Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 70

CarrollBlog 11.11

"The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has He created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than He wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom, or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, and are up...

CarrollBlog 11.10

When she was younger she was a model. She had a mediocre career although she slogged on in the business for years. Her one great job ended with a wickedly ironic twist. She had a beautiful figure and one day her agency told her a famous suntan cream manufacturer was casting for a model for their new campaign. This campaign is world famous. The image is iconic because it is always the same-- a tanned statuesque woman with a spectacular body in a bathing suit is posed with her back to us while ...

CarrollBlog 11.9

One of my favorite Beatles songs is "A Hard Day's Night" despite the fact the first time I ever heard it was while sitting in the backseat of a police car on the way to the town police station where we had to give statements about how we had just found the body. So naturally ever after when I hear the song I think back to that day and remember the radio DJ excitedly saying "And now the new song by The Beatles!"

My sister worked at the town theater that summer. They were about to open for...

CarrollBlog 11.8

At another time they might have had a rewarding, perhaps even profound relationship. But there are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or circumstance. Another place, time, or emotional frame of mind and we would happily fall into their arms; eager to take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is we encounter them when we are discontent or content, but they are not. Or they are hungry and we have just finished a big meal. One of us is looking for love ...

CarrollBlog 11.7

The Sacred

by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had

a sacred place

and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all

said it was his car,

being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth

had been spoken

and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,

the car in motion,

music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the...

CarrollBlog 11.6

At the end of the film A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, after many struggles and setbacks the heroine is reunited with her adored fiancee. The only problem is the lover has suffered a grievous head wound that erased all of his memory. When they are reunited, he doesn't know who she is. In Julie Christie's recent film AWAY FROM HER, she plays a woman with Alzheimer's Disease who gradually loses her memory and with it her ability to recognize her husband of many years. At the end of both stories the...

CarrollBlog 11.5

Today's homework assignment: In one hundred and fifty words or less, describe one of the happiest days of your life.

We spent that summer in Brittany. Every day the weather was beautiful, which is very rare for that part of France. The morning I finished writing my 2nd novel, I took it to the tiny village post office to photocopy, and then watched the ancient postmistress cover every inch of the package with beautiful multicolored French postage stamps. When she finished she said a loud "eh ...

CarrollBlog 11.4

Two decades ago before the Internet and websites like www.abebooks.com made the process easy, it was both tough and expensive to find rare or out of print books. We were talking about books that really mattered to us. She mentioned Theodore Weesner's great novel THE CAR THIEF. Both of us swooned on about how wonderful it was and how we had discovered the book when it came out in the 70's. She said years later she suddenly got the desire to re-read it but could not find a copy anywhere. So...

CarrollBlog 11.3

There is a discount supermarket chain in Austria (let's call it Delta) that sells 'almost- things.' If your favorite candy is called 'Freddy' bars and they're wrapped in red white and blue packages, what Delta does is sell their own brand called 'Friendly' bars, wraps them in virtually identical red, white and blue packages, and charges less for them. Whether it be candy, frozen pizza, red wine... the company's thing is to sell cheaper products that are almost the real thing but not quite...

CarrollBlog 11.2

"One of life's sad facts is there are people we no longer see who nevertheless gave us some of our best or most important experiences; but they don't know it and never will. That's because we didn't know it until much later, in retrospect. He thought about the summer in Greece almost thirty years before when they were together and flew from island to island on cheap rattle'y propeller planes whenever they felt like it. Ten dollar rooms with the toilet outside down the hall. They read wilted, ...