Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 63

CarrollBlog 1.20

I watched a short clip on how to properly fold a pocket square (or handkerchief) and put it in the breast pocket of a sports jacket. You know—the one that looks so casually stuffed in, as if it took the wearer two seconds and was done as a hurried afterthought. Not so. There were five proper steps to the process. Then when you've finally got the thing in place, it must be carefully adjusted so that it looks like it was done in seconds. I smiled at the oxymoron of the whole process...

CarrollBlog 1.19

On a rainy, gloppy, post-snowfall Monday, city crews are finally taking down holiday decorations that were strung up in November. Multicolored ornaments that doubled as street lights, giant many pointed stars that hang above the sidewalks, more. The final, municipal sign that the Christmas season is officially over. Standing at the counter of a café, I watch two men high on a crane disconnect one of these stars. When it's detached from its moorings, they drop it into the back of their truck o...

CarrollBlog 1.18

The first time they went to bed, he entered the room and she said "You're wearing a different watch."

He glanced at it, as if seeing the black rubber thing on his wrist for the first time. He said tentatively, "It's my night watch."

"You change watches before going to bed?"

"Yes. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and want to know what time it is. This one has a very bright dial."

"Why?"

Looking at her dark nail polish, he wished they weren't having this conversation. "Why do I w...

CarrollBlog 1.17

Cleaning my room (or desk, closet...) often ends up with coming across an object that makes me stop and think, Jesus, why did I buy that? It can be any number of things-- a hat, a pen, a book, a pair of shoes I haven't seen since I bought them, brought them home and put them deep in the closet. But the reaction is almost always the same-- why did I buy that? The answer of course is YOU didn't buy it-- THEY did. The guy you were that day back in history who saw the hat and thought for...

CarrollBlog 1.16

Coincidence department: I re-read this poem an hour before I heard about the Haitian earthquake. I thought it a good one to post today, no matter what you believe.

Pray for Peace

by Ellen Bass

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:

Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,

his suffering face bent to kiss you,

Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,

Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary

that she may lay her palm on our brows,

to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,

to I...

CarrollBlog 1.15

The two women at lunch-- mother and daughter, obviously. The girl is beautiful, tall, eighteen or so. She can't sit still in her seat. She bounces around, tosses her hair, eats too fast, talks a mile a minute while looking all around just in case there is something interesting she hasn't seen yet. The mother is also beautiful, perhaps fifty, her eyes alone are a 500 page novel.Serene and smiling she is a total contrast to the young woman sitting across the table. How happy she is to be here w...

CarrollBlog 1.14

A director of an Edward Albee play asked the playwright to read out loud one of the central monologues of the play so she could gain insight into what he meant when he wrote it. "Hearing him read it, with his own cadence, was fantastically illuminating." People frequently ask what you intended in a certain book when you wrote this or that. But I have always said that as soon as I finish writing a book, I become "only" another reader of it, nothing more or less. As a result, what I think of a ...

CarrollBlog 1.13

What if every person in the world made love the same way? Men way A, women way B. No matter who you looked at: pretty or ugly, old or young, tall or short, Mexican or Mauritanian, you knew exactly what they would be like in bed because all men did it Way A, women Way B. How would that affect human relationships/sexuality/monogamy, etcetera? When this thought crossed my mind this morning, I immediately asked someone's opinion. They said knowing all people were the same in bed wouldn't change t...

CarrollBlog 1.12

I've recently discovered the terrific poetry of Ellen Bass. I'm going to post some of her work in the days to come-- poems and excerpts. Take a look:

The thing Is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you've held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own f...

CarrollBlog 1.11

"When he worked at Brooks Brothers, Kaspar was friendly with another salesman there, a transplanted Dutchman named Remco Snoerwang. Remco collected Malaysian parang machetes and Indonesian Golok knives. Scary looking things, he kept every single one in his collection razor sharp. He said sharpening knives and ironing shirts were his ways of relaxing.

"One Monday Remco came to work looking very sad. While he was out of town over the weekend, his apartment had been b...