43
" If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well.
Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell
My guns along the highway. My coins to the table
To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay.
Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well.
What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well.
From August to May
For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris.
I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken.
But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee.
An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea;
To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well.
What might've worked for me? What might've ended well?
Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell?
Teacher of glorious stories to tell?
Man of gold, or stores to sell?
Lover to a gentle belle?
Maybe a camel;
A seashell.
What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well? "
― Dylan Thomas
53
" There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self. "
― E.M. Forster , A Room with a View
55
" In his landscapes, Alex expresses the totality of everything in the universe. At the same time, within each leaf, each drop of water or human hair, he conveys a light or glow, which seems to come—how shall I put this—from another dimension. And each brushstroke contains every ounce of his own life and vitality.From The Fate of Pryde, the second in The Trilogy of Remembrance. Enter the giveaway to win one of ten personalized, autographed copies of this novel starting July 31st to August 31st. You can sample the first fifty pages of it on my page. Also, for the same time period, The Drawing Lesson, the first in the trilogy is offered as a giveaway. "
59
" THE MANY FACES OF SURVIVAL
Sunday, August 10th at 2:00 PST
Dachau Liberator, medical whistle-blower, award winning writer, college professor and world renowned garlic farmer, Chester Aaron, talks about the hard choices he’s had to make, why he made them, and how it’s changed his life.
Mr. Aaron was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, and received the Huntington Hartford Foundation fellowship which was chaired by Aldous Huxley and Tomas Mann. He also inspired Ralph Nader to expose the over-radiation of blacks in American hospitals.
Now Mr. Aaron is a world-renowned garlic farmer who spends his days writing about the liberation of Dachau. He is 86 years old and he has a thousand stories to tell. Although he has published over 17 books, he is still writing more and looks forward to publishing again soon. "
― Judy Gregerson
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" On August 10, 1984, my plane landed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. There were no skyscrapers here. The blue domes of the mosques and the faded mountains were the only things rising above the adobe duvals (the houses). The mosques came alive in the evening with multivoiced wailing: the mullahs were calling the faithful to evening prayer. It was such an unusual spectacle that, in the beginning, I used to leave the barracks to listen – the same way that, in Russia, on spring nights, people go outside to listen to the nightingales sing. For me, a nineteen-year-old boy who had lived his whole life in Leningrad, everything about Kabul was exotic: enormous skies – uncommonly starry – occasionally punctured by the blazing lines of tracers. And spread out before you, the mysterious Asian capital where strange people were bustling about like ants on an anthill: bearded men, faces darkend by the sun, in solid-colored wide cotton trousers and long shirts. Their modern jackets, worn over those outfits, looked completely unnatural. And women, hidden under plain dull garments that covered them from head to toe: only their hands visible, holding bulging shopping bags, and their feet, in worn-out shoes or sneakers, sticking out from under the hems.
And somewhere between this odd city and the deep black southern sky, the wailing, beautifully incomprehensible songs of the mullahs. The sounds didn't contradict each other, but rather, in a polyphonic echo, melted away among the narrow streets. The only thing missing was Scheherazade with her tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights ... A few days later I saw my first missile attack on Kabul. This country was at war. "
― , Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story