maybe

advertorial

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 12:28:26 GMT

Hi everyone!

If you have a job requiring a copywriter, let me know! I'm offering my services.

A Child's Garden of Verses

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sat, 10 May 2008 07:05:24 GMT

I must have been eleven or twelve, I imagine, when a teacher gifted me with a tiny book hardly the size of my hand. It was an enchanting little thing and I carried it around in the pocket stitched into my school uniform. It was a big pocket and I remember how during recess the girls in school walked around the canteen with their wallets bulging from below the fabric. I stole nuggets of time for nuggets of poetry, skimming through (not without guilt) the longer verses, hoping they’d finish faster. I might not be wrong to suppose that that was when I first cultivated an appreciation for poetry that could capture an entire idea in eight lines or less. A Child’s Garden of Verses BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN- (skip a line) SON, illustrated by Charles Robinson, whose art in this collection established his reputation. He went on to contribute work to hundreds of editions, including Alice In Wonderland and The Secret Garden. Every poem, however tender and true, is accompanied by images equally tender and true. They created for me a secret passage out of the mundane lessons in school and boring family dinners; I had repeated a few quietly to myself so many times that they were committed to memory. ‘The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings. The world is so full of a number of…’ I dare say some kids thought I was a nut but no one understood, or maybe I couldn’t explain, the magic I carried inside me. I am bigger than you, I think I might’ve said then (but I didn’t for surely that would have invited a host of criticism since I was a fairly large child). So I sank deeper and deeper into myself and into my kingdom of happy thoughts. Eventually I lost it in heaps and piles of rubbish accumulated over the years, gradually forgot about it and gave the memories free rein to recede into the gray area of time and age. Imagine my surprise and delight when today, while clearing drawers and sweeping up a decade of memorabilia, I chanced upon my childhood imaginary world, this wonderful tiny book of escape; I sat on the dusty floor, opened it up. Stevenson says it best when he writes, 'But the glory kept shinning and bright in my eyes, / And the stars going round in my head.'

nds!

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:41:07 GMT

Yes! I've got Hotel Dusk! Now I'm stuck between wanting to start on it today after finishing the first part of Ace Attorney and starting on it after the exams when I'll need more distractions..

Yes, Preet. What a life-altering decision it will be either way.

1 thing

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:52:49 GMT

If and when there is milk in the fridge, these days I mix myself a cup of coffee with just a dash of Van Houten chocolate powder, and sip at it until I feel the cotton-wool-and-oil heaviness melt off my head. The coffee powder is a cheap 3-in-1 but my taste buds are surprisingly accustomed to its thin, weak taste; I've come to like it, and although I don't look forward to waking up, I do look forward to home-made mocha warming up the insides of my mouth and stomach. There are days I go for seconds; one year ago my caffeine receptivity would never have allowed it but these days, I get a raging headache and movie-character cranky if I don't get my fix within 2 or 3 hours of waking up and then some more. But in the mornings I like to imagine myself at a 1900s hole-in-the-wall sort of Parisian cafe with a dainty obligatory croissant next to my cup and checking my email on a super high-speed wireless internet connection. Or that ahead of my study table, which is plastered against the wall, is an Italian barista and imagine I can have all the comforts of my books and internetitivy while across the table/counter lie the coffee-making paraphernalia and crumbs from the loaves of bread baking in the oven and if I crook my head and look further behind the barista, I can discern quite clearly a quaint little street winding off to somewhere.

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:15:55 GMT

I need a job so I can buy and read Margaret Atwood and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

summary thoughts on brave new world

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:08:14 GMT

After 'The Grand Inquisition', the best chapter I've read so far is Chapter 17 in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in which Mustafa Mond and the Savage talk about god and religion. It's absolutely brilliant. Honestly, I can see Mond's side of the argument quite well and I sympathize with his vision of the world. Unfortunately, I do not sympathize with the results. Such a totalitarian, consumption-driven, class-stractified world would be a good solution, I think, if its citizens were less stupid. Why is Mustafa Mond so eloquent and brilliant and the products of his science so dumb? Maybe it's necessary to be aware that one has rejected truth for happiness as opposed to simply living happily. A conscious decision has to be made, a suffering must be undergone. More on all this when I find the time to put my thoughts together. Anyway, I must confess I found John Savage a trifle annoying.

I hope the get my hands on The Island soon. It seems like the perfect compliment to BNW.

Scientific Interpretation of Karma

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:07:35 GMT

"K. V. Mardia, in his book The Scientific Foundations of Jainism, has interpreted karma in terms of modern physics, suggesting that the particles are made of karmons, dynamic high energy particles which permeate the universe. However, most scientists do not consider karma theory to be within the bounds of science, as many believe it is a non-testable idea and so cannot be considered science."

Wow, really? I raise my eyebrows in marvel and skepticism - on one hand, I question the bounds of human logic (rather, illogic) that allows us to actually postulate such radically radical (there's really no other word for it) ideas - karmons! - and on the other, I feel sorry for myself for not having the guts to believe this could be possible - because if it is, then based on the karma I've accumulated in these 22 years, this I fear this might be my last shot at moksha in a long long time.

a response to "A Wounded Civilization" by V.S. Naipaul

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:09:57 GMT

"It has been 33 years since the book was published and plenty has changed, but I still had to put down Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization after a while (thirty pages from the end) because it became too much to stomach. While an argument can be made for its "stark honesty" (shouldn't it be stark misunderstanding or stark anti-Hinduism?), I think Naipaul's approach to India's post-Emergency problems are terribly myopic..."

rest of the review here.

I should be writing my essays, though...

Amit Chaudhuri - Afternoon Raag

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:23:29 GMT

That I have been exceptionally lazy is undeniable. I cannot even say that I've been busy with school - I wish I have - but that is exactly what makes Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag the perfect book to talk about in lieu of the recent events which have come to pass. But before I do that, I want to talk about a new secondhand bookshop introduced by Yisa (who very wisely set up a Facebook account for it). By local standards, it is a relatively large space, chockful with rows and rows of books carrying everything between American Surrealist poetry to South Asian literature to old single-issue comics to critical theory. Three weeks ago, I bought Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag, Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization and Dead Souls by Gogol for a total of - would you believe it - $15. I went back today not because I'm out of books to read but because the idea of purchasing good quality secondhand books from a multitudinous selection was too much to resist; I bought Amit Chaudhuri's A New World and the much acclaimed The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor for $10 altogether.

In Afternoon Raag, Chaudhuri waxes lyrical about the pivotal moment that is the college years. He writes about a young Indian from Calcutta who gains a scholarship to study Literature at the University of Oxford. His entire novel, which is pretty short at a total of 144 pages (Vintage edition), reads like a tightly-woven piece of prose-poetry (he somehow manages to merge the fleeting heaviness of poetry with the fluidity of prose). There is something so sublime, insightful and yet deeply saddening about his passages. They flow gracefully, lyrically; his descriptions of Oxford in winter, the occasional flashbacks to his character's home and family in Calcutta drips heavy with nostalgia - and, mind you, this is not nostalgia of the sickening sort. His observations are acute, sharp and lucid. He finds ways to sync history, myth and fiction in a way that will make any romantic weep with joy.

I have not yet read his A Strange And Sublime Address but this book, I think, was the perfect introduction to his writing. Reading this, as a student of Literature, was an incredible experience. Chaudhuri's story is an afternoon raag, the perfect musing between the morning of awakening and the wisdom before retirement - in between is the music of negotiation, the coming-of-age and sensitive blooming of consciousness. Chaudhari weaves beautiful, musical images on a string and knots the ends together to make a continuous flow of precise comments about being a student and coming to understand the universe in a personal and honest way. Absolutely perfect and the best book I've read in 2008 thus far.

so many books, so little time

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:51:57 GMT

I just thought of the perfect new year resolution. I should have done something like Read One Book A Week For One Year And Keep A Journal About It.

Oh, it's so perfect. And I know it would be cheating if I started now because then I could make an equally solid case about starting after the exams, during the 3-month break and that would defeat the purpose somewhat, wouldn't it?

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:13:16 GMT

I want to write a long, long update about Life Thus Far, which would include school, recent literary exploits, a paragraph about unnecessary studying (which includes but is not limited to tests, exams, essays and the like), book reviews I've been meaning to write, about my room and how I rearranged it (don't laugh, this matters to me), a beautiful black-comedy Brit sitcom called Black Books and why the first season is infinitely better than the next two, milk-and-chocolate meal combinations which would then expand into my recent unhealthy eating habits, a quote about a conversation over late Bak Kut Teh lunch about sexual domination and submission, and why it is hardly accurate to call it an either-or situation, power play and bed politics; also, I want to explain in lucid detail why Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles pales in comparison to the Original (although it is not bad on its own at all), why HL Strawberry milk is better than HL Banana, and why Big M Strawberry gives it a good run for its money; there's the issue of books, too, that I'd like to touch: V.S. Naipaul, Bapsi Sidhwa, Amit Chaudhari - who has written what is possibly the most lucid prose I've read in 2008 thus far, and definitely deserves a review - and my recent comeback into science-fiction-and-fantasy with Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series; I would also love to wax lyrical about the best essay I've read for any module of literature I've taken in the past three years: Freud's essay on The Uncanny is brilliant and beautiful, I loved that he made his subject the study of his essay and his essay a study of his subject; finally, I should mention, briefly, fleetingly, with a practiced nonchalance and a subtle degree of intrigue (this, I predict, will take time to craft) something lovely about memory and love-making, not so crudely as I've mentioned here, but with more grace and poetry, because memory, it seems, is like that, it stays that way, unchanging, light like summer wine but honey-thick, too, and it will remain dormant and sweet and you will want to keep it in your pocket, in an hourglass, untouched except by you, until suddenly reminded of it, an urge arises to enter a magic vortex in the deep of the night, and dive into the memory, live it again, destroy nothing, go through the motions and exit when satiated, remember with satisfaction that there was a rainy afternoon and a man; I wanted to write about all this but I'll do it another time.

cooking the books

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:39:56 GMT

Customer: "Excuse me, those books, leather bound ones... "
Bernard: "Yes, Dickens. The Collected Works of Charles Dickens."
Customer: "Are they real leather?"
Bernard: "They're real Dickens."
Customer: "I have to know if they're real leather, because they have to go with a sofa. Everything else in my house is real. I'll give you 200 for them."
Bernard: "200 What?"
Customer: "200 Pounds."
Bernard: "Are they leather-bound pounds?
Customer: "No"
Bernard: "Sorry, I need leather-bound pounds to go with my wallet. Next!"

Oh yes, I am surely addicted.

19/3 - 20/3 dream

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:58:01 GMT

Last night's dreams were a strange superimposition of images, one on top of another receding into an infinite regression, a plethora of confused meaning. (The same, I presume, can be said of every dream.) The family took a holiday to Switzerland to meet my cousin, Anil (who really lives in London with his wife and child), but I got lost in the train and traveled the entire length of the south region. The train stopped at small stations. Outside the window were thrift shops selling knitted beanies, scarves; men and women pushing prams which carried babies with sparkly blue eyes. The color of the streets was a dull gray but life felt vibrant. The winter clouds hung over the small town, threatening a blizzard. Although I was lost, I had an acute sense of direction (which was unreal because I lack this quality in my waking hours). When I was finally found, we went to an exclusive local wine club where I had a figurehead position of "Executive Member". Other than the most exclusive wine, it served gold-tinted quality champagne. Someone spilled coffee on my attire here and patched the red carpet an obscene, diarrhoreal brown. She was terribly apologetic after, and in a way of compensation smeared her hands, feet and beautiful gown with the drink.

x

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 07:38:19 GMT

Is this a story? Who weaves it and how perfectly? What is time and where is it? I float in full spaces; in space where no one looks at their wrist and worries after appointments. Between you and me, behind this black velvet backdrop we have mapped a constellation of memories.

World Ages

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:14:23 GMT

"Hindus almost universally accept a view of time as cyclical, an idea first articulated in the Upanishads, and elaborated upon subsequently. While various different ways of counting the years in World Ages can be found, a popular enumeration of them is the following. There are four eons (Yuga) in each Mahayuga, or cycle: Krta or Satya Yuga (lasting 4,000 divine years), Treta Yuga (lasting 3,000 divine years), Dvapara (2,000), and Kali (1,000). Each Yuga is worse than the one before it. Preceding each such Yuga is a period of unmanifest potentiality or latency, lasting respectively 800 divine years, 600, 400, and 200. Thus each Mahayuga lasts 12,000 divine years, equivalent to 1,555,200,000 human years. A thousand such Mahayugas equals a Kalpa, or a day in the life of Brahma, the creator God who presides over the world. Then follows a night of Brahma, in which the world is unmanifest. After 100 years of such days and nights, the lifespan of this Brahma is exhausted and all is absorbed back into its divine source, from which a new creation begins. This cyclic and infinite view of time is typical of Hindu and other Indic religious traditions, including the Jain and Buddhist traditions."

taken from Hinduism, ed. Bruce M. Sullivan

Also, someone please buy me this wonderful cushion.

Can I have another cookie please?

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:39:15 GMT

A few minutes ago, my sister walked through the door. "I want $35", she said. Naturally assuming that it was through some fault of my own that she is in deficit of $35, I nodded my head absently.
"Your books came in today."
I turned away from American Idol. Books? What books? Oh my god, you mean the ones I ordered through your colleague who was going to Delhi for a bit that I thought I'd never get because what are the chances someone would take time out to book-hunt for a colleague's sister?

$35 is very reasonable for 3 books, especially if one of them is a graphic novel. I now gladly own Amruta Patil's Kari, Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man (I especially wanted this title because outside of India, it is published as 'Cracking India') and Manil Suri's The Death of Vishnu. I cannot possibly explain how geekily excited I am. Suffice to say it is the equivalent of being Fat Kid in the final stage of 'Fat Kid Goes To Cookie Factory' and finding an ginormous machine dishing out cookies of every variety and all he can do is stand in the middle and throw fistfuls of sugar-coated carbs into the air.

subash k jha

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:05:35 GMT

This is such a delicate and whimsical review of Saawariya.

"Saawariya" is like a dream where the characters themselves live in a dream world. Escape from this world is akin to death. No one dies in Bhansali's majestic make-belief world and nothing wilts. Not even love when it is taken away from the boy who loves to entertain the unhappy girl in distress.

That is exactly how magical Indian cinema should be: a world within which fulfillment is no more than three steps away, and escape from this pretty paradise can only bring tragedy.

Meursault seeks a funky Siddharta

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:49:48 GMT

Language finally proved itself as exhausting and exhausted as the conversations I keep hearing repeated everywhere. How disappointing. Last night I saw someone that I wanted to talk to because he looked interesting but I heard a snippet of an ongoing conversation he was having and it sounded dreadfully dull. Where do people get the drive to endlessly regurgitate their epiphanies and why are they content listening to the same drivel over and over? I wish I could go back and re-live everything with the same genuine enthusiasm all over again. I want to go back to my first moment and feel it again, fresh. Right now, everything is an endless repeat of conversations I've had before, realizations I've already realized. Is this it, I wonder, this broken record piece of shit music that once sounded so sublime to my ears? The only thing that manages to blow my mind away these days is Indian classical, the ragas by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Hariprasad Chaurasia; in the dead of the night, at 3AM, listening to the Raga Malkauns, slow melancholic melodies skip-strolling in perfect circles picking up in the wind blowing like a whisper into and through a moonlit night and then brings you out into the other side of Everything. It is almost like being in the vortex of a twilight storm.

Shao was at Little India last night, he told me, and an old man was playing his sitar to a gathered group of late-night shoppers and the Chinese owners of the shop nextdoor. The street was empty and silent and every nuance of his plucking resounded beautifully. I would love to meet someone who can carry a conversation like a melody, like a musician, the agent of divinity, only to be left breathless and rejuvenated at the end of seventeen minutes.

also, a picture

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:24:39 GMT

I saw a beautiful man in school today and I need to find him again, even if it's just to sit across him and look into his eyes, because they are all I remember, his eyes looking down at me and an ocean inside them.

post india

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:07:28 GMT

Last night in the delirium of sleeplessness I turned to the internet and continued feeding my recently awakened obsession on South Asian literature. This is by no means a new undertaking. I have been searching the world wide web ceaselessly for information, academic and otherwise, for the past six weeks; it was since then that my interest in Indian literature perked again after lying dormant for years. Interviews, reviews, deconstructions, bibliographies, e-journals, reading circles; voyeuring at odd hours of the day and night at forums. Judging by the sudden and rapid acceleration of my interest, I thought, it mightn't have made a difference if I had been looking at porn instead. South Asian literature is so precious precisely because it has come out of a history fraught with violence and turbulence. The weight of such a burden gives rise to truly great works of literature. Of course, at some point, I'd like to read The Illiad and Odyssey and Ulysses, or Arabian Nights and British classics. But I cannot deny my conscience when I am drawn curiously to the call of a country that I've only been to thrice; I neither grew up in India nor registered it in my adolescent mind when my family last went ten years ago, but remarkably I have certainly managed to dig out of the recesses of my mind the memories of a decade ago; I remember it without romanticizing (to be honest, perhaps only a little) its poverty and gray-eyed people; in the village where I stayed with my aunt's family, the boy with dusty brown hair and behind his eyes a brewing storm, who used to stand at his door and stare across the narrow street at me; its crime and cows; religious superstition that becomes, in the minds of millions, an undeniable reality; incessantly impatient traffic and cheeky monkeys. I do not need to mysticize the east like The Beatles, Madonna or the hippies did because I did not live there. The desire my body and my mind has for the country is strong and unflinching, as if it were my motherland and in the peak of life and consciousness, it is calling me back.

hey, wanna play?

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:01:49 GMT

Perhaps it would have been wise to have made a resolution this year, something simple and easy that wouldn't require extending too much of a conscience should I fail to follow through. Last year I told myself to 'attend all classes unless emergency' (it was an unofficial resolution) but my emergencies became increasingly frequent and less urgent as the semester wore on. My strained finances did consider for a very brief, fleeting moment to quit smoking but something chased it out soon after, I don't know what. I could try writing more but at the rate I went last year, it'll be good to just write - period. Sometimes I find writing too difficult so maybe this year I'll settle for something simple like 'Be thankful'; that I can manage. Be thankful for school, for money to smoke, for books, for the ability to write. Notice how being thankful diverts the problem: now I shouldn't have to worry about anything.

I began on LOTR with a great gusto last year, feeding off the 1400-paged high from <em>A Suitable Boy</em> but I'm still somewhere in between the book, ploughing my way through like its the most dreadful task on earth when it's actually one of the most enjoyable fantasy fictions I've read to date. Surely watching the movies (I like to do it back-to-back) more than four times, I've told myself, has something to do with my dwindling frenzy: I started like a steam engine and now I'm down to a kettle on boil.

It is my eleventh day into 2008. I've been looking forward to this year because the last time I remember living in a year containing 8 was when I was twelve, and at that point I did not have the good sense to settle on a favourite number. I've been looking forward to writing the date at the top of all my lecture notes. It is a pretty number, it looks like the sign for infinity. As though one circle wasn't confounding enough, this has two. Double the paradox. I love these mysteries.

According to a magazine I found in a cab yesterday, Russia celebrates Christmas on the 7th of January. They follow a different calendar. If it wasn't impractical, I'd like to follow a different calendar too...

Getting my modules for this semester has been nothing short of a nightmare. I didn't get any pre-allocated so when I saw Patke's Literature and the Arts going for 1700+ points, I close to flipped and cursed the damn kid who fucked that up for me. This means I'll have to request exclusively for a spot in his class. I want Literature and Psychoanalysis too but it's filled its quota of students, which means I'm going to have to show up at Tania Roy's class on Wednesday and beg her for a place in her class, too. For a very hefty price, though, I managed to secure Forensic Science, Introduction to Indian Thought and South Asian Literatures in English.

I haven't gotten my books yet but I do know what I'm going to do to keep all my written notes secure this time.. it's going to involve $2 per stack.

In other news, I've made the decision to keep my personal (read: love) life under wraps. I hardly liked talking about it before and this time, more than ever, I want to avoid exchanging words or opinions about it - so please don't ask.

Also, this is long overdue but I finally made a list of the books/comics/poetry I read in 2007. I missed a few, I think, but this is a rough list..

1 dostoevsky - crime and punishment
2 the brothers strugatsky - roadside picnic
3 balzac - old goriot
4 sophocles - oedipus
5 sophocles - antigone
6 euripedes - medea
7 john milton - paradise lost
8 samuel beckett - waiting for godot
9 shakespeare - as you like it
10 goethe - faust part 1 & 2
11 christopher marlowe - doctor faustus
12 bible - the book of job
13 h.g. wells - the time machine
14 hardy - tess of the d'ubervilles
15 dario fo - we won't pay! we won't pay!
16 nikolai gogol - the overcoat
17 nikolai gogol - the calash
18 sartre - the age of reason
19 doyle - the hound of the baskervilles
20 douglas adams - hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
21 donne / marvell / herbert
22 peter weiss - marat/sade
23 freddy kreuger's seven sweetest dreams
24 ishiguro - while we were orphans
25 J.M Barrie - Peter Pan (!)
26 stanislaw lem - solaris
27 marquez - memories of my melancholy whores
28 dostoevsky - notes from the underground
29 angela carter - the magic toyshop
30 neil gaiman - american gods
31 bronte - wuthering heights (!)
32 fables 1
33 fables 2
34 fables 3
35 fables 4
36 neil gaiman - mr. punch
37 neil gaiman - dream hunters
38 sandman 1
39 sandman 2
40 sandman 3
41 sandman 6
42 neil gaiman - 1602
43 arkham asylum - grant morrison & dave mckean
45 watchmen - alan moore
46 batman gothic - grant morrison
47 jane eyre - charlotte bronte
48 a suitable boy - vikram seth
49 the idiot - dostoevsky
50 silence of the lambs - thomas harris
51 somerset maugham - cakes & ale
52 a canticle for leibowitz - walter m. miller, jr.
53 the red room - h g wells
54 herbert goldstone - virtuoso
55 russell banks - sarah cole
56 ingeborg backmann - everything
57 alex garland - the beach
58 albert camus - the outsider
59 r. k. narayan - malgudi days
60 mikhail bulgakov - master and margarita
61 dostoevsky - the grand inquisitor
62 tolkien - lord of the rings (included for effort)

and a happy new year

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:03:55 GMT

(Rolf)
You wait little girl
On an empty stage
For fate to turn the light on

Your life little girl
is an empty page
that men will want to write on

(Leisl)
To write on

(Rolf)
You are 16 going on 17
Baby its time to think
Better beware
Be canny and careful
Baby you're on the brink

You are 16 going on 17
Fellows will fall in line
Eager young lads
And grueways and cads
Will offer you fruit and wine

Totally unprepared are you
To face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared are you
Of things beyond your ken

You need someone
Older and wiser
Telling you what to do
I am 17 going on 18
I'll take care of you

(Leisl)
I am 16 going on 17
I know that i'm naive
Fellows I meet may tell me I'm sweet
And willingly I believe

I am 16 going on 17 innocent as a rose
Bachelor dandies
Drinkers of brandies
What do I know of those

Totally unprepared am I
To face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared am I
Of things beyond my ken

I need someone
Older and wiser
Telling me what to do
You are 17 going on 18
I'll depend on you

from The Sound of Music

the sum of things

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:58:10 GMT

Perhaps one could blame it on inebriation or the post-Christmas-party high but I feel wonderfully disconnected from everything yet oddly happy. Last night, I floated in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt along the surface of a swimming pool, looking out towards the beautiful sky, almost full moon, the Orion's Belt, and other random constellations I haven't been able to identify yet. I was hoping for a Christmas miracle and I think I got one. I am also looking for one of those surveys that assist in summing up the year in an introspective sort of way. I know I'm going to include South Park and LOTR and Satyajit Ray and Pablo. Either way, I am sleepy, tired, very high, in a limbo and happy.

christmas!

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 08:33:39 GMT

02/01

destinysblasphemy@hotmail.com — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:54:37 GMT

BIRTHDAY WISHLIST

1. Albert Camus - The Plague (penguin)
2. Ingeborg Bachmann - Malina
3. Gogol - Dead Souls (penguin)
4. Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov (penguin)
5. Anton Chekov - Forty Stories (penguin)
6. Gautam Malkani - Londonstani
7. Suketu Mehta - Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
8. Charles Williams - All Hallows' Eve or War In Heaven
9. anything dr. seuss
10. The Sandman (everything except 1, 2, 3, 6)

NON-BOOK ITEMS

wall clock
book light
60 gig external hard drive
Lord of the Rings extended DVD

if all else fails, throw me a party!