On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions." - Henry Miller (Tropic Of Cancer) "But get hold of Tropic of Cancer, get hold of Black Spring and read especially the first hundred pages. They give you an idea of what can still be done, even at this late date, with English prose. In them, English is treated as a spoken language, but spoken without fear..." - George Orwell (Essay: Inside The Whale) I look at Tropic Of Cancer in 2019 and have to think; these days the internet would be eating Henry Miller's flesh, or doing it's best to ban the book without being so uncool as to actually openly proscribe it. Which isn't an indictment of Miller, as the same thing would happen to Jesus or Buddha if they had an online presence. It's a book that's been canonized like an ancient Saint, kept on a virtual shelf and treated as a sacred work that everyone knows is l...

"add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith,  Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,  By name to come called charity, the soul  Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loathe To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess  A Paradise within thee, happier far.—" - Milton (Paradise Lost) I've spent a lot of my leisure time in used bookstores. One of the best was Berger's in Sunnyvale, California, back in the 80s. It was a dusty hole in the wall, owned by Thomas Berger, who spent his days reading classics and theological works, but would stop and ring up sales or handle trades as needed. I saw him use a vacuum cleaner a couple of times too. Like any good used bookstore, it reflected the owner's tastes, and in this case, it was the classics and history at very low prices. That was right up my alley, and my average stay was two hours, often more. My routine was to walk through the aisles and check the new arrivals, which were on the floor in boxes and bags until ...

He traverses familiar,  As one should come to town  And tell you all your dreams were true;  He lived where dreams were sown. - Emily Dickinson  "Do you suppose I give a damn about life now? Why, you bone-head, I haven't got a single damned lying hope or pipe dream left!" "By God, there's no hope! I'll never be a success in the grandstand--or anywhere else! Life is too much for me! I'll be a weak fool looking with pity at the two sides of everything till the day I die!" - Eugene O'Neill (The Iceman Cometh)  I've first saw O'Neill's play, "The Iceman Cometh" in high school. My English & Literature class watched the movie version that starred Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan on PBS. I won't go into all of the deep meaning, as there's cliff notes and Google for that, but what seems relevant today was the importance of dreams, which are part of a reality, even if delusional. The play'...