A Belated Happy New Year. It's been a while since I posted on-line.
Life, Christmas, Credit Card Bills, New Years and unpaid credit card bills beckoned;
But here I am again
In between the Kraken (my favourite new Spiced Rum) I did resolve to write for poetry contests that may come up this year even though I know and have come to terms with an understanding that I am at best a teething poetry writer.
It would be hard pressed for me to get even a whiff of the finalist list; but I did try, I even zeroed out my account paid for postage, took clean paged printouts of my work (nice touch there), stencilled the address on the envelope, and then relaxed.
All that and more to stress that I made a serious writing effort, I did not win but I did try amongst a 138 others. I am sure I will continue to make stringent efforts for the rest of the year.
I tried my hand at attempting to steer a car again, wavered, got administered a severe reprimand at least 15 times in my short but long driving class of 45 minutes and have not braved the road since.
Lottery time again at work and personally even there, there have been no large scale life altering wins.
So you could from these reams stated call me a pessimist, and I may enthusiastically declare myself a reformed one. I have been down some tough roads physically and mentally, the last couple of years have drawn me thin but I am still here catching the same bus, walking the same road, and back to the same blog.
Onwards, upwards, or flat lined, whatever life may bring you we must choose to stay and move forward right fellas.
Been reading a lot my closest friend presented me with an E-reader and it has I must say changed the way I read and changed the type of books that I read.
It used to be books like those that I listed earlier, but I was pleasantly surprised with the gradual change in my taste. While I swathed myself mostly with Fiction now I find myself steering into the Twilight area of Non-Fiction. To expound below is a list of books that I have read since December 25th
Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer by David Roberts
The book is based on the brief life of Everett Ruess and is compiled largely on the back of letters written during his travels, mostly to his parents, brother and friends and also from the journals that he maintained as a family tradition though most of the journals were lost during his travels in the Southwest through Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado during the years 1931, 1932, and 1934. The family published "On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess" based on these letters and journals and this was followed by "Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty" by W.L Rusho.
David Roberts the author of Finding Everet Ruess referenced the above books on Ruess to Jon Krakauer who in turn found an eerie likeness between Everett Ruess and the true life story of another traveller Christopher McCandless "a twenty four year old man who hitchhiked all the way into Alaska and ended up dying for his dreams of surviving in the wilderness,” Jon Krakauer ended up referencing Everett in eleven pages in his book on Christopher McCandless "Into the Wild" (my favourite travel book).
Everett travelled the Southwest with a couple of Burros (he switched them for Horses at some point and returned to burros) and his love for block-painting. He disappeared on the trail in 1934. Seventy Five years later David Roberts has tried to revisit his travels and discovered many a twist in the tale http://www.trailsedge.com/blog/the-mystery-of-everett-ruess/ . DNA testing was done on the skeletal remains found in Davis Gulch, later revealing that the bones were Native American and not Ruess’s. The mystery on whether he died due to a natural mishap on the trail, or was set upon by rustlers and murdered is still a mystery. But this is my favourite Ruess quote on life and this continues with the theme that I have set for myself.
"Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary;
That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;
Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases;
Lonely and wet and cold . . . but that I kept my dream!"
-by Everett Ruess
The story did not affect me as much as Christopher's did it is more closer to the time when I wished to hit the road and travel myself, but nevertheless F.E.R was definitely an interesting read.
Book 2: Turn Right at Machu Pichu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams. I loved this book. This book is based on the Author Mark Adams rite of passage that follows the trail of Professor explorer and Politician Hiram Bingham. Bingham claimed to having been the first to discover Machu Pichu.
I found the book funny, informative, and a rite of passage that shadowed my own minor reading experience. It draws a clear outline of Bingham his travels, his finds, his claims and the repercussions of his actions.
The book reveals with an excellent sense of humour, the author’s trail trials.
It provides a detailed history of how the Spanish Conquistadors reached deep into the Incan region. On how they conquered the Inca's. The rebellion that was led by Manco then the King of the Incas. It draws you into the tragic history of the Incas, the interspersion of the Spanish and Inca history and culture. For a more detailed link to the Incan History please follow the attached
http://www.rediscovermachupicchu.com/inca-rulers.htm
"In the variety of its charms and the power of its spell, I know of no place in the world which can compare with it. Not only has it great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead, gigantic precipices of many-coloured granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids; it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation, and the mysterious witchery of the jungle."
Quote By Hiram Bingham
http://ifip.com/Bingham.htm
Book 3 was "The Man who loved China" by Simon Winchester. It is based on the travels of Joseph Needham in China in the 1940's. Needham travelled deep into China to unravel the inventions that China produced, his theory was that China though the perpetrator of inventions had been sidelined in his era, and he worked diligently to catalogue the inventions and answer the question of why it had lost its standing as an innovator. These included cast iron, the ploughshare, the stirrup, gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass, and clockwork escapements, most of which were thought at the time to be western inventions. The first volume eventually appeared in 1954.
The man's constructive obsession with cataloguing and intricately detailing the Chinese inventions multiplied from seven into twenty four volumes of the book ‘Science and Civilisation in China’, the first volume that originated in 1953, stands today at twenty four volumes, fifteen thousand pages and 3 million words. His book reveals that the Chinese invented almost fifteen major new inventions every century. The most important invention was the Diamond Sutra and it is considered to be the very first published material, it was discovered in a Cave (Cave 17 in Dunhuang).
Simon Winchester has detailed the eccentric life of Joseph, his constant obsession with China (which strengthens through the pages of the book). It encompasses the time period between the Japanese Invasion of 1937 and the Japanese occupation that lasted till 1945, the movement of Chinese politics from Nationalism to Communism. Needham’s love for China fermented into a full blown purpose when he fell in love with Lu Gwei-djen who was to become his mistress and eventually after a wait of fifty years, his wife. Even in those conventional times that was the 1900's. his open ended relationship with his mistress was accepted by Joseph's wife Dorothy who continued to be married to Joseph till her death in 1987.
His lifelong commitment to reveal that China was an originator of many inventions that we use even today is listed in length at the end of the book. Some of the more important ones he has identified are
Abacus AD 190
Paper Money 9th century AD
Stirrup AD 300
Tea as drink 2nd century BC
http://www.nri.org.uk/index.html
At this time I believe this is a long enough revelation of the swing my reading has taken.
I hoped to complete my reading trail with a quote from Needham but I did not take it down and have since returned the book to the library.
These are cheesy times of depression, repression, recession when all the so called Greeting Card moments are pulled out and shouted out or whispered, and everybody is in need of a shot in the arm to bolster their individual spirit.
But these men prevailed in the toughest of times, circumstances, they have measured success differently in a painting, a sunset, a civilisation, even the clarification of another races measure of ingenuity,
Why then would we not persevere and believe well in these times.
‘Gung Ho’ ‘Geronimo’ and to those musically inclined have a listen to Hedley’s song “One Life” that may be a good place to start anew.
