Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs > Recent Status Updates

(While) driving, I have created turtle traps in my mind, have written long, detailed letters never to be put to paper, much less sent. When the radio was on, music has stimulated memory of times and places, characters and stage sets, memories so exact that every word of dialogue is recreated.

What’s beautiful about death is you can say anything you want to (when you’re dying), as long as you don’t lord it over others, pretending to know something they don’t. The big question we still have to ask is not where we’re going, but what we were doing here in the first place.

Art had this vivid dream while waiting for the end, in hospice care: “I enter the waiting area (at Dulles Airport)... the loudspeaker says, “Because of inclement weather, today’s flight to Heaven has been cancelled. You can come back tomorrow and we’ll put you on standby.”

He comes into that part of our being that is our treasure, that sacred space within us - hidden under all the fears, walls and anger within us - so that we may grow in the spirit of love.

This is the incredible story of Alistair Urquhart, of the Gordon Highlanders, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese during the invasion of Singapore, survived the Bridge-building on the River Kwai and the A-Bomb at Nagasaki... He penned this 50 yrs later. ON SALE ON AMAZON!

The hustle and bustle of a a family day trip to Persepolis plays off the stubby forthrightness of the native Iranian grandparents against the watchful care and ironic caution of the parents - and the constant, neurotic second thoughts of the teenaged Darius. You feel like hugging them all!

Gilbert Gosseyn has awakened from his long Aristotelian slumber to find himself on a complex interplanetary segue within the framework of interlocking parallel worlds completely devoid of absolute reference points. The World of Null-A. And the Fourth World War between Aristotelian thugs and Null-A visionaries is set to begin.

Drawing close to the conclusion of this jarring but wonderful, no-holds-barred Christian memoir. Ms Morgan is a mainstay at Our Daily Bread, and an intelligent and inspired panelist on their regular podcasts (free on the Web, for Apple or Android listeners).

As a small boy living near downtown Cincinnati on a quiet, tree-shaded street, I recall lying in bed on summer nights and... hearing the whistles of steam paddle-wheelers on the river on their way up to Pittsburgh or down to New Orleans.... a little boy’s thoughts are mixed with dreams.

I was then hopelessly lost in the streets of a small but endless town (near the Ontario border). It rained cold and pitiless... Suddenly the door was wrenched open (by) a man quite red of face, quite whisky of breath... “Thought you was in trouble... now, where is it you want to go?”

The author, Peter Matthieson, made his own warmly and wonderfully read abridgement for this audio book, during his last illness. This is a true treasure among my books!

You may say that a parrot puts on airs. Well, a parrot does. But a parrot KNOWS he’s putting on airs; he’s not like a blue jay that way... A blue jay gets all mixed up in his thinking because he starts believing his own PR... which is why you can win an argument with a jay and never with a parrot(!) EBOOK ON SALE TODAY!

Very inexpensive price for the ebook today on Amazon!

The rivers were full of logs, bank to bank for miles, waiting their turn at the abattoir to give their woody hearts so that the bulwarks of our civilisation such as Time magazine and the Daily News can survive, to defend us against ignorance.

Updike’s anti-hero, Piet, dreams one night after a party that he is an old, old minister making house calls. He is relieved when a German policeman arrests him. So the souls of the Second Circle of Hell will still have enough innocence to accept their divine punishment with grateful acquiescence, while buffeted by the gloomy infernal storm.

The lamb will break down the walls of fear, of violence, of sin, which imprison people.

Poor old Burrhus - you wonder, in mid-age, why your technological conditioning has made us all worse off than ever. You know, you don’t have enough intuitive understanding in your heart to understand its failure to resolve humanity’s ills. It’s simple - brains like ours have caused them, & they will never figure out the nature of love. It made us; LOVE is what we’re looking for, not non-stop technology.

OPENING QUOTATION:
“My hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining within structures which give us a false sense of security... while Jesus does not tire of saying to us, “Give (the poor at the door) something to eat.”
Pope Francis

Ever since I learned of my wise freshman philosophy professor’s predilection for this man’s thought, I’ve wanted to know more. Now, 51 years later, here’s my chance!

Fall hunting season in Maine:
“I was afraid for Charley... a poodle looks very much like a buck deer to these hunters. I wrapped Charley’s head in red Kleenex and fastened it with rubber bands... he wore it all the way west while bullets whined and whistled around us.”

Will Prince Myshkin EVER learn that society can open its arms to you - for all the wrong reasons?

Slanderous gossip within the British garrison threatens to expose the ingenuous friendship between these two young women - from opposing sides in the conflict - and may cripple the career of one of their husbands...

One of the few books in Bach’s library at the time he died - though worn with use!

One step more one alone all alone in the sand no hold he will make it.

Nova Scotia, 1750. The other shoe has dropped: the British have declared war on the French in the Canadian colonies. The forced expulsion of the French Acadians from the Maritimes is about to begin. An excellent audiobook!

Darius sees his Iranian soccer buddies as “pretty good guys.” One can’t resist a wistful smile over this, as in other, more Stateside circumstances he would be describing them as “Soulless Minions of PERSIAN Orthodoxy...” Ah, the ingenuous myopia of those caught up in the foreign travel bug!

That was George. He didn’t welcome me and he particularly didn’t welcome Charley. I never did rightly see George, but his sulking presence was everywhere. For George is an old gray cat who has accumulated a hatred of people so intense that even hidden upstairs he communicates his prayer that you will go away.

Darius wakes up in the Iranian town where his grandparents live, goes into the kitchen - and is just taking his anti-depressant pill when his granddad, Babou, walks in.
-What’s that Darius?
-My pills...
-Are you sick, Darius?
-Not really. Just depressed.
-Darius... Just TRY HARDER!

This audiobook is FANTASTIC! Darius is such a quirky, too-sensitive but warm-hearted teen, and it’s such a Treat to see and hear his jumpy knee-jerk reactions (along with his idiosyncratically anxious American thoughts) to the outgoing and so much less complicated Iranians!

I lay deep in hot water in the tub and I was utterly miserable, and nothing was good anywhere. Charley caught (the mood) from me, but he is a gallant dog. He came into the bathroom and that old fool played with the plastic bath mat like a puppy. What strength of character, what a friend!