Tales of Ordinary Madness.

"The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them." 

Charles Bukowski (Tales of Ordinary Madness)
 

If you're going to try.

 "If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is." 

Charles Bukowski - Factoum

 

Book Love.

Book collection.

I have only been here for 2 months and have already acquired a collection of novels / non-fiction / art books. Most were gifts and have cute little messages such as,  I dont know you but I like how you feel, others wishing safe travels and inspiration.

(The Camus books I borrowed from a guy at uni whom I never saw again, oops). Thank you Gatito for my latest treasure, The Hermes Scarf, pretty pretty images.

Words and Words

Some people are so good with words. Like these little notes of inspiration - they just appear so innate to the person who has written / spoken them.
I would like to be good with the written word. I think they express so much more than the spoken word.

Images from http://julia.blogg.se / http://somuchtotellyou.co.nz/ http://yespleasemademoiselle.blogspot.com/

PULP

Charles Bukowski - Pulp, possibly one of my favourite novels. If not, its a good read anyway. His work is characteristically dark, misogynist, humorous, apathetic, pathetically self-destructive and  uncontrollably hedonistic. Pulp was his last novel (1994) and is slightly less characteristic of his style, maybe why I like it. But I do love the rest.      

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." 

 

HOWL

I saw the film HOWL the other day at the 2010 Film Festival...

The film covers the trial surrounding the charge of obscenity (due to sexual content) of Allen Ginsbergs 1956 poem, Howl. The poem was eventually ruled as not being obscene, of having literally merit and went on to become one of the seminal works of the Beat Generation (along with work by Kerouac and Burroughs)

The above image is of Ginbergs and his love partner, Peter Orlovsky, the second image is a replication from the film

Highway

 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-   T.S Eliot ‘The Four Quartets’

Photo taken in Quebec, Canada

Young Blood

"In these mountains, I remember, were a group of caves cut high into a steep hillside and overlooking ridges and valleys of conifer forest which stretched to the coast. A few young people lived in the caves year-round, subsisting on wild herbs and brown rice, and on weekends adolescents from the city below gathered to make love and conversation and take drugs. There was something primitive to it, and as one listened to them murmuring around their fire at night, one thought, of course, of tribal rites. What they had done, unconsciously, but precisely, was to reproduce for themselves a common rite of initiation and isolation - as if, through the silence of the hills and temporary exile, they could come to terms with themselves. When they spoke there was a slow thoughtfulness to what they said, a solemnity - as if their distance from the urban sprawl below, the flatland, allowed them to sense the dimension of their own manhood."

 

This little gem of a book was given to me by a man whos bookstore was closing down

Its called  - The Free People, a photo essay of the Woodstock festival, with photographs by Anders Holmquist and one of the best introductions I have ever read (a snippet above) by Peter Marin. I wish I could include the entire 7 page rant... this was someone who really enjoyed the 60s.

Anais Nin

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
- Anais Nin

Anais Nin was a French author, Henry Miller’s partner, and renowned for her diaries and erotic novels
I like quotes, which she provides a plentiful of for me to play with
I also share her birthday