CarrollBlog 8.31

This is a must watch:

CarrollBlog 8.30

"Sometimes a story finds a storyteller, not the other way around."

CarrollBlog 8.29

Almost two decades ago I wrote a short story entitled FRIEND'S BEST MAN. It's about a man who saves his beloved dog from being run over by a train, but in doing so loses one of his legs. The rest of the story is about what happens to him after the accident. JB sent me this story from today's San Francisco Chronicle. The parallels between the two are astonishing. The real life story will break your heart.

CarrollBlog 8.28

Meadowbrook Nursing Home
by Alice N. Persons

CarrollBlog 8.27

A young beautiful couple walking down the street hand in hand, speaking Italian. Both of them have large pieces of transparent plastic wrap on their bare right biceps. Looking more closely, I see apparently identical just-finished large new tattoos there. Too self-conscious to look harder and see what the tattoos say, I can't decide whether what they did was very cool or nuts.
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A bunch of loud 20 year old young men are eating at McDonald's. A table full of bad haircuts.
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He tells me in a hushed tone that so and so, a mutual acquaintance, just died. I said, Well, that must have made your day. He looks at me, shocked that I'd say something cruel about someone so recently gone. Seeing his expression I asked why are you being a hypocrite? You never liked them. They treated you terribly for years. I don't believe in not speaking ill of the dead. An asshole is still an asshole, whether they're still breathing or not.
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"If I knew where the great songs came from,
I'd go there more often.
It's quite like the life of a
Catholic nun;
you're married to a mystery."

CarrollBlog 8.26

"Strangeness is a concept of innovative thinking."

CarrollBlog 8.25

That nice feeling after traveling a long time when you see the very first sign along the road for home, or when the arrival and departure board at the airport announces that the flight to your city is ready now for boarding.
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Walking past the large outdoor cafe, I see five young women sitting together wearing those gigantic half-face sunglasses that are so in vogue these days. They look like a convention of giant insects with ponytails.
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Advertisements in store windows for 'End of Summer Sales!' when July is only a week or two old. Every year when I see signs like this my brain stops at least once and thinks-- wow, summer's over already? Then it pats itself patronizingly on the shoulder and says no no, it's just begun.
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She's having a tough time getting over their relationship. She says in every dog walk zone in Vienna, the city offers free plastic bags to use to pick up dog crap and drop it in the garbage. Signs all over have a funny photo of a Jack Russell terrier with a handwritten sign in its mouth saying:

CarrollBlog 8.24

abracadabra
This charm was used throughout the Middle Ages. 'One only had to write it down in the triangular pattern shown below and wear it round one's neck as a sort of phylactery or charm to be protected from various diseases and to be cured of fever':

CarrollBlog 8.23

Why I Have A Crush On You, UPS Man
by Alice N. Persons

CarrollBlog 8.22

"While dressing and preparing to go out, she thought of Ben's story about the time he ate the greatest cassoulet on earth in a small village in southern France. The name of that town was Castelnaudary. He pronounced the name so beautifully when telling the story that German made him repeat it twice just so she could hear the catch and roll of the word in his voice. She didn't want to think about him now but that was almost impossible. Joy, real joy, comes so rarely in life that we mourn the death of it a long time. In the beginning of their relationship she said to him, 'Where have you *been*? Where have you been all this time? It feels like I've been holding my breath for years but now I can finally let it out.' They were lying naked on the couch when she said this. To her great surprise and consternation, Ben got right up, walked into the kitchen, and started making her cassoulet for the first time. When she entered the room a few minutes later, bewildered by his having disappeared from her arms just like that, he described Castelnaudary and the time he had eaten this extraordinary dish there. His back was to her while he spoke. When he turned, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears but he was smiling. 'This is the best meal in the world, German. I have to make it for you right now. It's the best way I know how to show how I feel about you.'

CarrollBlog 8.21

I told him one particular short story he'd written was a great favorite of mine and that I go back and reread it often. He made a pained face and said, "I don't like that story. I wrote it about someone who ended up being the biggest mistake of my life. I knew a writer who wrote a novel about her childhood. The book came out, no one bought or read it, and it disappeared very quickly. She told me the thing she was saddest about was that she had wasted her childhood on that book. I feel the same way about that short story: I wasted so much love on it when the one it was meant for turned out to be a very bad person."

CarrollBlog 8.20

I was watching Sydney Pollack's wonderful documentary SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY. At one point in the film they were talking to critics of the visionary architect. Time and again the naysayers brought up the point that Gehry repeats himself in his building designs. For example if you look at the Bilbao Museum and the Disney music center, they're basically cut from the same cloth. Nothing new there. By the time they had finished talking I was shaking my head. *All* artists repeat themselves. Philip Roth always writes about sex addled Jewish men in one form or another. Marlene Dietrich is always Marlene Dietrich no matter what role she plays. But that's exactly why people go to see her films-- because they love her in those roles. People who like Mozart can often recognize his work after listening to only a few bars because they know his style so well. You buy a Roth book or tickets to see a Dietrich film because you like how that individual portrays the world. You listen to a Mozart concert because his musical vision and phrasing appeals to your sensibilities. Even if you are unfamiliar with the piece of music that is to be played, you know his compositions unfailingly work for you. An artist's style is his way of seeing and then presenting the world. You either respond to it or you don't. But to fault him because he signs his signature similarly every time is ridiculous.

CarrollBlog 8.19

an interesting anecdote from a penpal in a Texas prison:

CarrollBlog 8.18

'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.'

CarrollBlog 8.17

I've heard so much over the years about the "Burning Man" Festival in the US every summer. I always wondered what it would be like to attend. This clip is a pretty good taste.

CarrollBlog 8.16

Riding on a bus through town yesterday, I realized something I had never thought of before: While moving along, I kept seeing places and sites that live happily in my memory. There's the faded Czech restaurant where I used to eat those delicious heavy dinners with F in the middle of that bitter winter. There's the bar next to the Danube where R and I sat one glorious late summer afternoon and I read her the first pages of my new book. Memories like that. Then I realized every single person has their own very personal map of where they live. A million people live in the same city, a million different maps. Whether it's a city or a small town, there are landmarks and x marks the spots all over it that are important or sacred or sad only to you and perhaps a small number of others who shared that place or experience with you. Everyone has their own map but they rarely overlap because what matters to me, what I distinctly remember about those places, means nothing to you and vice versa. Only when you have been with someone a very long time are they similar. Even so, there are still secret places on their maps-- restaurants and bars, specific addresses, doorways, statues... which you will never know the importance of to them. You will pass these places without a thought. But when *they* pass them they think--there-- that one is on my map forever. How could it not be?

CarrollBlog 8.15

The man at the blood bank is hugely obese. His cheeks are so red that they look like they (and he) will pop at any minute. He must have the blood pressure of a Titan missile on the launching pad. Still, he insists on doing it. The nurses are diplomatically trying to dissuade him, saying a "donation" in his condition is not a good idea. But he becomes more and more adamant the more they try to discourage him. You can see everyone involved is getting angry. When you volunteer to give blood here you must fill out a very long detailed form asking question after question about your state of health. 'Do you have high blood pressure?' must have been one although I forget after having answered so many. Perhaps he doesn't-- perhaps he's just an enormous guy in perfect health who happen to be a good altruistic citizen. I can easily imagine his blood transfused into the body of a very thin sick person. Immediately they'd feel eons better because the new stuff in their veins would be full of so many wonderful rich meals.

CarrollBlog 8.14

'Why do people love us? We are always trying to figure that out, but only by using our own point of view. That way is so limited. Sometimes they love us for things we don't even know about ourselves. For example they love our hands. My *hands*? Why would anyone love my hands? But they do and they've got their reasons why. You must accept that and realize the person they know and love is different from the one you know.'

CarrollBlog 8.13

The woman going through the trash has her system but having watched her a while, I cannot figure it out. She opens each trash receptacle, looks through the contents and then fishes out... certain papers, an empty bottle that after close examination she decides to keep, some red string or wire-- I cannot tell for sure what it is from this distance. She is very choosy and discards most of what she touches. Next to her is a small cart on wheels that she puts the booty into. What does she keep and what does she sell? What of the town's castoffs is still valuable to her or at least worth having? I wonder if you were to ask what her system was if she could tell you specifically. Perhaps it is an instinctive thing-- I just like the color of this empty bottle. Maybe one day I'll need this wire. Even though this paper is written on one side, I can use the other. When I look again a few minutes later she is up the street, at the next row of garbage cans lined up for Monday pickup. This time she has what appears to be a lipstick tube in her hand. She decides to keep it, although the little bag it came in she throws back into the bin.
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and a little Ryan Adams on a Monday

CarrollBlog 8.12

Thanks to DL for sending in this poem as a follow up to the blog on memory:

CarrollBlog 8.11

I took a book off the shelf and looked at it. Had I read it? I couldn't remember. Opening it here and there, I read a few pages to poke my memory awake. Nothing. The story/style/characters looked vaguely familiar, mostly not. Whoever wrote this book spent a lot of time and energy creating the story. But even after scanning parts of it, I cannot remember if I read it or not. That really is the ultimate nightmare of any artist, next to total obscurity: People look at your work with a blank gaze, unable to remember if they've encountered it or not. Have I? Haven't I? Sort of like meeting someone at a party and thinking they look sort of familiar-- were we lovers once? I honestly can't remember.

CarrollBlog 8.10

RE: the recent blog here about Fred Astaire, SS sent this good one in:

CarrollBlog 8.8

On "The Sartorialist" website, there was an interesting debate among readers about who was the better dresser/maximum cool guy-- Cary Grant or Fred Astaire. A woman named Heather sent this response:

CarrollBlog 8.7

THE OPUS
by Primo Levi

CarrollBlog 8.6

In Hemingway's short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," a man owns a small bar in Paris and the great pleasure of his life is keeping it spotlessly clean and functioning perfectly. He wants nothing more than to run his "clean well lighted place" the best he can. I often think of that story when by chance I bump into one of those places. Yesterday out in the country near the Hungarian border, a bunch of us stopped at a gasthaus only because it was midday and we were hungry. The restaurant was in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. There were no special markings or trumpets to announce its existence. A yellow sign by the side of the road 100 meters beforehand said there was a gasthaus coming up. Nothing more. We stopped and went in. It had been a farm once and the courtyard where animals had been lodged was transformed into a lovely outdoor garden where you could sit under shady trees and have your meal. The place was packed which is always a good sign. A smiling waitress came up and showed us to a table. A moment later another waiter brought menus and asked what we would like to drink. He tickled the dog that was with us and quickly brought her a bowl of water. I could give all the other nice details of the meal but it is not necessary. The food was very good. Nothing special-- pure Austrian heavy cuisine-- but it was done with love and care. Afterwards over coffee for some and another glass of wine for others, everyone sat there with small smiles on our faces. So happy to be here, the dog sound asleep in the bright sunlight, the murmur of people talking on a lazy Sunday afternoon, this restaurant a delightful surprise none of us had expected but could all appreciate fully and we said so. Another clean, well lighted place. More.

CarrollBlog 8.5

"Regret what you did do, not what you didn't do."

CarrollBlog 8.4

One of those nice moments when you get the distinct feeling life is winking at you: I was complimenting someone on the new shoes he'd just bought and was wearing. A very snazzy pair of sneakers, he was telling me how comfortable they were and how they were the newest, most technologically advanced shoe NIKE had ever made. They looked pretty damned sleek, that's for sure. I asked how much they cost and he said "A LOT." A few minutes later when we were talking about something else, a really raggedy bum walked by. His clothes were in tatters, he hadn't shaved for days and he smelled. But when I looked down at his feet, I smiled. I said quietly "Look at his shoes." My friend looked and spluttered "No way!" The bum was wearing the same shoes he was, only in green.

CarrollBlog 8.3

Cancer is pink; a pearlescent pink that moves swiftly and low to the ground like thin beautiful fog. Dogs have the ability to see it but cannot avoid being touched by it if their time has come. Like most animals, dogs can both see and smell diseases. They learn to recognize the differences between the deadly ones and the nuisances. Unlike humans, dogs also know that happiness can be as fatal as melanoma. They know that happiness always comes in varying shades of blue, some fatal and others not. Like any illness, when happiness has run its course, time is needed to recuperate from it-- sometimes an entire lifetime.

CarrollBlog 8.2

I really enjoy watching music videos of snarling, faux-dirty, tattooed, electric haired, kohl eye'd, thunder lightning and slinky sexy women in the background- rock groups singing their latest song when the lyrics are the worst kind of cliche-mushy-trite-bullshit. "You stole my heart," "How'm I going to live without you?" Etcetera. The rule of the day is you are not allowed to sneer at the camera (and the world) with boredom or disgust if you are the perpetrator of lyrics like "You broke my heart. You tore me apart. I don't know where to start to get over you." Sorry-- no spew for you, Kitschy.

CarrollBlog 8.1

Summer is road repair time in Vienna and this year is no exception. For some reason the street where I live is a great favorite of construction crews. It seems like every couple of years they tear the whole thing up for a month or two, make their mysterious repairs, and then pave it again. A neighbor commented after the umpteenth time of this ritual that it would be more convenient if they just put a big zipper on the street to make it easier for themselves next time. I've been making revisions on the manuscript of THE GHOST IN LOVE for the American publisher the last few weeks. But often it's hard to concentrate when the world around you is a cacophony of jackhammers, asphalt chunks being dumped into trucks, shouts, etcetera. This morning it got particularly bad right at the moment I was trying to figure out an important change in the novel. I even put my fingers in my ears but it did little good. Then I remembered a story about the last days of the composer Verdi. While staying at a hotel in Milan he suffered a major stroke. He did not want to go to the hospital so he spent his final days in that hotel room. By then Verdi was so loved and revered in Italy that the mayor of Milan had the road in front of the hotel covered with hay so that the passing carriages wouldn't make noise and disturb the last hours of the maestro.
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Another Verdi anecdote: All his life, the composer loved food almost as much as he loved music. At 88 years old, 20 days before he died, this is what he had for dinner one night: