In-between-posts quotes

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One pathleads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction.Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

-Woody Allen, authoractor, and filmmaker (1935- )

Such a wise remark from Woody Allen!

Sylvia's blog

Reading Sylvia's blog is like immersing yourself in history, poetry, and aviation at the same time. I haven't come across a blog like hers. The subject of the blog is not her life. It's a fictional story with characters and imagery. It reminds me of those novels that were published in installments in magazines way back. I think it should be compiled to make a novel. Yupp, it's that good!

My first book

It's only an adaptation
It's for kids
It's only a textbook
But I'm mega kicked that I have finally finished my first book (A retelling of "The Hound of the Baskervilles"). Technically, I finished writing it last year but it will be out soon this year. And the icing on the cake is that my first reader has loved it. My editor, Sylvia, said that the typesetter sat up all night to finish the book. Now, that's a compliment…! So I told her not to congratulate me because in actuality I didn’t write it. She should congratulate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle instead. But she insisted that I was the one who was responsible for this riveting read. Her point: would the typesetter have stayed up all night to read Holmes in the original? Arielle agrees with Sylvia. But I'm not convinced. It's a classic detective story with classic elements of suspense, plot, structure, and red herrings. "The Hound of the Baskervilles" could be written in Icelandic and it be still be as gripping!

Thanks Sylvia. I owe you.

Biotime and pure ideas

Most of us use routine to parry the day. Then it's gone. Others like to pack personal adventure or pleasure into the day. Purposeful folks write books or act in plays in which the routine is the quarry. One cannot buy biotime. So the day is a knight with a sharp lance rousing us from bed to perform roles useful to others. That occupation permits us to earn the currency of exchange without an expiration date. We can then buy things that do not degrade in biotime because they are not alive.

Political necessity is the mother of human history. After all, an idea is the least affected by biotime. War is pure idea. Which explains its attractiveness to the thoughtless and those who fear boredom and wasted days. War exchanges human life and labor for days and the invisible pennant of an idea waves above the dead, both just and unjust.

An Emersonism I like

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Life is reel

Isn't life like a badly made b-grade movie that you are stuck in forever? There is nothing to cry over and everything to mourn for.