Book a Week in 2014 - BW49

[shukriyya]

Ds finished 'Out of the Silent Planet' today by C.S. Lewis and is totally hooked. He loved it and is now awaiting 'Perelandra' on order from overdrive. I read this trilogy decades ago in my twenties and remember loving it. Fun to share it with him :D

[Stacia]

Was Pam in the nay or yay rhubarb camp? I can't remember.

 

I think Pam was in the yay-rhubarb camp, even going so far as to read a non-rhubarb book with 'rhubarb' in the title. Lol. (Pam, am I remembering correctly?)

 

So, did you say your tongue-twister & put the book back on your TBR list? ;-)

[Jane in NC]

HoAW update.  It had been my intention to put more effort into finishing this on schedule.  So much for intentions. 

 

I awoke last night at 3 AM and was restless. After pulling out HoAW and reading for ten minutes, I fell back into blissful sleep. 

 

Apparently not catching up anytime soon.

 

 

[Pam in CT]

Yeah, but if you say, "burble, burble, rhubarb, rhubarb" quickly three times, I bet you'll immediately put it back on your TBR list. :D

 

And we'll get Pam going on rhubarb again too! ;)

Well I do believe rhubarb is preferable to FLEAS and COCKROACHES and TAPEWORMS.  

 

But, takes all kinds.

 

Stacia knows Shukriyya very well :smilielol5:

 

Was Pam in the nay or yay rhubarb camp? I can't remember.

I was in the "I don't get rhubarb" camp.  And then you posted a link to Persian lamb-and-rhubarb tangine, which I actually made a few weeks later after the (ahem) BAW rhubarb subsided.  And now I'm all set.  Rhubarb belongs in SAVORY dishes not pink mush, and now that I understand that I'm all squared away.  Thank you for asking.

 

 

On a (go figure) wholly unrelated matter, I just finished my interfaith book group's monthly selection, Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven - A Pilgrimage, a memoir by Scott Cairns, an Eastern Orthodox poet who made several pilgrimages to Mount Athos, a peninsula dotted with EO monasteries.  This passage reminded me of you and cstarlette:

 

"Increasingly, I've suspected and tried to articulate a relationship between poetry and prayer -- a relationship, even, between what I think of as genuinely poetic language and sacrament....I've been trying to come to terms with what it is that distinguishes poetry from the other genres.  The attempt has, itself, been instructive, mostly because this attitude of coming to terms -- approaching words attentively, patiently, and without predetermination -- is precisely the disposition required for anything approaching success in making a poem...

 

My sense of actual poetry writing is that, before it can so much as begin, it must be recognized as a way by which we concurrently construct and discern experience; it is not a means by which we transmit ideas or narrative events we thing we already understand, but a way we might discover more sustaining versions of them.

 

Like most endeavors of the spirit, poetry itself is a pilgrim's journey.  We gather our gear, and we start out -- alert to where the path will lead."

 

 

ETA for typo

[Pam in CT]

I think Pam was in the yay-rhubarb camp, even going so far as to read a non-rhubarb book with 'rhubarb' in the title. Lol. (Pam, am I remembering correctly?)

 

So, did you say your tongue-twister & put the book back on your TBR list? ;-)

Rhubarb! Tales of Survival from a Little Greek Island by David Fagan.  Good romping fun, especially good for bleak sunless winter days whilst fantasizing escape from it all.

 

 

HoAW update.  It had been my intention to put more effort into finishing this on schedule.  So much for intentions. 

 

I awoke last night at 3 AM and was restless. After pulling out HoAW and reading for ten minutes, I fell back into blissful sleep. 

 

Apparently not catching up anytime soon.

:lol: For about three years I kept Adler's How to Read A Book on my bedside table for this express purpose.  Worked like a charm.  That is one boring book.

[Nan in Mass]

Pam -

 

I think rhubarb tastes fantastic at the end of winter.  It is the first of that season's fruit.  I know it isn't really a fruit, but it tastes like one.  Boiled into mush on vanilla icecream or cottage cheese, it is pretty good.  It is a bit too tart to eat straight unless you are really starved for vitamin C, which I think by that time many of us in New England are.

 

And that is way too many words about writing poems for me.  My experience with writing poems leads me to think they come from a wordless place and that their arrival doesn't have much to do with words, either.  It is only the sticky bits, the bits that aren't working well, that require words.  I tend to approach all of life from a story point of view, so the bit about poems not having anything to do with stories doesn't strike me as right, either, unless you happen to associate stories with sequentialness more than I do.  I think?  Or maybe what I said doesn't make sense at all...  For me, prayer seems to come from the same place, so maybe poetry and prayer are indeed linked?

 

Maus - It is amazing that parents survive their ordinary terror for their growing children, and what you are dealing with sounds so overwhelming...  Lots of hugs.

 

Shukriyya - Yah, math...  Somehow, I thought when my children were in their twenties I would be done with math...  Instead, I'm tearing through the Dolciani algebra 2 book with one at a rate of three lessons a day.  He's reviewing after a break of a few years of only applied math, so we can go pretty fast, but that rate still takes hours every night.  And one of my extra kids got behind in her community college algebra class and I'm trying to help her salvage her semester.  She's very math-damaged and hasn't much academic experience so this takes patient coaxing and tactful coaching and time.  Both my math students are sweet, motivated adults, which makes me more afraid for them than I would be if they were 13.  It is also a temporary situation, not like homeschooling.  It's sort of a case of being careful what you know how to do or you might have to do it lol.

 

Nan

 

PS - Maus - I think I've read Gifted Hands.  Is that the book where the mother realized her children were horrible schools and required them to read a book and give her a written book report every week and it was years before the son realized that his mother couldn't read?

 

 

 

 

[Pam in CT]

And, to catch up on books...

 

I finally finished re-reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, just in time for the winter solstice.  Funny how different a reading experience this was, 20-something years later.  The first time around, I was coming directly off Once and Future King, and read it primarily as a female-character-centered... midrash, I guess... rounding out a very different perspective on the Arthur narrative.  This time, it strongly evoked for me my family's experiences wandering the Andes for two months a couple years ago, and learning about the encounter there between Incan / other indigenous religions and the Christianity brought in by the conquerors... it ended up being a very different story for me.  (Angel, btw, you were totally right about its not being a good fit for an 11 yo.  Brother sister incest are the least of the issues, lol)

 

Also, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist, by Ruchama King Feuerman.  Stacia, I think this came from one of your lists?  All too timely (sigh), as it touches on the volatile subject of dueling prayer aspirations on the Temple Mount / al Aqsa site.  Aside from that heartache, it is an interesting story, with an unexpected and playful feminist twist, though ultimately superficial imo in its treatment of some serious and difficult issues.

 

Re: feminist, I also delved into Eliana's recommendation, Turning on the Girls, Cheryl Benard's dystopian satire (!!) of a world run by women.  OK this was an instructive reading experience as well.  For the first 130 pages, the only thing that kept me going was the mantra: Eliana recommended this.  Eliana recommended this.  ELIANA recommended this...  Had I not kept faith in this source, there were several scenes that absolutely would have caused me to put it aside.  Hurled it aside, even.  And then it turned... and, indeed, it is, truly, hilarious, wickedly so.  Too bad re: oop, though copies are cheap.

 

A slew of Barcelona-related books: Robert Hughes' love songs Barcelona and three decades later Barcelona: The Great Enchantress; Colm Toibin's Homage to Barcelona; and George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.  I especially liked the last, the best (if ultimately equivocal) book on the Spanish civil war I've seen.

 

And, I just spoke upthread on Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven - A Pilgrimage, by Scott Cairns.  Bits of this I really liked, but it is ultimately unsatisfactory -- he can't quite decide if he's doing a travelogue of a road seldom traveled (a genre I adore) or an account of a spiritual journey (which I also often enjoy).  It's a little of this, a little of that.  But with a few nuggets along the way. 

[shukriyya]

I was in the "I don't get rhubarb" camp. And then you posted a link to Persian lamb-and-rhubarb tangine, which I actually made a few weeks later after the (ahem) BAW rhubarb subsided. And now I'm all set. Rhubarb belongs in SAVORY dishes not pink mush, and now that I understand that I'm all squared away. Thank you for asking.

 

 

On a (go figure) wholly unrelated matter, I just finished my interfaith book group's monthly selection, Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven - A Pilgrimage, a memoir by Scott Cairns, an Eastern Orthodox poet who made several pilgrimages to Mount Athos, a peninsula dotted with EO monasteries. This passage reminded me of you and cstarlette:

 

"Increasingly, I've suspected and tried to articulate a relationship between poetry and prayer -- a relationship, even, between what I think of as genuinely poetic language and sacrament....I've been trying to come to terms with what it is that distinguishes poetry from the other genres. The attempt has, itself, been instructive, mostly because this attitude of coming to terms -- approaching words attentively, patiently, and without predetermination -- is precisely the disposition required for anything approaching success in making a poem...

 

My sense of actual poetry writing is that, before it can so much as begin, it must be recognized as a way by which we concurrently construct and discern experience; it is not a means by which we transmit ideas or narrative events we thing we already understand, but a way we might discover more sustaining versions of them.

 

Like most endeavors of the spirit, poetry itself is a pilgrim's journey. We gather our gar, and we start out -- alert to where the path will lead."

 

IIRC it was Jane who linked that wonderful rhubarb-lamb tagine recipe.

 

Funny you bring up thinking about what poetry is because yesterday on my hike I was having similar thoughts. More specifically I was realizing that what I aspire to with my own poetry is an economy of words, that essentially and in the end it's Silence that is the poem. My role seems to be about carving that Silence out of as few and as potent words possible. Rarely do I succeed but the thrill is in exploring how Silence wants to be heard, what shape it wants to embody. And I'd go one further and say that poetry *is* prayer, a sometimes but not always oblique offering made of the liminal and the manifest. Really it's a confluence of overhead intimacies.

[shukriyya]

And when I feel further into it poetry isn't confined to words, is it? We often describe a dance piece or music as poetic, perhaps a painting, or even a sequence of seemingly prosaic events. What do we mean? Does it have to do with a sense of visceral symmetry, with the relationship of space and density, color and light, the immediate and the timeless? Yes and yet still there's the unanswerable, the tension between that fascinates and animates...the pause between the breath where Grace lives.

[Pam in CT]

Pam -

 

I think rhubarb tastes fantastic at the end of winter.  It is the first of that season's fruit.  I know it isn't really a fruit, but it tastes like one.  Boiled into mush on vanilla icecream or cottage cheese, it is pretty good.  It is a bit too tart to eat straight unless you are really starved for vitamin C, which I think by that time many of us in New England are.

 

And that is way too many words about writing poems for me.  My experience with writing poems leads me to think they come from a wordless place and that their arrival doesn't have much to do with words, either.  It is only the sticky bits, the bits that aren't working well, that require words.  I tend to approach all of life from a story point of view, so the bit about poems not having anything to do with stories doesn't strike me as right, either, unless you happen to associate stories with sequentialness more than I do.  I think?  Or maybe what I said doesn't make sense at all...  For me, prayer seems to come from the same place, so maybe poetry and prayer are indeed linked?...

Interesting.

 

I am, myself, by disposition relentlessly narrative... to a fault, I think -- I constantly catch myself, reading poetry or psalms, creating a linear narrative in my head that positions the poet/psalmist in space and time, which rather defeats the metaphoric point, lol...

 

... I love the idea that it's the "sticky bits" of our experiences that require words.  My own interior experience, though, is constantly -- literally, all.the.time, every waking moment-- mediated by language.  I go to a concert and along with the music itself I experience a running language-mediated monkey-mind commentary "ah yes, a crescendo, and see how the key changes and now the flutes are about to come in and..."  I know this is not true of everyone.  My son, in particular, describes (haltingly! because he has to use language to do so, lol) an interior experience that is immensely more image-based, to the point that he almost has to haul himself out of his imagery and exert himself to use language.

 

So given my relentless narrative linearity, I'm not a very good candidate for writing, or even really for reading well, poetry.  Though I do try...

 

 

but the piece of Cairns' quote that spoke to me was the bolded...

(from Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven - A Pilgrimage by Scott Cairns)

 

"Increasingly, I've suspected and tried to articulate a relationship between poetry and prayer -- a relationship, even, between what I think of as genuinely poetic language and sacrament....I've been trying to come to terms with what it is that distinguishes poetry from the other genres.  The attempt has, itself, been instructive, mostly because this attitude of coming to terms -- approaching words attentively, patiently, and without predetermination -- is precisely the disposition required for anything approaching success in making a poem...

 

My sense of actual poetry writing is that, before it can so much as begin, it must be recognized as a way by which we concurrently construct and discern experience; it is not a means by which we transmit ideas or narrative events we thing we already understand, but a way we might discover more sustaining versions of them.

 

Like most endeavors of the spirit, poetry itself is a pilgrim's journey.  We gather our gar, and we start out -- alert to where the path will lead."

 

... which I read to mean, poetry is less a vehicle to describe experience but more a process of constructing / recognizing experience -- not after the experience but concurrent with it.  And that is the connection with prayer (another personal aspiration, not strength, lol)

[Jane in NC]

Nan--you are wonderful!

 

To give credit where credit is due, I searched for the rhubarb tangine recipe link and it was LostSurprise who deserves the credit.  I have made a savory rhubarb/quinoa thing but not a tangine.

 

 

And when I feel further into it poetry isn't confined to words, is it? We often describe a dance piece or music as poetic, perhaps a painting, or even a sequence of seemingly prosaic events. What do we mean? Does it have to do with a sense of visceral symmetry, with the relationship of space and density, color and light, the immediate and the timeless? Yes and yet still there's the unanswerable, the tension between that fascinates and animates...the pause between the breath where Grace lives.

 

Regarding poetry and prayer, it is no surprise that I would return to my personal Bible, The Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot).  This from Little Gidding:

 

 

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

 

And today is Christina Rossetti's birthday! " In The Bleak Midwinter" is my favorite Christmas carol.

 

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

 

ETA:  To give further credit, Rossetti's poem was set to music by Gustav Holst. 

[Pam in CT]

Lost Surprise!   :blush:  :blush:  :blush:   Thank you.

[shukriyya]

Shukriyya - Yah, math... Somehow, I thought when my children were in their twenties I would be done with math... Instead, I'm tearing through the Dolciani algebra 2 book with one at a rate of three lessons a day. He's reviewing after a break of a few years of only applied math, so we can go pretty fast, but that rate still takes hours every night. And one of my extra kids got behind in her community college algebra class and I'm trying to help her salvage her semester. She's very math-damaged and hasn't much academic experience so this takes patient coaxing and tactful coaching and time. Both my math students are sweet, motivated adults, which makes me more afraid for them than I would be if they were 13. It is also a temporary situation, not like homeschooling. It's sort of a case of being careful what you know how to do or you might have to do it lol.

Well, that's a poem right there.

[Nan in Mass]

Oooo That's one of my favourites, too.

 

Jane - I have to think about the bit about prayer. I know two kinds of prayer - the kind that starts chanting as the sun rises and then keeps chanting on into exhaustion, and the kind that stems from a personal wanting for something. I never have been able to figure out if the two are linked or not. Neither has much to do with words even though I probably am using my voice.

 

Pam - Still thinking, in my Pooh-brained, empty-headed way about what you said. I think the bolded part actually applies to my family life as well. Mostly, our conversation is confined to the sticky bits and the weather and the occasional point and ooo look at that. We also noticed that some family members have voices in their heads all the time and others don't. It's tough for the ones who do. I don't think I even have pictures, most of the time. I think I'd go mad if I had a voice going all the time. Do you like being stuck that way? If that is a stupid or rude question, please forgive me and ignore it. : )

 

Nan

[JuanitaL]

38. "Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story" by Ben Carson. Where have I been, that I'd never heard of this man? Very inspiring. I love that his mother made them turn off the TV and read two books a week. We could use a little unplugging around here, too.

 

 

 

There was a movie on Netflix for a while (I don't know if it still is or not), I think with the same title. It was fascinating, inspiring, motivating - and I can still remember my rage at the teacher who jumped up on stage when he received some type of academic award at school and shamed all of the white students for letting him outperform them. I can't help hoping she is still living and knows she's been immortalized in such a way.

 

(I know I should be gracious and hope that she  instead repented of her gross attitude and behavior and began doing good.)

[Pam in CT]

Jane - I have to think about the bit about prayer. I know two kinds of prayer - the kind that starts chanting as the sun rises and then keeps chanting on into exhaustion, and the kind that stems from a personal wanting for something. I never have been able to figure out if the two are linked or not. Neither has much to do with words even though I probably am using my voice.

 

Pam - Still thinking, in my Pooh-brained, empty-headed way about what you said. I think the bolded part actually applies to my family life as well. Mostly, our conversation is confined to the sticky bits and the weather and the occasional point and ooo look at that. We also noticed that some family members have voices in their heads all the time and others don't. It's tough for the ones who do. I don't think I even have pictures, most of the time. I think I'd go mad if I had a voice going all the time. Do you like being stuck that way? If that is a stupid or rude question, please forgive me and ignore it. : )

 

 

Re prayer: The first kind, which evidently in the EO tradition is called "ceaseless prayer" is FWIW what Cairns was going for, with episodic success.  I personally have very limited experience with this type of experience, but the EO monastic practice (and also, from the Merton I've read, other monastic orders as well) seems intentionally to bring it on, with marathon vigils starting at 2 in the morning, in a physical environment designed to foster a sense of mysticism and with a physical regime of fasting and interrupted sleep cycle designed to foster openness... and a liturgy that sounds not unlike a chanting sequence...

 

_____

 

Re: the voices in my head: As I've never experienced any other form of interior processing, it seems quite normal to me, lol... I was an adult before I understood that there was any other way to experience the world...

 

but, that said, there are definitely times I wish I could turn off the monkey-mind and just BE.  I have long been jealous of people who meditate.  I have tried on occasion but singularly fail to turn the words off.   I have a Jewish friend who alongside his strong and vibrant identification as a Jew has for a long time studied a form of Buddhist-originating meditation practice -- I forget what he calls it, but I expect you know -- as he's described it, he isn't aiming at eliminating the stream of words, but rather he names the words, observes the words, acknowledges the words, and then invites the words to go on their way? That might more be my style..

[aggieamy]

I have two work deadlines and need to go to the grocery store and have to prep food for my book club tomorrow morning AND I still need to read the book today.  If you see me hanging around here like I've got not a care in the world please yell at me to go away.  

 

:laugh:

 

For my ladies book club we're reading Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott.  Every year at this time we read a children's classic we didn't read as a child and then go check out a cool toy store in town.  I'm looking forward to it but I really gotta read the book still.  

 

Tschuss!  I will see you tomorrow.  

[hornblower]

 

 

but, that said, there are definitely times I wish I could turn off the monkey-mind and just BE.  I have long been jealous of people who meditate.  I have tried on occasion but singularly fail to turn the words off.   I have a Jewish friend who alongside his strong and vibrant identification as a Jew has for a long time studied a form of Buddhist-originating meditation practice -- I forget what he calls it, but I expect you know -- as he's described it, he isn't aiming at eliminating the stream of words, but rather he names the words, observes the words, acknowledges the words, and then invites the words to go on their way? That might more be my style..

 

If I may interject - 10% Happier really changed my thinking on meditation. I have struggled with meditation for years & kept giving up thinking it's pointless. But 10% convinced me that it's not the failing, but rather the ceaseless noticing you've failed & returning to meditation that works. And yes, just noticing, acknowledging & letting thoughts/words go is the style of meditation he talks about. It's usually called mindfulness meditation.

 

Oh & the Jewish/Buddhist/meditating tradition comes up several times in that book, as well as reference to Sam Harris's book Waking Up  (which at the time 10% came out wasn't published  yet.)  Sam Harris has written several posts on his blog about meditation & also has an audio of a guided mindful meditation. His book Waking Up is on my tbr & as I understand it, focuses heavily on the benefits of meditation, which is esp interesting as he's a neuroscientist...

 

 

Ok, I'm off for a walk & then I'll do a Tara Brach meditation. I'm wiped. Dd  - who suffers from huge anxiety & panic attacks - is writing a math final atm & last night after she went to bed I realized she had skipped an entire chapter of trig in her review.  So this morning when she was already on edge, I had to gently broach the subject of whether she wanted to just peek at it & look at the formulas.... I was up all night worrying about whether she'd get out of the house ok. Luckily it all went fine & she was reasonably calm so hopefully she's rocking it in there.  I meanwhile am a mess.

 

[JennW in SoCal]

And today is Christina Rossetti's birthday! " In The Bleak Midwinter" is my favorite Christmas carol.

 

 

ETA:  To give further credit, Rossetti's poem was set to music by Gustav Holst. 

 

Gustav Holst among others, though his is the tune we Protestants would know best from singing it as a hymn at Christmas or Advent services.  There is an organ and choral arrangement by Harold Drake that is also starkly beautiful, which varies the melody from stanza to stanza.  And I just found a Sarah McLachlan arrangement that is simple and pure and melodically more interesting.

 

I think of Christmas carols in terms of planning instrumental music programs for different events, and it isn't a tune I use as people don't recognize it -- it doesn't have a "hook", and it NEEDS the words.  

[shukriyya]

Re prayer: The first kind, which evidently in the EO tradition is called "ceaseless prayer" is FWIW what Cairns was going for, with episodic success.  I personally have very limited experience with this type of experience, but the EO monastic practice (and also, from the Merton I've read, other monastic orders as well) seems intentionally to bring it on, with marathon vigils starting at 2 in the morning, in a physical environment designed to foster a sense of mysticism and with a physical regime of fasting and interrupted sleep cycle designed to foster openness... and a liturgy that sounds not unlike a chanting sequence...

 

 

You know, I'm not sure I've ever thought of prayer in terms of success. Hmm...something to think on.

[shukriyya]

 

And today is Christina Rossetti's birthday! " In The Bleak Midwinter" is my favorite Christmas carol.

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

 

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

 

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

 

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

 

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

 

 

ETA:  To give further credit, Rossetti's poem was set to music by Gustav Holst. 

 

As soon as I began reading your post with those first lines of 'In the Bleak Mid-Winter' my own voice was supplanted by those of the Kings College Cambridge boys choir. We had an ancient 33' vinyl with a battered black and white photograph on the cover of the the choir in the cathedral all lit up by candles. This was one of the songs on that album which we listened to each Christmas and those clear, angelic voices ring on still in the corridors and rooms of my psyche.

 

 

[Jane in NC]

Gustav Holst among others, though his is the tune we Protestants would know best from singing it as a hymn at Christmas or Advent services.  There is an organ and choral arrangement by Harold Drake that is also starkly beautiful, which varies the melody from stanza to stanza.  And I just found a Sarah McLachlan arrangement that is simple and pure and melodically more interesting.

 

I think of Christmas carols in terms of planning instrumental music programs for different events, and it isn't a tune I use as people don't recognize it -- it doesn't have a "hook", and it NEEDS the words.  

 

Jenn, I do want to thank you for turning me on to the Inspector Montalbano mysteries!

 

How interesting that there are other musical arrangements of In the Bleak Midwinter! I wonder if people don't recognize the carol since it is simply not a popular one.  It is not bright or joyous as many are.  Rather it is a humble carol which I think is apropos of the intention of the celebration.  Perhaps that is why I like it--the anti-commercialization carol.

 

Jenn, I suspect that you could lead us to a number of underrated or unknown carols.  Suggestions?  Favorite CDs?

[6packofun]

One other note:  A friend today highly recommended All the Light We Cannot See.  Has anyone here read it?

 

I read it and thought it was very good.  I'd recommend it, too.

 

I finished Kristen Lavransdatter last week and really liked it a lot.  It was very interesting and made me so thoughtful and introspective at times. 

 

After that, I read Storm Front, the first book in the Dresden Files series.  Good, light fun.  OK.

 

Now, I am reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel about a traveling Shakespeare troupe in the second decade after a flu pandemic that wipes out much of the world.  Interesting so far...I like how it travels back and forth in time before and after the pandemic.  They have encountered a town taken over by a strange cult guy who calls himself a prophet.  Isn't it always true that in the apocalypse human beings show the truth of their hearts and some of them are pretty dang ugly?!  lol  Here is a good review:  http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20851940,00.html

 

[shukriyya]

For Jane and anyone else who enjoys this carol...in its two most famous settings, the Harold Darke version and the Gustav Holst version respectively. The carol brings back memories of turkish delight, dark aged Christmas cake, mince tarts and a roaring fire.

 

 

 

 

[Kareni]

... I love the idea that it's the "sticky bits" of our experiences that require words.  My own interior experience, though, is constantly -- literally, all.the.time, every waking moment-- mediated by language.  I go to a concert and along with the music itself I experience a running language-mediated monkey-mind commentary "ah yes, a crescendo, and see how the key changes and now the flutes are about to come in and..."  I know this is not true of everyone. 

 

This makes me think of something that I know has been discussed on the board (but perhaps not also here in a Book a Week thread).  

 

When you read, do you hear words, see pictures, or both?

 

 

Here's what I wrote in the thread I linked above:

 

I'm one who does not see pictures in my head.  When I begin reading a novel, I initially hear the words as though I am reading aloud silently (which sounds remarkably oxymoronic!). After a short time, I am simply experiencing the story but with no visual or sound effects. I simply turn the pages and take in the story. At some level, I'm aware of the words on the page, because a grammatical error or misspelling can be quite jarring. (My husband and daughter find my experience to be quite odd as they both see a movie and hear dialogue.) It's also not uncommon for me to have absolutely no recollection of the names of the main characters when I have finished a book.

 

I've talked about this with friends, and in general, the majority seem to have a visual experience when reading fiction. Non-fiction seems to bring about different experiences though I do have one friend who discussed seeing compounds coming together and reforming when she studied Organic Chemistry.

 

So, what is your experience, Pam?

 

Regards,

Kareni

[LaMere Academy]

Becky, The Elegance of the Hedgehog is one I couldn't make it through. I stopped partway. I sometimes joke that French authors & I don't mix. Lol. (Of course, like always, I turn around & completely contradict myself by saying that Alexandre Dumas is one of my favorite authors; I thoroughly enjoyed Translation is a Love Affair by a Québécois author --  is he really considered French or not?) Anyway, quite a few have loved Elegance, so I'm curious to see what your final opinion will be.

 

 

I am definitely not into it.  I'm still trying to slog my way through.  Not sure if I will give up or not.  It's one of those books I have to make myself pick up and read.

[Pam in CT]

re: the voices in my head, lol...

This makes me think of something that I know has been discussed on the board (but perhaps not also here in a Book a Week thread).  

 

When you read, do you hear words, see pictures, or both?

 

 

Here's what I wrote in the thread I linked above:

 

I'm one who does not see pictures in my head.  When I begin reading a novel, I initially hear the words as though I am reading aloud silently (which sounds remarkably oxymoronic!). After a short time, I am simply experiencing the story but with no visual or sound effects. I simply turn the pages and take in the story. At some level, I'm aware of the words on the page, because a grammatical error or misspelling can be quite jarring. (My husband and daughter find my experience to be quite odd as they both see a movie and hear dialogue.) It's also not uncommon for me to have absolutely no recollection of the names of the main characters when I have finished a book.

I've talked about this with friends, and in general, the majority seem to have a visual experience when reading fiction. Non-fiction seems to bring about different experiences though I do have one friend who discussed seeing compounds coming together and reforming when she studied Organic Chemistry.

 

So, what is your experience, Pam?

Regards,
Kareni

 

It's so interesting, isn't it, how different this is for different people?

 

When I read a novel, I hear the words.  If there's dialogue, and I have invested in / believe in / have a holistic sense of the characters, I hear their dialogue in different voices, as if I'm listening to a good audiobook.  The prose parts I hear in my usual inner voice (not the same as my actual voice), which is also how I hear non-fiction.  

 

When I learned, as an adult, that some people "think" primarily in images (I put it in quotes because it's just so alien to me; for me thinking IS verbal), I was so interested that I read a pile of books by neuroscientists and speech pathologists that attempted to describe (in words) how that worked (cause, see, reading books about new ideas is my principal means of learning about them...).  Particularly in the speech pathology world there are various exercises to "train" yourself into a different mode (they're usually working in the opposite direction, but find that tagging words to mental pictures helps with comprehension and retention... so they've developed techniques to help clients paint mental pictures...)

 

So I went through a phase -- this was maybe fifteen years ago -- where I concertedly and fairly systematically practiced painting verbal pictures as I read and also as I experienced auditory input (either people IRL talking; or listening to audiobooks; or even listening to music).  And lo and behold, it does help certainly with retention, and probably with comprehension as well.  

 

I have to consciously exert myself to do it, though -- much as my image-focused son describes having to pull himself out of the movies rolling in his head to use verbal language.

 

 

My best friend from college describes having most nouns associated with a color.  She is perfectly bilingual, and reports that the color associations are with the word, not the thing -- a tree might be one color in English and another entirely, nowhere even close on the color wheel, in Danish.  I have absolutely NO IDEA what she's talking about.  Her mother and one of her sisters does it too and we once did an experiment where I called off nouns and they wrote down the associated colors, and the three of them matched almost perfectly.  It was beyond bizarre.

[LaMere Academy]

Dh and dd14 just finished this book and the 3rd last week.  Both thought that the 3rd book was "brutal." Not sure what that means but they were glued.  Dh is reading the prequel now, and dd is reading the first of another series by Dashner.  

 

Thank you!  I am hesitant about Code Name Verity only because I recommended it to a friend who loves WWII fiction (unlike me) because I saw it recommended here.  She was surprised it was a YA book because of some sort of mature theme with the women who were kidnapped :confused1: .  I had forgotten about The Book Thief.  I will check with his mom on this one.  

 

I'm currently reading The Book Thief aloud to my teens.  Nothing bad in it except that it is sad.  Also language.  My dh walked through while I was reading it yesterday and heard me say ***hole and he looked at me shocked.  I told him I'm not editing the words out at their age (14 and 15). 

[Stacia]

I have two work deadlines and need to go to the grocery store and have to prep food for my book club tomorrow morning AND I still need to read the book today.  If you see me hanging around here like I've got not a care in the world please yell at me to go away.  

 

:laugh:

 

 

Don't go away yet. I have an important announcement to make (that will bring these poetry/prayer/meditation musings to a screeching halt)...

 

Amy, God's Gift: Over 100 Studs, Stallions and Dreamboats from the 70s and 80s does *not* include Paul Hogan.

 

:lol:

 

[hornblower]

r

 

My best friend from college describes having most nouns associated with a color.  She is perfectly bilingual, and reports that the color associations are with the word, not the thing -- a tree might be one color in English and another entirely, nowhere even close on the color wheel, in Danish.  I have absolutely NO IDEA what she's talking about.  Her mother and one of her sisters does it too and we once did an experiment where I called off nouns and they wrote down the associated colors, and the three of them matched almost perfectly.  It was beyond bizarre.

 

That's synesthesia. I've known people like that too. It can be colors associated with words, equations, numbers, music, all sorts of things. Or people who see music. It's fascinating, isn't it?

[Pam in CT]

Don't go away yet. I have an important announcement to make (that will bring these poetry/prayer/meditation musings to a screeching halt)...

 

Amy, God's Gift: Over 100 Studs, Stallions and Dreamboats from the 70s and 80s does *not* include Paul Hogan.

 

:lol:

 

Even in his stubby shorts?  Say it isn't so.

 

Gah, I miss GIFs.

[Jane in NC]

For Jane and anyone else who enjoys this carol...in its two most famous settings, the Harold Darke version and the Gustav Holst version respectively. The carol brings back memories of turkish delight, dark aged Christmas cake, mince tarts and a roaring fire.

 

 

 

It appears that Shukriyya is another fan of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College.  Lovely! And fun to hear that alternate version.

 

 

This makes me think of something that I know has been discussed on the board (but perhaps not also here in a Book a Week thread).  

 

When you read, do you hear words, see pictures, or both?

 

 

Here's what I wrote in the thread I linked above:

 

I'm one who does not see pictures in my head.  When I begin reading a novel, I initially hear the words as though I am reading aloud silently (which sounds remarkably oxymoronic!). After a short time, I am simply experiencing the story but with no visual or sound effects. I simply turn the pages and take in the story. At some level, I'm aware of the words on the page, because a grammatical error or misspelling can be quite jarring. (My husband and daughter find my experience to be quite odd as they both see a movie and hear dialogue.) It's also not uncommon for me to have absolutely no recollection of the names of the main characters when I have finished a book.

 

I've talked about this with friends, and in general, the majority seem to have a visual experience when reading fiction. Non-fiction seems to bring about different experiences though I do have one friend who discussed seeing compounds coming together and reforming when she studied Organic Chemistry.

 

So, what is your experience, Pam?

 

Regards,

Kareni

 

I am definitely in the visual-spatial camp when I read novels, even having dreams incorporating images created from my reading.  While I often cannot remember the title of a book or an author's name, I will remember the color of the cover and the position of the book in the library.   Poetry is different for me though--with a poem I seem to focus on words or even the sounds of the words.

 

Music also creates images in my head. 

[Stacia]

Even in his stubby shorts?  Say it isn't so.

 

Gah, I miss GIFs.

 

I know. Just imagine how much better my post could have been if I had been able to post photos & gifs.

 

(I know all you gals are picturing that photo of him in his stubby shorts now. Lol.)

[Jane in NC]

I know. Just imagine how much better my post could have been if I had been able to post photos & gifs.

 

(I know all you gals are picturing that photo of him in his stubby shorts now. Lol.)

 

 

Especially we visual-spatial ones. I'll let Pam supply the play by play as Hogan struts his stuff.

[shukriyya]

It appears that Shukriyya is another fan of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College. Lovely! And fun to hear that alternate version.

Yes, FoNLaC was a fixture in our home throughout my growing up years along with the, ahem, Queen's Christmas Day message. My very British father insisted we all pause what we were doing and listen to what she was sharing. Gosh, different times.

[Stacia]

Well I do believe rhubarb is preferable to FLEAS and COCKROACHES and TAPEWORMS. 

 

:iagree:

 

Also, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist, by Ruchama King Feuerman.  Stacia, I think this came from one of your lists?  All too timely (sigh), as it touches on the volatile subject of dueling prayer aspirations on the Temple Mount / al Aqsa site.  Aside from that heartache, it is an interesting story, with an unexpected and playful feminist twist, though ultimately superficial imo in its treatment of some serious and difficult issues.

 

Um, yes. After seeing the cover, I do remember it being on one of the lists. Which list, I don't know. But a list... :lol:

 

I am definitely in the visual-spatial camp when I read novels, even having dreams incorporating images created from my reading.  While I often cannot remember the title of a book or an author's name, I will remember the color of the cover and the position of the book in the library.   Poetry is different for me though--with a poem I seem to focus on words or even the sounds of the words.

 

Music also creates images in my head. 

 

Me too (as far as being in the visual-spatial camp). See my previous answer to Pam. I often go by cover art, location, etc.... (I still want to arrange my bookshelves by color -- am trying to clean off my shelves enough to do it.) When meeting someone new, I'll often ask the person how s/he spells her/his name. If I picture the name spelled out in my head (watching it being written out), I can often remember it.

 

Poetry & music, not so much. I find my eyes/ears/mind tend to wander away from those things....

 

Especially we visual-spatial ones. I'll let Pam supply the play by play as Hogan struts his stuff.

 

  :smilielol5:  Yeah, I have no problem picturing him but I'd sure like to read Pam's play-by-play!

[Pam in CT]

If I may interject - 10% Happier really changed my thinking on meditation. I have struggled with meditation for years & kept giving up thinking it's pointless. But 10% convinced me that it's not the failing, but rather the ceaseless noticing you've failed & returning to meditation that works. And yes, just noticing, acknowledging & letting thoughts/words go is the style of meditation he talks about. It's usually called mindfulness meditation.

 

Oh & the Jewish/Buddhist/meditating tradition comes up several times in that book, as well as reference to Sam Harris's book Waking Up  (which at the time 10% came out wasn't published  yet.)  Sam Harris has written several posts on his blog about meditation & also has an audio of a guided mindful meditation. His book Waking Up is on my tbr & as I understand it, focuses heavily on the benefits of meditation, which is esp interesting as he's a neuroscientist...

 

10% Happier is a pretty hilarious title, I must say... I'll see if my library has it on that basis alone!  

 

While Sam Harris is, I think, the New Atheist I least dislike, lol, I decided a few years back that I was All Done reading New Atheist books -- more snark than I really have the stomach for at my advanced and weary age....  This one looks though like he's maybe staking out in a slightly different direction...  I'll be curious to hear what you think of it...

 

 

That's synesthesia. I've known people like that too. It can be colors associated with words, equations, numbers, music, all sorts of things. Or people who see music. It's fascinating, isn't it?

Yes!  And I especially found it astonishing that the three of them nearly always associated the same color, and the association was with the word-not-the-thing-itself ... like there's an... associated aura, invisible to most but visible to some, passed on my HEREDITY... not with a tree but with the WORD tree...

 

Just.too.weird.  So weird that I had no choice but to pack it away into a (verbal) category of too-weird-to-contemplate and run away...

[Stacia]

I'm one who does not see pictures in my head.  When I begin reading a novel, I initially hear the words as though I am reading aloud silently (which sounds remarkably oxymoronic!). After a short time, I am simply experiencing the story but with no visual or sound effects.

 

When I read a novel, I hear the words.  If there's dialogue, and I have invested in / believe in / have a holistic sense of the characters, I hear their dialogue in different voices, as if I'm listening to a good audiobook.  The prose parts I hear in my usual inner voice (not the same as my actual voice), which is also how I hear non-fiction. 

 

It's weird in that I think of myself as highly visual. When I read, though, often I am seeing the words as just words -- not translating them to pictures in my head, but just seeing/tracing the shapes of the letters. Is that why I'm a font fanatic & why I can remember names by thinking of them being written out? Sometimes, I see pictures, but usually that is with dreamy/surrealist books, which are somehow easier for me to picture than straight, linear narratives -- if I do form a picture of something like that, it is often fuzzy/not clear or defined, more of an impression of an image. Maybe that's why I don't mind movie versions of books because I haven't already created my own movie/picture set in my head of how the characters, scenery, etc... look.

 

So, is picturing words (as in the letters themselves) visual? I don't think it's an auditory bent....

[hornblower]

10% Happier is a pretty hilarious title, I must say... I'll see if my library has it on that basis alone!  

 

While Sam Harris is, I think, the New Atheist I least dislike, lol, I decided a few years back that I was All Done reading New Atheist books -- more snark than I really have the stomach for at my advanced and weary age....  This one looks though like he's maybe staking out in a slightly different direction...  I'll be curious to hear what you think of it...

 

I  know what you mean about snark but you know, SH is really not snarky at all. He's so amazingly calm when I've seen him on panels  - the one with Deepak Chopra at CalTech & the recent one with Ben Affleck on Bill Maher for instance. Affleck was incredibly rude & snarky, Maher always is (grrrr, he ticks me off)  - but Sam just isn't. He sticks to facts & the conclusions & opinions he's drawn from the facts... If that's what you get after years of serious meditation, I'm sold :D   In written word, I think he's even more measured & respectful while making his points.

 

Oddly, I've been postponing reading his latest because I'm really, really uncomfortable with the word spirituality. The fact that it's in the title is making me squirm.

 

eta - ok, I've edited punctuation twice & I give up. Sorry. Brackets, dashes, whatever.  It looks weird no matter what... lol

[Violet Crown]

I read it and thought it was very good. I'd recommend it, too.

 

I finished Kristen Lavransdatter last week and really liked it a lot. It was very interesting and made me so thoughtful and introspective at times.

 

After that, I read Storm Front, the first book in the Dresden Files series. Good, light fun. OK.

 

Now, I am reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel about a traveling Shakespeare troupe in the second decade after a flu pandemic that wipes out much of the world. Interesting so far...I like how it travels back and forth in time before and after the pandemic. They have encountered a town taken over by a strange cult guy who calls himself a prophet. Isn't it always true that in the apocalypse human beings show the truth of their hearts and some of them are pretty dang ugly?! lol Here is a good review: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20851940,00.html

 

More plague literature! Yeah! We really have to put together a master list.

[Pam in CT]

re: Paul Hogan:

I know. Just imagine how much better my post could have been if I had been able to post photos & gifs.

 

(I know all you gals are picturing that photo of him in his stubby shorts now. Lol.)

 

Especially we visual-spatial ones. I'll let Pam supply the play by play as Hogan struts his stuff.

 

 

 

  :smilielol5:  Yeah, I have no problem picturing him but I'd sure like to read Pam's play-by-play!

 

Oh, all right already!

 

Cue music: Mucho Macho Man, by the inimitable and unforgettable Village People.  Man enters bar, wearing wide-lapeled white satin shirt unbuttoned to navel and skin tight black pants, with heavy gold medallion nestled into abundant chest hair.  Wait!  That's not Paul Hogan!  That's Tony Orlando!  Man eyes vivacious curly blonde across bar.  She smiles.  He lights cigarette.  Remember when people used to smoke cigarettes on camera?  When did that stop happening?  He keels over choking.  Blonde giggles.  He re-lights and manages a puff.  

 

Bartender serves healthy tumblerful of smoky-colored liquor.  He picks up glass.  He toasts blonde across bar, winks, and raises glass to mouth.  Cigarette, which lamentably is held in same hand, is also raised and sadly burns man on forehead.  Great shaking of man's shaggy curls and tapping of injured forehead.  Blonde smiles sympathetically...

 

 

 

(alternatively, see the image starting at about 2:00...)

 

[Kareni]

It is so intriguing to hear (see?) how we read in different way.

 

It's weird in that I think of myself as highly visual. When I read, though, often I am seeing the words as just words -- not translating them to pictures in my head, but just seeing/tracing the shapes of the letters. Is that why I'm a font fanatic & why I can remember names by thinking of them being written out?

 

So, Stacia, have you read this book?

 

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield

 

"A delightfully inquisitive tour that explores the rich history and the subtle powers of fonts.

 

Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product that we buy. But where do fonts come from and why do we need so many? Who is behind the businesslike subtlety of Times New Roman, the cool detachment of Arial, or the maddening lightness of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)? Simon Garfield embarks on a mission to answer these questions and more, and reveal what may be the very best and worst fonts in the world.

 

Typefaces are now 560 years old, but we barely knew their names until about twenty years ago, when the pull-down font menus on our first computers made us all the gods of type. Beginning in the early days of Gutenberg and ending with the most adventurous digital fonts, Garfield unravels our age old obsession with the way our words look. Just My Type investigates a range of modern mysteries, including how Helvetica took over the world, what inspires the seemingly ubiquitous use of Trajan on bad movie posters, and what makes a font look presidential, male or female, American, British, German, or Jewish. From the typeface of Beatlemania to the graphic vision of the Obama campaign, fonts can signal a musical revolution or the rise of an American president. This book is a must-read for the design conscious that will forever change the way you look at the printed word."

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Pam in CT]

re: Sam Harris' Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion: 

I  know what you mean about snark but you know, SH is really not snarky at all. He's so amazingly calm when I've seen him on panels  - the one with Deepak Chopra at CalTech & the recent one with Ben Affleck on Bill Maher for instance. Affleck was incredibly rude & snarky, Maher always is (grrrr, he ticks me off)  - but Sam just isn't. He sticks to facts & the conclusions & opinions he's drawn from the facts... If that's what you get after years of serious meditation, I'm sold :D   In written word, I think he's even more measured & respectful while making his points.

Oddly, I've been postponing reading his latest because I'm really, really uncomfortable with the word spirituality. The fact that it's in the title is making me squirm.

eta - ok, I've edited punctuation twice & I give up. Sorry. Brackets, dashes, whatever.  It looks weird no matter what... lol

Yeah, I agree, SH is the least snarky of the bunch, and is probably unfairly lumped with the rest of the lot.  There was much in Moral Landscape that I found very interesting.  

 

:lol: to the bolded.  He's in good company; "spiritual not religious" is among the fastest-growing categories in the US!

[Violet Crown]

It's weird in that I think of myself as highly visual. When I read, though, often I am seeing the words as just words -- not translating them to pictures in my head, but just seeing/tracing the shapes of the letters. Is that why I'm a font fanatic & why I can remember names by thinking of them being written out? Sometimes, I see pictures, but usually that is with dreamy/surrealist books, which are somehow easier for me to picture than straight, linear narratives -- if I do form a picture of something like that, it is often fuzzy/not clear or defined, more of an impression of an image. Maybe that's why I don't mind movie versions of books because I haven't already created my own movie/picture set in my head of how the characters, scenery, etc... look.

 

So, is picturing words (as in the letters themselves) visual? I don't think it's an auditory bent....

Have you read Five Hundred Years of Printing? Steinberg gets a little bogged down in detail sometimes, but it's fascinating and comprehensive. I never knew so much about fonts before.

[Stacia]

Pam, :cheers2: . (Your prose is so wonderful that I did actually picture the scene. I can almost smell the cigarette smoke.)

 

 

:smilielol5:

[shukriyya]

Oh, all right already!

 

Cue music: Mucho Macho Man, by the inimitable and unforgettable Village People. 

 

In an instinctively Pavlovian response to the bolded suddenly the music inside my head is blaring...

 

 

[Nan in Mass]

Yikes - I go buy a few snails and shrimp and the thread took off.  While they are acclimating to the new water (difficult with the snail because he keeps climing out of the water), I've read a few posts but am way behind lol.

 

Jenn - I know both melodies.  I didn't know there were two.  I think my mum sings one and my husband plays the Martin Simpson version on the guitar.  I suspect I sing one sometimes and the other other times but not close enough together to know they were different.  Or is there a different set of words that go with the first one?  We sing one of them in church from time to time.  I think the Simpson version works ok as an instrumental version but I'm not that picky.

 

Pam - I was told by somebody associated with the sort of Buddhist my bil's are (much more sedentary sp? than the sort I've been associated with) that the idea is to let the words be the ripples on the surface of the water and to ignore those and sink down deep in the water.

 

Nan

 

 

[shukriyya]

All I have to add to the discussion of the way words are received is that I feel them in my body first and foremost.

[Jane in NC]

Yikes - I go buy a few snails and shrimp and the thread took off.  While they are acclimating to the new water (difficult with the snail because he keeps climing out of the water), I've read a few posts but am way behind lol.

 

Jenn - I know both melodies.  I didn't know there were two.  I think my mum sings one and my husband plays the Martin Simpson version on the guitar.  I suspect I sing one sometimes and the other other times but not close enough together to know they were different.  Or is there a different set of words that go with the first one?  We sing one of them in church from time to time.  I think the Simpson version works ok as an instrumental version but I'm not that picky.

 

Pam - I was told by somebody associated with the sort of Buddhist my bil's are (much more sedentary sp? than the sort I've been associated with) that the idea is to let the words be the ripples on the surface of the water and to ignore those and sink down deep in the water.

 

Nan

 

And there is Nan bringing the conversation back to invertebrates!

 

[Rosie_0801]

That's synesthesia. I've known people like that too. It can be colors associated with words, equations, numbers, music, all sorts of things. Or people who see music. It's fascinating, isn't it?

 

I do that with people sometimes. Only if I care though. (So don't ask me what colour you are because I'm sick and don't care :p )Sometimes it is like seeing it in my head, sometimes it is more like seeing it with my eyes, though I know I'm not.