Monday, May 08, 2006

between barnes, flaubert, and the parrot

it is so hard for me to select what to read these days
not a lack of ideas/suggestions but the contrary is the case
safely going to the safe
finally grabbed that sold-esterline-pounds copy of julian barnes' flaubert's parrot

oh well well, i read barnes' the lemon table
and agreed blindly on a friend's quick reference of it as "missal"; and yes the lemon table was finely fine
a superb collection of stories with no other taste than humane randomness and witt all over the place

oh and the parrot what a trio those three are! flaubert, the parrot, and flaubert again through barnes' eyes

this is not even really what i intended to write
but a reminder to myself to write at least once a day a quote of this amazing book

why do i want to do that? well to come back and read and re-read them every possible minute i have
these words, some images, time, the time of the day and if filled with chords of an instrument like a cello going back and a forth like in making love are full-filled then the time of my life has been worth-living worth!

his ideas (barnes) and of course flaubert's but layered within englishman are a delight
a cradle song for the time
seconds come seconds are gone
but precious if sincronized with the clicking of reading their words!

and well voula here is the first one

"Perhaps this is the advantage of making friends with those already dead: your feelings towards them never cool." -Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot. (Barnes referring to a feeling of friendship, well not Barnes himself but his narrator on the novel, felt as he visited Flaubert's museum)

another one? tomorrow for sure

sorry no spell check! no tools around for that, gotta be confident on my learned English from a book, somehow I know people who learnt a second language have better spelling than on their native language... we'll see when tomorrow i go where i can copy/paste and spell-check

good nights and damn! i wish i could really write like these men...

o i find one now...

"Medicine then must have been such an exciting, desperate, violent business; nowadays it is all pills and bureaucracy." -Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot.
and as i finished the Kaiser Permanente logo materialized mysteriously on the page of the book, formed by the spaces left beetween letters, senteces and rows... see? a magical book, indeed... ha ha hello!

oh and the best one so far, a "literaly" one

"How submerfed dies a reference have to be before it drowns?"

followed in a couple of pages by its daughter (since for sure this second quote was preconceived by the first, therefore its mother it is)

"Did that burst of bubbles announce the gurgling death of another submerged reference?"

these men are just geniuses, well i guess it is clear and i am the only idiot that gets so amazed and happily impressed by julian barnes and gustav flaubert, every one else knows they are geniuses so they expect the best, maybe i am just happily-easily amused and that is very fine with me, no expensive complicated fun for me required at all

just this books and the little things around here in a monday night night ah! barnes...

asthma and hookworms

i was declared officially asthmatic early last year
while roommating with 2 lovely cats
now that i moved out and i don't have a pet
my symptoms have improved
(so sad! since i am an animal lover)
yet if i get too exciting news or spend over half an hour with any cat or dog
i start wheezing like there won't be no air any more
sometimes even out of the blue i wheeze
guess my lungs get constricted for the pleasure of it

today i read this strange news on a cure for asthma related with the hookworms
here the link on a very interesting article
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971
hope that if you wheeze, can get the worm...