So much for being bio-degradable. Veena informs me that the soul, far from melting back into the Supreme Unconsciousness (or at least the Supreme Sedentariness) when you die, keeps coming back again and again, like a piece of cheap plastic or a Canadian coin inserted into a Quarters Only laundromat. She has this, apparently, on good authority.
Right then. In order to restrict this post to manageable lengths, let's skip the standard could-I-end-up-dating-my-mother-as-a-teenager type stuff out of Oedipus Rex (or Back to the Future - whichever you prefer), as well as the political ramifications of such foresight (would you still vote for Dubya if you knew you were being reborn in Baghdad? [2]) and cut to the two things we really need to figure out about this whole phenomenon:
a) Does your credit history transfer across lives? (aka 'so you can't take it with you, but do you have to pay it back'?) and
b) If you know you're going to be a waiter in your next life, should you give more generous tips now?
Personally, I think this reincarnation business is just an excuse for extended procrastination. I mean, forget about putting things off till tomorrow or next month or next year. You can now put them off till your next incarnation! I could go through some four avatars before I find a topic for my dissertation. What more could a guy ask out of life? (Or lives?)
The thing that's always worried me about this reincarnation / karma thing, though, is whether it's not subject to a kind of Matthew Effect. Think about it. Say you really screw up your current life. Presumably this means that you come back as more of a loser, so that it's even less likely that you're going to do well this time around. So essentially, once the downslide starts it's pretty much a vicious cycle all the way- you just keep moving further and further away from Nirvana. After a point it's not even worth making the effort to rescue your soul - you might as well be hanged as a sheep as a lamb. Plus, once you slip out of the human race you're truly done for. I mean, let's face it, once you're a cockroach the only way you're going to get back to the human form is by agreeing to vote Republican in your next life. And even an eternity of being squished messily to death as your karma is better than that. Personally, I'd be happier with the one-time only Christian deal. Sure, you end up in Hell, but at least it's the same Hell for all eternity, it's not like you get points taken off for thinking bad thoughts about the guy who's shoving brimstone up your ass. So that next time you could end up being the brimstone that gets shoved up someone else's ass.
The other thing with foreseeing your next life, of course, is the question of reliability. How sure can you be that the powers that be will get this right? Do you get a Fed-Ex tracking number so you can figure out exactly where your soul is at any point of time? Is it like Pizza Delivery, where if they don't reincarnate you in half an hour you get to keep your old life for free [3]? Is the whole process Six Sigma? Can you trust it? Say you figure out who you're going to be in your next life and leave all your money to yourself, except the storks get the houses mixed up and next thing you know you're living next to Upchuck Smarmypants who is getting fat on your millions? It's a worrying thought, isn't it?
Also, do crime statutes apply across lives? Could you murder all your irritating grand-aunts in advance and get away with it? If you die and come back to life in the same city, do you still have to pay your old parking tickets?
The only good thing about this whole foreseeing your next life business, as far as I can tell, is the opportunity it gives you to buy an appropriate wardrobe. I mean let's face it - the last thing you want is that you die and it turns out there's an afterlife and you have nothing to wear.
Then again, who ever heard of a well-dressed bowl of petunias?
P.S. Veena, about the skirt - you don't think I'm pretty enough already?
P.P.S. Quote of the day: "Reincarnation? Over my dead body!"
Notes:
[1] If you didn't get the title of this post, I'm not going to bother to explain. Some of us are flowers. The rest are whale blubber.
[2] Q: If you come back as a suicide bomber, does that count as missing a turn?
[3] And if that's true, does this mean the next life almost always comes with the wrong toppings?
Categories: Humour
Friday, March 17, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
A Night at the Ballet
If only Death were truly like this.
Swan-like, imperious, graceful as a ballerina dressed in the purest of white, lithe as a fawn, light as a leaping ghost who scorns the bonds of the earth's gravity.
Poised. Balanced on the tips of her toes, in the quivering of moments. Exact as a compass, as the point of a needle pinning beauty to the ground. One leg rising slowly into the air like the hand of some infinitely delicate clock. The tension of her fluidity, the violence of her stillness.
If only Death were this pirrouetting angel, this blessed dervish, spinning the room with her frenzy. If only Death were this desperate, fluttering bird, dancing us all into extinction.
Went to a performance by the Russian National Ballet tonight - a ballet called Giselle. Good stuff, even though the music was somewhat trite, and the story was the usual romantic grotesque [1]. Much of the dancing, especially in the second half, was exquisite though, and all in all it was a sublime evening.
But the story. Giselle is this young and very beautiful country maid who falls in love with this young villager who is actually a Duke (or Prince or something) in disguise [2]. When her other lover, a forester, unmasks this Prince and his true fiancee comes forward to claim him, the jilted Giselle grows distraught and kills herself. So far so good.
It's in the second act that things start to get really bizarre. The scene is now the grave of Giselle in the forest. Giselle's two lovers come to visit her grave and are confronted by spirits of jilted women called the Wilis, who basically surround any man they meet and dance him to death. The forester - the guy who unmasked the lying Prince and has been faithful to Giselle all along is killed, but the Prince survives, helped by the still loving Giselle to last out till dawn when the Wilis let him go. Giselle then returns to her grave (freed from the power of the Wilis, apparently) and the Prince is left sorrowing and alone.
Two things about the story struck me as really interesting. First, the way in which this story (and others like it - remember Rigoletto) punishes all the good, innocent people and save the one guy in the whole scenario who was a two-timing scoundrel - suggesting that salvation, in the end, is not about whether you're good or bad, but only about whether you have the blood of nobility in you. Neat. The second thing, of course, is the sheer genius of having a flock of ballerinas dance a man to his death. What a way to go. Hitchcock would have been proud.
Notes
[1] This is why, on the whole, I like abstract dance more - at least that way you don't get the feeling that someone is bending a story over backwards just so they can come up with a bunch of things the characters can dance to.
[2] What's the deal with all these princes chasing after fair country maids anyway? It's such a cliche.
Categories: Arts,
Unfair weather
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXIV
Outside temperature 9 am yesterday: 70 degrees Fahrenheit
Outside temperature 9 pm yesterday: 36 degrees Fahrenheit (not counting windchill)
Gah!
Categories: Poetry, Miscellaneous
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXIV
Outside temperature 9 am yesterday: 70 degrees Fahrenheit
Outside temperature 9 pm yesterday: 36 degrees Fahrenheit (not counting windchill)
Gah!
Categories: Poetry, Miscellaneous
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Portrait of a man falling in love
He is standing at the bus stop when his heart starts to ring.
He panics. Who can it be, he wonders? Everyone is turning to stare at him. He can feel a blush creeping across his face. Why does it always have to be so public, so embarassing?
The vibration grows stronger, the sound of the ringing like some desperate claw, scratching away at the silence. He fumbles wildly at his breast, his only thought now to reach this disturbance, make it stop.
It's only when he finally has his hands around the feeling that caution returns. Before he answers he must see who it is. Naturally. He opens his heart up, glances at the name flashing back at him. Her? Why her? What could she possibly want from him? For a split second he stands there, staring at the screen, considering. Then, reluctantly, he pushes the button that says 'dismiss'. No. Not this time. Not now.
As he slips his heart back into his pocket he wonders if there's any chance that she'll call back.
Categories: Fiction, Whimsy
He panics. Who can it be, he wonders? Everyone is turning to stare at him. He can feel a blush creeping across his face. Why does it always have to be so public, so embarassing?
The vibration grows stronger, the sound of the ringing like some desperate claw, scratching away at the silence. He fumbles wildly at his breast, his only thought now to reach this disturbance, make it stop.
It's only when he finally has his hands around the feeling that caution returns. Before he answers he must see who it is. Naturally. He opens his heart up, glances at the name flashing back at him. Her? Why her? What could she possibly want from him? For a split second he stands there, staring at the screen, considering. Then, reluctantly, he pushes the button that says 'dismiss'. No. Not this time. Not now.
As he slips his heart back into his pocket he wonders if there's any chance that she'll call back.
Categories: Fiction, Whimsy
Monday, March 13, 2006
Om Ah Hum
Isn't poetry wonderful?
Friday evening. M and I are at this upmarket, 'happening' sushi restaurant. We have a reservation, but there's still a fifteen minute wait before our table will be ready. We slip down to the bar / lounge to wait.
The trouble is, I can't STAND lounges. My reaction to them is immediate and visceral - it's the sensation of something clenching up inside me, like every inch of my being were trying desperately to withdraw into the cocoon of itself. It makes me wish I really were a turtle and had a shell to be safe under.
It's the noise mostly. The mindlessness of the music thumping away in the background, the shrill cacophony of high-pitched female voices squealing and laughing all around me, the endless inanity of conversations that seem to consist entirely of exclamation marks. The ridiculous idea that being in a room where the noise levels are so high that you have to shout to be heard by the person next to you could be construed as being 'social', as though all that civilisation came down to was this herd instinct, this incapacity to deal with any idea not immediately accessible to the meanest intelligence.
Plus there's the claustrophobia of course. The dense, dark space, the haze of smoke, the constant jostling as people push past you. It's always amazed me that a group of people who are so protective of their private space on mass transit systems that they sometimes prefer standing to taking an empty middle seat, would willingly choose to pack themselves into this intensely uncomfortable environment like sardines, and actually seem to enjoy it.
At any rate, as M sidles off to the bar to get herself a drink (by this point I'm incapable of swallowing at all, so that a drink is clearly impossible) I can feel the nausea rising within me, I feel choked, my hands are clenched into fists, every muscle in my body has grown taut with tension. I shut my eyes and try taking deep breaths. That helps.
Then, just to take my mind off my surroundings, I try reciting poetry to myself. Eliot first. The first part of Ash Wednesday. Because I cannot drink / There where trees flower and springs flow, for there is nothing again. And then, more fittingly, Browning.
"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop
'Dust and Ashes'! So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold
Dear dead women, with such hair to, what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old".
There I am, in the middle of a floor crowded with beautiful people, in my scruffy raincoat and day old stubble, my eyes tightly shut, murmuring poetry to myself as though it were an incantation. Slowly, everything else around me fades out. The noise recedes, the individual voices bleached to a white static. I exist in a bubble of my own making. I am a spectre, I am a ghost. I am a planet of quiet but desperate gravity among these busy, unheeding constellations.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes and it's the security guard. He wants to know if I'm feeling okay. I cannot find the words to say to him. I want to tell him how utterly I reject him and these surroundings that he works in. I want to assure him that he needn't give me this half-amused half-pitying look that he reserves for those who don't fit in, because fitting in is never something that I've cared to do, and here, in this place, it's the last thing on my mind. But it's no use. No speech of mine could possibly reach him. From where I stand he seems too remote, too distant, as though he were a million miles away. I nod, then turn away, hoping he'll leave me alone, hoping he'll let me go back to my hard won peace. As I watch him drift away out of the corner of my eye, it occurs to me again how glorious poetry is, how life affirming, how necessary.
Auden writes: "Nights of insult let you pass / Watched by every human love". Without poetry to console us, lend us its gift of silence, could we survive the mindless hubbub of our everyday lives? I know I couldn't.
P.S. The title of this post comes from Ginsberg's amazing Mugging - a poem I'll always treasure, partly for the shock of discovering, at seventeen, that petty crime too, could be the subject of a poem and partly for the sweet irony of that final line - "my shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars full of poetry left on the broken floor" - the truth of that line both a triumph and a cause for despair - the world cannot steal our poetry from us, because the world will never know what it's really worth.
Categories: Poetry, Personal
Friday evening. M and I are at this upmarket, 'happening' sushi restaurant. We have a reservation, but there's still a fifteen minute wait before our table will be ready. We slip down to the bar / lounge to wait.
The trouble is, I can't STAND lounges. My reaction to them is immediate and visceral - it's the sensation of something clenching up inside me, like every inch of my being were trying desperately to withdraw into the cocoon of itself. It makes me wish I really were a turtle and had a shell to be safe under.
It's the noise mostly. The mindlessness of the music thumping away in the background, the shrill cacophony of high-pitched female voices squealing and laughing all around me, the endless inanity of conversations that seem to consist entirely of exclamation marks. The ridiculous idea that being in a room where the noise levels are so high that you have to shout to be heard by the person next to you could be construed as being 'social', as though all that civilisation came down to was this herd instinct, this incapacity to deal with any idea not immediately accessible to the meanest intelligence.
Plus there's the claustrophobia of course. The dense, dark space, the haze of smoke, the constant jostling as people push past you. It's always amazed me that a group of people who are so protective of their private space on mass transit systems that they sometimes prefer standing to taking an empty middle seat, would willingly choose to pack themselves into this intensely uncomfortable environment like sardines, and actually seem to enjoy it.
At any rate, as M sidles off to the bar to get herself a drink (by this point I'm incapable of swallowing at all, so that a drink is clearly impossible) I can feel the nausea rising within me, I feel choked, my hands are clenched into fists, every muscle in my body has grown taut with tension. I shut my eyes and try taking deep breaths. That helps.
Then, just to take my mind off my surroundings, I try reciting poetry to myself. Eliot first. The first part of Ash Wednesday. Because I cannot drink / There where trees flower and springs flow, for there is nothing again. And then, more fittingly, Browning.
"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop
'Dust and Ashes'! So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold
Dear dead women, with such hair to, what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old".
There I am, in the middle of a floor crowded with beautiful people, in my scruffy raincoat and day old stubble, my eyes tightly shut, murmuring poetry to myself as though it were an incantation. Slowly, everything else around me fades out. The noise recedes, the individual voices bleached to a white static. I exist in a bubble of my own making. I am a spectre, I am a ghost. I am a planet of quiet but desperate gravity among these busy, unheeding constellations.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes and it's the security guard. He wants to know if I'm feeling okay. I cannot find the words to say to him. I want to tell him how utterly I reject him and these surroundings that he works in. I want to assure him that he needn't give me this half-amused half-pitying look that he reserves for those who don't fit in, because fitting in is never something that I've cared to do, and here, in this place, it's the last thing on my mind. But it's no use. No speech of mine could possibly reach him. From where I stand he seems too remote, too distant, as though he were a million miles away. I nod, then turn away, hoping he'll leave me alone, hoping he'll let me go back to my hard won peace. As I watch him drift away out of the corner of my eye, it occurs to me again how glorious poetry is, how life affirming, how necessary.
Auden writes: "Nights of insult let you pass / Watched by every human love". Without poetry to console us, lend us its gift of silence, could we survive the mindless hubbub of our everyday lives? I know I couldn't.
P.S. The title of this post comes from Ginsberg's amazing Mugging - a poem I'll always treasure, partly for the shock of discovering, at seventeen, that petty crime too, could be the subject of a poem and partly for the sweet irony of that final line - "my shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars full of poetry left on the broken floor" - the truth of that line both a triumph and a cause for despair - the world cannot steal our poetry from us, because the world will never know what it's really worth.
Categories: Poetry, Personal
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Hey, every artist needs a creative outlet
It was a glorious day yesterday. One of those early Spring days, beautiful as first love, overwhelming as hope. Hounds of Spring on Winter's traces and all that sort of stuff. The sun was shining, the lake had turned an electric cobalt, it was 65 degrees outside and pleasant enough that you could walk around in shirtsleeves. It was the kind of day that only Emily Dickinson could do justice to.
M celebrated this unexpectedly brilliant weather by wearing a skirt. I celebrated it by getting her to take me to a nice little cafe and gorging myself on Ceasar salad, espresso ice cream with hot fudge and the most sublime espresso tarts I've ever tasted, laced with liberal doses of actual espresso. So far, so good.
M then suggests that we go for a drive, seeing as it's so wonderful outside. I acquiesce happily. Where should we go? she asks. I shrug my shoulders, consider pointing out that we don't actually need a destination to drive to, then say, 'Wherever', visions of leafy lakeside walks or pleasant out of the way arboretum's in my head. "I know!", M says, "we could go to an outlet mall! I need to shop for clothes for my new job anyway!" HUH? Apparently M's idea of relishing the great outdoors is to go into designer stores and check out the Spring collection. I protest. I don't want to be stuck inside some stupid mall on a day like this. And there is NO WAY I am going shopping for women's clothes. Not happening. Nada.
So of course we end up going to the outlet mall. M assures me that she a) just wants to pick up a couple of things b) already knows pretty much what she wants c) is amazingly efficient at buying clothes. This trip isn't about shopping, I'm promised (would she do that to me? her guest?) it's really about the drive - the outlet mall is just an aside, like a really convenient spot to make a U-turn in. We'll spend two hours driving about in this amazing sunshine, M tells me, and maybe an hour, at most, at the mall. Come on, that's not going to kill you.
I should have known better. The fact that M knows exactly what she's looking for and manages to pick it out in some fifteen minutes in the first store we walk into, does not, apparently mean that she does not have to visit every other store and pay due homage, like a devotee making a tour of the minor shrines. Besides, by this point the weather gods have turned against us, and it's all overcast and depressing out, so she might as well shop properly now that we've come all the way. Aarghh!!
Shopping with women is like the Holocaust. Every survivor has a story of his own to tell, and though most of these stories sound very alike, we still go on telling them, writing them down, publishing books about them because of the sheer untrammeled horror that they represent, the extent of one human being's cruelty to another. What moves us, in these stories, is first and foremost the plight of the narrator, his inalienable status as victim. This is writing as catharsis, memory as reconciliation, by putting our worst moments down on a page we cauterize them, distance ourselves from them.
So, shopping for clothes with women. The thing that always puzzles me about these expeditions is the way women want your opinion, but don't value it. Shrug your shoulders and maintain a careful neutrality over everything she picks out / tries on, and you're told that you're no help at all, and she knows she should have come with someone who would have been interested enough to give an opinion. Try giving an opinion (being careful, of course, not be too honest - it's always those pants are too tight, or that jacket isn't cut right - never you're too fat to be wearing something like that) and you'll get the 'what planet are you from / don't you know stuff like this went out of fashion, like three HOURS ago' look. M told me she wanted something simple and classy that she could wear to office and that would make her look professional. But every time I suggested something sober / conservative I got a look that was the equivalent of a rap on the knuckles and was told it was too plain. Go figure.
The second problem shopping for clothes with women is what I call the "I know what the debutante needs, but even she doesn't know what she wants" problem. Spend five minutes explaining to a woman why the purse / shoes / raincoat / suit she's trying on is absolutely impractical / overpriced / inappropriate for anything but dancing about in Geri Halliwell videos and she'll admit the truth of everything you're saying and then say "But I really like it." This, apparently, is an argument. M, unlike other women I've shopped with in the past, is reasonable enough not to actually buy the damn things, but her process for vetoing something that catches her fancy, consists of trying it on and then sashaying in front of the mirror until she's managed to convince herself that she doesn't look good in it (not that this takes long, of course). This works, but it has all the efficiency of sitting under a tree and waiting for the apples to grow rotten and fall to the ground instead of just plucking them.
Then, of course, there's the sheepish husbands club. This is the group of men you'll find standing at the entrance of the changing room in any woman's store, anxiously clutching purses / babies / dresses and trying desperately (but without any real hope) to make themselves invisible. If there is a hell, and the feminists have anything to do with it, this is what it will be like.
The trouble is that there's absolutely nothing to do in this situation. You don't want to look at the clothes because you're a MAN and can't possibly be seen browsing through flimsy pink dresses, fingering the fabric to see what it feels like. You don't want to look at the other women who are coming out of the dressing room and modelling the clothes they've tried on in front of their husband / the mirror because it's rude and you're not a pervert and they're bound to get the wrong idea. You can't look the other men waiting with you in the eye because the last thing you want is for other men to know that you would do this, it would be like chatting about your viagra prescription, you're embarassed enough as it is. So what you have is basically a ten minute period (fifteen, if the person you're shopping with didn't bother to wear a top that she could try on formal jackets with, so now has to pick out a shirt in each store and change into that just to see what the suit looks like) where all you're doing is looking away.
Plus there's the imminent sense of doom hanging over you. It's like waiting for an interview. Or a sheep shearing. Any minute now she's going to walk out of that door and you're going to have to make up something to say about the outfit and what if she looks really hideous in it, what do you say then? and what happened to all that stuff about not objectifying women, how am I supposed to judge how a woman looks if I don't objectify her, and what would Betty Friedan do if she were in this position, and why is it taking so long, could she have fainted in there trying to wrestle herself into that tight top and what do I do if she never comes out of there at all, if it's like some Hitchcock movie where she simply vanishes, do I call 911, do they have a special fashion victims unit, is that her, no, but I wish it was, I'm hungry, oh crap, is that the time, what the hell is she doing in there anyway?
The other frustrating thing, especially if, like me, you're not married to / dating the person you're shopping with, is other women. It's one of nature's great Catch-22s. Here are all these women, who usually wouldn't give me the time of day if I laid down my cloak to help them cross a patch of mud on the street, who are suddenly smiling sweetly at me, simply because, by dint of actually agreeing to help a woman shop, I have magically transformed into Super-supportive Sensitive Man. All this warmth and approval is edifying, until you remember that it's all based on the assumption that you're not single. It dawns on you that the only women you're ever going to be attractive to are the ones who think you're not available, that you are, in fact, 'safe'. You wonder how long it would take to swim to Geneva.
The worst part is that after a while you can't help getting involved. I mean you're in the damn stores, putting in the time anyway and it's clothing for god's sake, not rocket science, you're analytical enough to handle something that basic. Stockholm syndrome takes over. Next thing you know you're getting a full update on her entire wardrobe and helping her think through which pieces in it would help accentuate the understated tone of the suit she currently has on. You're talking blithely about the cut of the suit, the fall of the fabric and how this or that silheoutte isn't appropriate for her. You find she's hanging on to your every word, doing exactly what you tell her. The salesgirls in the store bring up outfit after outfit, offering it to you hesitatingly, in awe of your judgement. Other women are turning around to listen to what you're saying, and wondering whether it would, technically, be infidelity if they came over and took your advice over their husband's. You listen to yourself talking about the inappropriateness of the stitch, and realise you're actually good at this. You also realise how entirely gay you sound. You might as well move to Wyoming and tend cattle.
At any rate, four hours later and clutching enough polythene bags to destroy the groundwater balance of a small planet, we were done. All I felt at the time was relief, of course, but thinking about it later, over dinner with Veena and BM at a snazzy indian fusion place (tamarind shrimp, tandoori portobello and some heavenly lamb) it began to occur to me that I might actually be on to a good thing here. Okay, so it was an excruciatingly painful way to spend an afternoon, but if I'd bargained properly, just how many delicious meals could I have got M to pay for in exchange for it? Do I really need to be doing a PhD? Could I make enough just taking women shopping on the weekends, to spend the rest of the week writing and relaxing at home?
The reason the male prostitution / gigolo industry has never quite taken off, it seems to me, is because they're providing the wrong service. Women don't need to pay men to sleep with them, they can get men to do that anyway. The fundamental principle of prostitution is that you pay for something you really want but can't get otherwise. How many women would love to have a guy to go shopping with? How many of them can actually get a guy to do this? Is there a huge untapped market here?
I have a vision of myself dressed in luridly coloured tight pants, waiting outside a outlet mall, peering into the windows of the cars at all the single women driving in, saying "hey there! big spender! you feeling lonely this afternoon? You lookin' to do some shopping?" I could have my regular rate for a one hour quickie and a special price if you wanted me for the whole day. Plus additional charges if you wanted something extra - like if you wanted help choosing lingerie, for instance, or you wanted me to wait outside the salon and comment on your hairstyle when you came out. What? You want to bring your husband along? Sure, why not, I'm cool with threesomes. I'll even help him pick out ties while you're in the ladies room. No extra charge. Hell, for a little extra dough I'll bring a friend of mine along and you can listen to us argue over whether mauve is right or wrong for your complexion.
And maybe, if I'm lucky, some day a super-rich, over-achieving CEO type woman will pick me up off the streets and take me to back to her hotel room and we'll spend the whole night in the novelty shops in the hotel basement and one week later she'll show up at the door of my run-down little apartment in a white limousine clutching a bouquet of new credit cards in her hand, and I'll discover I'm really Julia Roberts and we'll all live happily ever after.
I just hope she doesn't look like Richard Gere.
P.S. For those of you who are wondering what happened to the erudite, cultured Falstaff you know and errr...vaguely like, though you wouldn't admit to as much in public - not to worry. I'm just getting over my fashion hangover (you know, the feeling you get when you open your eyes in the morning and see orange spots and an elephant dressed in a pink Ann Taylor dress?) and will be back to my regular self asap. Forthcoming attractions include: A long, long post about the Chicago Art Institute, and a discussion of how poetry can actually help you deal with being stuck in noisy, smoke filled lounges filled with the beautiful people.
UPDATE: Just a quick clarification. The elephant in a pink Ann Taylor dress referred to in the post script above is an entirely fictional being and bears no resemblance whatsoever to any persons living or wearing clothes from Walmart. Specifically, it does NOT refer to M (honey, will you please put that knife down now). No, not even if the dress fits....
Categories: Personal, Humour
M celebrated this unexpectedly brilliant weather by wearing a skirt. I celebrated it by getting her to take me to a nice little cafe and gorging myself on Ceasar salad, espresso ice cream with hot fudge and the most sublime espresso tarts I've ever tasted, laced with liberal doses of actual espresso. So far, so good.
M then suggests that we go for a drive, seeing as it's so wonderful outside. I acquiesce happily. Where should we go? she asks. I shrug my shoulders, consider pointing out that we don't actually need a destination to drive to, then say, 'Wherever', visions of leafy lakeside walks or pleasant out of the way arboretum's in my head. "I know!", M says, "we could go to an outlet mall! I need to shop for clothes for my new job anyway!" HUH? Apparently M's idea of relishing the great outdoors is to go into designer stores and check out the Spring collection. I protest. I don't want to be stuck inside some stupid mall on a day like this. And there is NO WAY I am going shopping for women's clothes. Not happening. Nada.
So of course we end up going to the outlet mall. M assures me that she a) just wants to pick up a couple of things b) already knows pretty much what she wants c) is amazingly efficient at buying clothes. This trip isn't about shopping, I'm promised (would she do that to me? her guest?) it's really about the drive - the outlet mall is just an aside, like a really convenient spot to make a U-turn in. We'll spend two hours driving about in this amazing sunshine, M tells me, and maybe an hour, at most, at the mall. Come on, that's not going to kill you.
I should have known better. The fact that M knows exactly what she's looking for and manages to pick it out in some fifteen minutes in the first store we walk into, does not, apparently mean that she does not have to visit every other store and pay due homage, like a devotee making a tour of the minor shrines. Besides, by this point the weather gods have turned against us, and it's all overcast and depressing out, so she might as well shop properly now that we've come all the way. Aarghh!!
Shopping with women is like the Holocaust. Every survivor has a story of his own to tell, and though most of these stories sound very alike, we still go on telling them, writing them down, publishing books about them because of the sheer untrammeled horror that they represent, the extent of one human being's cruelty to another. What moves us, in these stories, is first and foremost the plight of the narrator, his inalienable status as victim. This is writing as catharsis, memory as reconciliation, by putting our worst moments down on a page we cauterize them, distance ourselves from them.
So, shopping for clothes with women. The thing that always puzzles me about these expeditions is the way women want your opinion, but don't value it. Shrug your shoulders and maintain a careful neutrality over everything she picks out / tries on, and you're told that you're no help at all, and she knows she should have come with someone who would have been interested enough to give an opinion. Try giving an opinion (being careful, of course, not be too honest - it's always those pants are too tight, or that jacket isn't cut right - never you're too fat to be wearing something like that) and you'll get the 'what planet are you from / don't you know stuff like this went out of fashion, like three HOURS ago' look. M told me she wanted something simple and classy that she could wear to office and that would make her look professional. But every time I suggested something sober / conservative I got a look that was the equivalent of a rap on the knuckles and was told it was too plain. Go figure.
The second problem shopping for clothes with women is what I call the "I know what the debutante needs, but even she doesn't know what she wants" problem. Spend five minutes explaining to a woman why the purse / shoes / raincoat / suit she's trying on is absolutely impractical / overpriced / inappropriate for anything but dancing about in Geri Halliwell videos and she'll admit the truth of everything you're saying and then say "But I really like it." This, apparently, is an argument. M, unlike other women I've shopped with in the past, is reasonable enough not to actually buy the damn things, but her process for vetoing something that catches her fancy, consists of trying it on and then sashaying in front of the mirror until she's managed to convince herself that she doesn't look good in it (not that this takes long, of course). This works, but it has all the efficiency of sitting under a tree and waiting for the apples to grow rotten and fall to the ground instead of just plucking them.
Then, of course, there's the sheepish husbands club. This is the group of men you'll find standing at the entrance of the changing room in any woman's store, anxiously clutching purses / babies / dresses and trying desperately (but without any real hope) to make themselves invisible. If there is a hell, and the feminists have anything to do with it, this is what it will be like.
The trouble is that there's absolutely nothing to do in this situation. You don't want to look at the clothes because you're a MAN and can't possibly be seen browsing through flimsy pink dresses, fingering the fabric to see what it feels like. You don't want to look at the other women who are coming out of the dressing room and modelling the clothes they've tried on in front of their husband / the mirror because it's rude and you're not a pervert and they're bound to get the wrong idea. You can't look the other men waiting with you in the eye because the last thing you want is for other men to know that you would do this, it would be like chatting about your viagra prescription, you're embarassed enough as it is. So what you have is basically a ten minute period (fifteen, if the person you're shopping with didn't bother to wear a top that she could try on formal jackets with, so now has to pick out a shirt in each store and change into that just to see what the suit looks like) where all you're doing is looking away.
Plus there's the imminent sense of doom hanging over you. It's like waiting for an interview. Or a sheep shearing. Any minute now she's going to walk out of that door and you're going to have to make up something to say about the outfit and what if she looks really hideous in it, what do you say then? and what happened to all that stuff about not objectifying women, how am I supposed to judge how a woman looks if I don't objectify her, and what would Betty Friedan do if she were in this position, and why is it taking so long, could she have fainted in there trying to wrestle herself into that tight top and what do I do if she never comes out of there at all, if it's like some Hitchcock movie where she simply vanishes, do I call 911, do they have a special fashion victims unit, is that her, no, but I wish it was, I'm hungry, oh crap, is that the time, what the hell is she doing in there anyway?
The other frustrating thing, especially if, like me, you're not married to / dating the person you're shopping with, is other women. It's one of nature's great Catch-22s. Here are all these women, who usually wouldn't give me the time of day if I laid down my cloak to help them cross a patch of mud on the street, who are suddenly smiling sweetly at me, simply because, by dint of actually agreeing to help a woman shop, I have magically transformed into Super-supportive Sensitive Man. All this warmth and approval is edifying, until you remember that it's all based on the assumption that you're not single. It dawns on you that the only women you're ever going to be attractive to are the ones who think you're not available, that you are, in fact, 'safe'. You wonder how long it would take to swim to Geneva.
The worst part is that after a while you can't help getting involved. I mean you're in the damn stores, putting in the time anyway and it's clothing for god's sake, not rocket science, you're analytical enough to handle something that basic. Stockholm syndrome takes over. Next thing you know you're getting a full update on her entire wardrobe and helping her think through which pieces in it would help accentuate the understated tone of the suit she currently has on. You're talking blithely about the cut of the suit, the fall of the fabric and how this or that silheoutte isn't appropriate for her. You find she's hanging on to your every word, doing exactly what you tell her. The salesgirls in the store bring up outfit after outfit, offering it to you hesitatingly, in awe of your judgement. Other women are turning around to listen to what you're saying, and wondering whether it would, technically, be infidelity if they came over and took your advice over their husband's. You listen to yourself talking about the inappropriateness of the stitch, and realise you're actually good at this. You also realise how entirely gay you sound. You might as well move to Wyoming and tend cattle.
At any rate, four hours later and clutching enough polythene bags to destroy the groundwater balance of a small planet, we were done. All I felt at the time was relief, of course, but thinking about it later, over dinner with Veena and BM at a snazzy indian fusion place (tamarind shrimp, tandoori portobello and some heavenly lamb) it began to occur to me that I might actually be on to a good thing here. Okay, so it was an excruciatingly painful way to spend an afternoon, but if I'd bargained properly, just how many delicious meals could I have got M to pay for in exchange for it? Do I really need to be doing a PhD? Could I make enough just taking women shopping on the weekends, to spend the rest of the week writing and relaxing at home?
The reason the male prostitution / gigolo industry has never quite taken off, it seems to me, is because they're providing the wrong service. Women don't need to pay men to sleep with them, they can get men to do that anyway. The fundamental principle of prostitution is that you pay for something you really want but can't get otherwise. How many women would love to have a guy to go shopping with? How many of them can actually get a guy to do this? Is there a huge untapped market here?
I have a vision of myself dressed in luridly coloured tight pants, waiting outside a outlet mall, peering into the windows of the cars at all the single women driving in, saying "hey there! big spender! you feeling lonely this afternoon? You lookin' to do some shopping?" I could have my regular rate for a one hour quickie and a special price if you wanted me for the whole day. Plus additional charges if you wanted something extra - like if you wanted help choosing lingerie, for instance, or you wanted me to wait outside the salon and comment on your hairstyle when you came out. What? You want to bring your husband along? Sure, why not, I'm cool with threesomes. I'll even help him pick out ties while you're in the ladies room. No extra charge. Hell, for a little extra dough I'll bring a friend of mine along and you can listen to us argue over whether mauve is right or wrong for your complexion.
And maybe, if I'm lucky, some day a super-rich, over-achieving CEO type woman will pick me up off the streets and take me to back to her hotel room and we'll spend the whole night in the novelty shops in the hotel basement and one week later she'll show up at the door of my run-down little apartment in a white limousine clutching a bouquet of new credit cards in her hand, and I'll discover I'm really Julia Roberts and we'll all live happily ever after.
I just hope she doesn't look like Richard Gere.
P.S. For those of you who are wondering what happened to the erudite, cultured Falstaff you know and errr...vaguely like, though you wouldn't admit to as much in public - not to worry. I'm just getting over my fashion hangover (you know, the feeling you get when you open your eyes in the morning and see orange spots and an elephant dressed in a pink Ann Taylor dress?) and will be back to my regular self asap. Forthcoming attractions include: A long, long post about the Chicago Art Institute, and a discussion of how poetry can actually help you deal with being stuck in noisy, smoke filled lounges filled with the beautiful people.
UPDATE: Just a quick clarification. The elephant in a pink Ann Taylor dress referred to in the post script above is an entirely fictional being and bears no resemblance whatsoever to any persons living or wearing clothes from Walmart. Specifically, it does NOT refer to M (honey, will you please put that knife down now). No, not even if the dress fits....
Categories: Personal, Humour
Saturday, March 11, 2006
The Early Bird Catches...
...the sunrise.
P.S. Please not to miss the tiny little boat in the water. Monet would have been so proud.
Categories: Miscellaneous
P.S. Please not to miss the tiny little boat in the water. Monet would have been so proud.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Friday, March 10, 2006
Reading 'girls' books / this explains so much
Just saw this article in Slate by Emily Bazelon on boys reading 'girls' books.
The article surprised me a little, because it had never really occured to me that gender was a relevant dimension on which to segregate children's books. You mean I wasn't supposed to be moved to tears by Little Women (forgive me, I was a kid)? You mean the Malory* Towers series should not have been my favourite set of Enid Blyton's? Now you tell me.
I mean okay, so I went through my 'I read Hardy Boys and don't read Nancy Drew' phase (though in retrospect it's hard to see what the difference between the two was), but the only 'boy' hero I ever truly had (well, unless you count George from Famous Five) was Jupiter Jones from the Three Investigators (he was smart, he was fat, and he got to hang out with Alfred Hitchcock - do you begin to see why I worshipped him?) and let's face it, he wasn't exactly the machoest kid on the block.
Bazelon argues that the reason boys like some girls books is that these books have the kind of 'how to' descriptions that boys love, and which are the only reason that boys read at all. Boys, it seems are not interested in story and relationship, they are only interested in information. (to be fair, Bazelon does admit that she's stereotyping hugely, but even so this seems a little extreme a statement to make). I sit and try and remember what information I could have got out of the St. Clare's series. Is this why, when I finally went off to school myself, I was disappointed to find that there were to be no trunks neatly stencilled with my name, no lacrosse, not even a goofy old French teacher to laugh at?
The more I think about it, though, the more it dawns on me that Bazelon might have half a point. (WARNING: STEREOTYPES AHEAD!) The reason I liked 'girls' books [1] better than I liked 'boys' books as a kid (and we'll have no cracks about my masculinity or lack of it, thank you) was because they seemed so much closer to the real business of living. I mean your stereotypical 'boys' book would be about some kid who stumbled upon some exotic crime, and managed (often singlehandedly) to bring the criminals to justice. The stereotypical 'boy' hero was brave, clever and confident - a little over-impulsive, perhaps, but in general an action star in short pants. 'Girls' books on the other hand, were so much more about the little intrigues and disappointments of the everyday. They were about coping with people you didn't like (or who didn't like you), and situations you happened to stumble into. And the heroines of these books were so much deeper, so much richer as human beings - oh, they were courageous too, of course, but it was a more neurotic bravery, a courage born out of self-doubt. They fretted, they were unsure - confidence, for them, was something to be achieved with great effort and by overcoming a great many qualms, not something that came to them naturally. 'Boy' heroes discovered buried treasure and saved it from the money-grubbing hands of evil men, 'girl' heroes managed to be school captain. And to me, as a kid, the latter was so much easier to relate to. The ups and downs of friendships that the 'girls' books talked of were lived experience for me, but when it came to fighting crime, I'd barely been able to stumble upon a parking violation [2]. And anyway, who was I kidding? I wasn't brave, I wasn't tough, I couldn't climb ropes or use a penknife. If some criminal tied me up I wouldn't be all stoic and struggle with my bonds and find some cool way of getting out of them, I would sit quietly in place with tears running down my cheeks and wait for my Mummy to come find me. If anything, I resented these 'boy' heroes for implying that to be a real 'boy' was to be rough and physical, when the only things I was good at were Math and Poetry recitation. That's why I liked the Malory Towers series, not because of what it taught me about French verbs.
Plus, as long as we are dealing in stereotypes, I wonder if the distinction above has something to do with the fact that I know so many more women who are interested in fiction / poetry / literature than I know men with similar interests [3]. Could it be that 'girls' books were a better preparation for adult literature than 'boys' books - that the shift from Alcott to Austen and James was much less of a leap than the move from Tarzan to Moby Dick? By encouraging boys to read cops and robbers stories or 'how to' books about cars and guns, are we systematically eroding their ability to connect to masterworks of literature? Probably not, of course, but it's worth thinking about.
Notes:
1. I use the term 'girls' books and 'boys' books with extreme reluctance, and would be the first to concur that they are total stereotypes
2. And this wasn't for lack of trying either. When I was 9 or so a couple of friends and I had actually formed our own detective agency with the firm resolve to bring criminals to justice. If the group disbanded a week later, it was only because, having spent long hours stalking total strangers, or keeping watch on suspicious houses (not to mention one particularly memorable afternoon spent searching through the local garbage dump for 'clues'), we couldn't find any crime to fight.
3. Readers of this blog, of course, are important exceptions.
*Veena: Thanks for catching that.
Categories: Personal, Arts
The article surprised me a little, because it had never really occured to me that gender was a relevant dimension on which to segregate children's books. You mean I wasn't supposed to be moved to tears by Little Women (forgive me, I was a kid)? You mean the Malory* Towers series should not have been my favourite set of Enid Blyton's? Now you tell me.
I mean okay, so I went through my 'I read Hardy Boys and don't read Nancy Drew' phase (though in retrospect it's hard to see what the difference between the two was), but the only 'boy' hero I ever truly had (well, unless you count George from Famous Five) was Jupiter Jones from the Three Investigators (he was smart, he was fat, and he got to hang out with Alfred Hitchcock - do you begin to see why I worshipped him?) and let's face it, he wasn't exactly the machoest kid on the block.
Bazelon argues that the reason boys like some girls books is that these books have the kind of 'how to' descriptions that boys love, and which are the only reason that boys read at all. Boys, it seems are not interested in story and relationship, they are only interested in information. (to be fair, Bazelon does admit that she's stereotyping hugely, but even so this seems a little extreme a statement to make). I sit and try and remember what information I could have got out of the St. Clare's series. Is this why, when I finally went off to school myself, I was disappointed to find that there were to be no trunks neatly stencilled with my name, no lacrosse, not even a goofy old French teacher to laugh at?
The more I think about it, though, the more it dawns on me that Bazelon might have half a point. (WARNING: STEREOTYPES AHEAD!) The reason I liked 'girls' books [1] better than I liked 'boys' books as a kid (and we'll have no cracks about my masculinity or lack of it, thank you) was because they seemed so much closer to the real business of living. I mean your stereotypical 'boys' book would be about some kid who stumbled upon some exotic crime, and managed (often singlehandedly) to bring the criminals to justice. The stereotypical 'boy' hero was brave, clever and confident - a little over-impulsive, perhaps, but in general an action star in short pants. 'Girls' books on the other hand, were so much more about the little intrigues and disappointments of the everyday. They were about coping with people you didn't like (or who didn't like you), and situations you happened to stumble into. And the heroines of these books were so much deeper, so much richer as human beings - oh, they were courageous too, of course, but it was a more neurotic bravery, a courage born out of self-doubt. They fretted, they were unsure - confidence, for them, was something to be achieved with great effort and by overcoming a great many qualms, not something that came to them naturally. 'Boy' heroes discovered buried treasure and saved it from the money-grubbing hands of evil men, 'girl' heroes managed to be school captain. And to me, as a kid, the latter was so much easier to relate to. The ups and downs of friendships that the 'girls' books talked of were lived experience for me, but when it came to fighting crime, I'd barely been able to stumble upon a parking violation [2]. And anyway, who was I kidding? I wasn't brave, I wasn't tough, I couldn't climb ropes or use a penknife. If some criminal tied me up I wouldn't be all stoic and struggle with my bonds and find some cool way of getting out of them, I would sit quietly in place with tears running down my cheeks and wait for my Mummy to come find me. If anything, I resented these 'boy' heroes for implying that to be a real 'boy' was to be rough and physical, when the only things I was good at were Math and Poetry recitation. That's why I liked the Malory Towers series, not because of what it taught me about French verbs.
Plus, as long as we are dealing in stereotypes, I wonder if the distinction above has something to do with the fact that I know so many more women who are interested in fiction / poetry / literature than I know men with similar interests [3]. Could it be that 'girls' books were a better preparation for adult literature than 'boys' books - that the shift from Alcott to Austen and James was much less of a leap than the move from Tarzan to Moby Dick? By encouraging boys to read cops and robbers stories or 'how to' books about cars and guns, are we systematically eroding their ability to connect to masterworks of literature? Probably not, of course, but it's worth thinking about.
Notes:
1. I use the term 'girls' books and 'boys' books with extreme reluctance, and would be the first to concur that they are total stereotypes
2. And this wasn't for lack of trying either. When I was 9 or so a couple of friends and I had actually formed our own detective agency with the firm resolve to bring criminals to justice. If the group disbanded a week later, it was only because, having spent long hours stalking total strangers, or keeping watch on suspicious houses (not to mention one particularly memorable afternoon spent searching through the local garbage dump for 'clues'), we couldn't find any crime to fight.
3. Readers of this blog, of course, are important exceptions.
*Veena: Thanks for catching that.
Categories: Personal, Arts
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Childe Falstaff's Pilgrimage: Chicago-I
Several people have complained about my lack of active blogging in the last couple of days. This post is dedicated to those people. You asked for it.
Tuesday morning. The deceptive brilliance of a Chicago spring. The weather like some sadistic school teacher who tempts you out with the sunniness of her smile, only to grab you and make your ears hurt with the cold.
Riding the No. 36 bus downtown past Hemmingway House and Sandburg Terrace, crossing streets named Dickens, Schiller and Goethe (have I mentioned that I love Chicago?) I make my way to the Museum of Contemporary Art - the one museum I wasn't able to catch on my last trip here because it was closed at the time. I have been warned that people's reactions to the MCA are mixed at best, and I can see why. When these folks say contemporary they really mean contemporary, and the exhibits here range from the wildly innovative to the plain weird. You need to combine a fundamentally skewed view of the world with a fine-tuned instinct for the ridiculous and a love for breaking rules just for the heck of it in order to enjoy this museum - but fortunately, these are all qualities I possess in abundant measure. My favourite section of the museum was a special exhibit celebrating Beckett, which included a 12 minute film version of 'Not I' (not I regret to say, the 2000 Neil Jordan version starring Julianne Moore). There's really nothing like staring at a extreme close up of a talking mouth projected up on a big screen for twelve minutes - watching the movement of the tongue, the opening and closing of lips, the thin trickles of saliva running glistening between the teeth (you see what I mean by skewed world view). But there was other good stuff here as well - some glorious paintings, a stunning room wide exhibit [1] that consisted of a plastic model of some sort of structure in one corner, from which a matrix of wires radiated across the room, so that to pass through to the next gallery, you actually had to duck under the art and become, momentarily, a part of it. Some interesting experiments with light, including a ziggurat made entirely of reflected light and a circle suspended in mid-air, umbra and penumbra opening like petals on either side. Also, two kneeling Thai statues connected by a single white thread, praying for safety and an arrangement of five seated figures with one looking back at a mirror behind him, so that if you stand in front of the exhibit, you can see yourself reflected in the mirror, and it almost feels like he's turned away to look at the you who's entering from behind the exhibit you're really in front of (okay, I can't explain it, I give up).
The problem with the MCA is that it's really, really small. Half the galleries seem to still be shut, and the ones that are open have relatively sparse exhibits - an average of about 5-6 / gallery, which means that an hour and a half after I entered I'm done and need to find somewhere else to spend the rest of the day.
Signs on Michigan point me to something called the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA). I figure I might as well check it out. It takes me a while to find the place though, largely because it turns out to be on the floor above a Hershey Store, which is hardly the place you expect to find an art museum. My entry into the museum causes quite a stir. Apparently the idea that they might actually have visitors is a new one to them. The guard starts at the sight of me, tells me to wait, goes running off into the inner recesses to call the person who's supposed to be at reception. When she emerges I ask her for a map of the Museum. She looks embarassed. She explains that the museum currently consists of one large-ish gallery on the third floor, so they don't really have maps, but she hands me a brochure of the exhibit that's on to make me feel better. I am then escorted like an important dignitary to the third floor by the guard, who seems to be concerned that I, being clearly a mythic being, might suddenly vanish into thin air.
After the warning bells such disbelief at being visited has sparked, the gallery itself turns out to be unexpectedly interesting. The exhibit showcases the photography of Spanish director Carlos Saura and speaks to his life-long obsession with Flamenco. The pictures here have all the clean, nostalgic grace that black-and-white can lend to a photograph, and yet scene after scene captures (as Saura does so brilliantly in his films) the passion of flamenco, its aggression, its flaunting, half-tamed beauty. One section of the exhibit focusses on the making of Saura's Carmen, bringing back fond memories of catching the film as part of the film festival in Delhi in 1998 (99?), showing up at Regal first thing in the morning (at a time when the theatre usually shows third-rate skin flicks, a fact that caused my (female) friend and I much embarassment) and then sitting in an almost entirely empty theatre, hearing that glorious overture swell and crackle over the hall's stereo system and then, later, feeling the entire theatre vibrate to the clomping of the dancer's feet, in that glorious scene where the cigarette girls fight in flagrant flamenco, their firm gypsy breasts raised like the horns of a bull going into battle. All in all, an interesting exhibit, so that I couldn't help wondering, as I picked my one lone coat from the coat-check why more people didn't come to see it.
So much for art. That evening, M and I grab an early dinner consisting of some delicious crepes (a gloriously mediterranean main course, followed by belgian chocolate sprinkled with toasted almonds - who cares if the waitress's idea of service is to stand at the counter talking into her cell phone until you go give your order) and then head over to the CSO to catch the Boston Symphony in performance. The venerable (and I mean that in every sense of the term) James Levine is absent tonight, having sustained an injury [2], but David Robertson does a more than adequate job, making up in spry energy what he lacks in depth. The program itself is a mixed bag. The orchestra starts with Strauss's Till Eugenspiegel, an opening gambit I love them for because it's a piece I've always been extremely fond of, and have never had the opportunity to hear performed live. Next on the playbill is a setting of five Neruda Love Sonnets to music by Lieberson, which is pleasant enough, though it's a little disconcerting to hear Neruda sounding like Puccini, and after a while you can't help feeling that you'd rather just be sitting in a quiet room reading the great man. After the intermission, the orchestra opens with a nine-minute piece by Elliot Carter, who is one of those composers who I think are interesting, but have never quite managed to be enthusiastic about. M, it seems, is even less enthusiastic - she's sitting there trying to figure out what would be the most excruciatingly painful way to murder me (when I talked her into coming for this performance - mostly by calling her in the middle of the night and getting her to agree before she'd fully woken up - I may have, accidentally, neglected to mention that Carter was on the program, confining myself to mentioning Levine and Beethoven and Neruda). So it's almost a relief when the orchestra finally breaks into Beethoven's 7th, the familiar, humming rhythm of that most light-hearted of Beethoven symphonies sweeping us into its pleasant, undemanding happiness.
Wednesday morning I discover that the deadline of the Oxford e-Author contest (which I've vaguely been toying with the idea of entering for) is March 9th, India time. Panic. I spend the morning editing and re-editing and then rewriting and then re-editing and then re-editing again until I've finally managed to convert one week of random scribbles into something that bears enough of a family resemblance to a short story that I'm not ashamed to acknowledge its parentage. Short stories despatched, I decide I deserve to treat myself to some new books, so I make my way uptown to Powell's Book Store and spend a blissful three hours crawling under tables and up ladders in search of that elusive great deal. How can you not love a book store that has an entire section marked 'Marxism'? And one massive wall face of books on literary criticism? If I finally come away with only (yes, only) six books, that number alone should tell you the extent of heartbreak I suffered, leaving so many, many others behind. My original plan was to walk about in the city afterwards, possibly grabbing lunch (by this time it's 4 pm and I'm ravenous) at whatever cafe happens to catch my fancy, but six new books in my backpack means I'm going nowhere but home. I stop by the cleaners on my way back though, collecting some clothes for M who asked me [3] to pick them up if I could and neglected to mention that these included flimsy pink and green looking things that, carried in buses or borne high aloft and streaming in the wind as I walked, would firmly establish my status as a cross-dresser in the minds of the city's populace, earning me disapproving scowls and (more worryingly) smiles of open interest.
Back home again, Veena drops in for the evening, and a scrumptious dinner of melt-in-your-mouth seekh kebabs later [4] we head out for yet another musical evening. Our original destination is Green Mill, but through processes that I haven't quite figured out yet, we manage to make our way to Kingston Mines instead, stopping by some three coffee shops on the way to verify that yes, they actually are closed this late in the night (anonymous commenter: I tried. I really did. It's not my fault if M can't tell the difference between Jazz and the Blues [5]).
I can't say I cared for Kingston Mines much per se (stale cigarette smoke, the smell of too much beer, the static of people talking, dressed up 20 somethings dancing about, yeesh!) but the music was exquisite - even if I was one of the few people actually listening to it, my eyes tightly shut to block out everything around me. The performance featured some incredible music, silky-smooth guitar work on a soulful, blue-sy rendition of 'Stand by me' and a couple of electrifying vocal improvs that made me literally cry out in encouragement (you know that moment when the music surprises you by being so right - that 'yeah' moment when you throw your head back and just try to hold on).
All in all, it's been a good two days. This morning there's a thin drizzle in the air, and the Weather forecast promises a 50% probability of rain, so having had my fill of getting caught in the rain without an umbrella yesterday (oh, ya, that happened to - but no need to worry, the books were quite safe, thanks for asking), I'm staying put at home with my six new books (not to mention the three I carried with me from Philly, the four I bought and left with M the last time I was in Chicago, the three books she's managed to acquire since that I actually want to read). Who wouldn't, with a view like this out of the window:
Notes
[1] It would be great if I could actually name the artists and the work for you, but unfortunately, I don't have that kind of memory.
[2] And here I was thinking only sports persons suffered injuries. What did he do, pull a hamstring while trying to urge the orchestra to a particularly Wagnerian note? Or maybe he fell off a chair. So inconsiderate of him. I mean, a chap is going to be a conductor he should jolly well be a conductor and not go around practising to be a circus acrobat on the side. [6]
[3] Veena: note, ASKED me. Not ordered. Asked. (M: Is that okay? Is that how you wanted me to put it?)
[4] One thing I have to say about staying with M - you never, ever have to worry about getting good food (well, except if she decides to cook). The sort of uncompromising dedication she brings to this whole question of what's the best place to eat is truly exemplary. Was it Ted Hughes who called it this 'bullet and automatic purpose' with something about 'the shark's mouth that hungers down the blood-smell'?
[5] To be fair, I can't say it wasn't a substitution that I wouldn't have preferred anyway. Somehow I've always thought of Chicago as so much more a Blues town.
[6] If you think of yourself as a Wodehouse fan - see if you can spot where that reference comes from.
Categories: Personal, Arts
Tuesday morning. The deceptive brilliance of a Chicago spring. The weather like some sadistic school teacher who tempts you out with the sunniness of her smile, only to grab you and make your ears hurt with the cold.
Riding the No. 36 bus downtown past Hemmingway House and Sandburg Terrace, crossing streets named Dickens, Schiller and Goethe (have I mentioned that I love Chicago?) I make my way to the Museum of Contemporary Art - the one museum I wasn't able to catch on my last trip here because it was closed at the time. I have been warned that people's reactions to the MCA are mixed at best, and I can see why. When these folks say contemporary they really mean contemporary, and the exhibits here range from the wildly innovative to the plain weird. You need to combine a fundamentally skewed view of the world with a fine-tuned instinct for the ridiculous and a love for breaking rules just for the heck of it in order to enjoy this museum - but fortunately, these are all qualities I possess in abundant measure. My favourite section of the museum was a special exhibit celebrating Beckett, which included a 12 minute film version of 'Not I' (not I regret to say, the 2000 Neil Jordan version starring Julianne Moore). There's really nothing like staring at a extreme close up of a talking mouth projected up on a big screen for twelve minutes - watching the movement of the tongue, the opening and closing of lips, the thin trickles of saliva running glistening between the teeth (you see what I mean by skewed world view). But there was other good stuff here as well - some glorious paintings, a stunning room wide exhibit [1] that consisted of a plastic model of some sort of structure in one corner, from which a matrix of wires radiated across the room, so that to pass through to the next gallery, you actually had to duck under the art and become, momentarily, a part of it. Some interesting experiments with light, including a ziggurat made entirely of reflected light and a circle suspended in mid-air, umbra and penumbra opening like petals on either side. Also, two kneeling Thai statues connected by a single white thread, praying for safety and an arrangement of five seated figures with one looking back at a mirror behind him, so that if you stand in front of the exhibit, you can see yourself reflected in the mirror, and it almost feels like he's turned away to look at the you who's entering from behind the exhibit you're really in front of (okay, I can't explain it, I give up).
The problem with the MCA is that it's really, really small. Half the galleries seem to still be shut, and the ones that are open have relatively sparse exhibits - an average of about 5-6 / gallery, which means that an hour and a half after I entered I'm done and need to find somewhere else to spend the rest of the day.
Signs on Michigan point me to something called the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA). I figure I might as well check it out. It takes me a while to find the place though, largely because it turns out to be on the floor above a Hershey Store, which is hardly the place you expect to find an art museum. My entry into the museum causes quite a stir. Apparently the idea that they might actually have visitors is a new one to them. The guard starts at the sight of me, tells me to wait, goes running off into the inner recesses to call the person who's supposed to be at reception. When she emerges I ask her for a map of the Museum. She looks embarassed. She explains that the museum currently consists of one large-ish gallery on the third floor, so they don't really have maps, but she hands me a brochure of the exhibit that's on to make me feel better. I am then escorted like an important dignitary to the third floor by the guard, who seems to be concerned that I, being clearly a mythic being, might suddenly vanish into thin air.
After the warning bells such disbelief at being visited has sparked, the gallery itself turns out to be unexpectedly interesting. The exhibit showcases the photography of Spanish director Carlos Saura and speaks to his life-long obsession with Flamenco. The pictures here have all the clean, nostalgic grace that black-and-white can lend to a photograph, and yet scene after scene captures (as Saura does so brilliantly in his films) the passion of flamenco, its aggression, its flaunting, half-tamed beauty. One section of the exhibit focusses on the making of Saura's Carmen, bringing back fond memories of catching the film as part of the film festival in Delhi in 1998 (99?), showing up at Regal first thing in the morning (at a time when the theatre usually shows third-rate skin flicks, a fact that caused my (female) friend and I much embarassment) and then sitting in an almost entirely empty theatre, hearing that glorious overture swell and crackle over the hall's stereo system and then, later, feeling the entire theatre vibrate to the clomping of the dancer's feet, in that glorious scene where the cigarette girls fight in flagrant flamenco, their firm gypsy breasts raised like the horns of a bull going into battle. All in all, an interesting exhibit, so that I couldn't help wondering, as I picked my one lone coat from the coat-check why more people didn't come to see it.
So much for art. That evening, M and I grab an early dinner consisting of some delicious crepes (a gloriously mediterranean main course, followed by belgian chocolate sprinkled with toasted almonds - who cares if the waitress's idea of service is to stand at the counter talking into her cell phone until you go give your order) and then head over to the CSO to catch the Boston Symphony in performance. The venerable (and I mean that in every sense of the term) James Levine is absent tonight, having sustained an injury [2], but David Robertson does a more than adequate job, making up in spry energy what he lacks in depth. The program itself is a mixed bag. The orchestra starts with Strauss's Till Eugenspiegel, an opening gambit I love them for because it's a piece I've always been extremely fond of, and have never had the opportunity to hear performed live. Next on the playbill is a setting of five Neruda Love Sonnets to music by Lieberson, which is pleasant enough, though it's a little disconcerting to hear Neruda sounding like Puccini, and after a while you can't help feeling that you'd rather just be sitting in a quiet room reading the great man. After the intermission, the orchestra opens with a nine-minute piece by Elliot Carter, who is one of those composers who I think are interesting, but have never quite managed to be enthusiastic about. M, it seems, is even less enthusiastic - she's sitting there trying to figure out what would be the most excruciatingly painful way to murder me (when I talked her into coming for this performance - mostly by calling her in the middle of the night and getting her to agree before she'd fully woken up - I may have, accidentally, neglected to mention that Carter was on the program, confining myself to mentioning Levine and Beethoven and Neruda). So it's almost a relief when the orchestra finally breaks into Beethoven's 7th, the familiar, humming rhythm of that most light-hearted of Beethoven symphonies sweeping us into its pleasant, undemanding happiness.
Wednesday morning I discover that the deadline of the Oxford e-Author contest (which I've vaguely been toying with the idea of entering for) is March 9th, India time. Panic. I spend the morning editing and re-editing and then rewriting and then re-editing and then re-editing again until I've finally managed to convert one week of random scribbles into something that bears enough of a family resemblance to a short story that I'm not ashamed to acknowledge its parentage. Short stories despatched, I decide I deserve to treat myself to some new books, so I make my way uptown to Powell's Book Store and spend a blissful three hours crawling under tables and up ladders in search of that elusive great deal. How can you not love a book store that has an entire section marked 'Marxism'? And one massive wall face of books on literary criticism? If I finally come away with only (yes, only) six books, that number alone should tell you the extent of heartbreak I suffered, leaving so many, many others behind. My original plan was to walk about in the city afterwards, possibly grabbing lunch (by this time it's 4 pm and I'm ravenous) at whatever cafe happens to catch my fancy, but six new books in my backpack means I'm going nowhere but home. I stop by the cleaners on my way back though, collecting some clothes for M who asked me [3] to pick them up if I could and neglected to mention that these included flimsy pink and green looking things that, carried in buses or borne high aloft and streaming in the wind as I walked, would firmly establish my status as a cross-dresser in the minds of the city's populace, earning me disapproving scowls and (more worryingly) smiles of open interest.
Back home again, Veena drops in for the evening, and a scrumptious dinner of melt-in-your-mouth seekh kebabs later [4] we head out for yet another musical evening. Our original destination is Green Mill, but through processes that I haven't quite figured out yet, we manage to make our way to Kingston Mines instead, stopping by some three coffee shops on the way to verify that yes, they actually are closed this late in the night (anonymous commenter: I tried. I really did. It's not my fault if M can't tell the difference between Jazz and the Blues [5]).
I can't say I cared for Kingston Mines much per se (stale cigarette smoke, the smell of too much beer, the static of people talking, dressed up 20 somethings dancing about, yeesh!) but the music was exquisite - even if I was one of the few people actually listening to it, my eyes tightly shut to block out everything around me. The performance featured some incredible music, silky-smooth guitar work on a soulful, blue-sy rendition of 'Stand by me' and a couple of electrifying vocal improvs that made me literally cry out in encouragement (you know that moment when the music surprises you by being so right - that 'yeah' moment when you throw your head back and just try to hold on).
All in all, it's been a good two days. This morning there's a thin drizzle in the air, and the Weather forecast promises a 50% probability of rain, so having had my fill of getting caught in the rain without an umbrella yesterday (oh, ya, that happened to - but no need to worry, the books were quite safe, thanks for asking), I'm staying put at home with my six new books (not to mention the three I carried with me from Philly, the four I bought and left with M the last time I was in Chicago, the three books she's managed to acquire since that I actually want to read). Who wouldn't, with a view like this out of the window:
Notes
[1] It would be great if I could actually name the artists and the work for you, but unfortunately, I don't have that kind of memory.
[2] And here I was thinking only sports persons suffered injuries. What did he do, pull a hamstring while trying to urge the orchestra to a particularly Wagnerian note? Or maybe he fell off a chair. So inconsiderate of him. I mean, a chap is going to be a conductor he should jolly well be a conductor and not go around practising to be a circus acrobat on the side. [6]
[3] Veena: note, ASKED me. Not ordered. Asked. (M: Is that okay? Is that how you wanted me to put it?)
[4] One thing I have to say about staying with M - you never, ever have to worry about getting good food (well, except if she decides to cook). The sort of uncompromising dedication she brings to this whole question of what's the best place to eat is truly exemplary. Was it Ted Hughes who called it this 'bullet and automatic purpose' with something about 'the shark's mouth that hungers down the blood-smell'?
[5] To be fair, I can't say it wasn't a substitution that I wouldn't have preferred anyway. Somehow I've always thought of Chicago as so much more a Blues town.
[6] If you think of yourself as a Wodehouse fan - see if you can spot where that reference comes from.
Categories: Personal, Arts
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Both Sides Now
Airborne again. At this altitude, the clouds are their own landscape, a wilderness of white stretching away to the horizon. To the cursory glance the cloud surface looks flat, but closer inspection will show it to be a mass of swirling dunes, a desert of windswept mist. Its edges singed to gold by the sun.
This is how the angels die. Abandoned in these badlands they stumble for hours under the blinding sun, thirsting, bewildered, not knowing which direction to travel, searching for that elusive patch of blue sky that they will fall through and be lost forever. This is why heaven, above the shape-shifting pre-occupations of the clouds, above their unheeding, reluctant bureaucracy, is a blank space.
Categories: Whimsy
This is how the angels die. Abandoned in these badlands they stumble for hours under the blinding sun, thirsting, bewildered, not knowing which direction to travel, searching for that elusive patch of blue sky that they will fall through and be lost forever. This is why heaven, above the shape-shifting pre-occupations of the clouds, above their unheeding, reluctant bureaucracy, is a blank space.
Categories: Whimsy
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Boys will be boys
Posted as part of the Blank Noise Blog-a-thon
The point of a blog-a-thon, of course, is not what you say, but that you say it. Just as the point of running in a marathon (for must of us, at least) is not to set a new World Record, but simply to put on a T-shirt for your chosen cause, slip into the sneakers you bought six months ago (as part of a New Year's resolution) and have never worn, and just have a go at it.
So theoretically, I could say pretty much anything in this post. I could quote Shakespeare "I will be angry: what hast thou to do? / Father, be quiet, he shall stay my leisure". I could find some obscurely apt poem and quote that. I could wax eloquent about socio-cultural conditions and the embeddedness of sexual harassment in patriarchal institutions. I could come up with my own two-bit analysis on how the problem could be 'solved', ignoring, with my usual blitheness, my complete lack of factual information.
Thinking about it, though, I can't shake the feeling that anything meaningful I tried to say on the topic would be mere impostor. Never having experienced street harassment first-hand, or having studied it in any way (academics, of course, are not governed by the rule of knowing what they're talking about), it's hard to think of a piece I could write for this blog-a-thon that couldn't be written better by others, and wouldn't therefore, constitute a presumption.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to try to be analytical or insightful. I'm going to fall back on my old safeguard - poetry. I'm going to break (for the third time in some 300+ posts) my self-imposed rule on not posting poems on this blog, and post one written for the blog-a-thon. It's the best I can do.
Boys will be boys
“Boys will be boys”, you shrug and say,
“You should have said no and not allowed it.”
No. I’m sorry. It’s not okay.
“Next time, come to me. I’ll find a way.
I’m strong, I can help you out. It’s
Just boys being boys. That’s all”, you say.
“It’s not like they hurt you anyway.
Now the neighbours will have to hear about it –
You know, you know that’s not okay”.
“It’s your own fault for being on display,
The sway of your hips, your breasts, your pout. It
Makes the boys want to be boys”, you say.
“They didn’t mean you any harm.” Didn’t they?
The anger rises to my mouth. It
Says: No. No. It’s not okay.
If someone gets hurt it isn’t play.
It isn’t fun if someone cries out, it
Isn’t ‘boys being boys’, as you always say.
Oh, I’m sure you’d rather that I stay
At home; that you make the rule and I don’t flout it.
But no, I’m sorry, that’s not okay.
I’m going to scream it, I’m going to shout it.
Let your boys say what they want to say.
I’ll not put this off for some other day
We fix this now – no two ways about it.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not okay.
And it’s not up to you what I may or may
Not do. You’ve got your view and you’re free to spout it.
“Boys will be boys”. I will have my say.
If they’re boys they must be taught to obey;
If they’re men they can learn to do without it.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not okay.
It’s time we made these perverts pay.
It’s time we did something about it.
‘Boys will be boys’ is all you can say.
How about asking if I’m okay.
Categories: Poetry, Life
The point of a blog-a-thon, of course, is not what you say, but that you say it. Just as the point of running in a marathon (for must of us, at least) is not to set a new World Record, but simply to put on a T-shirt for your chosen cause, slip into the sneakers you bought six months ago (as part of a New Year's resolution) and have never worn, and just have a go at it.
So theoretically, I could say pretty much anything in this post. I could quote Shakespeare "I will be angry: what hast thou to do? / Father, be quiet, he shall stay my leisure". I could find some obscurely apt poem and quote that. I could wax eloquent about socio-cultural conditions and the embeddedness of sexual harassment in patriarchal institutions. I could come up with my own two-bit analysis on how the problem could be 'solved', ignoring, with my usual blitheness, my complete lack of factual information.
Thinking about it, though, I can't shake the feeling that anything meaningful I tried to say on the topic would be mere impostor. Never having experienced street harassment first-hand, or having studied it in any way (academics, of course, are not governed by the rule of knowing what they're talking about), it's hard to think of a piece I could write for this blog-a-thon that couldn't be written better by others, and wouldn't therefore, constitute a presumption.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to try to be analytical or insightful. I'm going to fall back on my old safeguard - poetry. I'm going to break (for the third time in some 300+ posts) my self-imposed rule on not posting poems on this blog, and post one written for the blog-a-thon. It's the best I can do.
Boys will be boys
“Boys will be boys”, you shrug and say,
“You should have said no and not allowed it.”
No. I’m sorry. It’s not okay.
“Next time, come to me. I’ll find a way.
I’m strong, I can help you out. It’s
Just boys being boys. That’s all”, you say.
“It’s not like they hurt you anyway.
Now the neighbours will have to hear about it –
You know, you know that’s not okay”.
“It’s your own fault for being on display,
The sway of your hips, your breasts, your pout. It
Makes the boys want to be boys”, you say.
“They didn’t mean you any harm.” Didn’t they?
The anger rises to my mouth. It
Says: No. No. It’s not okay.
If someone gets hurt it isn’t play.
It isn’t fun if someone cries out, it
Isn’t ‘boys being boys’, as you always say.
Oh, I’m sure you’d rather that I stay
At home; that you make the rule and I don’t flout it.
But no, I’m sorry, that’s not okay.
I’m going to scream it, I’m going to shout it.
Let your boys say what they want to say.
I’ll not put this off for some other day
We fix this now – no two ways about it.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not okay.
And it’s not up to you what I may or may
Not do. You’ve got your view and you’re free to spout it.
“Boys will be boys”. I will have my say.
If they’re boys they must be taught to obey;
If they’re men they can learn to do without it.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not okay.
It’s time we made these perverts pay.
It’s time we did something about it.
‘Boys will be boys’ is all you can say.
How about asking if I’m okay.
Categories: Poetry, Life
Monday, March 06, 2006
My obligatory post-oscar post
Right. It's final then. Oscar and I are officially over. Finished. Kaput. You go your way and I go mine. I take the high road and you take the low.
The thing with the Oscar's is, every year I tell myself that it's just a stupid award ceremony, it doesn't mean anything, I shouldn't let it get to me. And then every year, come Oscar night I sit there raving saying No! No! You've got it all WRONG! Sigh. It's the sheer consistency of it that gets me, the way they manage to get everything but the most painfully obvious things wrong. I mean, for my money, you could get a group of three blindfolded monkeys to throw darts at the nominations and still get a more intelligent set of picks.
Okay, so I'm going to try and suspend judgement here, given that I haven't actually seen some of the stuff that won. So it's POSSIBLE that Reese Witherspoon, who has always struck me as the quintessential featherbrain, may actually have delivered a better performance than Felicity Huffman's glorious turn in Transamerica. And maybe, just maybe, Memoirs of a Geisha got all the art direction, cinematography type stuff right, even if, by all accounts, they managed to get everything else wrong (note to self: Never, ever watch a movie because it got 'Three Oscars' without first enquiring into what they were for). But Rachel Weisz? Best supporting actress? Really? On the theory, presumably, that the more emotion you show the better the performance, never mind if you play a self-sacrificing activist as a self-righteous little brat. Even George Clooney's performance in Syriana was more deserving, and the best I can say about that is that it was mostly harmless.
And fine, so I won't crib about Crash winning Best Picture because I actually thought it was a really good film [1], even though I think both Brokeback Mountain and Capote were better. But Best Original Screenplay? This is the same movie where all of Los Angeles is peopled by exactly twelve people and a thirteenth guy who turns out to be the twelfth guy's brother, right? I suppose I should be grateful that Munich didn't win for adapted screenplay - if they're rewarding the sacrifice of elementary logic for the sake of making some obscure political point, that would have been the most obvious pick.
Ah well. At least this way I'm sure some theatre in Philly will show me Tsotsi. Oh, and Wallace and Gromit won. Proof that even the Oscars haven't got to the point where they can overlook outright genius. Yet.
[1] Of course, it stands to reason that the one movie I watch and don't write a review of has to end up winning the Oscar for Best Picture.
Categories: Arts, Rant
The thing with the Oscar's is, every year I tell myself that it's just a stupid award ceremony, it doesn't mean anything, I shouldn't let it get to me. And then every year, come Oscar night I sit there raving saying No! No! You've got it all WRONG! Sigh. It's the sheer consistency of it that gets me, the way they manage to get everything but the most painfully obvious things wrong. I mean, for my money, you could get a group of three blindfolded monkeys to throw darts at the nominations and still get a more intelligent set of picks.
Okay, so I'm going to try and suspend judgement here, given that I haven't actually seen some of the stuff that won. So it's POSSIBLE that Reese Witherspoon, who has always struck me as the quintessential featherbrain, may actually have delivered a better performance than Felicity Huffman's glorious turn in Transamerica. And maybe, just maybe, Memoirs of a Geisha got all the art direction, cinematography type stuff right, even if, by all accounts, they managed to get everything else wrong (note to self: Never, ever watch a movie because it got 'Three Oscars' without first enquiring into what they were for). But Rachel Weisz? Best supporting actress? Really? On the theory, presumably, that the more emotion you show the better the performance, never mind if you play a self-sacrificing activist as a self-righteous little brat. Even George Clooney's performance in Syriana was more deserving, and the best I can say about that is that it was mostly harmless.
And fine, so I won't crib about Crash winning Best Picture because I actually thought it was a really good film [1], even though I think both Brokeback Mountain and Capote were better. But Best Original Screenplay? This is the same movie where all of Los Angeles is peopled by exactly twelve people and a thirteenth guy who turns out to be the twelfth guy's brother, right? I suppose I should be grateful that Munich didn't win for adapted screenplay - if they're rewarding the sacrifice of elementary logic for the sake of making some obscure political point, that would have been the most obvious pick.
Ah well. At least this way I'm sure some theatre in Philly will show me Tsotsi. Oh, and Wallace and Gromit won. Proof that even the Oscars haven't got to the point where they can overlook outright genius. Yet.
[1] Of course, it stands to reason that the one movie I watch and don't write a review of has to end up winning the Oscar for Best Picture.
Categories: Arts, Rant
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Goin' to Chicago : The Soundtrack
Who says only movies are allowed to have soundtrack? Personally, I've always felt that my life deserved nothing less than a soundtrack of its own.
In keeping with that notion, here are the Top 5 songs about travelling to Chicago [1]:
1. Count Basie: Going to Chicago Blues
When you see me coming
Raise your window high
When you see me coming
Raise your window high
When you see me passing
Hang your head down and cry.
2. Robert Johnson: Sweet Home Chicago
Baaaby, baby don't you want to go?
Baaaby, baby don't you want to go?
Back to that same old place
My sweet home Chicago
3. Led Zeppelin: When the Levee Breaks
Going, go’n’ to chicago,
Go’n’ to chicago,
Sorry but I can’t take you.
Going down, going down now, going down.
4. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Chicago
Won't you please come to Chicago
Just to sing
5. Frank Sinatra: My Kind of Town
Chicago is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has
All that jazz
Bonus Track:
Grateful Dead: Truckin'
Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on main street.
Chicago, New York, Detroit and it’s all on the same street.
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.
Coming Soon:
Leavin' Chicago: The Soundtrack (MR, talk about upcoming releases, heh.)
featuring the inimitable talents of Muddy Waters and ZZ Top
[1] Yes, indeed, I'm Chicago bound. Leaving tomorrow. Back in a week. I'd like to say that this means I might be blogging with less frequency. But really, who I am kidding?
Categories: Personal, Arts
In keeping with that notion, here are the Top 5 songs about travelling to Chicago [1]:
1. Count Basie: Going to Chicago Blues
When you see me coming
Raise your window high
When you see me coming
Raise your window high
When you see me passing
Hang your head down and cry.
2. Robert Johnson: Sweet Home Chicago
Baaaby, baby don't you want to go?
Baaaby, baby don't you want to go?
Back to that same old place
My sweet home Chicago
3. Led Zeppelin: When the Levee Breaks
Going, go’n’ to chicago,
Go’n’ to chicago,
Sorry but I can’t take you.
Going down, going down now, going down.
4. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Chicago
Won't you please come to Chicago
Just to sing
5. Frank Sinatra: My Kind of Town
Chicago is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has
All that jazz
Bonus Track:
Grateful Dead: Truckin'
Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on main street.
Chicago, New York, Detroit and it’s all on the same street.
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.
Coming Soon:
Leavin' Chicago: The Soundtrack (MR, talk about upcoming releases, heh.)
featuring the inimitable talents of Muddy Waters and ZZ Top
[1] Yes, indeed, I'm Chicago bound. Leaving tomorrow. Back in a week. I'd like to say that this means I might be blogging with less frequency. But really, who I am kidding?
Categories: Personal, Arts
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Comment on that
boss i am disappointed in
some of your readers they
are always asking how does
archy work the shift so as to get a
new line or how does archy do
this or do that they
are always interested in technical
details when the main question is
whether the stuff is
literature or not
- don marquis, 'mehitabel was once cleopatra' [1]
You know. It had been a while since I'd put any poetry. And well, it's been that kind of a day. Cockroaches of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your...SQUISH!
[1] from the delightful archy and mehitabel
Categories: Whimsy, Poetry
some of your readers they
are always asking how does
archy work the shift so as to get a
new line or how does archy do
this or do that they
are always interested in technical
details when the main question is
whether the stuff is
literature or not
- don marquis, 'mehitabel was once cleopatra' [1]
You know. It had been a while since I'd put any poetry. And well, it's been that kind of a day. Cockroaches of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your...SQUISH!
[1] from the delightful archy and mehitabel
Categories: Whimsy, Poetry
Friday, March 03, 2006
In the summer, when it drizzles
Another of Shoe-fiend's insidious little assignments:
He dropped the sausages into the smoking oil, and listened to them sizzle. It was a sound he loved, the sharpness of it, the indignation. Like the hissing of some snake, roused rudely from sleep.
I love the sausage in the saucepan, when it sizzles. Wait, who'd said that? It was her, wasn't it? He'd been standing here, in this very kitchen, cooking frankfurters for brunch and she'd suddenly broken out into song. I love the sausage at our lunchtime. Yes, that's right, he remembered now. It must have been a Sunday. He'd called her over first thing in the morning so they could listen to his new Ella LP. Ella Fitzgerald's Greatest Hits. Such a glorious album. He wondered where it was now. They used to listen to it all the time. But that time, the one when she sang the song, was the first. I love the sausage when it fries. He chuckled softly to himself. How much they'd laughed then. How they'd spent the rest of the day making up stupid parodies like that. 'Say it's only a bacon rind / Frying over a non-stick pan'; 'I've got you under my spoon'; 'How high the stove', 'Bacon Street Blues'. And this one of course, the one she came up with first. I love the sausage in the summer, when it drizzles.
Yes, she loved it when it drizzled. She used to go stir-crazy when it rained. He still remembered the first time she'd suggested going out to get wet in it. How much the idea had shocked him then. Two decades of being a good little boy, the kind who knows better than to catch a cold by getting drenched in the rain, had rebelled against it. Two decades of being proper, coupled with an instinctive suspicion of anything that felt like it came out of a Gene Kelly movie. He'd opened his mouth to say no and realised that she was already out there, on the terrace, dancing about in the downpour. Her shirt clinging to her like a kind of white, transparent happiness. Seeing that slight figure give itself entirely to the monsoon, watching the swirling grace of it, he had a sudden vision of what spontaneity must look like. Then she had come running back to him again, her lips mouthing words he couldn't quite make out, her hand taking his. How could he resist her then? He stumbled after her, an anxious smile on his lips, feeling his inhibitions drain from him, a sense of abandon soak him through. That feeling that tells you that is no longer possible to go further than you have already come, get any wetter than you already are. He threw back his head and felt the raindrops on his eyelids, and he laughed, feeling the joy of that moment drip from his hair, the happiness trickled down through his clothes, all the way to his feet.
Yes, those were good times. He turned the sausages over, exposing the charred side. It had been weeks now since he'd had an e-mail from her. He supposed she was busy, what with the new baby and all. Still, she could write. The sausages were starting to stick together. He teased them apart, pushed them to opposite ends of the pan. Maybe he should try calling her. It would be good to hear her voice again. He looked at the sausages. He had time. He could at least go get her number.
He opened his little notebook and stared at the page that had her numbers on it. There were so many of them, most of them crossed out now. Like the scars of old wounds. Her home number, from when she still lived with her parents, for instance. The way her brother would hang up if he heard a male voice asking for her. Remember the time he'd been trying to call her from that PCO booth in Rajahmundry? He'd finally had to pay the woman who ran the PCO to get on the phone and ask for her. And that one, the number of that sub-let in Germany, the one where the landlady didn't speak any English. "Errr...Enschuldigen Sie. Ich mochte en fraulein sprachen, bitte?" That had been a nuisance. And her boyfriends, of course. A whole string of them. Not that he'd ever called any of them. Still, it was good to have the numbers. "In case of an emergency", she said. "You mean like if I'm re-reading Plath and get carried away?"."Idiot." He used to threaten her that if she didn't take his calls he would call up her then boyfriend (whoever he might be) and tell him all about 'us'. Not that there was ever anything to tell, of course.
The smell of burning meat finally made it through to his brain. The sausages! He'd completely forgotten them! The kitchen was filled with grey, greasy smoke. He opened the windows and the smell of wet earth greeted him. It had grown cloudy without his noticing it. It was starting to rain, the first few drops just marking out the earth with their careful decimals. In the summer, when it drizzles. No, wait, that was wrong, wasn't it? It sizzled when it was summer; it must have been winter when it drizzled. He stared at the sausages, examining them. It would take too long to make something else for lunch now. They weren't THAT badly burnt. They would have to do.
The smoke in the kitchen was clearing now. The rain had started up in earnest. On an impulse he scraped the sausages onto a plate, dumped the frying pan in the sink, and, stopping only to take his keys with him, went running up to the terrace. It's been too long since I've done this, he thought to himself, opening his arms to the rain. The children on the roof opposite were staring at him, taking in his tucked in shirt, his expensive looking trousers. What was a thirty year old man, a grown-up, doing prancing about in the rain, you could hear them thinking. He waved at them.
Behind him, on the kitchen counter, the sausages grew slowly cold.
Categories: Fiction
He dropped the sausages into the smoking oil, and listened to them sizzle. It was a sound he loved, the sharpness of it, the indignation. Like the hissing of some snake, roused rudely from sleep.
I love the sausage in the saucepan, when it sizzles. Wait, who'd said that? It was her, wasn't it? He'd been standing here, in this very kitchen, cooking frankfurters for brunch and she'd suddenly broken out into song. I love the sausage at our lunchtime. Yes, that's right, he remembered now. It must have been a Sunday. He'd called her over first thing in the morning so they could listen to his new Ella LP. Ella Fitzgerald's Greatest Hits. Such a glorious album. He wondered where it was now. They used to listen to it all the time. But that time, the one when she sang the song, was the first. I love the sausage when it fries. He chuckled softly to himself. How much they'd laughed then. How they'd spent the rest of the day making up stupid parodies like that. 'Say it's only a bacon rind / Frying over a non-stick pan'; 'I've got you under my spoon'; 'How high the stove', 'Bacon Street Blues'. And this one of course, the one she came up with first. I love the sausage in the summer, when it drizzles.
Yes, she loved it when it drizzled. She used to go stir-crazy when it rained. He still remembered the first time she'd suggested going out to get wet in it. How much the idea had shocked him then. Two decades of being a good little boy, the kind who knows better than to catch a cold by getting drenched in the rain, had rebelled against it. Two decades of being proper, coupled with an instinctive suspicion of anything that felt like it came out of a Gene Kelly movie. He'd opened his mouth to say no and realised that she was already out there, on the terrace, dancing about in the downpour. Her shirt clinging to her like a kind of white, transparent happiness. Seeing that slight figure give itself entirely to the monsoon, watching the swirling grace of it, he had a sudden vision of what spontaneity must look like. Then she had come running back to him again, her lips mouthing words he couldn't quite make out, her hand taking his. How could he resist her then? He stumbled after her, an anxious smile on his lips, feeling his inhibitions drain from him, a sense of abandon soak him through. That feeling that tells you that is no longer possible to go further than you have already come, get any wetter than you already are. He threw back his head and felt the raindrops on his eyelids, and he laughed, feeling the joy of that moment drip from his hair, the happiness trickled down through his clothes, all the way to his feet.
Yes, those were good times. He turned the sausages over, exposing the charred side. It had been weeks now since he'd had an e-mail from her. He supposed she was busy, what with the new baby and all. Still, she could write. The sausages were starting to stick together. He teased them apart, pushed them to opposite ends of the pan. Maybe he should try calling her. It would be good to hear her voice again. He looked at the sausages. He had time. He could at least go get her number.
He opened his little notebook and stared at the page that had her numbers on it. There were so many of them, most of them crossed out now. Like the scars of old wounds. Her home number, from when she still lived with her parents, for instance. The way her brother would hang up if he heard a male voice asking for her. Remember the time he'd been trying to call her from that PCO booth in Rajahmundry? He'd finally had to pay the woman who ran the PCO to get on the phone and ask for her. And that one, the number of that sub-let in Germany, the one where the landlady didn't speak any English. "Errr...Enschuldigen Sie. Ich mochte en fraulein sprachen, bitte?" That had been a nuisance. And her boyfriends, of course. A whole string of them. Not that he'd ever called any of them. Still, it was good to have the numbers. "In case of an emergency", she said. "You mean like if I'm re-reading Plath and get carried away?"."Idiot." He used to threaten her that if she didn't take his calls he would call up her then boyfriend (whoever he might be) and tell him all about 'us'. Not that there was ever anything to tell, of course.
The smell of burning meat finally made it through to his brain. The sausages! He'd completely forgotten them! The kitchen was filled with grey, greasy smoke. He opened the windows and the smell of wet earth greeted him. It had grown cloudy without his noticing it. It was starting to rain, the first few drops just marking out the earth with their careful decimals. In the summer, when it drizzles. No, wait, that was wrong, wasn't it? It sizzled when it was summer; it must have been winter when it drizzled. He stared at the sausages, examining them. It would take too long to make something else for lunch now. They weren't THAT badly burnt. They would have to do.
The smoke in the kitchen was clearing now. The rain had started up in earnest. On an impulse he scraped the sausages onto a plate, dumped the frying pan in the sink, and, stopping only to take his keys with him, went running up to the terrace. It's been too long since I've done this, he thought to himself, opening his arms to the rain. The children on the roof opposite were staring at him, taking in his tucked in shirt, his expensive looking trousers. What was a thirty year old man, a grown-up, doing prancing about in the rain, you could hear them thinking. He waved at them.
Behind him, on the kitchen counter, the sausages grew slowly cold.
Categories: Fiction
Freezing Rain
Right. Enough politics. When Mumbai Mirror starts quoting you, you know it's time you got back to what really mattered. Like the weather, for instance.
Don't you just hate it when they describe the weather outside as freezing rain? I mean, snow I can handle. Snow is like one of those big fluffy dogs that look like they might have polar bear blood in them - the kind that are all cute and loving and stuff, and will come and put their paws on your shoulder (while you're standing up) and proceed to lick you till you feel like a postage stamp. Snow is like that - like some big fuzzy animal that you don't really want to have deal with, but can't really find it in your heart to feel indignant about.
Freezing rain is another proposition entirely. The very name makes you think of some angular sharp-tongued geography teacher. Or some stepmother in a fairy tale. Freezing rain. Why do they have to add the adjective anyway? Couldn't they just say rain and leave it at that? We all know what the temperature is outside, we can figure it out. But no, the weather channel people have to rub this in, don't they? You can see them rubbing their mittened hands in glee. The sadists. What can you expect from people who give hurricanes the names of young girls.
Fortunately, on days like this, one always has one's inner resources to fall back on. Said resources consisting mostly of copious quantities of hot chocolate, and a stunning recording one recently acquired of Horowitz playing Schubert and Chopin. Glorious.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Don't you just hate it when they describe the weather outside as freezing rain? I mean, snow I can handle. Snow is like one of those big fluffy dogs that look like they might have polar bear blood in them - the kind that are all cute and loving and stuff, and will come and put their paws on your shoulder (while you're standing up) and proceed to lick you till you feel like a postage stamp. Snow is like that - like some big fuzzy animal that you don't really want to have deal with, but can't really find it in your heart to feel indignant about.
Freezing rain is another proposition entirely. The very name makes you think of some angular sharp-tongued geography teacher. Or some stepmother in a fairy tale. Freezing rain. Why do they have to add the adjective anyway? Couldn't they just say rain and leave it at that? We all know what the temperature is outside, we can figure it out. But no, the weather channel people have to rub this in, don't they? You can see them rubbing their mittened hands in glee. The sadists. What can you expect from people who give hurricanes the names of young girls.
Fortunately, on days like this, one always has one's inner resources to fall back on. Said resources consisting mostly of copious quantities of hot chocolate, and a stunning recording one recently acquired of Horowitz playing Schubert and Chopin. Glorious.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
The serial opponent
It was the day the World Social Forum 2004 opened. Of the many speakers who spoke that night, two stand out in my memory. The first was the incredible Shirin Ebadi, whose speech, like so many other speeches that day, served only to reaffirm the need for continued effort in the area of human rights and the importance of building stronger ties through forums like the WSF. It wasn't a particularly striking speech - what made it memorable was the way it was delivered, the quiet dignity of the speaker, the sense you got that every word had been carefully weighed and considered, drawing upon long years of experience fighting, and winning against, injustice.
The other speech I remember from that evening was Arundhati Roy's. Ms. Roy's speech was anything but quiet or dignified - it consisted, if memory serves, of exhorting the assembled public to direct, even violent protest against all MNCs; Ms. Roy's argument being that these companies (which included, as I remember it, Coke and Pepsi) were profiteering off the war in Iraq and as such were fair game for attack (the irony of proposing violent protest against - presumably - innocent managers in local MNC offices in order to protest the US invasion of Iraq had apparently not occured to Ms. Roy). Two things struck me about this speech. The first was the stirring effectiveness with which it was delivered - the quality of speech writing, the feel for the dramatic. The second was the sheer irrationality and empty-headedness of the argument being made once you got past the verbal fireworks. It wasn't just that what Ms. Roy was suggesting was impractical (I'm all for idealism) it was that what she was saying was ridiculous both morally and intellectually.
The contrast between these two speeches, throws into sharp relief for me the reason I have a low opinion of Ms. Roy. It seems to me that Ms. Roy has no real opinion (to the extent that an opinion can be defined as a reasoned and consistent set of ideas) all she has is a certain amount of literary talent and an overblown attitude. Protest, in Ms. Roy's world, is to be valued for its own sake and need not, therefore, be linked to either a coherent reason for protesting or a potential outcome to be achieved from the protest. There's something very adolescent in this - Ms. Roy has the petulant and combative self-righteousness of a teenager desperate to be allowed to sit with grown-ups.
Take her new piece in the Hindu protesting George Bush's visit to India, for instance. The entire piece is one long collection of indignant non sequiturs from start to finish. George Bush, we are told, is coming on a "triumphalist tour" to "wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects". Huh? When did that happen? Last time I checked the purpose of his visit was to discuss a hugely sensitive nuclear deal, not to crow over the conquered locals like some decadent Roman emperor.
This gem of hyperbole is followed by a long rant about the venue of Bush's public address in Delhi - the Old Fort - a diatribe that, not content with being gratuitiously insulting to Bush (and showing off Ms. Roy's deep and analytical understanding of the local fauna) includes a set of incoherent pot-shots at the "rich folk who live in our poor country like caged animals" who are, apparently, "protecting themselves from the threat of vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries." What? Never mind the irrelevance of the venue of Bush's speech, or the speech itself. Never mind the questionable factual basis for assuming that the only people at this speech will be rich capitalists (one would have thought bureaucrats and politicians would make up large chunks of the audience. Oh, and journalists.). Never mind the long and tortuous debate about the merits of capitalism / free market and the benefits of these systems for the nation's economic development. Never mind the engrossing question of how, in a land that has been independent for a little under 60 years, and liberalised for a little over a decade, corporate CEOs could have been dispossessing the people for centuries. Never mind that many of those CEOs may be as opposed to Bush's foreign policy as Ms. Roy herself. Why in god's name is this woman ranting about India's internal socio-economic inequalities in an Op-Ed column on Bush's visit? What's the connection? Can this woman stick to a point? Does she have one?
Oh, but it gets better. Just in case you felt the issue of venues Bush will visit had not been developed enough, Ms. Roy spends the last paragraph of her 'opinion' piece arguing against Bush's visit to another venue - Gandhi's memorial at Rajghat. Millions of Indians, we are told, will wince at this. Make that a million less one. How does it matter what bogus PR stunts Bush pulls, or whether he does or does not place flowers on a stupid slab of stone? What could that possibly have to do with the real and potentially frightening outcomes of Bush's visit? If millions of Indians want to wince over his visit let them wince if / when he signs a deal that helps India take her nuclear program forward.
That deal, and its ramifications, incidentally, aren't even mentioned in Ms. Roy's article. Apparently, what the primates in Delhi Zoo think of Bush are, to her, of more immediate and pressing interest. "It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will.", Ms. Roy finally declares. But in her entire piece she gives us no reason to protest his visit. If Bush's visit is to be protested, it should, hopefully, be for a reason better than proving that such protest is possible. What an issue that warrants such a protest might be, unfortunately, Ms. Roy sheds no light on, blithely assuming that anyone reading her piece must already agree with her point of view on this (though, of course, in that case, there really isn't much point to the article, is there?). What then, is she protesting? Bush's existence on Earth? The possibility of transatlantic flight? And this is the sort of idiocy that what is arguably the country's most intelligent newspaper prints under the heading Opinion / News ANALYSIS!!! [1]
Don't misunderstand me. I'm as opposed to Bush's foreign policies as anyone, and am entirely with Ms. Roy in describing him as a war-monger and terrorist. But that's precisely why I find Ms. Roy's piece so irritating. With so many good reasons to criticise Bush available, why pick on a bunch of things that make no difference to anyone, and reinforce the stereotype that Bush protesters are just airhead liberals who rant about anything and everything. To begin with, if we are protesting anything at all, it should be specific decisions or actions that Bush might take in India, not the fact that he's visiting India at all. If that visit per se is cause for protest then are we to assume that it is Ms. Roy's position that we should never meet with our enemies, never engage in any sort of meaningful dialogue with them whatsoever? That the very presence of someone whose policies elsewhere and/ or in the past we disagree with is cause for protest. How is that going to bring us any closer to a reasonable solution of the world's problems? It is my personal belief that if we are to make any progress at all, we must put our faith in a discussion of the issues, not in this sort of blind antipathy to anything and everything associated with those we oppose, not in this sort of boorish sniping.
Ms. Roy would like to believe, no doubt, that she is an activist. That, in my opinion, is false. Activists are people who bring courage and determination to finding meaningful solutions to real problems in a carefully considered way. People who will say any old thing to get their audience worked up against the other side are just rabble rousers. Ms. Roy may have a great facility with words (though, personally, I found even the writing here fairly jarring - what was with the long drawn out animal motif; and that incredibly obvious quail hunting joke?) but that's no substitute for honest content. And the sooner we stop taking her seriously, the sooner we're going to be able to engage in real debate on real issues again.
[1] By way of contrast, read this editorial in the NY Times about Bush's visit to India.
Categories: CurrentAffairs, Rant
The other speech I remember from that evening was Arundhati Roy's. Ms. Roy's speech was anything but quiet or dignified - it consisted, if memory serves, of exhorting the assembled public to direct, even violent protest against all MNCs; Ms. Roy's argument being that these companies (which included, as I remember it, Coke and Pepsi) were profiteering off the war in Iraq and as such were fair game for attack (the irony of proposing violent protest against - presumably - innocent managers in local MNC offices in order to protest the US invasion of Iraq had apparently not occured to Ms. Roy). Two things struck me about this speech. The first was the stirring effectiveness with which it was delivered - the quality of speech writing, the feel for the dramatic. The second was the sheer irrationality and empty-headedness of the argument being made once you got past the verbal fireworks. It wasn't just that what Ms. Roy was suggesting was impractical (I'm all for idealism) it was that what she was saying was ridiculous both morally and intellectually.
The contrast between these two speeches, throws into sharp relief for me the reason I have a low opinion of Ms. Roy. It seems to me that Ms. Roy has no real opinion (to the extent that an opinion can be defined as a reasoned and consistent set of ideas) all she has is a certain amount of literary talent and an overblown attitude. Protest, in Ms. Roy's world, is to be valued for its own sake and need not, therefore, be linked to either a coherent reason for protesting or a potential outcome to be achieved from the protest. There's something very adolescent in this - Ms. Roy has the petulant and combative self-righteousness of a teenager desperate to be allowed to sit with grown-ups.
Take her new piece in the Hindu protesting George Bush's visit to India, for instance. The entire piece is one long collection of indignant non sequiturs from start to finish. George Bush, we are told, is coming on a "triumphalist tour" to "wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects". Huh? When did that happen? Last time I checked the purpose of his visit was to discuss a hugely sensitive nuclear deal, not to crow over the conquered locals like some decadent Roman emperor.
This gem of hyperbole is followed by a long rant about the venue of Bush's public address in Delhi - the Old Fort - a diatribe that, not content with being gratuitiously insulting to Bush (and showing off Ms. Roy's deep and analytical understanding of the local fauna) includes a set of incoherent pot-shots at the "rich folk who live in our poor country like caged animals" who are, apparently, "protecting themselves from the threat of vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries." What? Never mind the irrelevance of the venue of Bush's speech, or the speech itself. Never mind the questionable factual basis for assuming that the only people at this speech will be rich capitalists (one would have thought bureaucrats and politicians would make up large chunks of the audience. Oh, and journalists.). Never mind the long and tortuous debate about the merits of capitalism / free market and the benefits of these systems for the nation's economic development. Never mind the engrossing question of how, in a land that has been independent for a little under 60 years, and liberalised for a little over a decade, corporate CEOs could have been dispossessing the people for centuries. Never mind that many of those CEOs may be as opposed to Bush's foreign policy as Ms. Roy herself. Why in god's name is this woman ranting about India's internal socio-economic inequalities in an Op-Ed column on Bush's visit? What's the connection? Can this woman stick to a point? Does she have one?
Oh, but it gets better. Just in case you felt the issue of venues Bush will visit had not been developed enough, Ms. Roy spends the last paragraph of her 'opinion' piece arguing against Bush's visit to another venue - Gandhi's memorial at Rajghat. Millions of Indians, we are told, will wince at this. Make that a million less one. How does it matter what bogus PR stunts Bush pulls, or whether he does or does not place flowers on a stupid slab of stone? What could that possibly have to do with the real and potentially frightening outcomes of Bush's visit? If millions of Indians want to wince over his visit let them wince if / when he signs a deal that helps India take her nuclear program forward.
That deal, and its ramifications, incidentally, aren't even mentioned in Ms. Roy's article. Apparently, what the primates in Delhi Zoo think of Bush are, to her, of more immediate and pressing interest. "It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will.", Ms. Roy finally declares. But in her entire piece she gives us no reason to protest his visit. If Bush's visit is to be protested, it should, hopefully, be for a reason better than proving that such protest is possible. What an issue that warrants such a protest might be, unfortunately, Ms. Roy sheds no light on, blithely assuming that anyone reading her piece must already agree with her point of view on this (though, of course, in that case, there really isn't much point to the article, is there?). What then, is she protesting? Bush's existence on Earth? The possibility of transatlantic flight? And this is the sort of idiocy that what is arguably the country's most intelligent newspaper prints under the heading Opinion / News ANALYSIS!!! [1]
Don't misunderstand me. I'm as opposed to Bush's foreign policies as anyone, and am entirely with Ms. Roy in describing him as a war-monger and terrorist. But that's precisely why I find Ms. Roy's piece so irritating. With so many good reasons to criticise Bush available, why pick on a bunch of things that make no difference to anyone, and reinforce the stereotype that Bush protesters are just airhead liberals who rant about anything and everything. To begin with, if we are protesting anything at all, it should be specific decisions or actions that Bush might take in India, not the fact that he's visiting India at all. If that visit per se is cause for protest then are we to assume that it is Ms. Roy's position that we should never meet with our enemies, never engage in any sort of meaningful dialogue with them whatsoever? That the very presence of someone whose policies elsewhere and/ or in the past we disagree with is cause for protest. How is that going to bring us any closer to a reasonable solution of the world's problems? It is my personal belief that if we are to make any progress at all, we must put our faith in a discussion of the issues, not in this sort of blind antipathy to anything and everything associated with those we oppose, not in this sort of boorish sniping.
Ms. Roy would like to believe, no doubt, that she is an activist. That, in my opinion, is false. Activists are people who bring courage and determination to finding meaningful solutions to real problems in a carefully considered way. People who will say any old thing to get their audience worked up against the other side are just rabble rousers. Ms. Roy may have a great facility with words (though, personally, I found even the writing here fairly jarring - what was with the long drawn out animal motif; and that incredibly obvious quail hunting joke?) but that's no substitute for honest content. And the sooner we stop taking her seriously, the sooner we're going to be able to engage in real debate on real issues again.
[1] By way of contrast, read this editorial in the NY Times about Bush's visit to India.
Categories: CurrentAffairs, Rant
Okay, now I KNOW the US Army is desperate
You know all the cartoons in the papers that talk about military recruiters going after anyone and everyone?
Well, I just got a mail from the local recruiting officer asking me if I wanted to join the US Marine Corp.
Okay, technically, he's inviting me to join their summer training program for officers, which is apparently "the best management training program in America" according to (hold your breath!) Inc. Magazine, but the mail assures me that once I'm done with the course I should have no problem at all in going on to become a trained pilot flying "some of the most advanced tactical aircraft in the world" or, if I'd prefer it, I could choose to be a Lieutenant in the Marine Corp and "receive starting salaries of $40,000-49,000 a year plus incredible benefits" (which presumably include butch haircuts and the chance to get shot for some bogus political agenda).
All I can say is, I hope these idiots are better with targeting bombs than they are with e-mail. Otherwise a hell of a lot of innocent people are getting killed (oh, wait, that explains a lot. No wonder they invaded Iraq when they wanted to go after terrorists in Afghanistan).
Maybe I should consider it though (never mind that I'm not an undergraduate student, able-bodied, of sound mind, or a US citizen - all of which you need to be to qualify). I mean okay, so boot camp will be hell (the first forty five minutes of Full Metal Jacket flash through my head) but there may be situations where being a mean, green fighting machine may turn out to be handy. Like for my dissertation defense, for instance. Or when I'm trying to keep 70 year old grandmas from pushing in in front of me in the supermarket check-out line.
And hey, if Woody Allen could be a war hero in Love and Death, then this thing should be a cinch. After all, I'm taller. Plus I already know the official Marine Corp marching song. You know, the one by Tom Lehrer.
Categories: Personal
Well, I just got a mail from the local recruiting officer asking me if I wanted to join the US Marine Corp.
Okay, technically, he's inviting me to join their summer training program for officers, which is apparently "the best management training program in America" according to (hold your breath!) Inc. Magazine, but the mail assures me that once I'm done with the course I should have no problem at all in going on to become a trained pilot flying "some of the most advanced tactical aircraft in the world" or, if I'd prefer it, I could choose to be a Lieutenant in the Marine Corp and "receive starting salaries of $40,000-49,000 a year plus incredible benefits" (which presumably include butch haircuts and the chance to get shot for some bogus political agenda).
All I can say is, I hope these idiots are better with targeting bombs than they are with e-mail. Otherwise a hell of a lot of innocent people are getting killed (oh, wait, that explains a lot. No wonder they invaded Iraq when they wanted to go after terrorists in Afghanistan).
Maybe I should consider it though (never mind that I'm not an undergraduate student, able-bodied, of sound mind, or a US citizen - all of which you need to be to qualify). I mean okay, so boot camp will be hell (the first forty five minutes of Full Metal Jacket flash through my head) but there may be situations where being a mean, green fighting machine may turn out to be handy. Like for my dissertation defense, for instance. Or when I'm trying to keep 70 year old grandmas from pushing in in front of me in the supermarket check-out line.
And hey, if Woody Allen could be a war hero in Love and Death, then this thing should be a cinch. After all, I'm taller. Plus I already know the official Marine Corp marching song. You know, the one by Tom Lehrer.
Categories: Personal
Minia-chores
As usual, you need to blame Shoe-fiend. She keeps posting all these cool writing assignments on her blog, so that sooner or later a fellow can't resist the challenge. Her latest was to write a story in exactly 50 words (plus a title of upto 15 words; there was also some guff about it having to be a story or something, but hey, I'm not taking a class in this stuff). Anyway, here goes, and to make it more interesting, I've limited myself to a one word title as well:
Unsaved
Categories: Fiction
Unsaved
When the power failed, he realized he hadn’t saved a copy of the note. The one where he explained about his life. It was a good note. It had been a good life. He had been about it to finish it. He wondered if he could get it back now.
DumbShe says I have to stop talking to myself. It freaks her out, she says. No big deal. I mean, it’s not like I’m addicted or anything. Hell, I’ll do it right now: “I do solemnly swear never to talk to myself again”. There. How’s that for resolve?
Categories: Fiction
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Hitting that button
"I fell not only into the habits but into the moods of the student day. Every morning I was hopeful, determined, energized by the campanile bells and by the smell of eucalyptus and by the day's projected accomplishments. On the way to breakfast I would walk briskly, breathe deeply, review my "plans" for the day: I would write five pages, return all calls, lunch on raisins and answer ten letters. I would at least read E.H. Gombrich. I would once and for all get the meaning of the word "structuralist". And yet every afternoon by four o'clock, the hour when I met my single class, I was once again dulled, glazed, sunk in an excess of carbohydrates and in my own mediocrity, in my failure - still, after twenty years - to "live up to" the day's possibilities."
- Joan Didion
Do you ever get the feeling that your life is on perpetual snooze? That all you're really doing is buying time, punching the clock that will let you go on the way you are a little longer, that will keep you from having to wake up to the reality of your days? And that death, by extension, would be just a really bad case of oversleeping?
Robert Lowell writes:
The man is killing time - there's nothing else.
No help now from the fifth of Bourbon
chucked helter-skelter into the river,
even its cork sucked under.
Stubbed before-breakfast cigarettes
burn bull's-eyes on the bedside table;
a plastic tumbler of alka seltzer
champagnes in the bathroom.
No help from his body, the whale's
warm-hearted blubber, foundering down
leagues of ocean, gasping whiteness.
The barbed hooks fester. The lines snap tight.
When he looks for neighbours, their names blur in the window,
his distracted eye sees only glass sky.
His despair has the galvanized colour
of the mop and water in the galvanized bucket.
Once she was close to him
as water to the dead metal.
He looks at her engagements inked on her calendar.
A list of indictments.
At the numbers in her thumbed black telephone book.
A quiver full of arrows.
Her absence hisses like steam,
the pipes sing...
even corroded metal somehow functions.
He snores in his iron lung,
and hears the voice of Eve,
beseeching freedom from the Garden's
perfect and ponderous bubble. No voice
outsings the serpent's flawed, euphoric hiss.
The cheese wilts in the rat-trap,
the milk turns to junket in the cornflakes bowl,
car keys and razor blades
shine in an ashtray.
Is he killing time? Out on the street,
two cops on horseback clop through the April rain
to check the parking meter violations -
their oilskins yellow as forsythia.
- Robert Lowell, 'The Drinker'
Sometimes it's fun to just turn over and wallow.
Categories: Whimsy
- Joan Didion
Do you ever get the feeling that your life is on perpetual snooze? That all you're really doing is buying time, punching the clock that will let you go on the way you are a little longer, that will keep you from having to wake up to the reality of your days? And that death, by extension, would be just a really bad case of oversleeping?
Robert Lowell writes:
The man is killing time - there's nothing else.
No help now from the fifth of Bourbon
chucked helter-skelter into the river,
even its cork sucked under.
Stubbed before-breakfast cigarettes
burn bull's-eyes on the bedside table;
a plastic tumbler of alka seltzer
champagnes in the bathroom.
No help from his body, the whale's
warm-hearted blubber, foundering down
leagues of ocean, gasping whiteness.
The barbed hooks fester. The lines snap tight.
When he looks for neighbours, their names blur in the window,
his distracted eye sees only glass sky.
His despair has the galvanized colour
of the mop and water in the galvanized bucket.
Once she was close to him
as water to the dead metal.
He looks at her engagements inked on her calendar.
A list of indictments.
At the numbers in her thumbed black telephone book.
A quiver full of arrows.
Her absence hisses like steam,
the pipes sing...
even corroded metal somehow functions.
He snores in his iron lung,
and hears the voice of Eve,
beseeching freedom from the Garden's
perfect and ponderous bubble. No voice
outsings the serpent's flawed, euphoric hiss.
The cheese wilts in the rat-trap,
the milk turns to junket in the cornflakes bowl,
car keys and razor blades
shine in an ashtray.
Is he killing time? Out on the street,
two cops on horseback clop through the April rain
to check the parking meter violations -
their oilskins yellow as forsythia.
- Robert Lowell, 'The Drinker'
Sometimes it's fun to just turn over and wallow.
Categories: Whimsy
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