friday afternoon goodness
Phooey -- everyone's left the office save The Sons and me, so I think I'm done working. :P
Thanks for the amusing links yesterday. My day was heartily made, and the evening just erased all badness from the working day. I did get some good news. April 20th I'm going on my first real business trip. Oooh, so exciting! For four days I'll be in San Francisco/Sonoma Wine Country, and the seminar I'm going for is only one day of those. Needless to say, I can't wait. I haven't been to California since I was 12, and I've never been in the northern end. Chinatown, wineries, the trolleys, awesome hotels on the company's dime...it's gonna be awesome.
I'm still reading Love in the Time of Cholera. This book really meanders around the lives of the three main characters, so I'm taking it slow and really enjoying it. I read it during my lunch break, and Marquez is such a master of words. I'd give my eyeteeth to write as well as him. Not only that, but just reading a dozen or so pages puts me in such a mood that any troubles from the morning was washed away by the flow of ink on the page.
Two of my favorite passages from recent chapters below. They're different women, two in the long list of Florentino Ariza's affairs.
She mounted him and took control of all of him for all of her, absorbed in herself, her eyes closed, gauging the situation in her absolute inner darkness, advancing here, retreating there, correcting her invisible route, trying another, more intense path, another means of proceeding without drowning in the slimy marsh that flowed from her womb, droning like a horsefly as she asked herself questions and answered in her native jargon; where was that something in the shadows that only she knew about and that she longed for just for herself, until she succumed without waiting for anybody, she fell alone into her abyss with a jubilant explosion of total victory that made the world tremble. Florentino Ariza was left exhausted, incomplete, floating in a puddle of their perspiration, but with the impression of being no more than an instrument of pleasure. He would say: "You treat me as if I were just anybody." She would roar with the laughter of a free female and say: "Not at all: as if you were nobody."
Six months after their first meeting, they found themselves at last in a cabin on a riverboat that was being painted at the docks. It was a marvelous afternoon. Olimpia Zuleta had the joyous love of a startled pigeon fancier, and she preferred to remain naked for several hours in a slow-moving repose that was, for her, as loving as love itself. The cabin was dismantled, half painted, and they would take the odor of turpentine away with them in the memory of a happy afternoon. In a sudden inspiration, Florentino Ariza opened a can of red paint that was within reach of the bunk, wet his index finger, and painted the pubis of the beautiful pigeon fancier with an arrow of blood pointing south, and on her belly the words: This pussy is mine. That same night, Olimpia Zuleta undressed in front of her husband, having forgotten what was scrawled there, and he did not say a word, his breathing did not even change, nothing, but he went to the bathroom for his razor while she was putting on her nightgown, and in a single slash he cut her throat.
Thanks for the amusing links yesterday. My day was heartily made, and the evening just erased all badness from the working day. I did get some good news. April 20th I'm going on my first real business trip. Oooh, so exciting! For four days I'll be in San Francisco/Sonoma Wine Country, and the seminar I'm going for is only one day of those. Needless to say, I can't wait. I haven't been to California since I was 12, and I've never been in the northern end. Chinatown, wineries, the trolleys, awesome hotels on the company's dime...it's gonna be awesome.
I'm still reading Love in the Time of Cholera. This book really meanders around the lives of the three main characters, so I'm taking it slow and really enjoying it. I read it during my lunch break, and Marquez is such a master of words. I'd give my eyeteeth to write as well as him. Not only that, but just reading a dozen or so pages puts me in such a mood that any troubles from the morning was washed away by the flow of ink on the page.
Two of my favorite passages from recent chapters below. They're different women, two in the long list of Florentino Ariza's affairs.
She mounted him and took control of all of him for all of her, absorbed in herself, her eyes closed, gauging the situation in her absolute inner darkness, advancing here, retreating there, correcting her invisible route, trying another, more intense path, another means of proceeding without drowning in the slimy marsh that flowed from her womb, droning like a horsefly as she asked herself questions and answered in her native jargon; where was that something in the shadows that only she knew about and that she longed for just for herself, until she succumed without waiting for anybody, she fell alone into her abyss with a jubilant explosion of total victory that made the world tremble. Florentino Ariza was left exhausted, incomplete, floating in a puddle of their perspiration, but with the impression of being no more than an instrument of pleasure. He would say: "You treat me as if I were just anybody." She would roar with the laughter of a free female and say: "Not at all: as if you were nobody."
Six months after their first meeting, they found themselves at last in a cabin on a riverboat that was being painted at the docks. It was a marvelous afternoon. Olimpia Zuleta had the joyous love of a startled pigeon fancier, and she preferred to remain naked for several hours in a slow-moving repose that was, for her, as loving as love itself. The cabin was dismantled, half painted, and they would take the odor of turpentine away with them in the memory of a happy afternoon. In a sudden inspiration, Florentino Ariza opened a can of red paint that was within reach of the bunk, wet his index finger, and painted the pubis of the beautiful pigeon fancier with an arrow of blood pointing south, and on her belly the words: This pussy is mine. That same night, Olimpia Zuleta undressed in front of her husband, having forgotten what was scrawled there, and he did not say a word, his breathing did not even change, nothing, but he went to the bathroom for his razor while she was putting on her nightgown, and in a single slash he cut her throat.