COLOR informal: August 2011

25 August 2011

I've been reading, and watching the hurricane's progress...

" 'Why do you have two beds in your room?' Ike asked as he conducted a brief survey of my bedroom.

'I used to have a brother, but he died.'

'How'd he die?'

'He killed himself.'

'Why?'

'Never got to ask him,' I said. 'Let's go to the party.' "

South of Broad, by Pat Conroy (good read, but I preferred his other books)

20 August 2011

I've been reading...

"...it was Bo I would miss the most, the little boy-child with his useless, lonely set shot and his towels fresh and warm from the dryers. His mother would call me three years later, grieving and proud, to tell me about the death of her son, the helicopter pilot, Lieutenant Bo Maybank. How can I say how splendid it must have been for him to come winged and ominous from the heights, dwarfing the tall men who had once teased him and stuffed him struggling and outraged into towel carts full of soiled laundry? How can I tell you that Bo never learned that height is not always the important thing? But he had learned all that he would ever need to learn about other small men with good eyes, good hands, instinctive cunning, and set shots far deadlier than his. The bullet entered his eye and blew out the back of his head.

His mother wept and I wept. I cried all night for that smallest of men who had loved me with his towels, who loved the game but never scored a single point or took a single shot except in empty gyms after the crowds had gone home. I remembered his tiny leaps up toward me after the VMI game and I regretted I had not looked down from the shoulders of my roommates, from the accolades of the crowd, looked down and done the right thing for once in my life, the grand and perfect gesture. I should have lifted Bo Maybank up with me, and together we should have taken that last frantic ride to the locker room. But I didn't; I wanted it all, all for myself.

The Lords of Discipline, by Pat Conroy...

04 August 2011

Alexander McQueen

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”

the show featuring mcQueen's creations closes this week-end.

dreams in cloth that wrap the body, but stand alone as works of art.

I've been reading...

"She saw women who smiled too much or drank too much and these were the women ordered to have a good time by their husbands. There were women who clung to her and laughed at her every joke, and administered to her every whim, and she knew that these were the ambitious women who were driving their husbands forward in the ranks. There were many others who could not be shuffled into convenient categories, but it was because they were skilled at hiding the signs of their satisfaction or their discontent. Whatever their story, these wives were appendages, roses climbing on the trellises. Their roles were decorative on this night and on all others; the glory was their husband's and their sustenance came from what nourishment they could derive from his reflection."

The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy

Just a few more days, and I'll be back to regular posting...what can I say, it's summertime.