The City of Lights vs The Big Apple

I stumbled upon a fun site that makes a visual comparison of two of the world's greatest cities: Paris and New York. Below are a few of the illustrated differences:

I think these are really wonderful. There's much more of Paris versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities. You can find it here.

Entering Volume 4 of the April 1st Project

Here's the latest from the April 1st Project. I have to admit that as the pages dwindle and I can see that a new thin notebook is about to be cracked open, I get rather, well, giddy.

Note that I dropped my phone, so some of the pictures have funny colored lines in them. Ah, a reason for an upgrade...

I check The Big Question almost daily. Back on the 2nd, it asked 'Do you know what you want?' -- Well, do you?

 On the 11th, I attended Inprint's presentation of Carlos Fuentes -- another great writer. I enjoyed the evening, though I thought it too short. Of the many things he said, I was struck by his description of Mexico as 'country destroyed by its own epic.'

'Be who you are and be that well.' -- Wise words from St Francis de Sales

And another quote from Gene Fowler: 'I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.'

And from Leo Stein -- 'The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.'

We attended Outstanding in the Field mid month. Wow! It was so much fun. We arrived at the Jolie vue Farms at three in the afternoon and proceeded to meet our fellow diners and nibble on passed appetizers. A few hours later, we walked passed the pens and up the hill to the table awaiting us. More than 170 people for a sit down, fantastic, gourmet meal in the country. I highly recommend it, but you'll have to wait until next year.

I was thrilled that Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize. I love The Storyteller and was riveted by The Feast of the Goat. He is a master storyteller.

The above is another of the self portrait drawings. Below is a glimpse at how fat the volume can be.

The wickedly clever Oscar Wilde once said, 'The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.'

If you like flash fiction as I do, try elimae and wigleaf. These are two new finds.

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. -- Mary Parker Follett

The last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl had an amazing story. I was deeply moved by Man's Search for Meaning when I read it years ago. Too many years, actually, and probably worth a reread.

That's it for now. Let me hear from you.

The Random Dozen

The instructor randomly selected 12 words out of The Art of the Personal Essay and wrote them on the board. Our assignment: to use them as a catalyst for writing. We could use all, none, or some. Go.

The words:

     publicity

     scars

     tossed

     timid

     corn

     dozen

     practice

     lashes

     dwarf

     luxury

     radio

     sweetness

This would be fun. My friend Melissa and I had done something similar (read it here), and I was ready to concoct a story with this arbitrary dozen.

Here’s the result, unedited:

His voice was sweetness as it caressed my ears floating out of the radio. It was a luxury to hear him sing, his records had only amounted to a dozen, and with little publicity they were hard to locate and very hard to come by. He sang of sadness, the scars of lost loves, past lives, and left leanings. I flirted with his voice, batted my eyelashes at the speaker and tossed compliments his way. Mi Amor. I was not timid. It was not a trait I possessed. I sang back; it was good practice. Some day, I too would be a crooner, luring men with my sumptuous voice, causing women to weep like the babies in their arms. Who would know that I was a dwarf? They wouldn’t. No one would see me. Technology does wonders with photography these days. They would only hear. And I, I would no longer be stuck in a factory making corn tortillas. I would be as great as him, and maybe, maybe as great as Amalia Rodriguez.

Books, quotes, and April 1st

Volume 3 of the April 1st Project is quickly coming to an end. Below are some highlights along with the latest photographs:

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
A graphic novel, powerful for its simplicity of both story and illustration. I highly recommend this book.

A few more books to explore:

      Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas
      Stateside by Jehanne Dubrow
      Stop-Time by Frank Conroy
      The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr

Words by others, aka quotes, are always of interest to me. Some new ones that I found memorable:

      "In life as in chess, forethought wins."

          - Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

      "Joy is the daughter of peace."

          - Finnish Proverb

      "Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin."

          - Grace Hansen

      "Leadership starts to crumble when it becomes inconsistent."

          - Kevin O'Connor

      "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist."

          - Indira Gandhi

From a writing contest on the Worst Sentence of 2010, the winning line (prepare yourself):

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss -- a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

Doesn't that just gross you out? It does me.