Pedro Páramo - Closing

He leaned against Damiana and tried to walk. After a few steps he fell down, pleading within but not speaking a single word. He struck a feeble blow against the ground and then crumbled to pieces as if he were a heap of stone.

Pedro Páramo - pg. 66

Many years later, Father Renteria still remembered the night when the hardness of his bed would not let him sleep and drove him outdoors. It was the night Mirguel Páramo died.

Pedro Páramo - pg. 59

"It feels as if somebody were walking over us."
"You don't have to be afraid any more. They can't frighten you now. Just think about pleasant things, because we're going to be buried for a long time."

Pedro Páramo - pg. 56

"You're right, Dorotea. It was the voices that killed me."

Pedro Páramo - pg. 22

"They've killed your father."
"And who killed you, Mother?"

Pedro Páramo - pg. 2

"What's the name of the village down there?"
"Comala, señor."
"You're sure it's Comala?"
"Yes, señor."
"Why does it look so dead?"
"They've had bad times, señor."

Pedro Páramo - Opening

I came to Comala because I was told that my father, a certain Pedro Páramo, was living here. My mother told me so, and I promised her I would come to see him as soon as she died. I pressed her hand so that she'd know I would do it, but she was dying and I was in the mood to promise her anything.

Copyright 1959 by Grove Press, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
First Evergreen Black Cat Edition 1969

Manufactured in the United States of America

GROVE PRESS, INC., 196 West Houston Street,
New York, N.Y. 10014

Mr. Palomar - Closing

"If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant," Mr. Palomar thinks, "and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen." He decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Louise Bogan

“lyric poetry if it is at all authentic…is based on some emotion—on some occasion, on some real confrontation.”

Mr. Palomar - pg. 74

This shop is a dictionary; the language is the system of cheeses as a whole: a language whose morphology records declensions and conjugations in countless variants, and whose lexicon presents an inexhaustible richness of synonyms, idiomatic usages, connotations, and nuances of meanings, as in all languages nourished by the contribution of a hundred dialects. It is a language made up of things; its nomenclature is only an external aspect, instrumental; but for Mr. Palomar, leaning a bit of nomenclature still remains the first measure to be taken if he wants to stop for a moment the things that are flowing before his eyes.

Projects for the New Year

• Start learning Spanish
• Read a good book on the history of Karachi
• Cover Upanishads, Bhagavat Gita, Ramayana
  

Mr. Palomar - pg. 54

The true form of the city is in this rise and fall of roofs, old tiles and new, curved and flat, slender or squat chimneys, arbors of reed matting and sheds of corrugated iron, railings, balustrades, little columns supporting pots, metal water tanks, dormers, glass skylights, and rising above all else, the rigging of TV antennas, straight or crooked, enameled or rusting, in models of successive generations, variously ramified and horned and shielded, but all of them thin as skeletons and disturbing as totems. Separated by irregular and jagged gulfs of emptiness, proletarian terraces with lines for drying laundry and with tomato plants growing in tin cans directly face residential terraces with espaliered plants growing against wooden trellises, garden furniture of white-painted cast iron, awnings; pealing campaniles; facades of public buildings, in profile and full-face; garrets and penthouses, illegal and unpunished constructions; pipe scaffoldings of constructions in progress or left half finished; large windows with curtains, and little WC windows; ocher walls and burnt sienna walls, walls the color of mold from whose crevices clumps of weeds spill their pendulous foliage; elevator shafts; towers with double and triple mullioned windows; spires of churches with madonnas; statues of horses and chariots; great mansions that have decayed into hovels, hovels restructured into smart bachelor apartments; and domes that make round outlines against the sky in every direction and at every distance, as if to confirm the female, Junoesque essence of the city: white domes or pink or violet, according to the hour and the light, veined with nervatures, crowned by lanterns surmounted by other, smaller domes.

To Do List

• Presentation: Part 1, Part 2
• Mr. Palomar
  
• Oatmeal Stout at Homegrown
  

The Voyeur - Closing

Since the buoy was not light enough to follow the movement of the waves, the water level rose and fell according to their rhythms against the sides of the cone. Despite the water's transparency, the detail of the substructures could not be distinguished -- merely a number of dancing shapes: chains, rocks, trailing seaweed, or perhaps reflections of the mass above water.
The salesman thought, once again, that in three hours he would be on land.

...another eight-column newsday for pakistani papers

The Voyeur - pg. 110

At the angle of narrow passageway between two almost vertical walls, the water alternately swelled and hollowed with each wave; at this point there was neither foam nor backwash; the moving mass of water remained smooth and blue, rising and falling against the rock walls. The disposition of the nearby rocks forced a sudden influx of liquid into the narrows so that the level rose to a height greatly exceeding that of the initial wave. The collapse followed at once, creating in a few seconds, in the same place, a depression so deep that it was surprising not to be able to see sand, or pebbles, or the undulating fronds of seaweed at the bottom. On the contrary, the surface remained the same intense blue tinged with violet along the rock wall. But away from the coast, the sea appeared beneath a sky filled with clouds, a flat, even green, opaque, as if it had been frozen.

The Voyeur - pg. 97

As for the other reason, it must be confessed that Maria's investigations represented only the time it would take to sell a watch - near a crossroads - to repair a new bicycle, to tell the difference between a frog's skin and a toad's, to rediscover in the all-too-changeable shapes of clouds the fixed eye of a sea gull, to follow the movements of an ant's antennae in the dust.

The Voyeur - pg. 82

The countryside was noticeably different here: there was an embankment on either side of the road lined with a thick, virtually unbroken hedge behind which rose the occasional turn of a pine leaning toward the southwest, the direction of the prevailing winds (that is, the trees on the left side of the drive leaning over the hedge, those on the right leaning away from it).

The Voyeur - pg. 38

This time the garageman started off on still more complicated considerations in which he managed to imply that Mathias must have been born on the island to conceive the preposterous notion of returning to it for a sales trip, and at the same time that the expectation of selling a single wrist watch betrayed a complete ignorance of the place, and finally that names like his didn't mean a thing -- you could find them wherever you liked.

Song #157

Ten Songs, one solid block of agony,
I wrote for him, and then I wrote no more.
His sad ghost must aspire
free of my love to its own past, that ghost,
among its fellows, Mozart's, Bach's, Delmore's
free of its careful body

high in the shades which line the avenue
where I will gladly walk, beloved of one,
and listen to the Buddha.
His work downhill, I don't conceal from you,
ran and ran out. The brain shook as if stunned,
I hope he's over that,

flame may his glory in that other place,
for he was fond of fame, devoted to it,
and every first-rate soul
has sacrifices which it puts in play,
I hope he's sitting with his peers: sit, sit,
& recover & be whole.

The Books...

Deer Park

Waqar Bashir

It is fair to say that I tried to recall all the days we spent in our undergraduate school. I did it many times. It's not pretty. It wasn't. I am sick and tired of remembering you. But I love you. If you were alive I might not have cared what you were up to right at this moment. But you live in so many memories. Now. I am thinking about you right now.

Saul Bellow's Nobel Diploma

Song #36

The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who's there?
--Easy, easy, Mr Bones. I is on your side.
I smell your grief.
--I sent my grief away. I cannot care
forever. With them all again & again I died
and cried, and I have to live.

--Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.
That is our `pointed task. Love & die.
--Yes; that makes sense.
But what makes sense between, then? What if I
roiling & babbling & braining, brood on why and
just sat on the fence?

--I doubts you did or do. De choice is lost.
--It's fool's gold. But I go in for that.
The boy & the bear
looked at each other. Man all is tossed
& lost with groin-wounds by the grand bulls, cat.
William Faulkner's where?

(Frost being still around)

Song #34

My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide
in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried
to his trigger-digit, pal.
He should not have done that, but, I guess,
he didn't feel the best, Sister, - feel less
and more about less than us ... ?

Now - tell me, my love, if you recall
the dove light after dawn at the island and all --
here is the story, Jack:
he verbed for forty years, very enough,
& shot & buckt -- and, baby, there was of
schist but small there (some).

Why should I tell a truth? when in the crack
of the dooming & emptying news I did hold back --
in the taxi too, sick --
silent -- it's so I broke down here, in his mind
whose sire as mine one same way -- I refuse,
hoping the guy go home.

Dream Songs

mp3: Aloha - Light Works

I am synched up to my friend on the other coast as we coast through this paper and I just finished The Square and I just read the first of John Berryman's Dream Songs cycle and here right now I want to kill pitchfork for not covering Aloha's new EP "Light Works". Aloha destroyed me in June with Brace Your Face, it was brutal on the mad-crazy alternating your life away to a free-deathbound-way. Things changed. But here they are trying to sell themselves out straight on the indie rockdom with very acoustic, very jammy ta-da ta-da ta-da overload. But it's good because it's bracing me away from the face that had the empty box of wine on it turned upside down. I love the earnestness in their sound.

Aloha -

The Square - Closing

"I must say good-bye. Perhaps then we shall meet again this coming Saturday?"
"Perhaps, yes, perhaps. Good-bye."
The girl turned and went off rapidly with the child. The man watched her going, watched her as hard as he could. She did not turn back. And he took this as a sign of encouragement to go to that Dance Hall.

The Square - pg. 15

A wind had risen, so light it seemed to carry the summer with it. For a moment it chased the clouds away, leaving a new warmth hanging over the city.

The Square - Opening

The child came over quietly from the far side of the Square and stood beside the girl.
"I'm hungry,' he announced.
The man took this as an opportunity to start a conversation.

COPYRIGHT 1959 BY JOHN CALDER (PUNBLISHERS) LTD.

Originally published in France by Librairie Gallimars as Le Square

First Grove Press Edition 1959

CAUTION: All rights, including professional, amateur, motion-picture, recitation, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Permission for any use of this novel as a play must be obtained in writing from the author's agent, Georges Borchardt, 100 West 55th Street, New York 19, New York.

Grove Press Books and Evergreen Books
are published by Barney Rosset at Grove Press, Inc.
64 University Place, New York 3, N. Y.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE SQUARE
Marguerite Duras
Translated by
Sonia Pitt-Rivers
and Irina Morduch

To Do List

• New Probability of Idle Estimates
• Presentation First Part

Old Bookstore on East Street

Op. posth. no. 14

Noises from underground made gibber some
others collected & dug Henry up
saying 'You are a sight.'
Chilly, he muttered for a double rum
waving the mikes away, putting a stop
to rumors, pushing his fright

off with the now accumulated taxes
accustomed in his way to solitude
and no bills.
Wives came forward, claiming a new Axis,
fearful for their insurance, though, now, glued
to disencumbered Henry's many ills


A fortnight later, sense a single man
upon the trampled scene at 2 a.m.
insomnia-plagued, with a shovel
digging like mad, Lazarus with a plan
to get his own back, a plan, a stratagem
no newsman will unravel.

Students carve hearts out of coal

Students carve hearts out of coal,
I just thought I'd let you know...
In This town we go down for the sake of going under...

Students carve hearts out of coal,
I just thought I'd let you know...
In This town what goes around does not come around...

So when you crawl out from the mist that the City kept insisting was pretty...
And the government sets you up with her cousin and a broken cup to drink from...
Not some vessel of purity, just tea in Montreal with assassins...

Students carve hearts out of coal,
I just thought I'd let you know...
In This town we get down for the sake of going under...

Students carve hearts out of coal,
I just thought I'd let you know...
In This town what goes around has yet to come around...

You had a great idea...
How can you have a great idea
when the girls get back on the continent, they wont even see you
from the Boys Club Platoon blowing deaf dumb and tuneless?...
It's vile the way you smile for them,
there are limits you know...

Students carve hearts out of coal...
Students carve hearts out of coal,
I just thought I'd let you know
about the bulls charging out from the gallery walls...
Homelessness calls...
Ah, sister you must now wreck the streets...

Crows

Lord, when the open field is cold,
When in the battered villages
The endless angelus dies --
Above the dark and drooping world
Let the empty skies disclose
Your dear, delightful crows


Armada dark with harsh cries,
Your nests are tossed by icy winds!
Along the banks of yellowed ponds,
On roads where crumbling crosses rise,
in cold and gray and mournful weather
Scatter, hover, dive together!

In flocks above the fields of France
Where yesterday's dead men lie,
Wheel across the winter sky;
Recall our black inheritance!
Let duty in your cry be heard,
Mournful, black uneasy bird.

Yet in that oak, you saints of God,
Swaying in the dying day,
Leave the whistling birds of May
For those who found, within that wood
From which they will not come again,
That every victory is vain.

Parisian Orgy

Drink! And then when mad blinding light stabs
Through the dripping heap of orgy at your sides,
Will you not slaver slowly, silent, still,
Into your glasses, staring at empty distances?

To Do List

• Presentation Outline
  
• Dissertation Chapter
• Fairness Paper

Marc Antony

Mark Antony:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Sacred Games - pg. 444

I listened to Kartuka go on, and into the evening he imparted the secrets of seduction. 'When you are courting her,' he said, 'you must be Kishore Kumar. And I don't mean just that you sing Kishore songs to her, no. You have to let the voice of Kishore Kumar move through you, and become that effortlessly confident, that happy, that funny, that breezy. If you can do that, happily she'll come to you, boss. Then, once that happens, once you've got her, then you've to sing Mohammad Rafi, and only Rafi.'

Sacred Games - pg. 441

'Is your gaand still sore?' one of them said to me. 'We heard that Parulkar took it every night for months. He said that you were a good gaadi to mount, that you moaned like a girl.'

Sacred Games - pg. 409

Sartaj squeezed, and now Vishnu was truly afraid. 'It's true that she's trying to take care of her boys. And do some good. You're a small man, Vishnu. Your brain is small, your heart is small, so you think small of people. You're a small, mean bastard, Vishnu. I don't like you. So shut up. Keep your mouth closed. Understand?'

Sacred Games - pg. 438

And in those three weeks, I learnt the rhythms of this new life: the whistle at five in the morning; the drowsy rows outside for the ginti; the rattling of aluminium plates and bowls and the crackling of the tari on the dal, for which tari you paid extra; the long hours of the morning, and then the smell of cooking from the bissi where they kneaded the atta with their feet and threw rotting vegetables into huge bowls; after lunch at ten, the murmur of conversation and the snores and the smell of hundreds of men sweating; the smokers with their precious little balls of charas and their long rituals of burning and crumbling and rolling; the shifting games of chess, and teen-patti, and Ludo, and the curses and the laughter over the rattle of the dice; my boys ranged around the only two carrom boards in the barracks, feeding their passionate following of the championship league they had set up, complete with blackboards for singles and doubles ladders; the tussles and sudden enmities that flared between men packed together, that spread like winding fire through the rows of beds; the shouting and threats as two men faced each other under the eyes of a hundred, each too afraid of shame to back down; the brawny kalias from Nigeria selling tiny fifty-rupee packets of brown sugar in the yard; and their clients, hunched knee to knee in tight little circles over their chaser-pannis, breathing in the smoke with the devout expression of men who had seen another, better world. And the long wait for five o'clock and the dinner of the same watery dal, and the lumpy, coarse rice, and the rubbery chapatis, and then sleep at eight.

first entry

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corpse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

Lord Byron

To Do List

• Fairness Curves for Qualnet Data: Absolute, Max-Min, Proportional (draft done)
  
• Checking Collision Probability (working)
  
• Sacred Games (pg. 400)
  

Sacred Games - pg. 386

This Sharma was one of those fair-skinned UP brahmins, very soft-spoken in fancy, All-India Radio Hindi. He was dressed in a long brown kurta and sat cross-legged on his chair, very poised like he was practising yoga.

Sacred Games - pg. 358

'You know they say that in Bombay, you should have among your friends one politician, one lawyer and one policeman.'

Sacred Games - pg. 349

A trio of ragged girls passed Mary, their bare feet slapping the pavement, and they surrounded a tall, blond foreigner walking some ten feet ahead. Mary went past him, smiling at the patter of the girls as they held up their open palms to his face. 'How are you? Uncle, Uncle. Please, Uncle. How are you? Please. Uncle, hungry, hungry. Uncle, food.' They were jumping up, towards his beaky-nose. He looked stricken. All this way he had come, to India, and now he was confronting its fabled poverty, and it had acquired English.

To Do List

• Collision Probability comparison with backoff models
• Proportional Fairness Models
• Sacred Games
  

Sacred Games - pg. 298

The yoga was supposed to soothe the criminals, to make them better citizens. But K.D. always wondered why they believed this, the teachers. Why wouldn't yoga just produce better criminals, more centred, calmer thugs who were more efficient in criminality? That master of villains, Duryodhana, was surely a yogi. They all were, those evil warriors. Gaitonde had looked quite calm, sunlit in his prison whites, in the superintendent's room. He was a bad man. Was Duryodhana a bad man? He had been killed through trickery and had risen to a warrior's heaven. Is there a soldier's paradise, waiting for K.D. Yadav?

Sacred Games - pg. 290

He was beset by questions: where was Bangladesh, what was it? Where was Bihar? How do three men travel thousands of miles, to one city, to a particular stretch of road, to a constable waiting under a thela? We are debris, Sartaj thought, randomly tossed about and nudging into each other, splitting each other's lives apart. Sartaj opened his eyes, and the room was still the old one, the shadows outside completely known to him, a thousand nights over. This was his corner of the world, safe and familiar. And yet here was this question, sitting on his chest: why did Katekar die? How did this happen?

Sacred Games - pg. 281

'You watch. One heavy rain and trains will stop. This chutiya central line, if ten schoolboys stand in a row and piss on the tracks, bhenchod service is disrupted.'
Sartaj nodded. All this was true, and it was a restful pleasure to lie under a thela and complain. They had already complained about the municipality, corporators, transfers of honest civil servants and policemen, expensive mangoes, traffic, too much construction, collapsing buildings, clogged drains, unruly and uncivilized Parliament, extortion by Rakshaks, bad movies, nothing worthwhile to watch on television, American interference in subcontinental affairs, the disappearance of Rimzim from soft-drink stands, inter-state quarreling over river waters, the lack of good English-language schools for children whose parents didn't have truckloads of money, the depiction of police on the movie screen, long unpaid hours on the job, the job, and the job. When you had complained enough about everything else, there was always the job, with its unspeakable hours, its monotony, its political complications, its thanklessness, its exhaustion.

In Autumn

Eros, Vita, Lumen

In the pallid afternoons
clouds roam tranquil
in the blue; on their burning hands
they rest their pensive heads.
Ah, the sighs! Ah, the sweet dreams!
Ah, the intimate sorrows!
Ah, the gold dust floating in the air,
behind those tremulous waves
the damp and tender eyes exchange looks,
the mouths inundated with smiles,
the frizzy hair
and the caress of rosy fingers!

Getting the urge to write... break the world into million little words

It is annoying when this urge rise up to write something... at 9:30 in the morning when the research paper that needs writing is sitting waiting on the table from the last night's half-equipped arguments for the main thesis, Metric plays the too little, too late on the speakers in a loop, trying to find all the choruses and half-vocalized lines, conversational reading is talking about Malcolm Lowry's un-Under The Volcano writings, visions of Oaxaca, Sonora, mescal, Colonel and his tequila breakfast at 7 in the morning, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano drunk on mescal and Roberto Bolano is dead still.

Sacred Games - pg. 256

Paritosh Shah had picked a bhaiyya pandit for his puja, so I could understand the katha in Hindi without effort. This pandit was a very dramatic story-teller, and he was doing the Santanarayan Katha with vivid expression, with different voices for the characters and full Dilip Kumar expressions, and now we were at the part where the trader and his son-in-law were on their way home...

3.5 shots of Jameson

at the bar messed me up big time. It was supposed to be quiet, drizzly anonymous Monday night. But there were more people than usual. Don came over about the same time as me. He brought a plastic case of hot sauce with him. His own creation for Jeremy. Some talk of Tabasco followed then a curious looking gentleman came out of nowhere with eyes looking a thousand different shades of darkness. He was before my time in this town so we cascaded our histories of Deer Park and East End in a conversational late-hours, bar room camaraderie. He ordered a green drink that tasted like toothpaste (mouthwash that other girl at the corner said), bought me a drink. Time is not the friend that should ever be trusted. He lived in Wilmington now he said and worked for DuPont. Taxi Driver's mention popped out of somewhere which it turned out he'd seen only recently. I was talking about this character in my novel who was trying to research a news story, had become so obsessed that he couldn't sleep at nights and he kept looking at the notes he had taped on his bedroom wall. Jeremy was trying to say something about Eva the Fugitive. I seriously don't know how can one drop the book once it's opened. I think he started reading it that's what he said. (kill me! kill me! I don't know how long it takes to read that 100 pager). Jeremy said something about an eastern european thing that was a reference to me. The girl who worked at Starbucks across the street during the day asked if I was from there. I mentioned that I was from the east, way east of the eastern europe. I remember this distinctly although I was sure It didn't come off as particularly funny. I don't think I remember anything more about last night except that Jeremy poured that whiskey in a shiny glass and split it neatly into two half-shots. I should have said no there and then. It made up for all that came out during the conversation I had later at the Kitchen Sink.

mp3: Rademacher

Today Is Different

"woody guthrie is speaking in your ear-phones from another century"

TedG: Noir, No Country...

McCarthy's writing style comes after the Clancy/Ludlum model where things are diced into parallel episodes but unified in a grand arc driven by the cosmic principle that good triumphs and the bad guys get punished. This has become the cinematic norm, so whenever we pass through a scene-story, we know how it fits in a universe powered by a machine of justice.....

The other cinematic notion that McCarthy uses is noir, and I am certain that it is what attracted the Coens. They've spent their entire careers surrounding this notion, probing it from all directions. In absolute terms, what defines noir is the notion that the machinery of the universe is arbitrary and linked to the act of viewing. That "viewing" piece has stickiness, because it involves us in what happens to the characters in the world we witness. McCarthy makes us explicitly complicit in the unraveling of ordinary, even expected justice.

Sacred Games - pg. 249

Paritosh Shah smiled. 'A jungle den? It would be expensive to supply and maintain. That's what I always wonder about. How do they get the oil and atta and onions to it, for so many henchmen?'

I switched off the tape. 'You're just too much of a bania,' I said, 'to appreciate a good story'.

Sacred Games - pg. 244

And so in the mandap, sitting next to Paritosh Shah, as the priests sang and thick sacrificial smoke gusted from the fire and an elder sister's happiness was chanted into being, I was helpless before the younger sister's life.

Sacred Games - pg. 235

When they brought out the sticks for dandia I stood up and asked for a pair. They laughed to see me tripping clumsily, unable to keep time inside the circles moving against each other, unable to find the clicking rhythm. I think at first this was equally the fault of the other dancers, especially the men, who were afraid to be dancing with me, stripped of their grace by my presence.

Sacred Games - pg. 233

After he left I turned to my English books. I was teaching myself, with children's books and the newspapers and a dictionary. Only Chotta Badriya knew, because he had bought me the books and the dictionary. I closed my door when I studied English because I didn't want anyone seeing me squatting on the floor, one uncertain and slow finger on the letters, which I had to laboriously knock together with moving lips until they adhered into a word:''p-a-r-l-i-a-m-e-n-t...parliament'. It was humiliating, but necessary. I knew that much of the real business of the country was done in English.

Little, Big - Opening

On a certain day in June, 19--, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City on a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited. His name was Smoky Barnable, and he was going to Edgewood to get married; the fact that he walked and didn't ride was one of the conditions placed on his coming there at all.

Little, Big
A Bantam Book / September 1981
FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved.
Copyright 1981 by John Crowley
Cover art copyright 1981 Bantam Books, Inc.

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Sacred Games - pg. 230

He said, 'Bhai, this is Bipin Bhonsle. He's standing for assembly elections next month and needs your help.' Now this Bipin Bhonsle, he was smartly dressed, good blue pants, printed shirt, dark glasses, he didn't look at all like those khadi-kurta bastards with their Nehru-topis who you see on television all the time. Bipin Bhonsle was young, my age and respectful.

Sacred Games - pg. 228

On his way home that evening, Sartaj took a detour to see how far the sadhus had come on their mandala. The crowds of the morning had thinned, but the sadhus were all working in the dusk, under a bright pool of lamplight. Sartaj stood by the window, and the older sadhu from the morning saw him, ducked his head and smiled at Sartaj's namaste. He was doing some fine work on one of the inset panels, colouring in the blond flank of a deer. The deer had impenetrable dark eyes, and sat against the deep greens of a forest glade. Sartaj gazed at the falling golden sand. The sphere was about half-done. It was inhabited now by a host of creatures, large and small, and a swirl of divine beings enveloped the entirety of this new world. Sartaj did not understand any of it, but it was beautiful to see it come into life, so he watched for a long time.

Sacred Games - pg. 220

'I'm saying only a little thing, Dada - this chutiya sardar inspector of yours will never make a decent income.'

Sacred Games - pg. 210

'You speak Bengali?'
'A little, a little. Their Bengali has quite a lot of Urdu in it, you know.'
'And what other languages do you speak?'
'Gujarati, saab. Marathi, some Sindhi. You grow up in this Mumbai, you pick up a little of everything. I am trying to improve my English.' He held up a copy of Filmfare. 'I try to read one English magazine every day.'
'Very impressive, Ahmed Saab.'
'Arre, sir, I am younger than you. Please call me Wasim. Please.'

Sacred Games - pg. 208

A face floated above the staggered roofs, huge, luminous brown eyes that went and came from behind the parapets, larger than any of the windows, and there was a gleaming brow touched by blue light, half-open lips and swirling hair, all of it somehow completely weightless and paradisiacal. Sartaj knew that she was only a cunningly lit model on a vast billboard across the main road, but it was distracting to be watched so intently by her. He turned his eyes down and went on.

Sacred Games - pg. 189

The next morning Prabhjot Kaur saw a line, a stream, a river of walking people that stretched to horizon. The men and women and children walked behind each other in silence, trudging in the same direction as Sajid Farooq's trucks, and all the cars. They were moving very slowly, and the trucks and cars moved past each one of them with ease, but it took three hours to leave behind that whole lot. That evening they were met by other soldiers, in the same uniforms and the same trucks, but these were Hindus escorting a convoy of Muslims.

Sacred Games - pg. 182

Dripping with viscous fluids and sharp edges glinting. Manjeet had shown he this thing in a senior class history book once, this engine of death, and now it came back to Prabhjot Kaur. Khoon. Papa-ji and the brothers came into the house laden with the names of those who were already gone. A sardar named Jasjit Singh Ahluwalia on the corner where Pakmara Street ran into Campbell Road, near Tarapore Bakery, slashed to hanging bits by men with swords. Ramesh Kriplani, aged sixteen, found with his throat expertly cut around, head hanging into the gutter so that Ali Jafar Road was not sullied by a drop of blood. 'They say a butcher from Karasanganj did it.' Alok-veerji said. 'Caught him on the way home from his Chacha's house.' Khoon.

Sacred Games - pg. 167

Prabhjot Kaur giggled and then instantly wanted a long glass of water from the surahi which Mata-ji kept wet through the whole day. She thought of it, of tilting the surahi, its clay neck round in her palm, and the water in a smooth stream dropping into the glass with a deepening circular gurgle, and the black road slipped away between the dusty tips of her shoes, and the dreary plonk-plunk plonk-plunk of Shagufta's hooves beat slowly at her temples.

Sacred Games - pg. 166

Ram Pari was small, with a wiry threadwork of muscles across her stomach, which Prabhjot Kaur thought it was mainly to get cool, get a little bit of breeze on her skin, but it released a huffing breath of smell, round there in the air, as real and inescapable as a cloud of heated sparks from the fire in the chaunka.

Sacred Games - pg. 156

This was something they had in common, this faith in details, in particulars. Sartaj had noticed it the first time Katekar had reported to him, many years ago, about a pickpocket who worked the line from Churchgate to Andheri Station. Katekar had droned on about name, age, height, and then added that the bastard had married three times, and that he had a weakness for papri-chaat and faluda, in the basti where he had grown up this was well-known. They'd caught him three weeks later, at the Mathura Dairy Farm near Santa Cruz station, with his head lowered over a plate of bhel-puri after a profitable evening rush-hour, sitting across from a cross-eyed girlfriend who was well on her way to becoming wife number four.

Sacred Games - pg. 128

That was when Sartaj was fifteen. He had taken to jumping out of the window during mugging hours at home, and finally Parulkar had volunteered to keep a watch over him the night before his maths exam. They had a fine time actually, regular dosages of whipped-up Nescafe, and oranges and small bananas, and Parulkar had shown a talent for reducing complex problems to simple questions. Sartaj had passed the exam with a fifty-eight percent score, which was the highst he ever achieved in maths.

To Do List

• Dissertation Chapter.4
  
• Clique Decomposition Code
• Sacred Games pg.200
• Ruben Dario
  

Zaban/Watan/Mulk/Boli

A writer's patria or country, as someone said, is his language. That sounds pretty demagogic, but I completely agree with him....

Sacred Games - pg. 85

She lived close to her family in Pune, and Sartaj trusted her to keep him updated on the network of relatives that stretched all the way up to Punjab and beyond. He thought of her as inextricably embedded in that family, while he himself was distanced from it, not quite separated but gone away somehow, like a planet that had spun out too far from its sun. He liked to listen to her stories of family feuds and ancient tragedies, as long as he could avoid being drawn into their fatal gravity and made a participant.

Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam

A spruce is standing lonely
In the north on a barren height.
It drowses; ice and snowflakes
Wrap it in a blanket of white.

It dreams about a palm tree
In a distant, eastern land,
That languishes lonely and silent
Upon the scorching sand.


Translated by Max Knight

Rimbaud To Theodore de Banville

Charleville
May 24, 1870

To Theodore de Banville
c/o M. Alphonse Lemerre, Publisher
passage Choiseul
Paris

CHER MAITRE
This is the season of love; I'm seventeen years old. The age of hopes and fantasies, as they say, and so I have begun, only a child, but touched by the finger of Muse (excuse me if this is banal) to write down my dearest beliefs, my hopes, my feelings, all the things that poets do - this is what I call springtime.

Destroyer - Trouble in Dreams

Destroyer has a new album out on March 18th, "Trouble In Dreams".

On Poetics - pg. 27

...this too is not the task of the poet, i.e., to speak of what has come to be, but rather to speak of what sort of things would come to be, i.e., of what is possible according to the likely or the necessary. For the historian and the poet do not differ by speaking either in meters or without meters (since it would be possible for the writings of Herodotus be put in meters, and they would no less be a history with meter than without meters). But they differ in this: the one speaks of what has come to be while the other speaks of what sort would come to be. Therefore poiesis is more philosophic and of more stature than history. For poetry speaks rather of the general things while history speaks of the particular things. The general, that it falls to a certain sort of man to say or do certain sorts of things according to the likely or the necessary, is what poetry aims at in attaching names.

On Poetics - pg. 30

Recognition [anagnorisis], on the other hand, just as the name too signifies, is a change from ignorance [agnoia] to knowledge [gnosis], whether toward friendship or enmity, of those whose relation to good or ill fortune has already been defined. A recognition is most beautiful when it comes to be at the same time as a reversal, for example as it is in the Oedipus.

On Poetics - pg. 11

The iambic meter too came about in invectives as is fitting for them, on account of which even now it is called iambic because they used to lampoon [iambizon] one another in this meter. And some of the ancients became poets of heroic meter and some of iambs. Just as Homer was also especially the poet of things of stature (for not only did he make other things well but also dramatic imitations), so also was he the first to indicate the characteristic shape of comedy, making not invective but a drama of the laughable. For Margites stands in an analogy: just as the Iliad and the Odyssey are related to tragedies so is this related to comedies.

To Do List

• Backoff Numbers Check
• Probability of Idle Calculations
  

On Translating Eugene Onegin

On Translating Eugene Onegin

1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.
2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task--a poet's patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument.
--Vladimir Nabokov

Cleansed - Scene Eleven

Scene Eleven
The Black Room.
Robin goes into the booth that Tinker visits.
He sits.
He puts in his one and only token.

The flap opens.
The Woman is dancing.
Robin watches - at first innocently eager, then bemused, then distressed.
She dances for sixty seconds.
The flap closes.
Robin sits and cries his heart out.

Phaedra's Love - Scene Six

Priest God is merciful. He chose you.

Hippolytus Bad choice.

Priest Pray with me. Save yourself. And your country. Don't commit that sin.

Hippolytus What bothers you more, the destruction of my soul or the end of my family? I'm not in danger of committing the unforgivable sin. I already have.

Priest Don't say it.

Hippolytus Fuck God. Fuck the monarchy.

Priest Lord, look down on this man you chose, forgive his sin which comes from the intelligence you blessed him with.

Hippolytus I can't sin against a God I don't believe in.

Phaedra's Love - Scene Six

Priest Self-satisfaction is contradiction in terms.

Hippolytus I can rely on me. I never let me down.

Priest True satisfaction comes from love.

Hippolytus What when love dies? Alarm clock rings it's time to wake up, what then?

Priest Love never dies. It evolves

Hippolytus You're dangerous.

Blasted - Scene Four

Cate It's wrong to kill yourself.

Ian No. It's not.

Cate God wouldn't like it.

Ian There isn't one.

Cate How do you know?

Ian No God. No Father Christmas. No fairies. No Narnia. No fucking nothing.

Cate Got to be something.

Ian Why?

Cate Doesn't make sense otherwise.

Ian Don't be fucking stupid, doesn't make sense anyway. No reason for there to be a God just because it would be better if there was.

Cate Thought you didn't want to die.

Ian I can't see.

Cate My brother's got blind friends. You can't give up.

Ian Why not?

Cate It's weak.

Ian I know you want to punish me, trying to make me live.

Cate I don't

Ian Course you fucking do, I would. There's people I'd love to suffer but they don't, they die and that's it.

Ford Maddox Ford

The Good Soldier (350 pages)

To Do List

• Conference Paper Review
• Backoff and Probability Idle Numbers check
• Sacred Games - pg. 100
  

Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey

He booked himself into the best hotel he could find in Arromanches, a pile made of brick, stone, and wood, which creaked in the gusting wind. Tonight I will dream of Proust, he thought. Then he called Simone and talked to the old lady who looked after her child. “Madame won’t be home until after four. She has an orgy tonight,” the woman said. “A what?” Rousselot asked. The woman repeated the sentence. My God, Rousselot thought, and hung up without saying goodbye. To make things worse, that night he didn’t dream of Proust but of Buenos Aires, where thousands of Riquelmes had taken up residence in the Argentine branch of PEN, all armed with tickets to Paris, all cursing or shouting a name, the name of someone or something that Rousselot couldn’t recognize, a tongue-twister, perhaps, or a password they were trying to keep secret, although it was gnawing at their insides.

Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey

“Nothing, a girl,” Rousselot said, trying to adopt the same tone as his compatriot. Then he said a rather hurried goodbye, and as he was climbing the stairs from the quai to the street he heard the bum’s voice telling him that death was the only sure thing: “My name is Enzo Cherubini and I’m telling you that death is the only sure thing there is.” When Rousselot turned around, the bum was walking off in the opposite direction.

[Notes - It is a very interesting conflation of two images centered on one piece of utterance that's rendered twice]

Sacred Games - pg. 61

I had no use for temples, I despised incense and comfortable lies and piety, I did not believe in gods or goddesses, but here was a haven. I took off my shoes and went in. The worshipers sat cross-legged on the smooth floor, crowded together through the length of the long hall. The walls were an austere white, lit up by tube-lights, but the dark heads swayed in a field of bright saris, purple and shining green and blue and deep red, all the way to the orange statue of Hanuman flying, suavely holding the mountain above his head.

Wayne Johnston - New Author

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

James Wood on Tolstoy

This might seem like a trivial point, but it is a little clue to the vision of the whole novel. Tolstoy sees reality as a system of constant adjustments, a long, tricky convoy of surprises, as realities jostle together and the vital, solipsistic ego is affronted by the otherness of the world.

-- The New Yorker article.

Sacred Games - pg. 42

'Bashir Ali,' Gaitonde said. The voice was commanding, like an emperor's, sure of its consonants and generosity.

Sacred Games - pg. 20

A murder case involving Bangladeshis was unusal because they usually kept their head low, worked, tried to make a living, and tried very hard to avoid attracting attention.

Sacred Games - pg. 14

They had a clear stretch of road now, all the way up to the intersection at Karanth Chowk. They sped past clusters of apartment buildings to the right, ensconced behind a long grey wall, and on the left the untidy shacks of a basti opened doors directly on to the road.

Sacred Games - pg. 8

'The roof needed work urgently. As you know, it's a very old house. My ancestral abode really. Also, it needed a new bathroom. Mamta and my granddaughters have moved back home. As you know. So.'

[Note: cadences with tum jantay hi ho/as you know rendered in English. not sure if it's a good idea.]

Sacred Games - pg. 7

There was an eight-foot wall around the whole complex, of the same reddish brown brick as the station house and the zonal headquarters. Both buildings were two storeys high, with identical red-tiled roofs and oval-topped windows. There was a promise in the grim arches, in the thickness of the walls and the uncompromising weight if the facades, there was the reassurance of bulky power, and so law and order.

Sacred Games - pg. 5

As Sartaj read, he could hear the elderly man sitting across from Kamble talking about slow death. His eighty-year-old mausi had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her hip. They had checked her into the Shivsagar Polyclinic, where she had borne with her usual stoicism the unrelenting pain in her old bones. After all, she had marched with Gandhi-ji in forty-two and had suffered her first fracture then - of the collarbone from a mounted policeman's lathi - and also the bare floors of jail cells afterwards. She had an old-fashioned strength, which saw sacrifice of the self as one's duty in the world. But when the pressure ulcers flowered their deep red wounds on her arms and shoulders and back, even she had said, perhaps it is time for me to die.

Sacred Games - pg. 4

Katekar was a senior constable, an old subordinate, a colleague really - they had worked together for almost seven years now off and on.

[Notes: This is in the beginning section of this 900 page book and Katekar's character has been described for the first time. I am looking how much of the relevant plot-history is coming out of this one sentence. Interesting]

João Guimarães Rosa - Brazilian Joyce

The Devil To Pay In The Backlands

Rosa, João Guimarães, 1908-1967.

The devil to pay in the Backlands :

New York : Knopf, l963.

494 p. ; 22 cm.

Morris Library PQ9697 .R76 D4813x 1963 Normal Loan

To Do List

• Average Backoff Number checks
• Probability of TX Success
• Probability of Idle
• Check Kim's numbers
  

Margot

Dress me like a clown is a perfunctory tune. It starts off with a cello solo and then progresses into the standard four-piece rhythm da-da da-da drum section. These two elements play off of each other, the singer drones and there is some talk of drinking and usual things... the chorus builds up in the background. The best part is the ending which strips away all the arrangements to a bare acoustic jam.

The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura: A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos

Irmtraud Morgner's Novel Amazon Link (high priority)

To Do List

• Hidden Node Probability of Success Modelling
• Residual Capacity Calculations
  

Napoleon Symphony

Burgess, Anthony, 1917-

Napoleon symphony

New York, Knopf; [distributed by Random House] 1974.

vii, 365 p. 22 cm.

Morris Library PR 6073 .I4678 N35 Normal Loan

The Devil in the Hills - Closing

It seemed to me that I had always known them. We got out at the level crossing. The branch road began there, with kerbs and low hedges, a white, cement road. We exchanged a few words and joked, Gabriella's hard face smiled an instant. Poli waved his hand.
Then they left and we went to the Mill to drink.

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 183

"The oldest soul that is inside each of us is the youngest -- the soul we had when we were boys. It seems to me I've always been a boy. It is the oldest habit that we have ...."

Sacred Games - Opening

Policeman's Day

A white Pomeranian named Fluffy flew out of a fifth-floor window in Panna, which was a brand new building with the painter's scaffolding still around it. Fluffy screamed in her little lap-dog voice all the way down, like a little white kettle losing steam, bounced off the bonnet of a Cielo, and skidded to a halt near the rank of schoolgirls waiting for the St Mary's Convent bus.

First published in 2006
by Faber and Faber Limited
3 Queen Square London WCIN 3AU
Typeset by Faber and Faber Limited
Printed in England by Mackays of Chatham, plc
All rights reserved
Vikram Chandra, 2006

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 110

I had already forgotten her honey-blonde hair, her bare, sandalled feet, and her constant air of just having stepped onto a beach

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 98

"Religion," Pieretto said, stopping, "is understanding how things go. Holy water is no use. You have to speak with people, understand them, know what each of them wants. They all want something out of life, they want to do something -- exactly what, they're never sure of. Well, it is in this intent that they all find God. It is enough to understand, and to help others to understand...."
"And when you're dead," Oreste remarked, "what have you understood?"
"You damned grave-digger!" Pieretto said. "When you're dead you have no more intentions."

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 78

His peasants were spraying the rows of vines with Bordeaux mixtures; bent under the canicular heat, they moved about in blouses and trousers hardened and splashed with blue, pumping the blue water from the brass sprays on their backs.The vine-leaves dripped, the pumps squeaked. We stopped above the great reservoir full of pure water, deep and opaque, like a blue eye, like a sky reversed.

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 69

We went the next day. A thin watercourse ran right down the middle of the hollow that divided our hill from the irregular downs, and we descended from the vineyard among fields of millet, until we came to a steep cleft, full of acacias and alders. At the bottom, the thread of water had formed a string of shallow puddles; there was one below a spring, from which we could see only the sky and the screen of briars. During the hot hours the sun beat straight down into it.

Book List (revisited)

• The Devil in the Hills - Cesare Pavese
• The Voyeur - Alain Robbe-Grillet
• Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra
  

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 61

Oreste's house had a peeling, reddish terrace, and it overlooked a sea of valleys and ravines bathed in a strong light which hurt your eyes. All morning I had ridden through the plain, a plain which looked familiar to me, and looking out of the train window I had caught sight of hedgegrows, mirrors of water, flocks of geese and meadow expanses that I recognized from my infancy. I was still thinking about these things when we entered between precipitous banks and you had to look up to see the sky. The train stopped beyond a narrow tunnel. I found myself in the heat and dust of the station square, my eyes meeting chalky slopes on all sides. A fat waggon-driver showed me the road; I had a good way to climb, for the village was high up. I threw my bag on the waggon and we went up together, matching the slow pace of the oxen.

Margot and The Nuclear So and So's

when in doubt make someone call up your creditors to back you up a little...

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 34

"These modern nights," Pieretto said. "They are as old as the world."

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 32

"It's beautiful to wake up and have no more illusions," he continued, smiling. "You feel yourself free but responsible. There is a tremendous power within us, freedom. You can reach innocence. You become disposed to suffer."

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 10

It was damp, dark, moonless; fireflies flashed. After a bit we slowed down, sweating. As we walked along we talked about our work, our experiences, our futures. We talked about ourselves with enthusiasm, we even drew Oreste into the conversation; we had walked through those streets other times, warmed by wine or by the company; but none of this mattered, it was a pretext for walking, for having the bulk of the hill beneath our feet. We walked among fields, boundary walls, gates of villas; we breathed the asphalt and the woods.

The Devil in the Hills - Opening

We were very young. I believe I never slept that year. But I had a friend who slept even less than I did, and certain mornings you would see him strolling about in front of the station during the hour in which the first trains arrive and depart. We used to leave him late at night, on his doorstep; Pieretto would take another walk and even see the dawn in, and then drink his coffee. Now he was studying the sleepy faces of streetsweepers and cyclists. Even he could not remember the discussions of the previous night: but having stayed awake on them, he had digested them, and he said calmly: "It's late. I'm going to bed."

Translated from the Italian
Il Diavolo sulle colline

All rights reserved

Originally published in 1959 by The Noonday Press, New York
Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Inc.
Reprinted in 1975 by Greenwood Press,
a division of Williamhouse-Regency Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Shostakovich - Piano Trio. No. #2 in E minor Op. 67

There was a funny anecdote that the conductor told about Dimitry Shostakovich in his introduction to this piece last night. Shostakovich was visiting the US and he was talking to students in a music conservatory in Baltimore and someone asked him that the problem with Soviet Union schools was that people weren't allowed to compose what they wanted. Shostakovich replied back that the problem with American conservatories was that people were allowed to compose what they wanted.!!

... and yet, a few days more - Faiz

Opinion pieces: an artform in Urdu journalism

I grew up reading various opinion pieces in Jang newspaper. Opinion pieces, "Columns" as they are known, are considered to be one of the major offering of any urdu newspaper. The roster of regular Columnists that a daily newspaper maintains, is considered to be a mark of prestige and it is a major selling point. I consider the writing, the shape and the masterful application of factual lacuna for rhetorical purposes of columns as a major artform.

Columns are supposed to cover opinions mainly related to the burning political issues of the time. The writings are meant to be incisive, analytical and factual and carry an air of self-importance. But this whole circus of punditry is hardly about any of those things. It is like a fluid narrative where the main voice, the invisible protagonist, the writer gets to shape a narrative within. The buried narrative unfolds in real-time bit by bit, column after column and accumulates layers as years pile up. The writer sometimes give a nod to this by speaking outside of his construction but rarely. Like for example today, one of the veteran journalist has put in a note at the end of his column in which he offered sarcastically an apology to his readers just in case, due to changing political situation, his today's subject matter becomes totally irrelevant by the time his creation comes out on paper. Oh, well.

PS: Oh, I absolutely like the title. It's called Temporary Murder referring the absurdity of "suspending" the constitution

To Do List

• Capacity Calculations
• Meeting with Stephan
• Brainstorming: Channel Allocation
  

Mahler graffiti in Toronto

The New Yorker's music critic, Alex Ross has on his blog (http:///www.therestisnoise.com) this funny image of someone's tagging the name of Gustav Mahler. ha!

Cover-page of a Pakistani Newspaper

This is the standard print edition of an Urdu newspaper in Pakistan. It folds in the middle and the news-stories are spread around in the top and bottom-half of the paper in a spatially descending format according to their importance. The main headline is written in the centre of the top-half with an special calligraphic font and carries a larger font-size than other news as it is obvious. Normally, the main headline is not spread out from one end (starting from right) to the other end of the page unless, the paper wants to stress the fateful nature of the headline content. In that case, the main-headline border which is enveloping here: a very thickset font, gushing decorative hyphens and slanted symbols around the text, runs horizontally across the page (referred to as an eight-column headline) as it can be seen in the posted image. The main-headline reads (literal translation):

Emergency Imposed, Constitution Suspended, PCO* Arrived, Chief Justice Fired

*PCO: provisional constitution order enforced by the coup-maker to replace the constitution

Ted Goransson making a point on "Bara no soretsu"

But then the better parts of me just enjoy the experience, part of which is wonder why the Japanese make the best French films. I think there's a discussion in there about cultural assertiveness and military failure seen as societal spaghettithinking.

Film: Bara No Soretsu
Dir: Toshio Matsumoto
(currently unavailable at Netflix)

New Writer: James McCourt

Amazon Link


Book Description (Amazon Blurb)
Diva Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced "Mardu Gorgeous") bursts like the most brilliant of comets onto the international opera scene, only to confront the deadly malice and black magic of her rivals. Outrageous and uproarious, flamboyant and serious as only the most perfect frivolity can be, James McCourt's entrancing send-up of the world of opera has been a cult classic for more than a quarter-century. This comic tribute to the love of art is a triumph of art and love by a contemporary American master.

Khwaja Ghulam Farid on the legend of Sa' ssee & Punnuh

Sa' see and Punnuh is a legend on the template of star-crossed lovers that roam around the sandy mounds of the Thar desert region. Famous Seraiki poet Khwaja Ghulam Farid created some intense poetry using the form 'kafis' in Seraiki. These poems take the legend and overlay metaphors and images that echo typical Sufist style conflation of Beloved/Divine, multiplicity/oneness...
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Where the desert grasses twist my love Ever-shifting shapes exist my love
The crickets creak, the pigeons coo
The foxes howl, the hyenas mew
The geckoes puff, the lizards whoo
The snakes and serpents hiss my love

In these surrounding rises the voice of Sassi.
Oh, in this desert's blessed sight I'll die indeed but not take fright
As for Punnu, he becomes for the Sufi a living and pervasive symbol of divine beauty.
See Punnal's presence everywhere
All mystics mark and hear know only he is here
All else shall disappear

Frederick Mershimer's Subway

[Notes: It's done with a 17th century printing process that was once used by Escher]

Béla Bartók

"We must drink our fill not from your silver goblets but from cool mountain springs."

an image

Concert Music List

Michel-Richard Delalande: Concert de Trompettes, Trois Caprices

Against The Day (book cover)

Eloisa to Abelard

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love! — From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.

Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies:
O write it not, my hand — the name appears
Already written — wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.

Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heav'n's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears, for ages, taught to flow in vain.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear!
Still breath'd in sighs, still usher'd with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:
Now warm in love, now with'ring in thy bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.

Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare,
Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,
When Love approach'd me under Friendship's name;
My fancy form'd thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind.
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry day,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gaz'd; heav'n listen'd while you sung;
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.
From lips like those what precept fail'd to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love.
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,
Nor wish'd an Angel whom I lov'd a Man.
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see;
Nor envy them, that heav'n I lose for thee.

How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies,
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;
Before true passion all those views remove,
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
The jealous God, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires;
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn 'em all:
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me.

Alas, how chang'd! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had oppos'd the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppress'd,
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.

Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,
The shrines all trembl'd, and the lamps grew pale:
Heav'n scarce believ'd the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the Cross my eyes were fix'd, but you:
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.
Still on that breast enamour'd let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press'd;
Give all thou canst — and let me dream the rest.
Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.

Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r.
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You rais'd these hallow'd walls; the desert smil'd,
And Paradise was open'd in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors;
No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n,
Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n:
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
In these lone walls (their days eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd,
Where awful arches make a noonday night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light;
Thy eyes diffus'd a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.
See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,
(O pious fraud of am'rous charity!)
But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah let thy handmaid, sister, daughter move,
And all those tender names in one, thy love!
The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclin'd
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.

Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.
I wake — no more I hear, no more I view,
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call aloud; it hears not what I say;
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!
Alas, no more — methinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,
Where round some mould'ring tower pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps.
Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies;
Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
And wake to all the griefs I left behind.

For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain
A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;
Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose;
No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows.
Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,
Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;
Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n,
And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heav'n.

Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?
The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.
Nature stands check'd; Religion disapproves;
Ev'n thou art cold — yet Eloisa loves.
Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.

What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,
Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.
I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee,
Thy image steals between my God and me,
Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,
With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight:
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown'd,
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.

While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,
While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,
And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art!
Oppose thyself to Heav'n; dispute my heart;
Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes
Blot out each bright idea of the skies;
Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears;
Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God!

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!)
Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu!
Oh Grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair!
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care!
Fresh blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality!
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest;
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest!

See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propp'd on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watch'd the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
"Come, sister, come!" (it said, or seem'd to say)
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!
Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and pray'd,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm in this eternal sleep;
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev'n superstition loses ev'ry fear:
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."

I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs.
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
Where flames refin'd in breasts seraphic glow:
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
Ah no — in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.
Ah then, thy once-lov'd Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.
See from my cheek the transient roses fly!
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev'n my Abelard be lov'd no more.
O Death all-eloquent! you only prove
What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love.

Then too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,
From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.

May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,
"Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!"

From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n,
One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n.
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

-- Alexander Pope

[Notes: I'm putting an excerpt from this poem at the start of my dissertation, the idea is to work the quote as a supplication to the Heavens, to make gods in bringing out the charms of that otherworldly domain ... ]