CarrollBlog 12.31

The year is going, let him go; ring out the false, ring in the true.

CarrollBlog 12.29

There is a small tailor shop up the street. Inside it is brightly lit. The walls are covered with paintings and vividly colored photos of beautiful places-- snow capped mountains, Venice's Grand Canal, pristine empty beaches with blue water the color of a baby's eyes. Two tailors work sitting across from each other at a shared table. They always seem to be in there day and night. Almost every time you pass, the lights are on and they are working. When you enter the shop it smells of strong coffee, cloth, dusty air warmed by a space heater. Music is often playing in the background; Arabic music, sensual and sad. While walking home through yesterday's snowstorm, I passed the place and glanced in. As usual the men were sitting at the table, heads down and concentrating on their work. They looked like monks at prayer. Suddenly both of them threw back their heads and laughed at something.

CarrollBlog 12.28

First heavy snow of the year. Sounds reappear you had filed away in the back of your mind but are instantly recognizable as soon as you hear them again-- A metal snow shovel scraping across pavement, the chink of steel car chains, the muffled sound of cars driving slowly down the street. The white dog is almost impossible to keep track of in all this new white everywhere. You have to keep a keen eye on him as he leaps and runs around, all joy, in the untouched snow covering the park at 6 in the morning. People on the street look either annoyed or happy with the overnight turn of events. You dig deep in the closet to find those heavy snow boots. There they are, covered with dust. Pulling them out, you know they will be used only two or three times this winter. They have an easy time of it. One of those objects in your life that are essential but rarely used, like a certain spice, or a toothpick, tweezers to pull that summer splinter out.

CarrollBlog 12.27

When you die,
I know they turn you
inside out, to see what portion
of your god-allotted guts
you failed to spend on earth.
The ones who arrive in heaven
without a kopek of their fortune left
are welcomed, cheered, embraced.
The rest are scolded and reborn
as salesmen and librarians.

CarrollBlog 12.25

I think we should act as if. I think we should read books, and tell children stories, and take them to the theatre, and learn poems, and play music, as if it would make a difference. . . . We should act as if the universe were listening to us and responding. We should act as if life were going to win."

Philip Pullman

CarrollBlog 12.24

Both the way she carries herself and her demeanor say she obviously believes she is a pretty woman. But she is not.
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Why do so many of the people who are driving very expensive cars look either sad or stressed?
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The men exercising at the gym spend far more time looking at themselves in the mirrors than the women there do.
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She asked how long it takes to write a book. I said that depends-- usually from nine months all the way up to two years. She said So, you either have a human pregnancy or an elephant. I asked how long is an pachyderm pregnancy.
She piped right up 22 months.

CarrollBlog 12.23

Frequently in the Vienna winter if it rains at night, the next morning everything is covered with a thin treacherous sheen of ice. It transforms this familiar world into a menacing capricious place. Cars suddenly spin out of control, pedestrians fall down, etcetera. I once saw a dog slide off the sidewalk, into the street and stop right in front of a truck waiting at a red light. The condition is called black ice because the stuff is often invisible which makes it all the more dangerous because to all appearances, nothing is different. Until you walk across a patch of it and are suddenly flying.

CarrollBlog 12.22

"Traditionally Zen Buddhist monasteries will only admit wandering Zen monks if they can show proof of having solved a koan. It seems that a monk once knocked on a monastery gate. The monk who opened the gate didn't say "Hello" or "Good morning," but immediately asked the visitor "Show me your original face, the face you had before your father and mother were born." The monk who wanted a room for the night smiled, pulled a sandal off his foot and hit his questioner in the face with it. The other monk stepped back, bowed respectfully and bade the visitor welcome.

CarrollBlog 12.20

"This was the first time I understood how God could become a real opponent, not just some kind of nuisance or large decoration."

CarrollBlog 12.19

"This small history, my life, is wrapped so completely in you and memories of you that I no longer know which is my skin, which is yours, and which is ours. The covering is so flawless and perfect that there really is no difference any longer, not even under love's careful and precise examination."

CarrollBlog 12.18

One of the pleasures of a train ride is looking into different backyards as you pass them. These spaces say so much about the house owners. There are the neglected yards: stuff scattered everywhere-- tools, toys, swingsets with broken forlorn swings, lawn furniture knocked over, and grass that hasn't been cut in forever.

CarrollBlog 12.17

Walking home yesterday evening, I saw a green octopus, a yellow kangaroo, and a red rabbit, in that order. They stood in front of different megastores handing out flyers, trying to lure customers into the places. It's Christmas
shopping season and obviously stores are trying anything to increase their business. But whenever I see someone dressed up in one of those lunatic life size costumes, I start wondering various things: Like how well can they see in there? What does it smell like? Does the inside of a green octopus costume have a different aroma from that of a red bunny? How often do passersby give them trouble? Do the people wearing the costumes feel dumb or embarrassed, or is it only funny to them-- just an amusing, offbeat way to make some money?

CarrollBlog 12.16

"The Jewish tradition teaches that within every person, even the worst criminal, there exists a nekudah tovah, a point of pure goodness. The Jewish obligation is to work to uncover that point of goodness, in ourselves and in others, so that it can transform us through the process of teshuvah, the radical idea that we can change, that we can always be better than we are. The concept of teshuvah holds the promise that even the most wicked cannot be defined solely by their worst acts. The divine spark always contains within it the potential for change."

Daniel Sokatch

CarrollBlog 12.15

"Everything I ever needed to know I learned in ballet class:
Bow to your teachers (for we dance on the shoulders of giants).
Do your positions every day (because even the most basic rituals prepare us).
Smile (though every bone in your body is aching).
Make it look easy (despite all the sweat on the floor).
And always, always thank the piano player (success is never a solo)."

Marie Arana

CarrollBlog 12.14

The barber I have been going to for the last fifteen years, the sublime Herr Franz, told me he is retiring on Christmas Day. He said that was the day "the scissors go still." In one of his poems, Jack Gilbert says real life is what happens in between the big events. I'm so used to visiting Herr Franz once a month for a trim and an always- interesting chat that only when he told me it was over did I realize what a great small pleasure it has been to have known him all these years. One of the things that made the everyday a little bit finer, a little bit happier.

CarrollBlog 12.13

I spoke with a woman who once was a Czechoslovakian border guard. She said the Russian mafia often passed through the checkpoint where she worked on the Polish/Czech border. Now and then the cars they drove had various bulletholes in them. There was no question that that's what they were. When they stopped these cars to inspect them, she and her colleagues liked to ask ingenuously, "What are those?" She said the drivers invariably answered with straight faces, "Oh, that's for the air conditioning."

CarrollBlog 12.11

He never bought raffle tickets or lottery tickets or entered any sort of contest. He believed fully in luck but had his own theory about it. He believed that luck chose you; it came to you but you could never go to it or win it or seduce it. Luck was stubborn, picky, and frequently recalcitrant if you bugged it too much with requests.
It was the prettiest girl at the ball and could have her pick of partners. Woe to the boy stupid or vain enough to walk up to Luck and ask her to dance.

CarrollBlog 12.10

"I make art in order to give other people my problems."

CarrollBlog 12.9

In one of his stories, Gabriel Garcia Márquez says there are long loves and short loves. This is true about dogs as well in that there are great dogs and nice dogs. The greatest dogs become part of myth. Great dogs become part of a person or a family's history. Their personalities, adventures, quirks, tricks, and love are cherished and embellished down the years until they become legend in a small but essential way.

CarrollBlog 12.8

"Some things you shouldn't get too good at:
smiling, crying, celebrity."
Bono

CarrollBlog 12.7

Live with intention
Walk to the edge
Listen hard
Practice wellness
Play with abandon
Laugh
Choose with no regret
Continue to learn
Appreciate your friends
Do what you love
Live as if this is all there is.

CarrollBlog 12.6

As a reader, I think the greatest problem with most blogs is their authors think that simply what they do or think in a day is of interest to others. That misconception is further aggravated by the fact that they write about their daily ho-hum in uninteresting, numbing detail. They don't frame their words and phrases, don't sand them smooth, or make an effort to polish the thoughts or experiences. I read a blog yesterday where the author described going into a Starbuck's and deciding what kind of coffee to buy. That's all. Three hundred words about should I buy the cappucino or moccacino? One of the best lessons I learned in a university creative writing class was when the mean but good teacher read a poem I'd written and said simply, "This subject may be interesting to you, Carroll, but the *way* you have written it does not make it at all interesting for others." The greatness of blogs is that they allow everyone who wants to "publish." But if someone is going to publish, they have a responsibility to whatever audience they have out there. They must ask themselves before pressing SEND, "Is what I've written really interesting? Have I expressed it the best way I know how? Or am I only downloading the trivia of my day onto someone out there in the ethers?"

CarrollBlog 12.5

In Austria, there is some sort of peculiar tradition of naming your children what everyone else names theirs. As a result, on meeting an Austrian you can almost be sure that their name will either be Thomas, Maria, Florian, Ursula, Karoline, Robert, etcetera. It is a dubiously short list. I have never understood why people give their children names that everyone else uses. That's not to say one should name a child something bizarre just to be different (like Frank Zappa naming one of his kids "Moon Unit"), but there's no one else like your kid in the world. Why would you want them to be just another Robert?

CarrollBlog 12.4

And on another language note:

CarrollBlog 12.3

I looked inside her passport and did a double-take. The photograph of her there was beautiful. I have never, ever seen a good passport photo of anyone. At best they suffice and at worst they're either scary or unrecognizable. But this small picture made her look like a goddess. Granted, she is very good looking but still... I could easily imagine some suicidally bored passport inspector at Kennedy airport not even looking up when she slid her little book across the desk for his perusal. Opening it, he'd see that photo and freeze. The deliciousness and the pain in the seconds that passed between seeing her photo and finally looking up to see her for real...

CarrollBlog 12.2

Sometimes food translated into another language sounds like nothing you've ever heard before. A favorite meal in this Balkan part of the world is pork with sauerkraut and knodel, which roughly translates in English into a big dumpling. I just read that in Slovakia, if you want to order that meal in a restaurant there, you say "Vepro, Knedlo, Zelo." Which to these American ears sound either like three villains from STAR TREK, or the names of the dwarves Snow White never admitted to knowing.

CarrollBlog 12.1

Why does it seem that almost every other time you buy an appliance, the one you want that's in the window or on a shelf happens to be the last one in the store? You ask if they have another in one of their other branch stores. The salesmen go dutifully to the computer, check, and say no, sorry-- that's the last one of its kind in the entire universe. Take it or leave it. But then they reassure you it's in perfect working order, has the same guarantee, no problem... Nevertheless, you want your big new thing to come out of a sealed box, pristine. Not with dust on it from having sat in a display window for God knows how long.
New is shiny. New is not dusty.

Carollblog 11.29

Colin writes in with a comment on the blog for 11.25: