Scrivner

I hate following you.  You’re straight
and long, boundless, impossible.

Looking at you,
I feel inadequate. Looking at you,
I never know where to begin.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the
end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance—always substance and increase,
always sex;
Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail—learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is
so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entreated, braced in
the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery, here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my Soul.

This is a great video regarding getting your people to work for you so they feel they contributed and you get results that are more than you’ve hoped for.  I believe this strategy works even for volunteer mobilization.

His point at about 3 minutes in is slightly glossed over, but let me just re-emphasize it here:  when you pay your employees enough to start with, you take money off the table and people begin to work for personal success.  Money is not the proverbial carrot….purpose is.

The Calgary Cache and Release event (CCARS10) is holding a photo contest called “Who the Heck is Tommi Potx?”  Tommi Potx is supposedly a very hard to find geocacher.

The gist of the contest is to post a photo of what people think Tommi looks like.  Obviously, I didn’t post a photo.

But I’m still hoping to win!

Muggle cards are very handy when stopped by muggles (non-geocaching folk) while out on the trail.  Instead of looking suspicious or lying to people why you are poking around in the bush (“I was looking for my contact lens.”), hand them a card to explain geocaching.

It makes you seem legit and it may just get the muggle interested in the sport.  See also: Geocaching Savvy: Muggles…Who Are They?

Feel free to download this sheet of ten one-sided muggle business cards from this PDF. Write your geocaching name on the back and/or your logo.  Another great idea: print off a set to leave as trade items in your next find.

Carpe cache!

…arrived today!  1000 of them to distribute and encourage (or harass) people into reading my stuff.  Here’s the front:

The back of the card didn’t scan up very well because it’s a washout of the front design with some more encouragement (harassment) to have people contact me for an interview.

And since we’re on the subject of harassment, let me encourage y’all out there in ether-land to read me at www.examiner.com/calgary .  I’m located under the Sports and Recreation tab in Geocaching.  I’m the recreation, as always.

See you there! (..and don’t forget to subscribe or I’ll have to harass you some more….)

The New Yorker has issued its Top 20 Under 40 article that names ZZ Packer as one of those 20.  Besides the guy that wrote that weird novel that turned in a weirder movie about some Ukrainians that didn’t act like any Ukrainians I’m related to – I didn’t know anyone.

I do know, however, that ZZ Packer and I (Zed Zed as I call her being a Canadian) shared a list once, too.  I’d love to prove it to you but sadly the InterWeb is a temporary thing.  Making the Top Short Fiction Writers longlist in 2007 with ZZ  doesn’t count a whole lot when you’re begging for a Starbucks and she’s in the New Yorker.

But, hey, we ride on anyway.

Congrats to you, Zed Zed.  I always knew you’d make it big.

Here we go, the annual list!  This year I’ve re-read more books that I have in the past 3 years, and also have stuck to authors I have read before.  Let’s get started in order from first read to last:

1. Just After Sunset by Stephen King.  I can’t remember what the heck this book was about.  Huh.  I do remember that I keep getting the title mixed up – whether it is just before or just after sunset.

2.  Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler.  This was one of the top three books I read this year.  This story was the basis for the movie Eyes Wide Shut but I think you’ll get more out of the book (even though it’s relatively shorter than the time it would take you to possibly watch the movie if you’re a fast reader!).  Very unique read.

3.  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  Re-read.  Read this again because my grade 12 daughter was taking it in English class.  I think I understood the metaphors at the end a lot better.

4.  The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb.  I was severely disappointed in this book.  It took me forever t read it and then it was based upon the Columbine shootings, in part.  I think I’ll read Lamb again because I’ve enjoyed his past fictional books.  I just didn’t want to spend time there, I suppose.

5.  Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook.  Non-fiction.  Very good book, depressing, but clear.  I’ve also read Middlebrook’s biography of Sylvia Plath and found her to be the best biographer I think I’ve ever read.

6. Little Children by Tom Perrotta.  Worst book I’ve read this year.  Gaa.  So predictable and horrible writing to boot.

7.  The Life and Times of Micheal K. by J.M. Coetzee.  Second book I’ve read by Coetzee having also read Disgrace which was one of my favourite reads last year.  This book is also good!  I’m looking forward to reading his Waiting for the Barbarians sometime when I can find it for cheap.  Reader’s helpful hint: Micheal K. is black.  I never got that for the whole book.

8.  Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  This book took me three months of train reading to complete.  Forever!  Beautifully written book, I liked it far better than his 100 Years of Solitude but perhaps that is not saying a whole lot.  Watched the movie based on the book and had to admit, I enjoyed the book better.

9.  Black Girl/White Girl by Joyce Carol Oates.  This seemed to be a period when Oates was only writing about the college girl experience.  Last year I read her I’ll Take You There and also Beasts which are essentially this same story all over again.  Good, not great.

10. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  Re-read.  Again, my oldest daughter was reading it so I thought we could have our own book club for 2.  I finished, she didn’t.

11. The Time In Between by David Bergen.  Another book in the top three for this year.  Giller Prize winner.  Set in Vietnam, it is at once beautiful and harsh.  Read this.

12. Algernon, Charlie & I by Daniel Keyes.  Non-fiction.  I bought this because it was placed on the writing shelf but it turned out to be more of an auto-biography than anything.  Neat fact: the top song “Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie”  was originally supposed to belong to the musical for Flowers for Algernon.  Neat.

13. SeinLanguage by Jerry Seinfeld.  Non-fiction.  Funny.  Quick.  Not memorable.

14. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.  Re-read.  I think I’ve now read this 6 times and done two school projects on it.

15. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.  Re-read.  Preparing to see the movie.

16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.  Re-read.  Couldn’t stop at just one.

17. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.  I didn’t get the Pulitzer Prize quality of this book.  Seemed slightly below par to me.  The book’s revelation was incredibly contrived, I thought.  Well, whatever.

18. Watership Down by Richard Adams.  Re-read.  Second time through was as good as the first.

19. Searching for Mercy Street by Linda Gray Sexton.  Non-fiction.  Wanted to see if this would make a good companion book to Anne Sexton’s biographer (above).  Turns out not to be.

20. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Barrow and Schaefer.  My Virtual Bookshelf on Living Social keep suggesting this one to me so I decided to take them up on it.  Fun little book.  Probably the only book that has made me really want to go and visit the location where it was set.  Book clubs would like this book, since it’s basically about one.

21. Night by Elie Wiezel.  I think about this book from time to time.  I think that’s the mark of something powerful.  Question, though: is this book fiction or auto-biography?  It is listed as both in certain places.

22.  The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.  The best Morrison I’ve read to date, having only also read her Beloved.  Sometimes authors are like that, though.  Their first book being the only good book to read.  Weird.

23. The Birth House by Ami McKay.  Disappointing. 

24. On Beauty by Zadie Smith.  The last of the top three books of this year.  I spaced those out nicely, didn’t I?  Read this.  It’ll take you forever but it is well worth it.  Read this.

25. Sylvannus Now by Donna Morrissey.  Another disappointing read by a Canadian author.  The book started out very promising and faded into nothingness.  Saw she has another Sylvannus book out now.  I don’t think I’ll read it.

26. The Imaginary Girlfriend by John Irving.  Non-fiction.  Boring.  I hate wrestling.  Why couldn’t it have been more on the time he spent in Kurt Vonnegut’s writing class?

27. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  I read this for a book club I never ended up going to.  I’m glad I read it, I wouldn’t read it again.

28. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.  This was a great book to enclose all the books I read on the ‘black experience’ this year (all by accident, strange).  In this book, you can see the birthing of writers such as Zadie Smith, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.  Great book.

29. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides.  Watched the movie previously.  So depressing.  Book and movie follow together nicely.  Good writing.  Depressing book.

30. White Teeth by Zadie Smith.  This book started off so well and then dissolved into too many points of view.  I love her writing, didn’t like this book as much as I hoped I would.

31. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.  Love Vonnegut.  This one was pretty crude but it did make me LOL on the train.

32. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobelinski.  For a first novel, it was good.  Not great.  Could have used editing.  Very slow moving.

33. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Non-fiction.  Kind of a good way to finish, don’t you think?

Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Hey-o, Wordletting was kind enough to publish me again (second page this time, baby, movin’ up in the world…).  Check out “Venus Grapefruit” because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.