Compulsively Aimless

  Books Read 2019 If you're a runner, I suppose finishing a marathon is an ultimate goal.  You collect a runner's high and hold a badge of honor.  For reading, my goal for 2019  was to read 100 books.  Yesterday I finished the year with 102. If you're raised in the midwest, you're not supposed to brag but I will share this with Goodreads since the site is about sharing our reading experiences. And like a runner, there were times on the journey when I was exhausted but there were probably more moments of experiencing a reader's high. What did I learn?  It pushes you to read outside your normal area of interest but don't be too structured about what you plan to read.  Be open and go with the flow of your current interest.  Here are some stats on types of books read:   Travel/Place - 14 History - 14 Non-fiction 11 Novels - 9 WWII - 7 Digital World - 8 Art - 5 Biography -5 Poetry - 5 Memoir - 5 Photography - 4 Language - 3 Sci-Fi- 3 Philosop...

November 7-8: The overnight in Springfield, the log report the hotels were filled up with 700 Republicans.  Before leaving Springfield, John bought arctic overshoes to cope with the mud.    In the little town of Ashland, they spot American Crayon 30 Blendwell and Chroma points.  John says it boosts their spirits to see something from Sandy.   They overnight in Quincy where the natives seem to be enjoying themselves on a Saturday night. 

The crew is up at 6:30 to leave Indianapolis but not before buying mud hooks, and then buying more mud hooks.  Lynn Curtis looks very blue according to Earl.  Without road maps they rely on locals for directions.  Without good dope they go off course.  The roads turn from gravel to mud and they resort to putting mud chains on tires.  When they drive into a ditch, they are pulled out by a local farmer in a Ford truck They drive late into the night to reach Decatur, IL.  The crew's big ambition is to be in Kansas City by Sunday.  The rest of their entries are consistently succinct: Mud. Mud. Mud.

November 5: Springfield, OH to Indianapolis, IN  

Exactly one-hundred years ago today, November 4, 1919, my grandfather John Whitworth convinced three of his hometown friends to attempt a cross-country drive under the cruelest of conditions.  The men were inexperienced, the car was subject to regular breakdowns, and the highways were a series of unmapped dirt roads. This was still an era when passenger trains were the only acceptable means to cross the continent.  Anyone who attempted such a journey by automobile was likely to be considered eccentric or foolish or both. To the drivers of today, however, the four young men would be considered pioneers. During the month of November, I'll be posting excerpts from  the logbook my grandfather kept of their journey from  Sandusky, Ohio to Pasadena, California. The car they drove was a 1915 Fiat Riviera. My grandfather recorded the mileage, location, time, and comments on the road about  the people, places and things that he witnessed. He...

When my parents died, I inheirted their libraries.  One set of 28 books were from The Modern Library series.  The series was created in 1917 with the intent to provide American readers with inexpensive reprints of what were considered important European titles and a few contemporary American books.  The books were issued in compact, hard-cover with a textured cloth in two-tone finish and without dust jackets. (There are different color schemes but I've never figured out if there is a signficance to the color combinations.)  The series adopted a running torchbearer as its logo.  The Modern Library was sold in 1927 to a new publisher, Random House, lead by editor Bennett Cerf. Random House added more titles over time billing tself as “The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books” but kept its mission the same.  The series, published thorough the 1930s, reached some 280 titles and covered authors from Aristotle to Zola.   I recall seei...

Duel at the Haiku Coral Junior fought a haiku duel with the old witch and won! Beach Combing Everyone is a collection of stories and when they die their stories scatter washing up on different shores to be discovered by beach combers or stay buried under the sand. Eternity Road Driving eternity road in an 18-wheeler of flammable emotion the rest stops are shuttered except for the coin-operated machines offering heroism, selfishness, and endless confusion. Dark and Light Dawn and dusk and the boundaries are’t clear but I see rivers of darkness rushing through the night Curl away the brown wrapper and there’s a new morning Here Be Monsters Dark poetry drove sailors over the edge of the map. I Saw This in a Movie A figure on the horizon the hero waits too long deceived and disarmed but if he had acted too soon it would have been murder. Battle of the Bands : Honorable idiots vs. Imbeciles for Hire Wrong Again vs. Revenge Men Favorite Phantons vs. Real Imposters Fancy Types vs. Rus...

Digital morning Everything needs a password Everyone forgets

Cartoons present a wide and nearly inexhaustable spectrum so with this list, I'm emphasizing my disclaimor that the lists presented are completely random and based on whatever I happen to have lying around.  After a couple of cups of coffee this morning, here's a few. Favorite Haunts, Charles Addams (1976).   A collection of Addams "greatest hits" from the leading cartoonist for the New Yorker who inspired the Addams Family TV show and unacknowledged god father of dark humor.  As a kid, I spent many a rainy Saturday afternoons in our basement flipping through the different Addams cartoon collections.  Inheirited from my parents book collection.   Cat, Tiny Footprints, Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon , Whack Your Porpupine , B. Kliban (1975-1982).  B.Kliban started with cat meat loaf drawings and moved on to other more surreal subjects. Bizaar and slightly distrubing, I bought most of them in the local mall where I grew up and even had t...

Summer 1969 June I crashed my Matchbox Ferraris on home-made gravel roads Saturday nights the thunder of stock car engines traveled miles across cornfields the Doppler effect making their revolutions rise and fall like the din of a faraway battle the thunder lasted a thousand summers but maybe it was five or six. July My parents' guests laughed and drank on the patio under the shadows of an 80-year old oak tree spared by the contractor leaving it encircled like a druid meeting place for the first time humans cast their shadows on the moon I ran from our black and white TV to the patio with urgent dispatches The Eagle has landed Stepping off the LEM now … not one Christopher Columbus among the guests to come watch TV with me. August Morning was the hum of a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower marching up and down the yard spinning silver steel against green grass but in the afternoon sprawled on the lawn it was the transient drone of an unseen p...

Five Cent Amusements 
 The dunce did a dance with his cup of love. *** The fox in the dark makes the house dogs bark *** Most everything is expectations that never happen. Weather is the first gift from nature. *** On stage with my fears every day I walk out the door *** Soon my time will be someone else’s time *** After the storm broken branches on the dark pavement look like overgrown tarantulas.

Masters of the Universe Coffee shop idlers everyone at the center of their MacBook universe. Supreme Coffee Brain   After the large latte and venti dark roast there were fifteen minutes where I was at the mountaintop master of all knowledge or at least a Sunday New York Times   Then, slowly my foot slipped from the summit and I spiraled down the caffeine chasm  crushed in an avalanche of my pedestrian ignorance   Sound Memory The sound that comes from one small town is the place where I was young.   Outspeak the Dark Music Frantic man yelling in the distance to fugitive listeners Leaf and star burn at night The destiny of diamonds is dust Bonehouse is the body said Beowolf Words I Like relic atmosphere murmuration You're No Haiku Shark fin old gin make you grin Minor Word Distortions   Company Panic Steel Plates in Head Home Despot Artist Rectal   Band Names + Songs Stage Presence - Last Noise Milton’s Angels - Robbe...

Could a public safety slogan be adopted by poets, “If you see something, say something.” NORMAL RATE OF SPEED   Out west a murmuration of black starlings flash semaphores from the setting sun while in stoic slowness bison stride across the tributaries. In the north their distant cousins the musk ox steam and scowl under frosted scruffs.  

SIX PORTRAITS OF MADNESS   Portrait 1: Outside and Inevitable   The hermit grew delusional and portentous about the outside and the inevitable with dire moods invading his home 
no more did he trust the press, phones or the outside world in general.
 During the day he activated his nocturnal headshrinker Then again he never thought he would ever be caught violating the rules of day-night psychology.
 Last words from the smashed and dying shortwave radio warned that
 many inoperable ruptures  frustrate the dreams of obstinate
 yet sentient beings.   Portrait 2: Elves Themselves More benign than translucent we prodded the tremulous elves 
into buses  and provisioned them with crudites for the expedition ahead. Up north
when evil weasels find Etruscan elves elusive they often turn to Elvis
 and thoughts of industry A rival tribe of trolls with souls
 escaped into their underground game rooms.   Portrait 3: The Surreal ...

Returning to my random lists of books on my shelf after several years. I had to pause for a while after several moves that put my library into a state of of upheaval.  After moving from out of a house with built in bookshelves, I've had to keep my books stacked and double shelved on small shelves or stuffed in liquor boxes sitting in an attic.  I've finally been able to build shelves in my current house and see my books again.  Since then, I've also inherited books from both my parents who have passed away in the last few years.  Write it Yourself - Part II One of my first lists were books about diaries and journals including one of the most famous diarist - Samuel Pepys.   Write It Yourself - Part I Diaries, journals, logs, notebooks -- may be for an audience of one to recording daily life or possibly as a record moments in history.  Diaries cover the widest spectrum of human experience -- the drama of war ( Guadalcanal Diary or the introspect...