A Novel is the life of the People.

"I see literature as story and characters. Literature should be enjoyable...(however) A novel is the life of the people. Similar to our daily life but more profound, more significant, and more beautiful...Because I am against the schools of fiction that write away from life."

Quote by Alaa Al Aswany in the article Writing the Revolution.

Five Pictures in Hope of Endless Travel: The Isle of Skye.

Climbing to the Old Man of Storr.

Look familiar? Look above at the title of the blog. This photo was taken six years later.

In Portree, Looking out and into the bay.

Rogue Lorrie muffler. Even junk looks beautiful in Scotland.

Edinburgh Castle.

October, 2010. All photos by M.C..

"The Placebo Effect."

"In most cases, the larger the pill, the stronger the placebo effect. Two pills are better than one, and the brand-name pills trump generics. Capsules are generally more effective than pills, and injections produce a more pronounced effect than either. There is even evidence to suggest that the color of medicine influences the way one responds to it: colored pills are more likely to relieve pain than white pills; blue pills help people sleep better than red pills; and green capsules are the best bet when it comes to anxiety medication."

Excerpt from The Power of Nothing by Michael Specter.

War is the most concrete thing there is.

Nowadays in Sarajevo death is all too easy to imagine and is itself continuously, intensely present, but back then the city was fully alive, both inside me and outside me. Its indelible sensory dimensions, its concreteness, seemed to defy the abstractions of war. I have learned since then that war is the most concrete thing there is, a reality that swallows all, easily overriding any other mode of existence and levelling both interiority and exteriority into the flatness of a crushed soul.

Excerpt from "Mapping Home" by Aleksandar Hemon.

Untitled: January Ninth, 2000.

Through the fog, driving

My hands smell of salt water

The grit between my fingers

As if I had swam today

But it is my own precipitate:

Sweat, old sweat.

The fog comes and goes

A wind tunnel

But there is no sound of wind

But rather music, faint, crackling

A bass tone, drowing out

And the fog comes again.

I pass through.

Walt Whitman visited me in a dream.

I told someone sitting beside me

That he had lived through the Civil War

Like I lived through the fog.

Walt Whitman looked at me

his outdoorsman yet feminine beard

was grey and he had a lisp.

He said: "I stop somewhere waiting for you"

But all I found was the fog.

The fog deep in the ins and outs of others

Those like myself who had

"Had the experience but missed the meaning."

Fog is in the inside of the telephone wires

A sigh on one end

The mumbling of words that cut on the other

Like a car passing through the fog

Or a boat like an arrow.

M.C-Journal entry, 1/9/00.

A tree: My old amigo.

Striding up to a cedar, he patted the rough trunk as if it were an old amigo. "This tree is a relative," he said. "It has feelings like we do, so it should be treated with respect. If you make tea from the bark of this tree, it has a lot of power. It's good for colds and respiratory problems. But if you don't ask permission before you cut the bark, it may not work. So I always say a little prayer so the tree knows I'm serious and I want to share its power. 'Give me your strength for healing,' That's what I ask."

Excerpt from "What became of the Taino" by Robert M. Poole

Was Qaddafi all that bad?

"The worst thing that Qaddafi did was that Abu Salim thing," he said, referring to the 1996 massacre. "I mean, killing a bunch of prisoners in the basement of a prison, that's not nice, but, you know, these things can happen. All it takes is for someone to misinterpret an order--you know what I mean? Yes, the students were hanged in the seventies, and there was Abu Salim, but there was not much else. The secret police was around, but it wasn't too obtrusive. If you got thrown in prison, they allowed your family to visit and bring you couscous."

Excerpt from John Lee Anderson's article King of Kings. Above, an interview with a friend of the Qaddafi's.

Five Pictures in Hope of Endless Travel: Part Two.

Tulsa, Oklahoma. July, 2011.

St. Pete Beach, Florida. July, 2011.

Lake Michigan. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October, 2011.

Joplin, Missouri. May, 2011.

Providence, RI. August, 2011.

Photos by M.C and A.G.

You are what you eat.

Through processed food, factory farming, and the rush to get large amounts of food to the table as quick as possible, it's frightening what we have lost. On reading "True Grits" (based on chef Sean Brock's Southern food restaurant--Husk--in Charleston, SC.), Burkhard Bilger reminds us that the loss of extended crop rotations (some up to 17 years) and the substitution of more common, viable crops, has made thousands of foods disappear over the past century. Brock's intention: to go back in time (by diving into history books, diaries, etc...) and resurrect those heirloom vegetables that have been lost to convenience.

I pulled these two quotes: one poetic, one philosophical. Yet both inspiring.

"Southern food is more than a collection of recipes and seeds. It's a distillate of memory and hard-won experience, of ocean crossings and forest clearings, turnip winters and radish springs."

"It changed my life growing my own food," Brock said. "You start to see why farmers are so strange: they have a lot of time alone to ponder the questions of the universe."

-M.C.

Five pictures in hope of endless travel: Part One.

The infamous F.W. Woolworth's. Greensboro, North Carolina.

June, 2008.

San Francisco Bay at sunset.

March, 2009.

Loch Ness, Scotland, by boat.

May, 2005.

Somewhere between here and there. Utah.

August, 2010.

Old Jewish Cemetery. Prague, Czech Republic.

May, 2005.

All photos by either M.C. or A.G..

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

"By 1915, however, the demographics of addiction had changed and so had American attitudes towards drug users. Cocaine had come to be seen as a drug taken by lower-class, urban men, who were often looked upon with fear and disdain. Opium had been tolerated in the United States for more than a century--until Chinese laborers began to compete with Americans for jobs. Since then, the more directly a drug has been perceived to be associated with minorities and the poor, the graver the danger it is seen as posing to society."

Excerpt from "Getting a fix" by Michael Specter.

The cult of Ikea.

To be a member of Ikea's cult, here are some things you need to know:

-It is said that one out of every ten Europeans is conceived on an Ikea bed.

-Pigs and skeleton's are banned motifs.

-Ikea uses a technique called "Bulla, Bulla," in which a bunch of items are purposely jumbled in bins, to create the impression of volume and, therefore, inexpensiveness.

-Ikea is the third largest consumer of wood behind Home Depot and Lowe's and ahead of Walmart.

-Ikea published 197,000,000 catalogues last year in 29 different languages.

-"Breathtaking" items are termed so because they are so cheap you can't afford not to buy them.

-Ingvar Kamprad (Ikea's founder) has been rated the 5th wealthiest man in the world. Living in the Swiss village of Epalinges, Kamprad has very little taxes to pay and has been accused of doing nothing for the village (financially or philanthropically). Kamprad's nickname in town is the Miser.

Excerpt from Lauren Collins' "House Perfect" in the Oct. 3rd issue of The New Yorker

The Immortal words of Kenko...

"To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare."

-Kenko

"Adding to the day's sense of upheaval was a collision that occurred just outside 27a when the embassy chauffeur--a man named Pickford--struck a motorcycle and broke off the rider's leg. A wooden leg."

-Excerpt from Erick Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.

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On reading ITGOB, I felt empathy towards Kenko's quote...the second excerpt was a welcomed absurdity (or pleasurable anecdote) while reading about the initial Nazi Political purges of the the Third Reich. What would the insanities of history be without humor?

-Matt

I trust only old books.

"Hla Htut has no time for any contemporary Burmese writing, be it novels, newspapers, or magazines. 'I don't trust them. They always lie,' he said. 'I understand it is not the same in your country. Your books and newspapers never lie, isn't that so?' I thought about it for a moment and was prepared to launch into a long and complicated answer about the warped images of world affairs painted by tabloid newspapers and about mainstream international news channels simplifying stories for mass consumption, but Hla Htut took my hesitation for agreement and summed up his theory on reading. 'I trust only old books,' he said."

Excerpt from Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin.

PooP.

Found this drawn in the sand at Madera Beach. St. Pete, Fl. Mid August. 2011.

-M.C.

Art As/Is Religion

Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private. That it fills the habit of faith--makes communities, encourages values, creates hierarchies--is perhaps the best thing about it. The strongest argument for religion is not that it is in touch with God but that it is in touch with one another. The best argument for an art that no one can entirely like is that it makes us like one another more.

-Excerpt from "Life Studies" by Adam Gopnik

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Some days I want to stay in doors and read, maybe type some quotes, add a picture or two, and reflect through this blog. Other days I just want to get on my bike and pedal as far as I can, hours later finally making home, exhausted.

Sometimes when I read a really moving essay, learn something new and profound, or just revel in the fact of how lucky we are to be alive--seeing, hearing, and feeling--my eyes will start to well up.

Both instances are acts committed in solitude. The result of both is the ability to appreciate, the desire to mingle and commuinicate, the need to empathize with people.

That balance is hard to find.

-M.C.

Repetition as comfort.

"The human sense of comfort depends on repetitive, familiar actions--our minds and bodies strive to become accustomed to predictable circumstances."

Excerpt from the "Aquarium" by Aleksandar Hemon.

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Like the afternoon shower that comes every day, in Tampa, in the summer time.

But it's also comforting to see it on the fringe...On those days that it allows us some reprieve.

Top photo by Scott Ehlert.

Bottom by M.C.

Occasions in Connecticut.

A distance storm off the coast of New Haven, Connecticut. I sat for 20 minutes taking photo after photo in hopes to capture one bolt of lightning.

Three friends. Drunk. Fully clothed. I watched as their boat capsized.

Danielson, CT. My friend Vic in the forefront. A kid named Chris in the background sending himself off of a lake jump.

Shot with an I-photo application. August 1st and 2nd 2011.

-M.C.

Should I laugh?

Posted on a bathroom door at a local elementary school.

Photo by S. Ehlert.

-M.C.

Goth's Best Bass lines.

I'll have to admit, I'm a sucker for embarrassingly over-dramatic goth rock. I've always loved the creepy vibe, the attention to absurd post-punk leather attire, and wearing sunglasses at night. But put plain and simple, I'm a sucker for driving bass riffs...

Here are six of my top pics that, for me, epitomize what I love about this ridiculous sub-culture. Close your eyes, give em a listen, and enjoy.

-M.C.

The Sisters of Mercy: Marian.

The Cure: The Figurehead.

Christian Death: Church of No Return.

Fields of the Nephilim: Love Under Will.

Dead Can Dance: The Trial.

Souxsie and the Banshees: Arabian Nights.