Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 65

CarrollBlog 12.31

I've never been a big Bible quoter but recently I came across this one and it struck a deep note. Around the end of any year I'm always on the hunt for a good quote, poem or prose passage that might put us in the right frame of mind for the next 365. This line from the Bible does that really well. So Happy New Year, everyone. I hope 2010 both lifts and anchors us all in the best ways at the same time.

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is...

CarrollBlog 12.30

Someone wrote in today with a scolding voice saying, "I was in a bookstore looking for something new to read. I picked up a novel by ******, an author I hadn't read before. On the back cover was a nice quote from YOU praising the book. So on that basis I bought it, read it, and HATED it. Thanks a lot, JC. You owe me $15." Naturally I did some research at Amazon.com where you can see pictures of both the front and back of any book. On purpose I review very few books so I clearly remember the o...

CarrollBlog 12.29

Years ago I wrote a short story in which the main character is dying of cancer. While walking down a busy street one day, it suddenly strikes him that for certain some of the people he's passing are also gravely ill or dying. It is a revelation that makes him watch the world much more closely afterwards. While out for a walk this beautiful afternoon, I got a call on my cell phone from a friend who's in a bad place emotionally. I stopped in the middle of a medieval courtyard to talk to them...

CarrollBlog 12.28

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 Haley's Comet, their orbit has for some...

CarrollBlog 12.27

"Scheherazade was so wrong; she had it all backwards. For 1001 nights, she told her king new stories to keep him interested and spare her life. But men don't want to hear stories-- they want to tell them. They want to talk; they want to hold the floor. Males want the world to listen to whatever it is they have to say. That was the single thing she learned from her dismal period of Internet dating—most men really only want to talk to someone who listens. Some want to download while others...

CarrollBlog 12.26

I don't know about you, but I remember certain books because of where I read them or the circumstances surrounding the reading more than what the story was actually about. The other day I was poking in a bin at a 2nd hand store and came across a very good novel I'd read long ago. What immediately came to mind when I saw the book was reading it at Vienna's only PIZZA HUT one winter day a decade ago. The Austrian version of PH was shitty (that place closed soon after and the whole franchise...

CarrollBlog 12.25

Insomniac

by Galway Kinnell

I open my eyes to see how the night

is progressing. The clock glows green,

the light of the last-quarter moon

shines up off the snow into our bedroom.

Her portion of our oceanic duvet

lies completely flat. The words

of the shepherd in Tristan, "Waste

and empty, the sea," come back to me.

Where can she be? Then in the furrow

where the duvet overlaps her pillow,

a small hank of brown hair

shows itself, her marker that she's here,

asleep, somewhere down in the dark

...

CarrollBlog 12.24

If I owned a bar or restaurant, I would always keep it open on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Almost everything in Vienna is closed then. But lots of people visit here for the holidays and it's sad walking around town on those two days, seeing the tourists or the lonely single person looking for any place to eat or hang out while the rest of the city is home Christmas cocooning and doing the traditional things. Years ago a friend from Germany and I went out for a drink on Christmas...

CarrollBlog 12.23

I don't know how we got onto the subject, but the woman giving me a haircut told an interesting story. She said her ex-husband had had a gruesome accident and was clinically dead for a few minutes before they revived him. He lost so much blood in the accident that he had to be given huge transfusions. After fully recovering, he was an almost entirely different man. Where once he had been tight fisted, now he was very generous with her. At the same time, where once he had said what's mine is y...

CarrollBlog 12.22

"Then he fell in love. One April day, a 109 pound American blue nose pit bull terrier named 'Slab' marched toward him on 47th street. The dog looked like a molasses colored sumo wrestler on four short muscular legs and a huge head shaped like a United Parcel Service delivery truck. The hound appeared to be smiling at him. Kaspar was a goner. He liked animals but didn't love them. He was happy to eat them when properly prepared. But in all his days he had never seen a creature like the burly a...