The Waitress Was New

This quiet novel, the first of French novelist Dominique Fabre’s works to be translated into English, is a lyrical and poignantly amusing study that taps right into the heart of the human condition. Following the inner musings of 56-year-old barman Pierre over the course of a few days, the novel explores the consequences of the choices we make, the loneliness of aging, and the dignity that arises from being of service and work, all with an attentive observation that is simply exquisite.

“I shook hands with a few regulars I’d got to know over the years without really trying to. They’re here, they come in for a drink, a bite to eat, they read the bar’s newspaper. They never forget what they are, or all the things they have to do, but for a few minutes, maybe an hour or two, they put themselves between parentheses, and I bear the name of that thing in their lives.”

Weather Scores

So, every now and then, I’m going along and I get into a rut. Bills to pay, cat puke to clean up, rotting vegetables in the refrigerator, dead things in the yard–you know the drill. It gets sort of mundane. And more than ordinary.

And then, one day, you walk into a studio at an Open Studios event and you find this.

And, over the next few days and weeks, you come to realize, again, that the world is nowhere near as small as you might imagine and fear it can be. It’s big. Very big. And, if this woman is able to capture the elaborate music of hurricanes and storms in color and form…

Well. Isn’t there something I can do, as well?

Time passes.

‘Nothing makes time pass more quickly or more shortens a journey than a thought which absorbs in itself all the faculties of the organization of him who thinks. External existence then resembles a sleep of which this thought is the dream. By its influence, time has no longer measure, space has no longer distance. We depart from one place, and arrive at another, that is all. Of the interval passed, nothing remains in the memory but a vague mist in which a thousand confused images of trees, mountains, and landscapes are lost.’

-Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

This is how I always felt, driving for long stretches on the highway, my novel alive in my mind and working itself out…

 

image by allisonac

A Song Unfinished

“There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”

-Carson McCullers

image by liquidskyarts

Zoo Maps

I have become completely enamored with zoo maps of late. This in one of my favorites…so simple in design.

“Hire”

Jenna: We just need to hire some of those ugly people who have the paper and change the shapes on it.
Jack: Writers?

Font stuff.

Love this. 

Kafka on the Shore

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

The City of Ember

I recently read a book I would never have read except that I had to read it for a freelance project. It’s a young adult book, about an underground city set in the future. One thing that made my heart stop and put me into a panic everytime in this book: sometimes, the city experiences a ‘black-out,’ due to the failing generator, and then the lights flicker and go out and they are plunged into complete darkness. They have no flashlights and they do not know how to make fires. It’s just dark! And…if the generator fails, that’s it!  They have no idea that they are underground, that there are ways out of the city–no idea! (due to the Instructions for Egress having been lost, at one point).

It creeped. me. out. when the lights failed. -shudder- -shudder- -shudder- Every single time.

And, on top of that, the shelves of the supply depot–which was stocked to last the city for 200 years–are becoming bare. They are running out of things, and have no idea they were supposed to re-surface about, oh, 50 years ago?

God, this book made me feel SO claustophobic and desperate! But, it had a happy ending, of course. And awesome, quirky passages, such as this one:

At a house on Calloo Street, Lina delivered a message to a worried-looking man whose living room was completely dark. “I’m saving on light bulbs,” the man said. And when Lina took a message to Can Cafe, she learned that on certain days the back room was used as a meeting place for people who liked to converse about Great Subjects. “Do you think an Invisible Being is watching over us all the time?” she heard someone ask. “Perhaps,” answered someone else. There was a long silence. “And then again, perhaps not.”

Soup, Art.

‘I hated the soup and felt little for the can.’

-Patti Smith on Andy Warhol