Fairy Tales

A couple of nights ago, I read The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen to my daughter.  I had never read it before, and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

I found an old copy of Andersen’s fairy tales some months ago and picked it up with the idea of reading some of them to Aida.  It’s a neat old book with interesting illustrations by Arthur Szyk and twenty-nine tales translated into English by E.V. Lucas and H.B. Paull.  The Nightingale was the first one we’ve read.

I’m familiar with a few of the stories, having been exposed to them in various forms in my childhood; The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and The Princess and the Pea have been told and retold in our popular culture.  I’ve never read the original stories, though, and I’m completely unacquainted with the majority of the tales in this collection.  It’ll be interesting to see how some of the rest compare to The Nightingale.

The cover of the book has an illustration from The Nightingale.  “I will sing to cheer you and make you thoughtful too.”

indeed

yes

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune but this is reality, so give me some room!

Billy Bragg, Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

damn

Here is a passage from A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant (translated by H.N.P. Sloman):

It seemed to Jeanne as if her heart was broadening, enabling her to grasp things unseen, and these little scattered lights in the fields suddenly gave her a keen sense of the isolation of all human beings, with everything to keep them apart and divide them, leading them far away from all the things that they might love; and with resignation in her tone she said: "Life really isn't much fun."

grave

I read that Guy de Maupassant wrote his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing."

Wow.

a few words

"A compact crowd, clamorous but orderly, looked on, standing in rows upon the sidewalks, and held in place by policemen on horseback who passed along, pushing back the curious brutally with their feet, in order that the villains might not mingle with the rich."

de Maupassant

a great war leaves the country with three armies...

I read a quote somewhere--supposedly a German proverb--and I thought I'd put it here. And then I got to thinking...you know, pretty much everything is fucking bullshit.

well

"Very well, then, let us live while we live, and enjoy to the fullest whatever of adventure or pleasure each new day brings, since any day may be our last, and we shall be dead for a considerable while."

Well, as is usual, it's been sometime. Not only that, it's been a long time for some things...the cold water of the Missouri, a snowy night in a sleeping bag with toes cold and not much sleep, my friend teaching me how to not be scared witless by a horror movie...

Anyway, here I am now--in front a screen (it seems like there's a hell of a lot of screens most everywhere) with a window just above it letting in the lowering light of evening, of a spring evening when the days lengthen as the sun warms.

I had surgery on my leg a few weeks ago. I could say that's one reason why it's been awhile here, and I suppose it's true but maybe I wouldn't have written anything anyway. The surgery went well and now I'm recovering. The first couple of weeks I was pretty much reclined in a chair with my leg elevated. After I was over being nauseated, I read books and old comics and watched a couple of terrible--terrible--movies from some 50-movie-dvd-set that some friends passed off on me.

Speaking of books, I've been on a bit of a pulp sci-fi kick recently. I read some Edgar Rice Burroughs (the first couple of books in his Martian stories--publishing beginning in 1912, and Beyond Thirty, written around 1915)--he seems like a crazy nationalist, but if I get around that (and some of the -isms that bleed from the prose) I enjoy some of his books, or at least parts of them. And I read another old science fiction book--Triplanetary--by E.E. Doc Smith, most of which was first published in 1934. So, yeah--old school science fiction, comics, and other stuff, too.

I started writing here with a bit of an idea about something; then I got a phone call, and now I don't really remember what that less than half-formed thought was.

I've been listening to music the last couple of days. That sounds less than mentionable, I am sure, but it's really kinda different for me, recently. I just haven't listened to much music for some time. But I've really been enjoying doing so lately.

So, now I am quite a bit more mobile than the last couple of weeks. I'm still using crutches, but it's getting better every day. I started going to physical therapy, to help address this nerve thing I've gotten as a reaction to the surgery and to work on basic range of motion stuff. I think it's helping and, like I said, it's getting better and better. So, I'm pretty happy about that.

It was a crazy warm day here--very, very springish, indeed. I guess it's that time and all.

flyingears

the secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.
-Basho