Books,Feb 2011

Samuel Johnson is indignant. Lydia Davis


Pretty awesome collection. Short, thoroughly short stories. Some of them too brilliant for words. Funny in a everyday kinda way. By which i mean you and i have cracked these jokes, these common place jokes but you can still laugh when you read them. here is a small story from the book.


Boring friends:


We know only four boring people. The rest of our friends we find very interesting. however, most of the friends we find interesting find us boring: the most interesting find us the most boring.The few who are somewhere in the middle with whom there is reciprocal interest, we distrust: at any moment,we feel, they may become too interesting for us, or we too interesting for them.





                                                                          William Faulkner-As i lay dying

Just started reading this today morning so cant say much for now.But love this line so far because these days i am all about descriptions.

" The quilt is drawn upto her chin,hot as it is,with only her two hands and her face outside. She is propped on the pillow, with her head raised so she can see out the window,and we can hear him every time he takes up the adze or the saw. If we were deaf we could almost watch her face and hear him, see him. Her face is wasted away so that the bones draw just under the skin in white lines. Her eyes are like two candles when you watch them gutter down into the sockets of irod candle sticks. but the eternal and everlasting salvation and grace is not upon her"






                                                                             Wise blood- Flannery O' Connor

Not read yet. I have gotten into the habit of reading two books at a time. At least i am reading again.
This is her first novel btw. Its all about redemption,  church and faith.

Not quite my kind of thing but i am totally willing to see what she came out with for the veeery first time. Because this woman is quite the rockstar- for the lack of a better word :/

My Big Bday Boi

So my boi turns thirty and is little sad. I tell boi il join him there soon enough but clearly thats no way to cheer him up. So boi gets payasam one today. Dinner with friends tomorrow. and on sunday breakfast at his kinda favorite place and then boi,his best friend type person and his wife will hit the strip club. where boi will be brought some lap dances and will get drunk enough to forget the terrible thirty for some time. and we will conclude this with payasam two-his favorite kind which sadly i dont have at home right now. :/

ps: i dont think i would really care if i turned thirty. really. as long as i have me a kid and i am writing and i have some parts of my plans in place.

Allright more after the weekend.

Since

Poetry is totally hooking me these days here something that was so simple and yet brilliantly put by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I used to write,oh well, still do, a lot of bad poems. Initially of course i rhymed it all and then it became plain depressing and then it was half prose and soon i gave up when fiction happened. But poetry seems to be making a comeback these days. so here goes. Its called In Golden Gate Park That Day:

In Golden Gate Park that day

                           a man and his wife were coming along   

         thru the enormous meadow

                           which was the meadow of the world   

He was wearing green suspenders

                              and carrying an old beat-up flute

                                                                        in one hand   

      while his wife had a bunch of grapes

                                  which she kept handing out

                                                                         individually   

                                                      to various squirrels

                                                                           as if each   

                                                             were a little joke

      And then the two of them came on

                                                thru the enormous meadow   

which was the meadow of the world

                                                 and then

            at a very still spot where the trees dreamed

         and seemed to have been waiting thru all time

                                                                            for them   

             they sat down together on the grass

                                              without looking at each other   

                and ate oranges

                                    without looking at each other

                                                            and put the peels   

             in a basket which they seemed

                                       to have brought for that purpose   

                  without looking at each other

      And then

                  he took his shirt and undershirt off   

       but kept his hat on

                                    sideways

                                                and without saying anything   

             fell asleep under it

                                           And his wife just sat there looking   

at the birds which flew about

   calling to each other

                           in the stilly air

      as if they were questioning existence

                   or trying to recall something forgotten

But then finally

                   she too lay down flat

                                                and just lay there looking up   

                                                                               at nothing   

                        yet fingering the old flute

                                                                which nobody played

                            and finally looking over

                                                                at him

                  without any particular expression

                                                               except a certain awful look   

                        of terrible depression

White Oleander

After all the fears, the warnings
After all
A womans mistakes are different from a girl's
They are written by fire on stone
They are a trait and not an error

Sex

so sex. Right. The truth is sex has never been like this. Ever ever before. This is sex that i wouldn't have quite believed, existed. Its sort of a -oh i am all skin now and now i am all bones and now i am not there anymore and oh but i am right here.
Though thats poetic and perhaps a little cliched its true. I think at some point when i never quite understood that thin line between love and sex i said some silly insanely silly things. To the boi.Thats right. Boi and i are doing our long distance crap and of course the worst part of that is sex. No truly. Keep aside all that love and wanting to be together and eating tog blah blah at the end of every night its about sex.

I wanted to complete a year of working and i had some other things to sort out too so i told boi how after we get married i am sure i will take some more time before i move. Boi is clearly sad but you know he is the boi. He is being very brave about it but in a sad mopey way. I feel all upset and righteous that he is being mopey. :/
I tell him "well if its only about sex then i understand" I guess i sort of saw it in a very clinical way. A very getting off and thats it way. I guess i never really understand how important it is to be in love first..

The point is these days am noticing i am being off hand about it. Sort of being lazy about it. A little thinking about it makes me worry that this might be what they meant when they said marriages become like this. such wise words that i refuse to believe.  And the worst part is- its totally me. Boi is still just exactly how he was when i first met him.
Boi tells me i am being lazy. I tell boi- ok. you got it, lets see if you can keep up.
Boi says bring it on.
Allright boi.

Here i come.

HA
what an unintended pun. 

chow time

so since nothing except cooking will set me in a happy mood right now, here goes

Fish cakes and mashed potatoes:

Chilli chicken:

Hmghggj

So too many rejections have been coming my way. too many for my own good. One guy said " Dont be disheartened, i thought it was brilliant but just not a good fit right now, you should keep trying at other places"

Dude. Fuck you. Seriously. This is horrid. An outright "Get out of our sight girl, dont ever,EVER send things this way" is uhmm kinda better than"oh this is brilliant, you are the next wonder from India, but not for us."
You see what i am saying? I have 2 whole months of waiting before the rejections from the programs will start trickling in.I will stay glued to the Mfa blog, to the facebook group, to the profiles of other applicants, though staring at their photos will accomplish what i dont know.

I am slowly getting into that place, you know the place, where you dream about rejections. I am so going to be taking it horribly personally. And its going to be one hell of a task re-motivating me out of it. AND the problem is because of all this i am not reading or writing anymore.I got a graphic novel from the library and its like the easiest thing to read, just keep flipping the pages and i am stuck with that.

what else
I imagine soon someone will say to me.

Dear s
Thank you for letting us read your crap. Its a no. AND IT always will be.

Dear s
What were you thinking!
(clearly you are not)

Dear S
hahahaha!
Seriously. har har.

Dear S
For your sake we hope you will find peace and your calling. well, its really for our sanity.
The Editors.

I am making book lists though. Like i should read all this before i get into a program cos you dont want to reach there and feel like a fool what with all those literary genius types discussing structure and dialogue and types of criticism.

Moving on. vacation was = disaster. all the flights we had to catch disappeared/ dint arrive/ cancelled. people treated us like airport beggars making us wait in endless queues while they spoke in german about i dont know what, maybe how stinky i was. and how under no condition should we allow her to board any of our flights. :/

Then we reached and peeled the clothes of us. and i proceeded to fall sick the next day. my father wouldn't take me to a hospital ,something to do with his ex-vet skills as a doc. meh
i know when gargling will help and this was not one of those times. finally we had to go. oh, thats right. i gave it to boi too. No reason he should trot about happily. My appetite wasn't affected though, thank god for small favors.
Dubai was cold and mall-ed. We prefer to sit at home and watch movies cos that is kind of our idea of family bonding. Boi's sis had taken leave to take us out. Boi had knee injury. You can guess how that must have gone. i left back to Muscat early than boi and i land and the infection is ready and waiting. I get admitted in hospital cos i am travelling in less than five days. The nurse does a bad IV job for which am suffering now, its sort of swelled up now.

I thought i applied to one place. i realize now i haven't. oh well.

soon, later.

P

I have missed you. I really have. I know sometimes i am not really available,i also think i have spoiled you with much louw and affections over the years so now you  get very antsy  :p
but this is just to say that the coming months are going to be really hard on me because of a zillion things and i want you to know that i might be a little distracted and nervous and easily miffed. But if at all you need me i will most definitely be there just like all the other times (i hope) and just like you have been there for the past six, seven ish years. I love you much much and not just like a friend more like my sister.
Also i am sorry about that quite horrid bit i said earlier. Terribly.

muuuuaah

s