How To Make A Hollow Book in Which to Hide Your Stuff

~ Chris Cocca ~ 9 Comments

If you went to a high school, you knew a kid who tried to do this. Trust me on that. (No, it wasn’t me.) Now that you’re all growed-up like Wendy Darling, what kinds of things would you use something like this for? Oh, and kids, if you’re reading: don’t bring crap you’re not supposed to to school. Unless it’s something funny. Also, don’t do drugs.

found here via StumbleUpon.

My favorite part of this whole project has to be the inclusion of our old friend, the 3.5 inch floppy disk.  I also appreciated “make sure this is your book” and “make sure you use a hardcover book.”  Now, honestly, I actually cringe at the very thought of cutting or otherwise mangling a book no matter what the awesome final product.  When I find old books at garage sales, I bring them home and nurse them back to health.  Maybe you have a damaged, unusable, unsalvageable edition of something that you can re-purpose for these kinds of projects. If so, then, like Mitch Hedberg used to say, I’m for ’em.

Speaking of Mitch Hedberg, I’m pretty sure he invented Twitter.  Is a post on that forthcoming?  I think you know the answer to that, friend.

Speaking of StumbleUpon, if you use it, let me know so we can connect and share recommendations, reviews, and likes.  If you don’t know what it is, let me just say that it has precious little to do with Culture Club.  Misheard title lyrics there are “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.”  You’d think these guys would be all over that.

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A Paean For the Fourteenth of February, A.D. 2011.

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

Today our hearts are full of spring.  Hopes and expectations advance from the cold winter of our more withdrawn selves and everything is possible, nay, everything is new!  The vanquished and the victors each with passions barely bridled step forth to give and to receive; Joy, oh Joy, that wing-ed thing! And wing-ed, with its own wings lending; might we see eternal forms?  Today, the ancient tandems torn asunder by the cycling of Demeter reunite in temperate climes.  Persephone returns to us, and Proserpina, Roman twin:

Oh, that's right. It's today.

 

Poetry Being the Thing

~ Chris Cocca ~ 4 Comments

The Path

The narrow path crawling,
Shivering underneath the feet,
At the end of which
The Tree of Life has grown, shimmering…

What a big heart it has
This road to Eternity
This path for people, plants and beasts alike,
This path of winged birds…Breathe, o breeze,
Little stutterer,
Entwining and swirling
The love of life
And the harvest of the heart,
From the sea waves,
From the cloud pleats,
From the molten blaze
Of crimson flowers,
Let her light a golden light under my bosom,
And you, blow into the flame, o gentle wind,
So that my hope
Swells eternally
Over my chest…

(Komitas)

A Poem

Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn’t you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?…

(Nichita Stãnescu)

I Am

I am your love,
I am the heat of your love,
Yet lonely…

I am your woman,
You, you are my soul
That I depend on…

Your voice sounded as sudden thunder of love
My soul breathed as an elating lightning of spring…

I breathed your breath deep down my chest
And by your fire I became the poet of the flames…

(Komitas)

 

…the most memorable concern of mankind
is the guts it takes to
face the sunlight again.

(Bukowski)

Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.

(John Keating, Dead Poet’s Society)

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers.  And to my wife.