My week in Pictures

Love, with Trees and Lightning

I’ve been thinking about what love is for.
Not the dramatic part where he gathers
until he is as purposeful inside her
as an electric storm. Not when he breaks
into a thanks so bright it leaves her split
like a tree. (How we all jolt back, our picnic
ten shades lighter, our hands clapped over awe
that is too big for our mouths, our raw hearts
more tender now that they’re a little burned.)

No, not the connecting and charring part.
(After all, nothing we like to call lightning
stays very long among the branches.)
But the two of them, afterwards, tasting
the electricity. Nibbling the charge
on the ions. When her soul has already
risked coming to meet him at the wide open
window of her skin. When what is left
of his body still feels huge, and he sits draped
in his fine, long coat of animal muscles
but uses all this strength to be human
and almost imperceptible. They curl up,
make their bodies the same size, draw promises
in one another’s juices. “You,” they say.
I love it when they say that.

Would that they could give a solid reason.
Sometimes they even refuse to try. They make jokes
while cinching their laces—”I’ll call soon,”
“You are so sweet.” The rank sugar of his breath
doesn’t summarize the world for her. “Not you,” they say.

And nothing bad has happened. They just turn
the doorknob that has been shining in their hands
the whole time, walk out, and continue to die.
Same as the rest of us. So maybe love
is a form of crying. Of finishing
what autumn leaves always start and turning
a brilliant color before we drift down.

Name one living thing that doesn’t
somehow bloom. None of them get to choose
the right conditions. Think of fire, of orchids.
She’s already up the street when he feels
his body pale, close, and become insufficient.
“If you go,” he says out the door, “I go too.”

There is no one like him, but she has no hope
of ever proving it. Instead she stays up
pressing old secrets into his skin and asking
if it hurts. He sets her on top of himself
so he can’t leave without her and confesses
to feeling as if he almost matters,
as if he no longer disappears
as soon as he connects with something
receptive on the ground. She says she will
split in half for him a million times.
They bring flowers and carpet and children
into the act, stand by one another’s side
for years. They refuse to move, ever. They act
as if they’ve found the only hospitable
spot on earth. I love it when they do that.


— Catie Rosemurgy

Beautiful Words

Persuasion - Jane Austen

Blurb on the back: Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?

Jane Austin once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work.

My Thoughts: I haven't read much of Jane Austen to decide whether this is her best novel or not. But it is definitely a far cry from the utterly boring wishy-wash world of Emma. Don't get me wrong, the novel is full of cunning, social hierarchy and lots of spurned love and arranged matches but there is a lot of reflectibility in Anne Elliot to make her real. She is irritatingly judgmental and intelligent to the point of self-righteousness but I love my herione with all their flaws. One thing that didn't go down well with me is the fact that every other character is named Charles. What's with that?

Rating: 3/5

Winter.

“And yet the only exciting life is an ordinary one.” – Virginia Woolf



Finally I learned to decipher the fog. I come from a tropical beach city where temperatures rarely fluctuate +/- 5 degrees all year round. We are never too hot nor too cold and have massive amounts of rain and sunshine and this eternal summer is the standard to which I hold the weather all over the world. Even the most brilliantly beautiful cities with places right out of a picture postcard are reduced to masses of gray damp if the weather is not agreeable. Winter is my least favourite of seasons. I get lost in this maze of short days. As soon as I open my eyes its dusk already and all I am left to do is count stars on my fingertips because the night’s going to last forever and its too late to stop now.

I cannot for the life come to romanticize bare trees, icy winds and the monochromatic landscape. I know that these elements embody the cycle of life and la-di-la but there is nothing beautiful about the death of nature. And there is certainly nothing romantic about dripping noses, cramped fingers, wet socks and the flu every second week. 15 layers of clothing and huge ear muffs aren’t cute. This cold January has turned me into an obstinately hopeless grump.

To counter these effects of winter I started reading some saucy, hot Greek mythology. Now I know what keeps those Gods and Goddesses busy. I eat bright red apples all day long, listen to Harry Potter audio books, miss home, watch George Carlin on youtube, crochet colourful flowers and miss home some more. I just wish I could make up this lost time in Spring or Monsoon and life wouldn’t seem so fleeting to me in those days. In winters I lose the demarcation between days and this blur of time just swallows up the most potent part of me. I wish the sun would come soon and help me find myself again.

Handmade Bracelet

My week in pictures

Things that are not magic

Electricity. Rabbits. Starlight. Starlings.
Clockwork. Respiration. Pop music. Time
travel, especially when it’s not theoretical.
Pharmacology. The way light bends when
it falls across water. The trajectory of fire.
Dream sequences. Architecture. Dark matter.
Calligraphy. Holograms, and any other surface
that glitters. Remembrance. Centripetal force.
The inverse relationship between duration
and speed. Agriculture. Aeronautics. Any
known taxonomy. Perfume. Small batch gin.
Windmills. Industrial dams. Field recordings.
Sex with a stranger, however significant, is not
magic. It cannot change history. It won’t rebuild
your broken heart. This is not my fault.

- Gillian Devereux

Beautiful Words

I am America (So can You) - Stephen Colbert

Blurb on the back:Congratulations -- just by opening the cover of this book you became 25% more patriotic.

From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23 hours of your day. I Am America (and So Can You!) contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast.

Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder over a three-day weekend, this book contains Stephen's most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form.

Always controversial and outspoken, Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones.

You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong.

I Am America (and So Can You!) showcases Stephen Colbert at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

My Thoughts: Stephen Colbert is a funny guy and this is a funny book (although he admits he hasn't written the book). It's an entertaining satire on the modern American society and it is done in the same dead pan mocking style for which Colbert is famous for. For me the funniest part of the book were the pictures of Colbert, he is quite the expressive guy. But quintessentially this is an airport book, good for a few laughs and over within hours. The book doesnt bring forth anything which we didn't know beforehand and the jokes seem forced sometimes. Anyone who has seen the show will find the book redundant. But good for a few laughs on a cold, dreary boring day.

Rating: 3/5