Things I have read in the last few months

What I Loved- Siri Hustvedt- 2003
I loved this. I shall be looking for more of her books.

The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family- Dan Savage- 2005
This was what I read in the month before I got married myself. It sat in the bathroom where all three of us in the apartment read it simultaneously, with three bookmarks marking our different spots in it.

Battle for Bittora- Anuja Chauhan- 2010
I like Anuja Chauhan. I think she's very funny.

Bride Flight- Marieke Van Der Pol- 2011
I read this while on a plane. It seemed like good theme reading. It wasn't very good, and was about some terrible relationships. So in the 1950's at some point a plane full of young brides for immigrants in New Zealand took part in an air race that KLM went on to win. That part of the story is based in fact. Hopefully the tangled and painful lives of three of the girls on board are mostly fiction. I did not have a lot of patience for this book. But I was stuck on a transatlantic flight with not much else to do.

Blood of Tyrants- Naomi Novik-2013
If it has dragons I will read it. There was a long break between the last book in the Temeraire series that I read, and this one, so I had forgotten a lot of the detail. Much like one of the principal characters in the book.

The Berlin Noir Trilogy- Philip Kerr- 1993
I read these over less than a week and enjoyed them thoroughly. In general I wish there had been a bit less anal rape, over all three books. It would also have been nice if some of the women survived. They are not as ghastly as this short review makes them seen. There are four other Bernie Gunther books and I will be starting the next one this evening as soon as I can put it on my Kindle.

Oh yes. I caved and bought a Kindle. It is lovely, light, and has turned up the dial on how much I read and when.

Domesticity

This morning while being chivvied for not getting ready fast enough I was told that I was slower than two sloths losing their cherries. 

Meanwhile here is a picture of a very sleepy dog. He's not climbing over. He just likes to sleep like that. 

This is my study break

Because Robyn is awesome, and makes life worth living.

Friday evening party anthem

I realise it is a bit of a cop out to just keep posting poetry that might reflect some of the things I have been thinking of late.
As I type this I am sitting on what must be the world's third most comfy couch. Against my left elbow a little beagle is curled up, and making wheezy sleep sounds. I have Chopin playing on the stereo, and while it gets dark earlier each day, inside the house it just gets cosier as the year turns towards winter.
I have about a week's worth of work to do and two days in which to do it. The couch is my home, the dog my only friend, and eventually tears will replace the music. Until Tuesday when regular work, the 8 hours a day sort, will begin again. I cannot wait.

If you forget me

I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

- Pablo Neruda

SELF

 

 

 

My mother didn’t believe
when, in 1945, I appeared to her
in a dream and told her
I would be born to her the following year.

My father recognised me
as soon as he saw
the mole below my left thumb.
But mother believed to the very end
that someone else had been born to her
masquerading as me.

Father and I pleaded with her,
but dreams are not reliable witnesses.
She went on waiting for that
promised son till she died

Only when she was reborn as my daughter
did she admit it had really been me.

But by then I had begun to doubt:
it was someone else’s heart
beating within my body.

One day I will retrieve my heart;
my language too.

 

 

 

 

- K Satchidanandan

From: While I Write: New And Selected Poems

Poetry week

has just been declared.
After all why not give in whole heartedly to the stereotype of what people do after having their heart broken. Cry, eat chips, drink heavily even on weekdays, turn your Twitter feed into a graveyard for songs about lost love and revenge, read poetry and force it on other people.


To the Welsh Critic who does not find me Identifiably Indian

You believe you know me,
wide-eyed Eng Lit type
from a sun-scalded colony,
reading my Keats - or is it yours -
while my country detonates
on your television screen.
You imagine you’ve cracked
my deepest fantasy -
oh, to be in an Edwardian vicarage,
living out my dharma
with every sip of dandelion tea
and dreams of the weekend jumble sale…
You may have a point.
I know nothing about silly mid-offs,
I stammer through my Tamil,
and I long for a nirvana
that is hermetic,
odour-free,
bottled in Switzerland,
money-back-guaranteed.

This business about language,
how much of it is mine,
how much yours,
how much from the mind,
how much from the gut,
how much is too little,
how much too much,
how much from the salon,
how much from the slum,
how I say verisimilitude,
how I say Brihadaranyaka,
how I say vaazhapazham -
it’s all yours to measure,
the pathology of my breath,
the halitosis of gender,
my homogenised plosives
about as rustic
as a mouth-freshened global village.
Arbiter of identity,
remake me as you will.
Write me a new alphabet of danger,
a new patois to match
the Chola bronze of my skin.
Teach me how to come of age
in a literature you’ve bark-scratched
into scripture.
Smear my consonants
with cow-dung and turmeric and godhuli.
Pity me, sweating,
rancid, on the other side of the counter.
Stamp my papers,
lease me a new anxiety,
grant me a visa
to the country of my birth.
Teach me how to belong,
the way you do,
on every page of world history.

-Arundhathi Subramaniam

from http://cercopethicidae.tumblr.com/