The internet is awash with quotes. There are so many quotes, being quoted by so many,  that I rarely stop to read them when they appear on my social media news feed. These days, it has to be a helluva quote to suck me in. I’m suffering from ‘quote-fatigue’, and you may quote me on that.

It is all so easy. If I want to project a certain point of view upon my social media followers, all I have to do is to perform a quick internet search for an individual whose interests/beliefs/values/religion, or whatever,  align somewhat with mine, enter her name along with the word ‘quotes’, and just like that…an instant pool of quotes appear into which I can dip my virtual ladle.

For example, a search for ‘Richard Nixon quotes’ turned up a boat load of quotes, among them:  

“I can take it, the tougher it gets, the cooler I get.”

(This is by far my favorite Richard Nixon quote.)

Or a search for Charlton Heston quotes turns up this oft repeated, bastardized, and misused quote by both the political right and left:

“There are no ‘good guns.’ There are no ‘bad guns.’ Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody, except bad people.”

And so it goes with the quotes.

What I am interested in knowing, is if you have any quotes that have stuck with you over a period of time – say at least a month or two. Do you have any quotes attributed to the famous, or even the marginally famous that have caused you to get out your notebook and mechanical pencil and jot it down for future reference? Maybe you taped it on an index card so you could read it every day and maybe you placed that index card by your computer, or taped it to the dash of your car, or maybe it’s on the doghouse of the 18 wheeler you’re driving. Maybe it is attached by magnet to your refrigerator door, or you folded it and placed it in the bottom of your purse. Or it’s tucked into a pocket in your wallet under your Blockbuster card. What is important is that this piece of writing inspires you to do something – to exercise, lose weight, relax, maximize your workday, or just make it through another 24 hours on this rock. Do you have anything like that???

Yes, of course I have a great and meaningful quote, or I wouldn’t be writing this would I. I have it written in a notebook that I use every day, and although I don’t read it every day (I don’t do anything EVERY day), I do read it quite a lot. It is by Ralph Waldo Emerson. So here is  the quote:

“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

Being more of a windshield guy than a rear view mirror guy this quote makes sense to me. I like to spend more time thinking about what’s ahead, rather than what’s behind.

I rather like the thought of starting each day unencumbered with old nonsense.

How about you?

Feel free to leave your favorite quote in the comments section.

Months ago, back before the pandemic, back when I made frequent trips to bookstores, I came across a book titled “100 Books to Read Before you Die”. I had the book in my hand intending to buy it, but before finalizing the purchase I reconsidered. Did I really need someone telling me which books I need to read before my demise, I asked myself? Maybe I do not need that kind of structure in my life. So, I put the book back on the shelf. Still, the idea of such a reading list intrigued me. In the months since, I found several such lists on the internet. After reviewing a couple of these lists, I decided there were simply too many books. 100 books are too much reading to plan.

 If I read a book a month, it would take me roughly 8 ½ years to read all the books on the list. Of course, I have already read many of the books on the list, so that would shorten the time required but still it is an intimidating list. So, I decided to come up with my own list.

I quickly jotted down about a dozen or so titles – mostly books that I already own but have never gotten around to reading. Still, the list was too long. I slashed it down some more, eventually deciding that my own personal list would contain only four titles. Three of the titles are what I refer to as projects. They are more than simple reading assignments. They require time and commitment. They might require notes. They are my project reads. The fourth, by no means is a project read, but I include it for reasons I will describe later.

Here are the books that I hope to finish before I go on to that great goodnight:

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace; Word count 543, 709. Roughly 1000 pages. Four and a half pounds.

 I have a confession to make. I sometimes find myself reading a lot about the lives of writers, even though I have read little of what they have written. David Foster Wallace (DFW) is in this category. I first started reading about DFW in 2008, in the wake of his tragic death by suicide. Since that time, I have read a lot about him. I have read his 1994 Class Syllabus “How to teach serious literature with lightweight books”. I know that he was a hopeless nicotine addict that chewed tobacco to help relieve his dependence on cigarettes. I have read a great deal about his personal struggles. But I have not read Infinite Jest. It remains on my bookshelf unopened.

Ulysses by James Joyce; Word count 265,391

This one remains on my Kindle. It has taken up space there for nearly two years. It is said that when Joyce completed this work, he handed a copy to his wife who read a few pages and tossed it back at him saying “Why don’t you write something people can understand”. That alone is enough to consign this one to my must-read before death list. Maybe right before death. It is also said that after he completed this book, he did not write a word of prose for a year. So yeah, I must complete this one before the lights go out.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy; Word count 587,287

Some years ago, I picked up a hardcopy of this book in a New Jersey bookstore. At the time I was commuting by train and I intended to read it on my way to and from my job in New York City. Today, a piece of note paper marks my last reading of this book. It marks page 93. The piece of note paper was, at one time, a shopping list, and it lists the following items: milk, eggs, dog food, cigarettes. The last item caught my eye. Since I have not smoked in nearly 30 years, it looks like I gave up both smoking and this book around the same time. Both were taking a toll on my health. One needs to keep notes to get through this one. I will do it though, right after the Madagascar Ultra Marathon.

Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway; 517 pages

I have been a Hemingway fan for as long as I can remember. I have read about everything Papa has written (including his poetry). In one of my blogs here at EEOTPB I mentioned that the first chapter of “A Farewell to Arms” was the best damned first chapter of any book written in the 20^th century. So yes, I am a Hemingway fan. I have been a frequent visitor to Key West, and I have travelled there to attend Hemingway Days (where his poetry was read). I have travelled to Bimini to see the ruins of the Compleat Angler Hotel, and if I am lucky, I will live to visit Havana and have drink in the Floridita Bar. I will see what is left of the Pilar. I would love to see Finca Vigia. I’d like to go to Spain one day. At present, I have Hemingway’s last posthumous book, The Garden of Eden loaded on my Kindle.

But I have not read Death in the Afternoon. Not yet.

I am saving it for the end. I am saving it for post-diagnosis.

What books are on your end times reading list?

Drop a list in the comments section…

A couple of nights ago, my friend Tulip called from Long Beach. Some of you who have been around this blog since the beginning will remember Tulip because I mentioned her in some of my first posts here on EEOTPB. Tulip and I were really good friends at one time, but we had a falling out over nothing really and although neither of us was truly angry at the other, we fell out of touch over an inappropriate barb aimed at a political personality who shall remain nameless here.

That’s the way most old friendships end. All is going well, and then there are a couple of terse words about something nonsensical and the phone goes dead and stays dead forever. These days there is no telephone receiver to slam down in its cradle in disgust. No telephone booth to rush forth from in the middle of a rainy night, leaving the receiver dangling from its cord…just the dead weight of a smart phone, heavy in your hand, which can be immediately redirected to social media to confirm whatever we need to confirm about our own particular viewpoint or belief. In the end, I think we all might be better friends if we had landlines tethered to the earth.

So, until two days ago, I had not spoken to Tulip in years. But she sent me a card at Christmas this past year saying she’d remarried and was moving to Long Beach, and her new husband was recently furloughed from one of the airlines where he’d worked for more than a decade as a flight attendant. She told me she had given up smoking and she had been watching lots of YouTube videos. She was painting. She was drinking red wine instead of gin. She said she was taking vitamins every day and she and Gavin (not his real name) were planning a trip to Costa Rica in the fall. She was walking ten thousand steps a day and she wanted to go zip lining in the rain forest. She told me she was going to Weight Watchers and reading a book a week. Gavin was taking cooking classes online.

We talked about the day we met in Muir Woods in 1980 and about how she’d driven out to California from Minnesota in the late 70s to work for a paint company in the Bay Area.

But all of that was in the past. Like Reaganomics and the Carter administration. Like B1B Bob Dornan. But this is today, and the pandemic had hit Tula and Gavin hard. Tulip wanted to move to Phoenix, but Melvin hated the desert. I suggested Tacoma but Tulip cut me off. Fed Ex was at the door she said, and she had to go. Fed Ex was delivering dog food for their rescue Chihuahua named Minnie Pearl.

Then it was time to go.  I told Tulip I was  happy for her new life. I suggested that they move to Denver, but she said no. Gavin is not a skier. I suggested the Midwest, but she said it wasn’t in her blood any longer. St. Paul had left her drained even after all these years. She said the winters would kill  her. It was all over in an instant. Tulip went her way and I went mine and she said she’d call back in a couple of weeks.