October: Books and Movies

Books:

Half a life: V. S Naipaul ****
Aerogrammes: Tania James ***
Sir Vidia's Shadow: Paul Theroux

Movies:

Le Havre: Aki Kaurismaki

I think I will take a moment to write about this. This is my second movie from the director and the appeal (for me) is how his view of the world is to see the harsher realities and yet attempt to trust/ believe in the best in a man. The film is often sentimental but never loses awareness of where its set and what it deals with.
It pretty much says: Every man can be a better man and it succeeds in showing it.
What it does well without fan fare is show the sense of community, of people reaching out with no demands or expectations and in that it seems almost fairy tale like. Such communities, do they still exist?

The Bicycle Thief: ( I don't know why IMDB lists it as Bicycle Thieves)-Vittorio De Sica

Rosetta: Dardenne Brothers

Usthad Hotel: ** Started out all right, ended almost whiny and moralistic. In other words, wrenches emotions it hasn't earned simply by virtue of tugging at your heartstrings with visuals of the impoverished. I really wanted to like this movie, because I adore how Anjali Menon speaks and I think very highly of her but even so nothing can excuse the ending of this movie or the predictable-ness in which the latter half moved along or rather hummed along.

Thirakadha: Ranjith: It was all right. Nothing I would recommend too highly. Can.Not.Stand. Prithviraj. Please. Stop.

Oru CheruPunchiri: M.T Vasudevan Nair ****

Absolutely brilliant. I had forgotten the joy of reading M.T and watching this just flooded my mind with such lovely memories. Oduvil at his best and the actress who played his wife, so elegant. In 40 years I would be so glad if A and I could just be like this couple.

A SLEW OF BAD MOVIES:

When I have cramps I attract bad movies apparently and hence:

The Tall Man: ** Oddity, a little crazy, can be hit or miss.

The Lazarus Project *-- Actually it had a fairly interesting idea, I suppose.

Absentia : BOO YOU
Case 39:  :/

Do we need to go looking for inspiration? or can we be inspired simply

This question is one to which  there won't be a definite answer. But instead let me try to write what inspiration means to me. Inspiration is the joy in knowing that someone is making something out of his life, it is what gives me hope. And hope for me means survival. For now I am fine. I have only losses that I can handle on my own with no extra help except of a friend and a husband. But some day if there are bigger losses, of scales that I can't control myself, then I know is when art of the inspired will come handy. It will help in remembering and understanding that life is always bigger than what it dishes out. That most things can be solved with time.

Did that make much sense? Probably not.

One of the joys of living together is that we get to attend things together and then discuss it afterward. Ours are mostly pleasant discussions on how something made us feel, moved us and so on. It never scales the tops of extremely intellectual peaks.

On Tuesday I tried to get in for the Patten Lecture Series held at IU at which Werner Herzog was scheduled to speak. The first in a series of three, it was entitled The Search for the Ecstatic Truth--a phrase coined by Herzog. I couldn't because the crowd was longer than at a temple!!

My introduction to him happened about a year ago when M in my class--a literally Herzog groupie ( exaggeration alert) kept ranting about him. We, a group of five and our Prof. had gone for a beer but as always Madame M monopolizes the talk. Her story had been just ripped apart and given a new assehole ( I am still mad about how the Prof. never got to say anything cos this idiot kept interrupting and I really wanted to get to know her better!!) Anyhow. M says, now you know Herzog would be one to understand THIS story of mine taking it to a whole new level of narcissism.

Herzog's works as I eventually discovered are in fact works of extreme beauty and like the man himself very self aware. The ideas that he goes looking for are unique in not just their existence but also in the way he explores them. Obviously this is how I feel about it but I really need to watch more before writing more. I have seen just three of his works and all documentaries. I do want to see the fictional works next and especially Heart of Glass and Lessons in Darkness.

Grizzly Man is perhaps what he is most famous for in a commercial sense. What I am going to say is probably not what people agree with, but for me Treadwell was a man who decided to pursue a passion that resulted in his end. People termed this passion as mental illness but who are we to decide what sounds right and wrong for another? Treadwell died protecting the bears he thought were being poached. There was no poaching. But he thought, he felt, he decided. I doubt he was unaware of the risks. If one is willing to die, then what else remains?

Herzog himself seems to have a slightly altered view of Treadwell which bothered me. Because one thing I value in a documentary is the  non polemicity ( is that a word? probably not) that the maker needs to first adorn.

But here Herzog seems to think of Treadwell as crazy loon, fiercely opposing nature with some kind of fairy tale view of it in his head. Perhaps it is justified but, but, Herzog himself is a man of passion and vision and constantly looking for inspiration. While he says that Treadwell's vision resulted in death of his gf and the bears; a casualty that could have been avoided he seems to fail to look at his own actions at the shooting of his film where a plane crash occurred in the Amazon jungles and people died.

Herzog said, "If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams
and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.

Who else could have understood Treadwell better than Herzog?


Here is the last clip of Grizzly Man
Coyotes by Don Edwards


In Cave of Forgotten Dreams it was more of an ethereal feeling. The quest for understanding our past has always been a story that never results in concrete answers but here were cave drawings from supposedly 30,000 years ago. The imprint of a small hand with a twisted pinky against a wall. Pictures of what could have been mammoths. Of horses, of hunting. Chauvet Caves was perhaps one of Herzog's works that dealt with understanding of " What constitutes humanness?"
This is kind of interesting for me because lately I have started reading about when we became human and the Out of Africa theory and our origins. Here is a book that I am going to start reading next week.

Lone Survivors

Also here is an interview clip from The Colbert Report :) Thanks to A.
Interview with Herzog

Into the Abyss, the documentary on death row is a bit more complex because it incites feelings of opposing nature. It brings to light quickly and without judgement ( in my opinion) about the waste that lives can be. The final scene in this is so magnificent, the kind of a breath caught in throat feeling.


In the lecture yesterday, which was on the Transformative Role of Music in Films he showed a variety of clips ranging from Taviani Brothers, to the chicken dance, to a clip so fantastic from his movie Lessons of Darkness.
Here it is:
Wagner


From it's Youtube description: The Final (and the most bizarre) sequence from Werner Herzog's classic film 'Stroszek' (1977). The location for the closing sequence is in a strange fun-house where chickens dance, play the piano, a duck plays the drums and a rabbit is blowing the horn on a fire-engine!!!

Chicken Dance

The other clip that he got a lot of flak for was this one here: The Woodabe Men
And this very powerful clip from a movie Padre Padrone by Taviani Brothers where toward the end you  feel like grief becomes part of something larger than just humans, of mountains and mere rocks joining in.
Padre Padrone

Yesterday he spoke of the time he was at a film festival and when this clip was shown there was an indignant silence. And then a lady film maker next to him said, " We, as film makers, should be like flies on the wall," to which he said, " No, we should be like the hornet that stings it subject."
and then he stood up and said, "Happy New Year losers." and left.

As much as I endorse his endeavors and enjoy them this seeming inability to understand  or even pretend to understand different approaches and almost instantaneous dismissal of other schools of thought seems to be his blind spot or maybe in fact his genius.

September Books & Movies

I am reading gazillion short stories just to get this one story of mine right . So here goes.

A&P- Updike **
Pilgrims- Julie Orringer ****
Reunion-Cheever ***

The Point- Charles D' Ambrosio
River of Names: Dorothy Allison ***
An Abduction- Tessa Hadley ****

The Stain- Tessa H ****
The Cheater's Guide to Love: Junot Diaz ****
Permission to Enter: Zadie Smith **

The Surrogate: Tessa H ***
How Was It To Be Dead?- Richard Ford ***
Araby: James Joyce
The Balloon: Donald Barthelme
School: Donald B
The Yellow Wallpaper: Gilman


The Atlas of Unknowns- Tania James ***
Brick Lane-Monica Ali **
Drown- Junot Diaz
Portraits of a Marriage- Sandor Marai



Movies:

Hope Springs :/ **
Ek Tha Tiger :/ :/ * ( I don't know why I saw it!! Happened)
Life before her eyes * (Uma Thurman)
Ai Wei Wei ****
Where do we go now? ****-Nadine Labaki
Cocktail (Hindi)  *
Heart of Glass ***-Herzog

Some dreamily..

Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track

BY MARIANNE BORUCH

Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track

toddlers who walk like drunks. Buzzy,

the picnic grounds, noisy, sun-crazed, how

forks and spoons don’t exactly lie flat.

A mountain’s here, a famous overlook

from which you’d see none of this. Like that

first daguerreotype, its moving carriages

and those who strolled never picked up

in the long exposure, a Paris street emptied

by the camera, only houses and lamp posts

gone eternal. Or the one who stopped

for a shoe shine, the one who knelt to the task.

At the picnic—a commotion. A large man

to a younger man. I don’t know you! he’s hugging

and laughing. I don’t know who you are,

he shouts over and over a stillness so immense.

August: Books and Movies

Books:

The Changeling
Tis Pity she is a Whore
Persuasion
Museum of Innocence


Movies:

Medea
Chinatown
To Rome With Love
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Une Femme est unne femme
Tokyo Story

Shakespeare

All the Shakespeare I read when I was young weren't verses. They were abridged copies, so now when I am reading again the real words with a vague whirl in my head of knowing the story but not entirely remembering it, it is the best feeling in the world!

So far I have done Hamlet and Tempest and I just saw the movie by Julie Taymour with the female Prospera played by a wonderful queenly Helen Mirren. I definitely loved it, although I am sure I like the version I had in my head better. I am not even trying to be snobbish here, but when it's a production so many things change like Caliban. I love the Caliban in the movie but not as much as the one in head. But definitely like the movie Ariel better.
It's always amazing to note how the ideas he played with are so eternal. Why does that always surprise me?

My father keeps telling me for almost five years now about the virtues of forgiveness and the joys in it. When I read the Tempest and watched the movie I am almost convinced, but not yet. Why can't I be old and forgiving as opposed to now? The only difference I can think of is --awareness. To be aware of  being able to maybe let go and forgive now but still choosing to wait it out is probably the mistake I am making as opposed to someone so miserable and in their misery, blind to the joy of forgiving.

And like Prospera ( I love the female better) says: This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine.

And I am sure I can live with it.

On to Titus Andronicus which apparently no one seems to read and Othello--of course. I think my paper is going to be on Othello and I am sure the Prof. will say: Oh, I wasn't looking for that subtle a meaning :/ Yeah, I have a Prof. who does that!

I said: the only reason I am not entirely convinced that Prospero's forgiveness is based entirely upon their penitence is because no remorse has been shown by the culprits and that to me, it seems a sign of self delusion on his part and a need to believe in the most base quality of being a human.

and he said, long pause later: Oh, I am not looking for that much subtlety.

I don't know!!


I am sure I will remember this because I was pretty pissed.

July Movies and Books

Movies:

Indecent proposal **
The Elephant in the Living Room ****
Food Inc-****
Planet of the Apes **
Carnage:**
In the Mood for Love:***
The Return:****

Fahrenheit 451 ****
Into the Abyss ***



Books:

Tamburlaine The Great
Dr. Faustus
The Spanish Tragedy
Hamlet
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Volpone
Emma
Tempest

To be expanded

Movies
April-May-June

Turin Horse **
Lolita ***
The Son ***
The Kid with the bike ****
Sleeping Beauty **
Secrets in their eyes ***
Man without a past ***

Cave of forgotten dreams **
Certified Copy **
We need to talk about Kevin **
Drive **
Muriel's Wedding ***
Sex Lies and Videotape **

Soul Kitchen ***
Monsieur Hire **
Everlasting Moments **
The Stoning of Soraya M ****

The Good Wife **
The Seven Year Itch **
The Help :/


Hope Floats :/
The Wild Child ***

Black Girl ***
A Dangerous Method *
Sense and Sensibility **

Hysteria ****


Books:

The Autobiography of an ex colored man
My Antonia
The Sun also Rises
The Sound and the Fury
Huckleberry Finn
Collected poems of Paul Dunbar
Collected essays and short stories-Henry James
The Rise of Silas Lapham


Yekl and The Imported Bridegroom
Their Eyes were Watching God
Tender is the Night
The Feather on the Breath of God
The Country of the Pointed Firs and other stories
Invisible Man
The Technology of Orgasm-"Hysteria, The Vibrator and Women's Sexual Satisfaction"

Waiting

What is a better time to blog than when waiting infuckingendingly ( bad wrong word) for people to pick up phones. So yes, about Sunday and that leaving on Sunday plan- because of the hurricane flights are cancelled. Before I forget two people have already pissed me off with hurricane jokes.
1) "You guys I am having a hurricane party! Though here, its only mild cloudy skies"

2) - uhm faulty memory kicks in, what was it! It was really stupid though.

Anyway on the phone, me and boi, calling Orbitz and United, both of them making us hold and hold andddd hold. I have also caught a cold from the boi. I have a funny picture of him under a towel taking steam. Ok, not that funny, but still.
Maybe I can give you some random news while I wait. We saw Planet of the Apes yesterday despite my Franco aversion and Pinto dislike and I absolutely liked the movie. I guess they were fairly harmless and plus it was all about the ape, anyway.  Franco aversion if I havent explained before is all due to his bad writing, yes really- "The shadows were shadow coloured". WTH and his terrible need to soothe his ego with half finished degrees from all over the country, all those unfinished MFA's and Phd's and now, one more will be started apparently coming fall. So obviously I dont care what he runs about indulging in, but it hurts to think that each time he needs an ego boost, he is taking up a precious spot at some school and taking away health insurance and other benefits that could have gone to a more deserving student. So yes, that is my Franco rant for now. Plus I hear, he is a real dick..

My first and immediate reaction to most life problems used to be and maybe still kind of is, oh if it gets thaaat bad, I guess I will just die, end the misery. I was also obviously very aware what a fucked up way of thinking that was. But not how fucked up till the other day, this crazy pyscho character, drug addict, sex addict character says it out aloud to her sister. I had a dumbfounded moment where I re read those lines again and again. I am not sure what the difference was but just the very idea that someone so so pathetic thinks like that.. stops me in my tracks. Plus, I haven't thought about this strategy in a really long time. What with the general happiness, that is my life, currently. And even brighter life moment- I think to myself " It looks like you might be balding, yes.. by forty, you could be really bald, no, no wigs for me, even the nicest ones, I will just shave it off, keep it really simple. Oh!! maybe I should do it now, see how it looks. Or not. What if I get Cancer, I will have to do it then anyways"

I dont know if you see the bright side in this? No? Its how I will definitely be fighting Cancer hard if at all and will try and be positive in general about it. No, no one is seeing that? OK.

Please check this link out meanwhile. Probably might prompt you not to do those stupid Facebook crap when October rolls around, those what color is your bra, post the color or where do you like purse to-be-sexual-innuendos.( Really!!) statuses. This right here.

Boi is making his super awesome yummy shepherd's pie and I cant smell it with the stupid cold.

Books: John Irving-The World According to Garp
Movies: Birth of a nation, Planet of the apes.
Series: My so called life ( pretty good))

Someone picked up.

DIY

Life in this country is a big do it yourself project and as part of that project, we just moved houses all BY OURSELVES. In caps, because I have never done that before. In all my life we have moved houses exactly thrice and all times people from Achan's office would come and pack everything up while we played with bubble wrap and had a lot of outside food. Also: in these rented houses every time before I left, I would go up to the terrace and in some corner write my name and a few things about me for future kids who arrive in the house to read. I also searched for such things in new houses, its one of those things, that now manifests itself when I buy old second hand books, I search for some writing, some kind of clue who the last owner was. Some kind of a kick.

Anyhow, that was a painful process, but thankfully, the new house is just a 5min drive away, so we hauled the Uhaul and loaded everything up, lugging down bed and boxes and dining table and stands and god-knows-what-other crap.
By night about ten-ish when we were done, I had literally no energy left but I wanted to do the whole boil milk thing but I didnt let it overflow? all over. There was no way I was going to clean that up and then we had  KFC- because we deserve it!

The new house has the woods next to it, so in the evenings you hear the Cicada's song- I am just calling it that, I am not sure if its indeed them. But the sound is so calming and reminds me of my native place. I am going to miss staying here with him.

As for other activities, finished Last of her kind- Sigird Nunez, in less than three days, it was so interesting. Its about the 60's America- Class, flower power and all that craziness. I am so excited to meet her!
Movies: Capt America- Not bad at all
My Blueberry nights- Pretty decent.

I will leave on Sunday. 

What is happening is..

Yes, we must categorize this so that I dont miss out on anything. Books, writing and reading.

1) Books: I always read more when I am here and buy more when I am home. Current book house guys love me, when I walk in, the dark small mouse like guy will grin showing me all his white teeth. He will sort of half follow me if I am alone, at a respectable distance and if I turn around to ask a question, there he is! 

Thus I read four books in the one month I have been here now. 

1. The Painted Veil. - W.Somerset.Maugham

My book cover is not as cool this one. And I also did not know that they made it into a movie till I was    searching for pictures. 

Kitty's transformation is the story, she is shallow and her motives to marry are as silly as they come and Walter her husband though they portray him as a bit of a boiled banana, I got the feeling he was one of those guys girls always dismiss as "my bessst friend", the one they call all hours to whine about their assehole boyfriends while these poor idiots waste time and money on these women who then proceed to wonder 'where are all the nice guys gone!!"

Towards the end though, Maugham writes in a way that makes it impossible to detest her. Despite her new found courage and values she still goes and does something despicable which was the high point for me because I genuinely believe one is not capable of immediate realizations and actions. We learn from some of the mistakes, yes but that doesn't mean we are cured of them all. The same mistake can be repeated if it comes in some other form. I dont think I have explained it well. But nevertheless my second book by Maugham and I still love him.

2) Veronica- Mary Gaitskill

This one I bought a while ago but only found time now. Its a cold hard book. Though what I sensed from it is probably different from what the general review might be. To me it was about cruelty and tolerance and how much pain can we inflict upon us time and again. 

The usual reviews speak about beauty and how brilliantly the author explores the dark spaces in peoples minds. Which is yes, true. 

The novel is about Allison's youth, her beauty and her foray into the world of fashion in the 80's. Allison's relationship with Veronica, a woman with AIDS and her ties to her family.  

3) Fine just the way it is.- Annie Proulx

I had heard of Proulx but mostly so after checking out this artists colony in Wyoming. Someone who is going to be in school with me is going there for the summer which is so awesome. Anyway so I heard how Proulx wrote Brokeback mountain while there. I am not sure how true that is but still I shall definitely apply for next summer if they dont take me for the global fellowship and send me somewhere. :/

Also I didn't know how to pronounce her last name - its simple- pru.

In an odd way Wyoming stories makes me think of my grandmothers life. The Wyoming women take care of a lot of things, home, ranch, kids, horses, cattle. Though of course my gmum didn't have horses she did have to take care of most of the rest and still be a cheerful person, perhaps why I loved the collection so much.

4) The Voyage out- Woolf

Still being read.

So far so good, she does tend to rant a bit but still my patience for her and Atwood's rants is huge.

2) My own writing:

Is actually finally kicking up. After months of a dry spell I am writing two stories at the same time. Somehow its easier this way, a bit of this and that.

one story was not in the list, I have a list of inspirations, sudden jotted down plots. This came to me one night after dinner, Mum me and my sister had gone out to Grand. The guy who holds the door there, a huge man with a funny hat/cap and those Maharaja moustaches- as I call them, long and curved up at the end knows us from frequent visits. My dad always tips him and usually I do too more so from habit.

Also I like doing the whole handshake-tip routine. :o

Though my hand in his giant hands are bit of an oddity. so anyway, he runs and opens our car door and I am rummaging in my bag for my purse when I see him sort of scratch the hair behind his cap in a where-is-the-money, the car has started you will be off in a second! Somehow it reminded me of a dog. waiting for a bone. Quite patiently but almost half scared as though if he exhibits even the slightest irritation the bone will be denied of him. 

Our driver hates us tipping anyone. :/ he pulled the car out of the lot, me still staring and wondering. Anyway the story was suddenly born there- if you could say that, combined with another thought I have been wondering about. Anyway I should be done in the next few days, but this time Id like some more opinions. If any of you all want to read it I am willing to send it your way, just send me and email.

heathcliffsgirl@gmail.com

Till then

S

Cos people are weird and times are strange

So in this country most things are expensive, by my standards. Getting your eyebrows threaded costs you 14 $ and a girl has gotta do what she is gotta do. A decent meal, comprising of Margaritas ( of course) and Appetizers and then a shared entree (we are kinda poor eaters despite all the talk) and then a vanilla bean cheese cake is gotta cost about 45$ which translates ( by me of course) to a good 2000Rs. meal. Which is ridiculous in my head and its not even like some super sexy classy place. A near normal chinthi place is doing this. Anyway

The only thing that people dont seem to value is books. Now they go on sale for such cheapliness that i almost want to cringe in shame. and delight at being the one at the good receiving end. So the local library has a bookstore too which has sale's once in a while and also a bi-annual thing where books go for, wait for it, wait....wait..WAIT..w.a.i.t, yes, enough, for 25cents for a paper back and 50 cents for hard backs. I dont know what else is there to say to this stupid kindle obsessed country except maybe, thanks,losers? Oh and big thanks to whoever was donating them, though.

And the amazingly bestly part is that it isnt crappy novels and romantic dusty paper backs its actual books. By which i mean the following. See for your selves.

John Irving- Cider House Rules
Atwood: Cats eye
Eugenides: Middle sex
Jhumpa Lahiri: The Name sake

Cunnigham: Specimen Day's
Toni Morrison: Sula
John Updike: A month of sunday's
Best American short stories- 2004 and 1998!!

Pearl S Buck: Letters from Peking
Janet Fitch: White Oleander
F.Scott Fitzgerald: The beautiful and the damned
Saul Bellow; Henderson the rain king

Joseph Heller: Portrait of the artist as an old man
Ian Mc Ewan: On Chesil Beach
Wally Lamb: The Hour i first believed in

Irwin Shaw; Short stories from Five decades
Mary Gaitskill: Veronica
Atwood: Blind Assasin!!!!!!

Doris lessing: The summer before the dark
E,M Forster: Howard's end and other stories
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Anton chekhov: selected short stories
John steinbeck: In Dubious Battle
John Irving: The world According to Garp
Jerome K jerome: Three men in a boat !!!!

James Baldwin: Going to meet the man
Faulkner: As i lay dying
Ishiguro: The Uncensored
Alice Walker: Possessing the secret of joy

Ethan Hawke: Ash wednesday :/ :/ < Yeah some mistakes were made>

and i spend less than 20$ for alllll this. That is half of that decent meal money. Ridiculous aint it?
Well i am not complaining obviously just exclaiming out aloud. Someday i shall have over 2000 books. some day.




Obviously Mr Bird is also very involved in the book deal. So here is his contribution, Picture and all, Here

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 :/

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

December reading

Herotica 2- A collection of women's erotic fiction
Driftless- David Rhodes

The stories of John Cheever
Vacation-Deb Olin Unferth
The Diary of Anais Nin

Being sock

I meant sick. Being sick sucks. Ever since i got here i had some kinda good luck with the illnesses what with the wonderful air and no dust and climate unlike cochin's where every two weeks my nose would be running.
But yes we are back to runny noses and pghlem filled speeches. The saving grace is boi with his wonderful tomato soup with some bacon in it - boi is kind like that and staying home and working and bringing me my favorite chocolate.
Another saving grace is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Its such a brilliant read, with all these characters that are so pathetic and vulnerable at the same time, more on that when i am done with the remaining 300 pages, yes, its 600 page long but i dont think it could have been done any other way. Also its written in such a way that you cant find it in you to take anyone 's sides which i absolutely love. Its so hard to write like that.

Since im huddling on the couch and bed in turns boi has been sitting with me and watching movies-to-watch-when sick. So we saw look who is talking and i was sad and happy and sad again in turns and boi said its a mistake watching this with me now, what with my id-like-one now feelings. Then yesterday we saw Harry meeting sally boi said he hadnt seen it so well. It wasnt so good the nth zillion time around, though the last time i saw it was about 3 years back. Boi said he was bored :/ cant blame him..

There is rice, rasam and beef for lunch which i should probably drag myself to and heat up and eat up. drink up. sit up.
i hate it. i reaaly reaaaly hate it. esp when i have so much to do in less than 2 weeks. This sucks.
f

Exhaustive list

There is only way to read a fiction writing workshop book. Take out the parts that you think suit you.  leave the rest. You cant write like anyone else. I for one, write because its a compulsion, boi's wise words. I write because it needs to be out, finding its own way. I write like how i would eat a cheesecake. savoring some of the words for a while, then rushing to the end. Making no stops for even grammar errors.
I write, using a cliche here, because its like coming home. Each time the plane lands at cochin airport, i see all the greenery and the water and there is this throb, this anticipation of everything. That is how it feels to write. Like i am coming home finally to words that were ignored were so long because of stupid MBA's and Economics.
I always had stories. Mostly i dreamt them. I woke up with the threads loosely connected and joined them up. But these stories were never written well. They did not have clarity and they had nowhere to go.
But now they are all being written, beautifully, if i may so. I will say so. They will be send off into the world into what my hearts tells me is going to be about 90% chances of rejection. Which is fine with me. i mean there are about 300 applying for 6 seats,in most places. I can actually believe that if i dont make it its because there was someone better but i have to try, cos you know, i have to know.

This is just the beggining of my exhaustive reading list for the next one year. Here are some of them.

1. Loosing eddie- Deborah Corey
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (again)
3.Ball of fat- Guy De Maupassant
4. Dead Souls- Nikolai Gogol
5. Easter Parade- Richard Yates
6. The girls in their summer dresses- Irwin Shaw
7. The beast in the jungle- Henry James
8. The Human Factor- Graham Greene
9. where are you going, where have you been? - Joyce Carol Oates
10. Notes from underground- Dostoyveski
11. Middle march- George Eliot
12. Patriotism- Yukio Mishima
13. Mayor of Casterbridge- Thomas Hardy (again)
14. Citadel- A.J.Cronin
15. Sally Bowles- Christopher Ishwewood
16. Shiloh- Bobbie Ann Mason
17. The artificial Nigger: Flannery o' Connor
18. Ward vI- Chekhov (again), Link, If you are interested
19. Death of Ivan Ilych- Tolstoy
20. Sketches from a hunters album- Ivan Turgenev
21. The girl on the plane: Mary Gaitskill
22. The metamorphosis: Kafka (again)
23. The old forest- Peter Taylor
24. The bride comes to yellow sky- Stephen Crane
25. Laughters in the dark- Nabokov (again)
26. sister Imelda- Edna O Brien
27. The sound of the fury- Faulkner
28. The sorrows of young werther _ wolfgang von goethe

Its going to be a while.

Nick Hornby

is totally worth your money. How to be good had me in splits. The boi in splits and the boi's friend R, who i insisted on reading paragraphs too, too.

About a boy, isnt quite as funny but true to the bone. ( though i dont think that is even a saying)

so in this book there are these extremely natural lines which makes me sit up because i keep thinking i have thought that. I think like that. I did that!

Here is some. This is all testimony to how foolish. no not foolish. Naive i can be.

"Occasionally when the mood took him, he applied for jobs advertised in the media pages of the guardian. He liked the media pages, because he felt he was qualified to fill most of the vacancies on offer. How hard could it be to edit the building industry's in-house magazine or run a small arts workshop or write copy for holiday brochures. Not very hard at all he imagined. so he doggedly wrote letters explaining to potential employers why he was the man they were looking for. He even enclosed a CV although it only just ran onto a second page. Rather brilliantly,he thought, he numbered these two pages one and three and thus implying that page two, the page containing details of his brilliant career had got lost somewhere. The idea was that people would be so impressed by the letter, so dazzled by his extensive range of interests that they would invite him for an interview  where sheer force of his personality would carry him through. Actually he never heard from
anybody , although he did sometimes get a standard rejection letter"

Now i am not technically guilty of any of this but i have thought how hard is it to write brochures and even considered applying to Hallmark to write sickeningly sweet cloying love poems.

The book has many moments which make you think. oddly enough. though the reviews for it says humorous fiction giving it an air of frivolity.which is only sad because its not frivolous at all. Anything but frivolous.
I hear there is a movie too, with Hugh Grant. Which i cant watch for the same reason.

Oh. Hugh Grant is the reason.

Books read over last month and must be shared and so we have here:

Loitering with intent: Muriel spark

Hadnt heard of her till like a month back, Dame Muriel Spark is one awesome brilliant writer. she makes you laugh without even meaning to. Her lines are so, lets say, Innocent. Almost like she is sitting there huddled up in a corner going "what now" as i try not to laugh loud and wake boi up.
The main character Fleur Talbot, goes through up's and down's in her job, her novel "warrender chase" gets stolen by her boss and then everyone at work starts acting like the characters from her novel. Terribly creepy and at some points her descriptions of people on streets and random incidents kept making me go" that happened to me"/ "this happened to ME"

The thing around your neck: Chimamanda Adichie
Collection of short stories, mostly from a woman's perspective. Nigerian women who have immigrated and their stories. Interesting but you could just as easily get bored too.
I started reading her after Birdsong was given to me by P, after it came in New Yorker.I completely fell in love with that story. After which, one day i was watching Youtube Interviews of Michael cunnigham and Chitra Divakaruni when i you tube'd Chimamanda too.
She sounded moderately sensible, not given to any extreme opinions save for one. She thinks that when a man gives a woman ring, there is a certain level of gratitude involved, and that she hates it, the laughing and obscene tears and such.
I disagree.

Last book, not started yet
Peter Carey: Fat man in History
read here and there and zimbly cant wait to get started.