"Barb, hey, if you're going to have a memorial service for me, I know where it should be."
Long pause. "Oh?"
"Yeah. Hooters!"
Longer pause, then a sigh. "Well, that makes sense if you're going to be consistent..."
Music from Cheap Trick, with Surrender.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
I hope you won't mind my recycling a comment I left on another blog as today's blog post; today Cynthia Ruchti posted Top Ten Things Good Books Are Missing on the Books and Such Literary Management blog.
My reply, written in the form of a sonnet, addressed what a good book needs, at least from my perspective.
In cancer’s fatal Isandlwana, where the impis line the beetling hill and the blood-scent’s fell and vicious dare is how to face the foe’s casual kill, I turn to words that have no trope to sell, nor style to flash; I turn to words that give me hope that a part of me outlives the clash of my skin against metaphoric steel that rends from within, and knows no mercy, nor gives time to heal but simply follows, blow on blow. There will one day be no dawn, no leaven save your words, pointing me to Heaven.
Music from the Alan Parsons Project, with Closer To Heaven.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
Yesterday, Christmas Day, Barb was at the hospital supporting her very sick friend and her friend's husband (and bringing cheer to the nursing staff), so I was on my own and watched a movie.
I choose films pretty carefully; cancer is taking much, these days, and I need to find ways to build my morale, to build hope.
I picked the wrong movie, as it turns out.
Ridley Scott's Alien Covenant is stylishly made with seamless special effects, a plot that generally cracks right along, a number of building climaxes...and a thoroughly nasty ending which not only makes the whole film a waste, but leaves a really bad taste for along time afterwards, because evil not only wins, but it's presented as something almost attractive.
Good doesn't always win through; I know that, and cancer's brutally knocking home the point every day.
But we need our stories to give us something besides the sneering reality that we're fodder for an indifferent if not evil universe.
Our stories have to give us hope.
A happy ending may be bittersweet...look at Ghost, or Brian's Song...but the stories to which we turn to make sense of the world build the moral framework upon which we find the courage to stand against the things that rightly scare us.
Our stories tell us that our lives mean something, especially when in the depths all seems wrecked and futile.
Samwise Gamgee said it best in the second Lord Of The Rings film, The Two Towers:
Frodo : I can't do this, Sam.
Sam : I know. It's all wrong By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
Music from Maureen mcGovern, with The Morning After.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
I'm writing this on Christmas Eve; Barb isn't here, and won't be here tomorrow.
A dear friend of ours is in hospital, very ill, and her husband is very worried, so Barb is there for them.
An that is what Christmas is all about.
It's not about family and food and festivities.
It's not about carols and church and pageants.
It's about God coming to stay with a scared and hurting world, offering Himself as comfort.
It's not like I'll be alone, facing cancer on Christmas Eve Night. We've got eighteen dogs and an insanely brave cat.
God will be here, too.
And...I've got Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2!
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
I wrote the sonnet below as a comment on Steve Laube's brilliant blog post on the real meaning of Christmas, that in Christ is found the answer to our greatest longing.
Did Mary know Isaiah’s gist
and did her pure heart quail
to see each soft and perfect wrist
rent by an iron nail?
Or was she somehow shielded
from what must one day be?
Were the terrors gently fielded
by God as she took a knee?
I’d like to think He gave her
both peace and wisdom too;
her Christmas Night made sweeter
by what she must pass through.
It’s bittersweet chiaroscuro, this story
where the shadow gives the light its glory.
I think there's a bit of this on the cancer journey, too. I see a situation that deteriorates every day, with nights that are frankly brutal and days that are worse. And yet...the enveloping quality of the darkness makes the lights in my life all the brighter. The love of my wife and my friends and my dogs, the small physical victories of fabricating a piece of faceless steel into something useful, and the glory of the stars shimmering in a frosty sky... I took these for granted before. I see them now not because I likely won't be around to see them for long, but because their intrinsic beauty and wonder is clearer now. No longer is the light of my own ego isn't competing with the light of God's blessings. Here's my very favourite Christmas carol, Better Days by the Goo Goo Dolls. I hope you'll enjoy it.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
