On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

“I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman to be.”  - Anatole France (Life Of Joan Of Arc) That thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a sympathetic relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty being, with whom a man deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some part of it, and from whom he receives in return a gift of magical powers. - James George Frazier (The Golden Bough, A Study Of Magic And Religion) "...one of these days, when you hear a voice say 'come,' where you going to run to?" - Lyric from Johnny Too Bad (The Slickers, Harder They Come soundtrack) Spirituality and atheism require the same amount of faith out there. I got all butt hurt at God and his great plan that put me in a car on some hot muggy side street, and yet the prayers kept coming, begging for a happy ending. In a Godless landscape, you have to believe that the god of money, and it's doctrine, capitalism, will reward faith in t...

"When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks." - Marcel Proust (Swann's Way - Remembrance Of  Things Past, Vol 1 - C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation from the French 1922) I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.  I do not think that they will sing to me.  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves  Combing the white hair of the waves blown back  When the wind blows the water white and black.  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea  By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. T.S. Eliot In my upcoming book, a key point is that sleep t...