CarrollBlog 1.31

Someone sent me an interesting, albeit gruesome website link. It was to the Texas Prison system listing both the crimes and last words of all prisoners executed in Texas over the last few years. For those of you unaware of it, Texas executes more people than any state in America, so the list was long. What I found fascinating about it was that roughly 95% of all the condemned people used their very last words to either say that they were innocent of the crime they were accused of, or that they forgave the state for killing them. They lied or they forgave. The last words out of their mouths.

CarrollBlog 1.30

Almost every time I go to this cafe in the late afternoon, I see the couple sitting at the same window table. They are both attractive, middle aged, and well dressed. The one really noticeable thing about them is the woman's auburn red hair. I'm always pleased to see them because they appear to be genuinely content with each other's company. They are almost always reading magazines or newspapers and drinking something. They rarely speak to each other but there is a peace around them, a balance you can almost physically see in certain couples. When one has finished with their reading material they automatically hand it to their partner. The other takes it without a word and lays it down on the seat between them. The person without the magazine drinks their coffee or looks out the window until the other is finished reading. Then they talk for a brief time, sometimes laughing quietly, always paying full attention to what is being said. They are like an island of tranquility in the middle of all the human rush. Seeing them, watching them, invariably makes me feel a little better.

CarrollBlog 1.28

http://www.bobbyneeladams.com/age.html

CarrollBlog 1.27

At five o'clock in the evening it finally begins to snow. It has threatened to all day but now the leaden skies really let go. The snowflakes are huge and pound down like they're in a hurry to make up for lost time. Passing a movie theater, I see a man standing under its marquee holding a baby in his arms. The child is no more than a year old, if that. The man looks up at the thick snow beginning to fall and smiles, then laughs in delight. The baby looks at the snow, obviously some of the first he has ever seen, then at his laughing father, then straight up at the sky where this white stuff is coming from. He begins to laugh too. The two of them look at each other and their laughter grows.

CarrollBlog 1.25

Someone wrote in yesterday with the interesting but enigmatically brief comment "You are full of shit." Only that. I checked the most recent entries in this blog to see if I'd said anything that might have offended someone's sensibilities, but there were only the Virginia Woolf quote about writing and a couple of good poems by other people. So I assume Grumpy is referring either to my books or to me personally. If that disgruntled reader happens to be reading this, I can only say I *am* full of shit, but so are you. Biologically, it's one of the things that makes us human....

CarrollBlog 1.23

understudy
by Beverly Rollwagen

CarrollBlog 1.22

Religion
by Robert Wrigley

CarrollBlog 1.21

Many years ago I wrote a short story in which the main character is dying of cancer. While walking down the street one day, it suddenly strikes him that at least some of the people he's passing are also gravely ill and dying. It is a revelation and makes him watch the world much more closely afterwards. While out for a walk this beautiful afternoon, I got a call on my cellphone from a friend who's in a bad place emotionally. I stopped in the middle of a medieval courtyard to talk to them. Our conversation was long and intense. People passed by me laughing and talking and sometimes smiling when we exchanged glances. A few of them were also talking heatedly into phones as they passed. Once again I thought how many times do we pass others on the street without ever thinking that this moment or time may be incredibly important for them, life changing even. In the fifteen seconds it takes to walk past someone talking on a phone, they are being told their medical test results or that their sister just gave birth, or something else ominous or momentous. Without knowing it, we are inadvertently in their *space* as a huge piece of their life slides into place forever.
------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-librarian23sep23,0,555757,full.story

CarrollBlog 1.18

A very handsome, beautifully dressed man is talking to a woman on the street. He's smiling a lot and from the looks of it, trying hard to make a good impression. Suddenly he laughs loudly and it is the strangest, most disturbing laugh I have heard in a long time. It is a few inches away from a high pitched screech and completely unexpected, especially coming from someone as cool looking and well kept as him. I glance at the woman he is talking to and her face is frozen in a weird half smile, as if she doesn't know what to do now that she's heard that screech creature emerge from somewhere inside him.
______________________
an interesting one from ON:

CarrollBlog 1.17

In the neighborhood is a store that sells very sexy, very expensive women's lingerie. The kind of underwear a hopeful man buys for his girlfriend, or a woman wears to entice her love. There is nothing on display in their window that is thicker than a whisper or less expensive than a dinner for two at an excellent restaurant. Today while riding a bus, I watched a woman get on who was old, hunched over and threadbare. I smiled from ear to ear on seeing that the only thing she was carrying was a small, lipstick- red bag from that lingerie shop.

CarrollBlog 1.16

Both babies and puppies put anything into their mouths that looks interesting. As if they were at life's buffet for the first time and taste testing everything before deciding what they like to eat best among the vast array of possibilities.
----------------------------------------------

CarrollBlog 1.15

New words for 2007 (from a British friend):

CarrollBlog 1.14

"The apple that Eve is holding in many paintings is not mentioned in the Bible-- the fruit there is unnamed, merely from the tree of knowledge. Probably its depiction results from the value it had in ancient times-- to the Romans it was a luxury. In ancient Greece, cultivated apples were also so rare and expensive, so much so that there was a decree that a bridal couple might share only one apple before proceeding to the marriage bed. In Sicily today, tradition has it that a girl who tosses an apple into the street beneath her window will marry the boy who picks it up. If a priest picks it up, she will die a virgin."

CarrollBlog 1.13

I call her Ria, but I could call her salt or lightning just as well.
The two of us do many senseless things, We call
them beautiful, and drop them.
She is carved out of x-rays. She radiates through
walls and my words. She is very far away.
If I am alone, she sits here in front of my eyes.
I think I must pain her, because she sighs and sheds
her sadness on my body.
How strange that no one has noticed the flowers
above her head! I have seen and heard them; they fling
colored bells in all directions.
From them, her future children smile at me.
She walks among them, takes care of them, thinking
meanwhile she is cleaning the house and making dinner.
We are prongs of the same tuning fork, and still, if
we look at each other at times sadness flies up with a
hoarse sound.

CarrollBlog 1.12

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2005/12/29/GA2005122900888.html?referrer=emaillink

CarrollBlog 1.10

Two hours before my dog Jack died, I took him to see the Christmas trees. A week ago it was discovered that he had cancer everywhere although he was only six years old. The doctor said the disease was moving so fast that the kindest thing I could do was to put Jack to sleep while he was still alert and filled with lebensfreude, as the German language puts it. The greatest thing about Jack was how funny he was. I have never owned a dog that made me laugh as much as he did. His last morning was no exception. For some reason, the dog had always loved Christmas trees. He loved to smell them and rub up against them. When there was a tree in the house over the holidays he was in heaven. To everyones amusement, he would delicately sniff it all the time and stand unmoving as if stoned under its branches for long minutes so that he could feel them on his back. A year ago I wrote about there being collection places around Vienna after Christmas where you can leave your tree and eventually city workers will take them away to the dump. One of these drop off places is in the park across the street, so on our final walk together I purposely took him to see the trees. It was the first week of the new year and most people in the neighborhood had already brought their trees or Christmas wreaths and made a giant pile of them. Jack was mesmerized. He kept looking at them and then up at me as if to say, isnt that amazing! Look at how many there are! After gazing in wonder for a while, he literally threw himself into that high pile, like a musician doing a stage dive into the audience. He burrowed and leapt around and grunted in total delight. His lungs had been badly damaged by the cancer so he was very short of breath. But he would not stop flipping and flopping. A young couple walking by stopped to watch him. They started laughing because he was so nutty in his ecstasy. Back and forth, wiggle waggle, stop, wiggle waggle some more. They laughed, my beloved friend Jack frolicked, and the only thing I wanted in the whole world then was for that moment to go on and on.

CarrollBlog 1.8

In the building directly across from mine, the top floor apartment used to be occupied by a young couple who obviously loved their home. On the small balcony in good weather they kept a great wild array of flowers and things like potted palm trees. Through the windows you could see the rooms were furnished with lots of furniture, pictures, rugs... Cosy stuff. A few months ago they moved out and the place was empty for a while. Recently a single man moved in and from all signs, the rooms are now almost completely empty. The only light in the place appears to come from single bulbs dangling from ceiling lights with no shade on them. Whenever I glance over there now, especially at night with that sallow light shrugging out into the dark, I think how sad the apartment must be that the couple moved out. Like someone in a happy marriage who has lost their merry,loving partner.

CarrollBlog 1.6

An old man is in his final days. His heart is failing, lungs, his whole body is gradually shutting down. While in the room with him, his family puts on happy faces and do what they can to make him comfortable. Outside the room however, a small battle rages between his children. The man has stopped eating, which is apparently very common in situations like this. The only thing he *will* eat are chocolate chip cookies. He'll eat a lot of them if they're offered. His daughter is totally against this. She thinks he should be eating healthy things, not cookies. And if they are going to give them to him, they should be a reward for his having eaten the good stuff. The son disagrees. He says the old man is dying so why not give him the only thing he likes now. Papa's not going to get better so we should make him happy however we can.

CarrollBlog 1.5

Owning a bullterrier, one of the things you constantly have to deal with is people coming right up to you and insulting your pet to your face. I don't know how many times people have said to me, "That's the ugliest dog I ever saw. How can you own something like that?" Or "I heard those things are killers." Or "Is that a dog or a pig?" and then snickering. I know it's not the same thing, but it's similar to walking up to a young mother and after looking at her child saying, "That's the ugliest baby I ever saw." One bullterrier owner I know has an interesting answer. If a woman approaches and says something mean about her dog, she answers very sweetly, "He *is* ferocious. But you don't have to worry because he only bites pretty women."

CarrollBlog 1.4

He was telling me about the new car he's buying. The only extra he had ordered was a television set mounted in the dashboard where the navigation system is usually found. I thought that odd because he never has anyone else in his car but himself. I said that. He told me one of the great pleasures of his life at the end of a day is to sit in the car in front of his house and listen to music on the sound system. Now he wanted to expand that by watching TV in his new car and maybe sometimes get a burger and eat dinner in there while watching the news or a favorite early evening show. As he talked on, I found myself unconsciously tilting my head to one side like a dog when it hears a very high pitched whistle. What this man was saying was so odd to my sensibilities-- eating dinner in the car while watching tv there-- that it was like a dog hearing a sound high and impossible.
-----------------------
just in from JdT:

CarrollBlog 1.2

Since you asked

CarrollBlog 1.1.2007

One of the interesting things about this time of year is often the strangest people get in touch, frequently after decades of silence. You receive a Christmas card or an email saying Hello-- it's been years but here I am again. How are you? Merry Christmas.The mind has to shift into neutral for a few seconds to process this name, then dredge up their face, and finally the memories of this person who left your solar system long ago. But now, like Halley's Comet, their orbit has for some reason brought them back for a glimpse before they're off again. I like it when this happens. It reminds me that I've had more than one life, one set of friends, one set of intimates, etcetera. It reminds me that life really is made up of chapters and that the one we inhabit right now is just one and not the whole story.
------------------------------------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddn4MGaS3N4&NR