed
Thursday, June 2nd, 2005
Something Brendan said yesterday really got me fixated on a line of thought. For some reason I don’t consider myself a writer (perhaps a diarist or “journal-ist” at best), and yet telling stories has been a part of my imaginative side for as long as I can remember— whether illustrative, oral, or written. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer may have been the first nonlinear story, but I didn’t read Homer (just the condensed juvenile versions) until long after my brothers and I had begun to create a rich oral/written tradition that’s almost 50 years old now. It’s nonlinear nature is one of its strongest suits. It’s been called various things over the years, but now we generally refer to it as “The Legend.” If I keep thinking about this I’ll have the ingredients for another Oldenday segment.
Posted in Blogging, Brendan, Creativity, Fiction | Comments Closed
Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
As every reader knows, there’s a turning point in each good novel when the author has you hooked. We’ve just reached it with
The Sparrow. I say “we” because Dana and I are taking turns reading it to each other aloud. Bob and Carol gave us this idea a while back. Cold Mountain was perfect for it, and A Man in Full was a hoot. Not every work lends itself to the practice, so we’ve had a few false starts. Inevitably we “cast” the main characters like a motion picture, so we can concur on physical appearance and general persona. Ethan Hawke as Inman and Ashley Judd as Ruby were engraved in the imagination before Hollywood made its own choices, and now I’m certain that only Salma Hayek could portray Sofia Mendes. Brendan recommended The Sparrow to his mom (my sister Joan), and she enjoyed it so much we borrowed it next. Bruce will want to read it when we finish. I already know that I’ll immediately want to start again from the beginning, but we’ll probably go find a copy of Mary Doria Russell’s sequel instead—Children of God.
Posted in Brendan, Dana, Family, Fiction, Movies, Personalities | Comments Closed
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005
There is perhaps nothing more subjective than taste in music, which can shift and evolve throughout the life of an individual. This has certainly been true for me. It would be pointless to attempt any explanation of my improvised excursion from Burton Cummings to Stanley Turrentine to Jackson Browne to Herbie Mann to Claude Debussy to Alexander Glazunov to JS Bach.
Lately I’ve had an unquenchable thirst for various “greatest hits” of a Scandinavian nationalistic flavor, primarily those by Edvard Grieg and Jan Sibelius. I’m finding much pleasure in pieces that others have judged to be bombastically second rate. And I love how a personal connection with music can trigger new areas of interest and investigation on the Web, such as Nordic dramatists of the late nineteenth century (Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson), Finnish folklore (Lemminkäinen), or medieval Norwegian history (Heimskringla).
Posted in Fiction, History, Music, Personalities | Comments Closed
Monday, May 16th, 2005
Marty loaned me his DVD of
Troy, so I watched it late Saturday night while Dana was out of town. Although it kept my interest, it didn’t have much to offer. The workmanlike performances, clumsily directed, were squandered on a bastardized plot that should leave even a lukewarm admirer of the legend unsettled. When a screenwriter “fornicates” with one of the most exquisite stories ever produced by human culture, the punitive amputation of keyboard fingers should be given serious consideration. I’ll begrudge some credit to a talented cast who approached the script as if it did justice to its classic source. As I said, not much to offer, except for a few scenes of brilliant action choreography, which makes the motion picture worthy of attention by all but the most discriminating fans of stylized movie combat. Watch it for the craftsmanship in the fights, and then reward yourself by viewing
The House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu) or Hero (which Brendan found superior, but I haven’t seen).
Posted in Brendan, Dana, Fiction, Marty, Movies | Comments Closed
Saturday, May 14th, 2005
Anyone who accepts the legitimacy of yet another chain email and passes it along without first checking for accuracy is like a person who wants to believe that professional wrestling isn’t phony. And this is coming from somebody who has an admitted weakness for trivial entertainment. Hey, I just like to know the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, but what do I know? Maybe if Homer was alive today he’d be having fun creating goofy chain emails.
Posted in Fiction, Personalities | Comments Closed
Monday, April 25th, 2005
“Every noble work is at first impossible.” —Carlyle
His transplanted kidney declared a loss, Bruce nevertheless takes up the fight.
“An enterprise, when fairly once begun, should not be left till all that ought is won.” —Shakespeare
Branches of prayer extend as the roots of the faithful deepen.
“A good intention clothes itself with power.” —Emerson
Thirty-eight days later, when renal function is restored, doctors are heard to use the word “miracle.”
“The divine insanity of noble minds, that never falters nor abates, but labors, endures, and waits, till all that it foresees it finds, or what cannot find, creates.” —Longfellow
And to top it all off, a lost hat is restored!
Posted in Community, Family, Friends, Personalities, Prayer, Time, Verse | Comments Closed
Tuesday, March 8th, 2005
Today’s Anacrusis story makes me think of Kethan Mortice. I guess you have to be a “Benedict’s 9er” to know what I mean.
At the same time, Kristi sends me the salvaged interactive stories, including the one that I thought had been lost! She’s thinking about starting up a new gathering spot to resurrect the activity. I know I’m not that good a writer, but is that any reason I shouldn’t compose fiction? Like I shouldn’t shoot baskets because I’ll never dunk the ball, or give up entering footraces because I’ll never break a seven-minute-mile pace, or (perhaps more to the point) refrain from playing my recorder because I’ll never be able to play a Telemann sonata?
Posted in Brendan, Exercise, Family, Fiction, Music | Comments Closed
Sunday, March 6th, 2005
I’m reading what seems to me to be a jewel of a book by the poet and writing scholar Robert Graves. It’s called “The Islands of Unwisdom,” a novel of Spanish colonization in the South Pacific that takes place roughly in the same time period as Clavel’s “Shogun.” I don’t know very much about Graves other than he was a contemporary at Oxford of Tolkien and Lewis, but apparently had a less than admirable private life. He supposedly dismissed his historical novels as mere thrillers, but I find “Islands” quite captivating. I have no appetite for sentimentality in historical fiction, prefer it to be based on actual characters who lived, and enjoy insights into the clash of cultures, especially East and West. This work fits nicely into that niche, and I may also investigate his “Count Belisarius.”
Posted in Fiction, History, Personalities | Comments Closed
Saturday, March 5th, 2005
I’ve spent a surprising amount of my day updating our family Website, “Clandestiny.” Joan wrote a wonderful poem, a tribute to Mombo for her 80th birthday celebration, so I put that on there. She’s so much more talented than she gives herself credit for. Today would have been Joe’s 57th birthday, so we talked briefly on the phone. We’d already agreed that it was appropriate to change the home page, even though it’s hard to remove Joe’s picture. I hesitate to put a link to the site. It’s really a private family newsletter. Those who are interested know how to get there. I wrote, “How superb a world of human feeling our Divine Source has crafted for us, that we can travel from such sorrow to such joy in so short a time, now that our Grammo has celebrated her milestone of years, which enables us to celebrate a milestone of family love.” I truly mean that. With each family event, happy or sad, our connection to each other deepens, while at the same time we draw apart as households. I suppose it’s just the natural course of things, even within close families. I wrote an open letter to the Clan last fall, and only one person replied, but already I think that much has improved for the better, despite our devastating loss. It should work that way, I guess. It has to.
Posted in Family, Mombo, Verse | Comments Closed
