Thanks

Let me tell you now the story of this blog and the circumstances by which every day I find a new reason for feeling thankful, among some other unexpected incidents that will surely thrill you, unless (alas!) the contrary is proved.

Writing in this blog has unleashed my usual writing: this is the plot, the core of it. Before I created this secret forest I used to write as if I was in an awkward situation, something like... Now try to imagine something spooky, like a “hum” over your shoulder; or, to be precise, like finding yourselves in a mausoleum where takes place a tense gathering of ghosts that you’ve interrupted while you were scratching a blank page with your pen, which is also the cause of your appearance there. That’s it, I wrote like that. Well, OK, I still do. But let's not miss the point. Before blogging, for some years, I just couldn’t note down a word (you know, among a tense company like that...), not a personal, not a true word. And I think you’ll agree that it wasn’t the nicest circumstance for someone who wants to make a living as a writer. This is me, hello.

At this point I must explain that I don’t write my stories in English. I’ve never had such an aim, for I don’t speak English in my everyday life. My efforts to write in a foreign language sometimes are amusing, sometimes are ludicrous. But they help me to write in my own language. I don’t know why it happens. But it’s great. If I had done it intentionally I’m sure it wouldn’t have worked. I had four blogs written in my language before I created this one in English, and none of them lasted more than a month. They simply didn’t work. Why? Well, I never dared to ask to those rigid ghosts. The thing is, one bright day, I thought that it would be nice to extend my English learning with a blog.

And now, the reason of this blabber. To say that I feel thankful with this blog is to say that I feel thankful with its readers. Without you, this forest would be a sad notebook locked in a drawer. Your comments are the best part of this site and I shall find the way some day to put them all in the main place and relegate my posts to some unnoticed corner (if I don’t do it soon please remind me to). So, the story ends with a huge thanks to all of you. I feel generous today, and industrious, and pleased. It’s because I’ve achieved to write the entire draft of my novel, and, believe it or not, I couldn’t have made it without you. Now the story is yours, along with this link to some folktale closings and openings.

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Forgotten Bookmarks

One of this week’s blogs of note in Blogger is an odd site named Forgotten Bookmarks. It’s written by a bookseller who buys used books from people every day and posts on the net the weird things he finds in them (handwritten recipes, labels, collectible cards, photos with inscriptions...). After visiting this blog I remembered the used books I’ve bought so far and I couldn’t help but look into them again and take some photos. Among the dust and evocative smells, this is what I found:

In the first one, an old leaf. Touching. There’s a whole life behind every leaf in a book.

In the second one, the former owner of the book copied this definition: “Skepticism: philosophical doctrine whereby humans are not able to know the ability”. Very thoughtful. But he or she should have written ‘truth’ instead of ‘ability’. It’s a hilarious confusion between the Catalan words l’habilitat and la veritat.

Two forgotten bookmarks. The bookmark on the right with a Christmas theme. The one on the left with the following quote:

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Part I, iii
Oscar WILDE (1854-1900)

It’s not much but I had fun indeed!

UPDATE: I add a link to Found Magazine ("We collect found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists [...]"). Thanks to Unpublished Guy, who talks about it in a comment.

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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

My reading preferences have a wide range but I am drawn to long, everlasting novels from nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and I also have a thing with Anglo-Saxon classics. Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorites. I’m glad he wrote a novel, not a long one but a novel, after all, and today I wanted to recommend it to you.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is a story of mystery and suspense that grows darker while the characters find themselves in harsh situations, until it becomes a tale of cruelty, threat, and discovery. Everything is surrounded by a maritime atmosphere that we can find in his whole works. In fact, there are some accounts inserted in the main plot (which won’t be disclosed here) that resemble his well known tales.

This book is a must for everyone who likes suspense and thriller. The writing is much elegant; dealing with Poe, there’s always something beyond the fear and the horror, and it’s his style. I won’t try to describe Poe’s craft. Instead, I’ve chosen an excerpt from the book that can be seen as a description of his style, and, in the end, a sample of it: "it is utterly useless to form conjectures where all is involved, and will, no doubt, remain for ever involved, in the most appalling and unfathomable mystery."

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Art Day

Today is Art Day. To be honest I’m not sure if it’s a real worldwide day included in the calendar, but that’s the least of it. There’s not an unsuitable date to celebrate art, so we can say that the second Friday in August is as proper as any other date for this purpose. Having said this, let’s celebrate art! I joined this world activity in Bloggers Unite and everyone who participates is supposed to “Write a post and: draw a picture, compose a song, write a poem or story, paint, have a party...”. Just for a change, today I made three drawings (don’t be scared) and forgot my usual efforts to write. I think you’ll agree that these drawings are the telephone kind:

I had fun indeed. Well, I hope you’re enjoying this international holiday for artists of all kinds. I wish you a nice Art Day, or rather a nice simple day.

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Wheat Fields

With this post I participate in one of the writing exercises proposed by A Thousand Words that consist in writing something inspired in one photo and then link it to their site.

Image source

The light was neuter and did not bring colors or nuances to the landscape. He was glad to meet again the simple and brief view of the plain. Alone on the road, while he saw those fields that were familiar to him like all the places where he used to play when he was a child, he felt comfortable as if he was already at home.

He saw the Old mill behind some poplars towards the south. Years ago, he used to carry there the corn that he gleaned from the nearby fields or the wheat that his father got as a payment for helping with the harvest. In fact, the miller was touched by that boy who was always thrilled with his provisions, and he just couldn’t say no to him. Then he used to take the ground corn to the farm animals and carry the wheat flour to the bakery, where they exchanged it for bread.

While he walked he associated the landscape and everything he perceived with that bread that years ago he bought thanks to the neighbors of the Old mill. Then he remembered the reason why he was returning home. He didn’t have news from his family, and it was unlikely that they had changed as little as the plain. Moreover, he still wondered why nobody had picked him up in the train station and if they were really unaware of his return.

He left the road when he was approaching the farm.

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Catullus

The poetae noui, a generation of Latin poets of the first century BC, got inspired, among others, by the ancient Greeks, whose writing was erudite, elitist and true to the frame. Callimacus and the Alexandrines influenced Catullus in the search of the formal perfection and the adoption of some genres such as short epic poems, invectives and a proper genre to show one's wit and tell anecdotes: the epigrams. Catullus was the best of the poetae noui and his poems were very innovative in spite of the influence of the Greek predecessors. The thing is that every Latin writer had his main reference in the ancient Greeks, although they didn't exactly imitate their compositions but use them as models of their creations. They would find our nowadays thing about originality shallow and unintelligible, for they didn't conceive an act of creativity without a model.

The master, Callimacus, was cold and restrained, but elegant and accurate. Catullus, never distant or decadent, wrote with passion in this strict Greek formal range lyric and carnal poems about his everyday life. This personal involvement was the actual renewal of his work. Thus the old poems encouraged him to write in a new subjective and sincere genre with which we can feel identified 2.000 years later.

Below I quote an ancient Greek poem and two fragments by Catullus based on it. I also add a link to the Carmina online, the work of this young man who’s still the head of the poetae noui, the new poets.

Away, you tribe of poets that sing of “mantillas”,
“tapers”, “tunnies” — every word a prickle! —
and, fretting every verse’s tortured structure,
sip simple water from a sacred spring.
Today we drink to Archilochus, to Homer: men.
No place around the wine-bowl for drinkers of water.
ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA, Epigrams 11-20


(...) at uos quo lubet hinc abite, lymphae,
uini pernicies, et ad seueros
migrate: hic merus est Thyonianus.

But water, begone, away with you, water,
destruction of wine, and take up abode
with scrupulous folk. This is the pure Thyonian god.
CATULLUS, Carmina XXVII


(...) uos hinc interea ualete, abite
illuc unde malum pedem attulistis,
saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae.

You poets, meantime, farewell, away with you,
back to that ill place whence you brought your cursed feet,
you burdens of our age, you worst poets.
CATULLUS, Carmina XIV

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