Kevin Holohan 2012

You're a god then? said the yellow paper.
I employ gods, said Word, and left. 

 - from Kleinzeit

Posted to Twitter

Kevin has also written an excellent "Remembrance of Russell Hoban" on writing.ie

Kate Laity 2012

"Everything is real, Angelica. Reality is a house of many rooms, and sometimes we can enter more than one."

 from Angelica Lost and Found

Pictured in situ, James Hardiman Library, NUIG (nestled next to Chandler; no Hoban in the library's holdings! Such a sad miscarriage.) 

Posted to Kate's blog

Ben Hennessy 2010

a couple of quotes left around Waterford, Ireland - one in a bookshop and one in a cafe

from two of my favourite Russ stories

all bes and well done on an amazing site

ben

Ben Hennessy
Artistic Director
Red Kettle Theatre Company

from THE GHOST HORSE OF GENGHIS KHAN

In the hospital his father opened his eyes. “O thou of two worlds,” he said.
“How are you feeling?” said the night sister.
“I almost didn’t get here.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I felt my horse sink underneath me, then…”
“Then what?”
John’s father laughed. “It was a dream,” he said.

It was almost four o’clock in the morning when John’s mother woke up and went into the study. She saw her son asleep at the desk with his head cradled on his arms. She read the page in the typewriter that had ended: “…on and on until a long, long shudder…” Now there was more. She read:

…on and on until a long, long shudder passes through the horse but it doesn’t stumble, it keeps on galloping. The pursuers have no more arrows and they stop chasing Temujin.
It was getting dark when the red roan brought Temujin to his camp. His brother Khasar pulled out the arrow and bandaged the wound and got him a fresh horse. It was time to move camp, and they rode away. Temujin’s wound hurt, he’d lost a lot of blood. He fell asleep in the saddle.
When he woke up the moon was shining and they were in the hills. The horses were put out to graze and he went to look for the red roan but he couldn’t find it.
“Where’s the red roan?” he asked Khasar.
“How should I know?” said Khasar.
“But I rode into camp on it, said Temujin.
“I found you lying on the ground at the edge of camp and there was no horse,” said Khasar.
“Were there any tracks?”
“No tracks.”
Then Temujin knew that the red roan had galloped beyond death to save him.

In two weeks John’s father came home. He sat down at his desk and looked at the page in his typewriter. “Someone’s been typing on my page,” he said.
“It was me,” said John. “I woke up in the middle of the night and came in here and I sort of had a dream at your desk.”
“Sleeptyping?” said his father.
“Something like that,” said John.
“It’s not bad,” said his father. “Not bad at all.”

from A NEAR THING FOR CAPTAIN NAJORK

One morning after breakfast Tom was fooling around with his chemistry set and he invented anti-sticky. Then he fooled around with anti-sticky and jam and springs and wheels and connecting-rods and he made a two-seater jam-powered frog.

Tom got into the frog with Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet and started it up. The frog hopped over the fence and the next three gardens in one giant hop.

“What makes it go?” said Aunt Bundlejoy.
“Jam,” said Tom. “When the anti-sticky hits the sticky it bounces back. The spring keeps it going, the connecting rods move up and down, the wheels go round and the frog hops.”

Tom and Aunt Bundlejoy took the frog out for a spin. They hopped along the river and they hopped past Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork’s house.

Captain Najork was in the observatory looking through his telescope at the girls’ boarding-school across the river when the frog hopped past.

“Follow that frog!” he shouted to his hired sportsmen as he leapt into his pedal-powered snake, and away they undulated.

Ben Hennessy 2009

Hi all and happy Hoban Day - a fantastic site Gombert - well done...

two quotes

The night wore on and all the tigers danced now, old and young, the grown ones and the children.

They danced the moon dance and the shadow dance and the dance for the starlight and the glimmers on the river.

Under the hissing and humming of the moon, under the racing clouds they danced.

They danced the moon down low and pale into the morning. Some perhaps were moved to pity but they could not stop.

The dance was in them and they danced it.

From The Dancing Tigers

Harry looked for a knocker. There was no knocker. He looked for a letterslot. There was no letterslot.

There was no door-knob or handle. Harry looked for a keyhole.

When he found it he put his mouth to it and said, "How do I get in?"

A voice said, "Who is it?"

Harry said, "It's Harry."

"What do you want?" said the voice.

"Rain" said Harry.

"And very reasonable too," said the voice. "Only it's the line, you see. You'll have to draw it off."

"I'll bring a pencil," said Harry.

"Not that kind of a line," said the voice. "It's the roaring kind."

"Lion!" said Harry.

"That's what I said," said the voice. "He's much too close, you see. He's frightening my horse and I can't get these hoses screwed together."

Then Harry knew whose voice it was. "You'll have to open the door for me," he said.

"You'll have to say the right words," said the voice. "And this is the rain door, you know. Once you're in you won't get out till rain time."

"I'll have a go," said Harry.

The door opened.

from The Rain Door

all bes ben

Vernon Ó Heigheartaigh 2007

The remembering sea, at Kilcar and Fintra, Co. Donegal.

"Do you think the rain remembers, Fremder?"

"I think everything remembers, Pythia."

"…especially the rain. It remembers when the world was new, remembers how the seas filled up. Think of all the midnights and the dawns the rain remembers, how many there were before a single word was spoken. Neither pleasant palaces nor wild dogs to howl in them, only the steam rising as the seas filled up, only the white mist on the water in the ancient mornings."

from Fremder

Vernon Ó Heigheartaigh 2006

I'm new to sa4qe, but a sometime visitor and member of the Kraken (Ernie Óh). First participant from Ireland, by the look of things.

The first of two quotes was placed above at Letterkenny General Hospital and at Fintra Strand (in a non-littering fashion):

'Do you think the rain remembers, Fremder?'

'I think everything remembers, Pythia.'

'…especially the rain. It remembers when the world was new, remembers how the seas filled up. Think of all the midnights and the dawns the rain remembers, how many there were before a single word was spoken. Neither pleasant palaces nor wild dogs to howl in them, only the steam rising as the seas filled up, only the white mist on the water in the ancient mornings.'

from Fremder

The second was posted at the telephone kiosk at the bottom of Donegal Courthouse steps:

EURYDICE

The sea is full of marvels but there are no answers in it. There are remote beaches where certain things are insisted upon. There are crabs whose bodies are like human faces, angry and disappointed faces with mouth parts gabbling silently, urgently. These faces are carried on jointed legs, they hurry along the tidal edge drivenly surviving from one moment to the next; there is no time to lose if their line of angry and disappointed faces is to continue.

In the spring tides the female crab releases her ten thousand eggs, each one a potential angry and disappointed face and most of them will be eaten by the creatures of the sea. The female stands not like a face on legs, she stands huge, heroic and technological, like a spacecraft poised on elaborately articulated legs; she stands like the most modern thing in the world and she expels into the sea these ten thousand ancient faces.

from The Medusa Frequency

Sorry, no photos, but I may be able to take one of Fintra Strand - 'sea and remembering' may still be there.

--Ernie Óh