Damian - Movies/Videos (updated 9/30/02) | |
Time Bandits | twisted history |
Twice Upon a Time | cartoony take on people and dreams |
Naked Lunch | disturbing, confusing sexual sanity tickler |
Photographing Faries | death and...well...fairies, set in england at the turn of the century |
The 13th Floor | reality bender for computer geeks, overshadowed by the not-as-similar-as-it-seems Matrix |
This is What Democracy Looks Like | what you didn't see at the WTO Seattle protests a few years back, this has to be special ordered from their site (or borrowed from me) |
Dark City | a great sci-fi mystery, with wonderful special effects and a great gothic feel |
What Dreams May Come | a beautiful movie on death and love |
Michael - Books | |
Death in the Andes ,
In Praise of Stepmother And others by Mario Vargas Llosa |
These are definitely not children's stories! Engaging, disturbing... they cling to my memory after years of forgetfulness. This Peruvian author ranks in the stratosphere of wordsmiths. It makes me wonder how much better his writings would be if I read Spanish. If you look for his stuff alphabetically in book stores he may be in the "L"s (wrong) for Llosa, or in the "V"s (right) for Vargas Llosa. |
The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart Edited by Robert Bly (who needs no intro), James Hillman (who?), and Michael Mead (the best storyteller I have ever had the pleasure to listen to). | This is my all time favorite collection of poems.
Some samples: Gary Snider: Old Woman Nature/ naturally has a bag of bones/ tucked away somewhere./ a whole room full of bones! Robert Frost: The hurt is not enough:/ I long for weight and strength/ To feel the earth as rough/ To all my length. Chippewa tribe: Sometimes I go about pitying myself,/ and all the time/ I am being carried on great winds across the sky! |
Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. | No damn cat, no damn cradle... actually almost any book by Vonnegut or Twain |
Dirt - The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth William Bryant Logan | "What is beauty? Beauty is a sum not
reducible to its parts. It is a perception of harmony in variety. What is
worship? To worship means not to figure out, not to analyze not to pin down
like a dried butterfly on a grid, but to value. Deeply to value." This book is all about dirt - really - there's lots of fertilizer in it! |
Rumi in almost any translation. | "In the shambles of love, they kill only the best,/ none of the weak or deformed./ Don't run away from this dying./ Whoever's not killed for love is carrion." |
The River Why David James Duncan | If you have not read it, and want some good belly laughs and some serious musings on life, the universe, and everything, buy it. If you have not read it in years, get it off the shelf and read it again. |
Intelligent Life in the Universe I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan | Speaking of life, the universe, and everything... this (now very dated) book on the subject is the best popular work I ever read. If anyone knows of a comparable tome - more contemporary - let me know! |
Sex and Temperament Margaret Mead | Forget Mars and Venus. This woman covered planet Earth getting her data straight! |
The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame | A children's story that has no equal. Perhaps my
earliest recognition of my love of Pan comes from this jewel: "Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw..." I have heard that piping - at the fag end of a twelve day retreat in Qahira's avocado grove many, many moons ago. The Sufis call it the ecstatic music that entices reluctant souls to incarnate. To me it will always be the call of the Lord of Nature, that one "might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly." |
The Skystone
and the rest of the Camulod Chronicles Jack Whyte |
Purely escapist Arthurian fun. Done with a gritty "get me through the chaos of the decline of Rome" attitude, a male counterpoint to The Mists of Avalon. |
The Immense Journey and absolutely anything by Loren Eiseley | Lifetime beacon. Absolutely clear. A naturalist
on the loose. Speaking of the possibility of extraterrestrial life Eiseley
turns the question into a mirror: "Life, even cellular life, may exist out yonder in the dark. But high or low in nature, it will not wear the shape of man. That shape is the evolutionary product of a strange, long wandering through the attics of the forest roof, and so great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely and identically human is likely ever to come that way again." |
The Fallen Man
and anything else by Tony Hillerman |
More reading for pure enjoyment - murder mysteries on the Dine (Navajo) reservation. |
A Wrinkle in Time
and most anything by Madeleine L'Engle |
Fun read if you don't mind children's format. Who can forget Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit. Nary a week goes by that I don't mutter to myself their admonition: "Nobody said it would be easy." |
Over Sea, Under Stone
and all the rest of the Dark is Rising series Susan Cooper |
Another kid's series (OK - so I never "grew up" - so sue me!). Outstanding pagan battle of light and darkness. Set modern in Britain. When Hern looses the hounds my heart leaps and my skin goes to goose flesh! |
And of course William Shakespeare, The Bard. Honest. I keep the complete works close to hand. | Who else can turn the English phrase (when
speaking of the braying of hunting hounds at sunrise): "So musical a discord! Such sweet thunder!" or again "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't!" And you thought Huxley made up that "Brave New World" line! |