Steel step-through frame sports roadster bicycle with 3-speed internal hub and Brooks saddle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.“   —   Christopher Morley

(Man!  And people say I’m strange!  Just kidding.  Very poetic quote.  And, a bit of a bitch to decode!  Of course, I made it a little more difficult than it really had to be.  I was fairly certain that the first word had to be either THE or ONE, but I was reluctant to take the plunge.  However, even after penciling in the E – yes, I said penciling – I had a hard time getting any traction.  I had strong suspicions about SHOULD, but figuring out the first name was Christopher became the big key.  Good fun!  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

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Enjoy!

Mother holding girl. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“It is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace.“   —   Christopher Morely

A photograph of a 2 month old human infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his maternal great-grandmother. Each person in this photograph gave birth to the next younger person thus showing four generations in one family photograph. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(A beautiful line from the section on Mothers, in the Book:  Mince Pie, by Christopher Morely.  I’d like to dedicate this quote to my baby sister, who became a grandmother just last week!  Blood-wise, she is actually ahead of me, although I am the proud Grampa of three, via my handsome and talented step-sons.  I’m going to treat you guys to a link to the online-literature page on Morely’s Mothers.  I think you’ll enjoy it.  Thanks, Rebecca!  Be well and do good, friends.  Love and appreciate your moms!)   —   YUR

http://www.online-literature.com/morley/mince-pie/24/

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Click for source.

“No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.”

– Christopher Morley

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Happy Friday, everyone! Thanks for all of your great feedback on my post about where your dog sleeps; it’s been really helpful to hear from all of you, as always, and I take all of your comments and advice to heart. Hope your weekend is filled with many walks and cuddling sessions.

And so, the week’s went by and everytime the newspaper landed on our doormat on a Friday afternoon, I’d check to see if I’d made it. Sadly, there was usually nothing. That is, until today!

As I had yesterday off from work, I was due to go into school this afternoon for a couple of hours. Just as I was heading out the door, I noticed the paper lying on the floor. It was strange today because part of my just thought I’d pick it up and leave it on the side till later, but something told me I should quickly check. As I flicked the pages trying to find the gallery, I was astonished to stumble across an all to familiar image – the beach huts from Woolacombe were now in print for everyone to see. And, the little write up they did for it was quite nice too.

It’s funny that it’s appeared this week, they must have known it was my birthday!

In case you haven’t seen the featured image, I’ve decided to make it today’s 365. I’m really proud to see my work in print, even if it is only the local paper – but everyone’s got to start somewhere.

The image brings back so many memories of a very enjoyable summer holiday, and as you all know, I do love being by the sea.

If you want to see the actual article, head to my Facebook page.

Just Changing – June 2011

“You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be”
- Robert Collier

Follow my 365:
www.benlowephotography.co.uk/project365
www.twitter.com/benlowe3
www.facebook.com/benlowephotography

If that opening sentence didn’t sound like some cheesy tag line for a movie or something I don’t know what does!

Armed with my wellies, I set out to the park with Jack for an early morning walk. It was rather empty; I think I only saw two people the whole time I was out. The good thing about having my wellies on was that I could deliberately go through the mud without worrying about getting my shoes dirty. I’m not sure if Jack was quite as excited as I was, but if he minded, he never said.

The only problem with taking dog and camera on a walk is that whenever I try to take a picture Jack decides to pull on his lead. Who’s walk does he think it is really? Funny how he’ll be perfectly still whilst I’m focussing but as soon as I go to press the shutter, he’ll give a tug on his lead, (probably to tell me he’s bored of waiting) which results in a lovely blurry photo. And then the whole process starts all over again. It would be so much easier if he could talk and I could just tell him it would be a lot quicker if he just waited still for a minute.

Anyways, with Spring fast approaching I hunted out some very nice looking daffodils. After experimenting with a range of different shots, Jack decided he would wander into view. On this occasion he was welcome!

Good boy Jack!

“No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.”
- Christopher Morley

Follow my 365:
www.benlowephotography.co.uk/project365
www.twitter.com/benlowe3
www.facebook.com/benlowephotography

I love the text for this piece (all the lines in the doors are text… sorry, but back then I wasn’t taking good photos):  ”On Doors” by Christopher Morley

The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions of man’s life. What a mystery lies in doors!

No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the most familiar room, where the clock ticks and the hearth glows red at dusk, may harbor surprises. The plumber may actually have called (while you were out) and fixed that leaking faucet. The cook may have had a fit of the vapors and demanded her passports. The wise man opens his front door with humility and a spirit of acceptance.

Which one of us has not sat in some ante-room and watched the inscrutable panels of a door that was full of meaning? Perhaps you were waiting to apply for a job; perhaps you had some “deal” you were ambitious to put over. You watched the confidential stenographer flit in and out, carelessly turning that mystic portal which, to you, revolved on hinges of fate. And then the young woman said, “Mr. Cranberry will see you now.” As you grasped the knob the thought flashed, “When I open this door again, what will have happened?”

There are many kinds of doors. Revolving doors for hotels, shops and
public buildings. These are typical of the brisk, bustling ways of
modern life. Can you imagine John Milton or William Penn skipping
through a revolving door? Then there are the curious little slatted
doors that still swing outside denatured bar-rooms and extend only from
shoulder to knee. There are trapdoors, sliding doors, double doors,
stage doors, prison doors, glass doors. But the symbol and mystery of a
door resides in its quality of concealment. A glass door is not a door
at all, but a window. The meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside;
to keep the heart in suspense.

Also, there are many ways of opening doors. There is the cheery push of
elbow with which the waiter shoves open the kitchen door when he bears
in your tray of supper. There is the suspicious and tentative withdrawal
of a door before the unhappy book agent or peddler. There is the genteel
and carefully modulated recession with which footmen swing wide the
oaken barriers of the great. There is the sympathetic and awful silence
of the dentist’s maid who opens the door into the operating room and,
without speaking, implies that the doctor is ready for you. There is the
brisk cataclysmic opening of a door when the nurse comes in, very early
in the morning–”It’s a boy!”

Doors are the symbol of privacy, of retreat, of the mind’s escape into
blissful quietude or sad secret struggle. A room without doors is not a
room, but a hallway. No matter where he is, a man can make himself at
home behind a closed door. The mind works best behind closed doors. Men
are not horses to be herded together. Dogs know the meaning and anguish
of doors. Have you ever noticed a puppy yearning at a shut portal? It is
a symbol of human life.

The opening of doors is a mystic act: it has in it some flavor of the
unknown, some sense of moving into a new moment, a new pattern of the
human rigmarole. It includes the highest glimpses of mortal gladness:
reunions, reconciliations, the bliss of lovers long parted. Even in
sadness, the opening of a door may bring relief: it changes and
redistributes human forces. But the closing of doors is far more
terrible. It is a confession of finality. Every door closed brings
something to an end. And there are degrees of sadness in the closing of
doors. A door slammed is a confession of weakness. A door gently shut
is often the most tragic gesture in life. Every one knows the seizure of
anguish that comes just after the closing of a door, when the loved one
is still near, within sound of voice, and yet already far away.

The opening and closing of doors is a part of the stern fluency of life.
Life will not stay still and let us alone. We are continually opening
doors with hope, closing them with despair. Life lasts not much longer
than a pipe of tobacco, and destiny knocks us out like the ashes.

The closing of a door is irrevocable. It snaps the packthread of the
heart. It is no avail to reopen, to go back. Pinero spoke nonsense when
he made Paula Tanqueray say, “The future is only the past entered
through another gate.” Alas, there is no other gate. When the door is
shut, it is shut forever. There is no other entrance to that vanished
pulse of time. “The moving finger writes, and having writ”–

There is a certain kind of door-shutting that will come to us all. The
kind of door-shutting that is done very quietly, with the sharp click of
the latch to break the stillness. They will think then, one hopes, of
our unfulfilled decencies rather than of our pluperfected misdemeanors.
Then they will go out and close the door.

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature’s great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee-

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life’s queer conundrums you accept
Your strange Divinity still kept….

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
May make you poet, too, in time-
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!

-Christopher Morley

P.S.

To the child within all of us.

My surprising fiction discoveries (I am always happily surprised to enjoy a new author’s work) were Teju Cole’s exceptionally exquisite Open City, J. M. Ledgard’s thrilling Submergence (thanks, Nicole), Vyacheslav Pyetsukh’s The New Moscow Philosophy (thanks Michelle) and Jenny Erpenbeck’s haunting Visitation.

Of the non-fiction, Masha Tupitsyn’s Laconia was charming and thought-provoking (to this day), Michael Levenson’s Modernism was the comprehensive history I was seeking. Stach’s Kafka biography leaves me starving for the next volume. My current book, Helen Small’s The Long Life is (so far) brilliant and a superb way to end the year.

I’m not able or willing to pick out a single favourite from either the fiction or non-fiction categories. I read a few books this year I loathed. Given the author is not living I will give Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels my coveted ‘I Wish I Could Get That Time Back Award’.

Geeky Statistics

1. 40% of the eighty books I read were in translation (mostly from German), up from 30% last year.
2. 18% of the books I read were written by women; I am disappointed this is exactly the same as last year.
3. 52% of the books I read were written by living authors, pretty much the same as 2010.
4. 58% of the books I read were fiction, up 14% from last year.

Other literary highlights of my year were attending John Berger’s angry and passionate reading of Bento’s Sketchbook and Geoff Dyer’s enlightening talk about Camus.

During 2011, with the help of readers, I compiled a list of female writers we should be reading and bibliographies of worthwhile secondary literature on the works of Kafka and Beckett.

Thanks to my book blogging friends, particularly Emily (Beckett, de Beauvoir) and Nicole (Goethe) with whom I shared reading explorations this year, and Frances whom I joined in a crazed attempt to read all 42 in Melville House’s Art of the Novella series, abandoning the attempt after thirteen novellas. I don’t participate in many read-a-longs but made an exception and had fun during German Literature month, organised by Caroline and Lizzy.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.
- Christopher Morley, 1890 – 1957

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.” ~ Christopher Morley.

Listening to advice often accomplishes far more than heeding it.  – Malcolm Forbes

Quote 2

Nothing comes easy that is well done.  – Harry F. Banks

Quote 3

It matters not how long we live, but how well.  – Pubillius Syllius

Quote 4

Good Luck beats early rising. – Irish Proverb

Quote 5

In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.  – Herny Waddworth Longefellow

Quote 6

Read, everyday, something no one else is reading.  Think, everyday, something no one else is thinking.  Do, everyday, something no one else would be silly enough to do.  It is bad for the mind to be alwayspart of animity.  – Christopher Morley

Quote 7

There are two ways of spreading light:  to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.  – Edith Wharton

Quote 8

The free thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.  – Matthew Arnold