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Breaking It Down
From whiskey river: The states of mind or feelings that art can excite have been helpfully distinguished in Sanskrit aesthetics, where they are called rasas, from a word meaning “juice” or “essence”. A fully achieved work of art should flow with all nine of them: their names might be transposed into English as wonder, joy, [...]
Wild
[Image above, "Where the Wild Things Are," a tribute to Maurice Sendak by elmicro of the deviantArt site. Click the image to see the original.] Today marks Maurice Sendak’s 81st birthday. This year also marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are. From 100 Best Books for Children: After creating [...]
WIP Excerpt: Al Castle Meets… Someone Important
Background: This passage’s action takes place in 1959. The “Al” here is Al Castle, who owns a metalworking company in southeast Pennsylvania, in a small town named Caerleon. His company has been acquired by a big multi-national corporation named Sarras, which also owns a Welsh firm which brews a particularly elegant, powerful, and pricey ale. [...]
Aqua Vitae
[A modified version of the image above appears as the cover of Pascale Petit's 2008 collection, The Treekeeper's Tale. It also pretty much perfectly accompanies Petit's poem appearing below, as the first whiskey river entry in today's post.] From whiskey river: What She Wanted What she wanted was to return to the original rainforest hear [...]
Crossing the Line
For me, the last few days of May and the first few of June, in most years, are veined with ambivalence. First, there’s May 29. As you may have put together by your own clever self, that’s The Missus’s and my anniversary. This has always been an easy date for me to remember, because it [...]
There Are Some Cures for Pre-Summertime Blues
Wanted to draw your attention to a couple of recent donations to the “life is complex and frustrating, so let’s go have some fun!” cause. First, you can generally look to the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog for a pick-me-up. (And before breakfast, say researchers, is when 99% of the populace most needs picking [...]
