…

Then she gazed at him in wonder and laughed. “You idiot. I love you. I said I'm pregnant.”

“Ah...”

His mind had softly whited out, the manly equivalent of a neurasthenic faint onto the sofa behind him. Pregnant. He struggled with this ripely swelling word -familiar enough, but for the moment devoid of helpful context, like the face, say, of the local newsagent encountered in an improbable place. Then word, meaning and consequences, biology and fate, clicked into an alignment like a steel bolt. His cell door had been open for months, years, and he could have walked free. Too late. While his back was turned one of his own sperm, as brave and cunning as Odysseus, had made the long journey, breached the city wall and buried the its identity in her egg.

…

She took her pleasures easily, she was a loud, big-hearted lover of the back-clawing school, which was to his taste, but not tonight. As they bucked and turned, and her silky skin turned slick and her cries grew louder in his left ear, he found he could no longer abandon himself completely, and he as troubled, distracted. He wished she had not reminded him of her pregnancy. After many uncountable minutes, the moment was approaching when sexual etiquette required that he time himself, get in step with the shrieking downhill dash to her final orgasm, and he knew he was not ready and might not make it. And so, in those closing seconds, he entered a familiar empty theatre, sat in stalls and auditioned some women he knew, bringing them on stage in merging sequence at the impossible speed of thought. They appeared in experimental attitudes, in different tableaux that magically involved himself. He summoned and dismissed the girl from Milan, then an Iranian biophysicist, and then Patrice, an old stand-by. But at last he settled on the right choice, the immigration officer with the withered arm. He let her step out coolly from behind her station, and there they stood, fucking against her desk in front of five hundred bored passengers ready with their passports. To Beard, sex in public among indifferent was a fantasy unaccountable appealing and it worked. He made it just in time."

--------------

Has your mood lightened up? Time to pass aux choses sérieuses...Inspirée d'un fait divers qui s'est passé à Lyon en 2009, cette histoire d'un pauvre type qui s'est fait tuer par trois agents de sécurité d'un supermarché pour y avoir consommé une bière sans pouvoir la payer est écrite sans ponctuation, sans majuscules, ni début ni fin, en une longue phrase(!), de où les ... . Une tristement bonne écriture. Peut se lire en une demi heure...

"...les jambes recroquevillées avec cette putain de position de fœtus et qui n'arrive jamais quand ça va -peut-être qu'ils ont demandé si ça allait?- est-ce que le plus vieux s'est penché vers lui pour le secouer? Et sa peau toute blanche, est-ce qu'elle a rougi un peu avant de demander, tu vas répondre, dis, ça va? réponds et soudain l'image de la mort s'est collée sur la rétine de ses yeux verts et sur les deux autres, ceux que la lâcheté a fait reculer d'un pas et laissés plus timides..."

------------------

Ξεχνάμε ότι ξεχνάμε… Πολύ μ'άρεσε αυτό. Και έτσι ακριβώς συμβαίνει νομίζω.

"…Με τις κατεδαφίσεις ξεχνάμε και τις πόλεις. Στην αρχή ξεχνάμε μια ανάμνηση, όμως προσπαθούμε να θυμηθούμε επειδή ξέρουμε ότι ξεχνάμε. Έπειτα ξεχνάμε ότι ξεχνάμε και η πόλη παύει να μας θυμίζει τον εαυτό της. Στο τέλος, οι χώροι με τα χαλάσματα που πληγώνουν, ή οδηγούν στην απώλεια της μνήμης, γίνονται τοποθεσίες όπου κάποιοι άλλοι μπορούν να κάνουν καινούργια όνειρα. "

------------

This book should be first in your agenda. Actually, in the agenda of all thinking humans. I agree, this is not really a beach book, yet one to give you an idea of the future that arrived, hmm, yesterday! An E x c e l l e n t read, albeit hard to buy in the bookstores, and I will have to get back to it more thoroughly one day. It almost feels silly to cite just one paragraph; I could easily rewrite the whole book here...

" When irrupting populations surpass the newly available carrying capacity, the ensuing crash may occur by different means among humans, animals or plants, although none are exempt from die-off. Access to new carrying capacity ,ay come about differently for plants than for animals, and differently for other animals than for humans. But these differences do not affect the basic principle: die-off is the sequel to overshoot."

-----------

Last but NOT least: cette bande dessinée excellente. Pas très facile à emporter dans une valise, mais peut aussi servir de chapeau de soleil, si placé ouvert sur la tête! (Cliquer sur la photo pour lire dedans)

Bonnes vacances, καλές διακοπές, Nice holiday!

Multikulti

____________

Duncan, we’ve been more friends than lovers for quite a long time. Maybe we should think about making that relationship official.”            His face lit up, and for a moment Annie thought she was safely on to the other bank. “Marriage, you mean? Because I’d be happy to…”           “No, no. You’re not listening. The opposite of marriage. A non-matrimonial, nonsexual, once-a-week-in-the-pub friendship.”            “Oh.”

Annie was beginning to resent the unfairness of all this. The one good thing about being rejected by Duncan was that she didn’t have to end the relationship herself. Now, suddenly, it would appear that she had to both get dumped and do the dumping. How had that happened?”

___________

Ce dernier temps je n'arrive pas à finir mes livres. Je suis indigné. Pour les avoir achetés!

“93 ans. La fin n'est plus loin. Quelle chance de pouvoir en profiter pour rappeler ce qui a servi de socle à mon engagement politique: le programme élaboré il y a soixante ans par le Conseil National de la Résistance!”

Très actuel. Libye, le monde arabe s'enflamme, Japon éclate. Pensons à il y a soixante ans.

"-¿Vos aceptaríais abdicar?

-¡Jamas! Para tomar el poder, se verán obligados a violar el tratado y deponer me a la fuerza. A los ojos del mundo entero aparecerán como agresores, estoy seguro de que vacilaran...

-No os hagáis ilusiones, Majestad, el mundo olvida rápidamente, un acontecimiento tapa el siguiente y aquel que tiene el poder impone su versión de la historia, que, en pocos anos, se convierte en la verdad incontestable."

Really? As if we were not watching CNN...

"Confeso a Roger que echaba mucho de menos a su mujer. No la veía hacia dos anos y recibía de ella pocas cartas. Tal vez había dejado de quererlo. Tal vez se había echado encima un amante. No era de extrañar. Les ocurría a muchos oficiales y funcionarios que, por servir a Bélgica y a su Majestad el rey, venían a enterrarse en este infierno, a contraer enfermedades, a ser mordidos por víboras, a vivir sin las comodidades mas elementales. Y para que? Para ganar unos sueldos mezquinos, que apenas permitían ahorrar. Alguien le agradecería luego esos sacrificios allá en Bélgica? Por el contrario, en la metrópoli había un prejuicio tenaz contra los “coloniales”. Los oficiales y funcionarios que regresaban de la colonia eran discriminados, tenidos a distancia, como si, de tanto codearse con salvajes, se hubieran vuelto salvajes también."

Pas mal, mais "unfinissable". Pas pour les âmes sensibles belges.

La qualité des oeuvres de Vargas Llosa reste très inconstante. Lisez plutôt "La fiesta del chivo" (The feast of the goat), ou "Las travesías de la niña mala" (The bad girl).

____________

"Su nombre se ha borrado de mi memoria.

Desde luego, podría buscar su escuela, que recorté y guardé, para recordarlo, pero a estas alturas da igual como se llamaba. Es un nombre que se ha borrado para mi. Así de sencillo.

A veces me encuentro con amigos a quienes no he visto desde hace anos y si por casualidad en nuestra conversación hablamos de ella, tampoco recuerdan su nombre. «  ¡Ah, entonces...! ¿Como se llamaba? Ni idea, oye... y eso que también yo me la follé un montón de veces... ¿Que habrá sido de su vida? ¡Estaría bueno tropezarse-la por ahí...! »

« Erase una vez, en algún ligar, una-chica-que-se-acostaba-con-todos. » Así se llamaba para nosotros. Ese era su nombre."

_________________

" Δεν έχω ανάγκη να πάω πιο μακριά. Τώρα, ξέρω πως έφτασα επιτέλους στο τέρμα του ταξιδιού μου. Εδώ είναι πουθενά αλλού. Ο λευκός σαν το αλάτι δρόμος, οι ακίνητοι τοίχοι, η κραυγή του κόρακα. Εδώ μ' έκλεψε πριν από δεκαπέντε χρόνια, πριν από μια αιωνιότητα, κάποιος από τη φάρμα Χριουίγκα, ένας εχθρός της δικής μου φάρας των Χιλάλ, για μια υπόθεση νερού, μια υπόθεση πηγαδιού, μια εκδίκηση. Όταν αγγίζεις τη θάλασσα, πλησιάζεις την άλλη ακτή. Εδώ, βάζοντας το χέρι μου πάνω στη σκόνη της ερήμου, αγγίζω τη γη όπου γεννήθηκα, αγγίζω το χέρι της μητέρας μου."

_________

" There was once, in the city of Kahani in the land of Alibay, a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear; which meant that whenever he called out “Dog!”the bear waddled up amiably on his hind legs, and when he shouted “Bear!” the dog bounded towards him waggling his tail. Dog the brown bear could be a little gruff and bearish at times, but he was an expert dancer, able to get up on to his hind legs and perform with subtlety and grace the waltz, the polka, the rhumba, the wah-watusi and the twist, as well as dances from nearer home, the pounding bhangra, the twirling ghoomar (for which he wore a wide mirror-worked skirt), the warrior dances known as the spaw and the thang-ta, and the peacockdance of the south. Bear the dog was a chocolate Labrador, and a gentle, friendly dog, though sometimes a bit excitable and nervous; he absolutely could not dance, having, as the saying goes, four left feet, but to make up for his clumsiness he possessed the gift of perfect pitch, so he could sing up a storm, howling out the melodies of the most popular song of the day, and never going out of tune"

________________

"Jesús nunca tuvo ese aspecto, pensé al mirar una Santa Cena que había en el despacho del pastor protestante. Si era un judío árabe, ¿ por qué en la mayoría de las imágenes parece uno de los Bee Gees ?
No seguí con mis pensamientos porque entró en el despacho el pastor Gabriel, un señor mayor con barba, ojos de mirada intimidante y la frente surcada por unas profundas arrugas de preocupación que deben de salirle a todos los que pasan treinta años teniendo que cuidar ovejas.
-Le quieres, Marie ? -me preguntó sin antes saludar.
-Si... Ejem... Pues claro que quiero a Jesús,... un hombre magnífico...-respondí.
 -Me refiero al hombre con quien quieres casarte en mi iglesia.
-Oh... "
 ..
 "Comprendí que en aquel momento tenía que decir "Sí, con la ayuda de Dios". Pero, de repente, fui consciente de que "todos  los días de tu vida" era mucho tiempo. Muchísimo tiempo. Eso se lo habrían inventado cuando la esperanza de vida era de treinta años, antes que murieran en sus cabañas de barro o fueran devorados por los leones en el Circo Máximo. Pero, ahora, ahora la esperanza de vida era de ochenta, de noventa años. Si la Medicina continuaba avanzando, seguro que acabaríamos llegando a los ciento veinte. Bueno, yo no tenía seguro privado, o sea que sólo llegaría a los ochenta, noventa años, pero, aun así, seguían siendo muchos años "

__________________

Probably the funniest book that has ever been written. Cruel and hard, as all Onion publications.

Look inside: Colombia - India - Greece

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“Usually though, her wish for seeing our lives as gauzy art, a permanent monument to evanescence, made for scenes as artfully composed as postcards, and dreamy, gentle Sachiko was an expert at spinning dream images as at producing gift-wrapped memories: she, looking over the Kamo River, eyes shining in the dark ; she, in plum kimono, plucking the koto in front of billowing curtains ; she, holding her breath and closing her eyes tight as she stood before the Buddha. Coming to Japan in search of romance, I found myself now a protagonist in someone else’s dream, and found, too, that the favor was returned.

« This dream ? she often said, and the only answer I could find was yes.”

...

"Around us, clutches of apprehensive wedding parties stood around gravely, waiting to have their moment immortalized. I looked on in surprise as Sachiko fell into animated chatter with the startled-looking lady at the desk (not accustomed, I suspected, to seeing a Japanese girl in a sari asking for a wedding picture alone). Then, eyes alight, she handed over 160$ for two formal portraits of herself.

            “But Sachiko,” I protested, bursting in. “That’s enough to buy an air  ticket to Thailand! Surely you can use this money better!”

            “Please,” she said, putting a finger to her lips. “Please don’t worry, Pico! I want give you something you always keep together. Photo never change; you take many place, always happy memory. Later, you old man, maybe you little look this photo, time stop; you always remember this time. In photo, I always very young, maybe little beautiful.

 A nice love story that ends up well*

“ (Pico Iyer) now lives in Japan”, I read at the preface of the book.

And I googled “Pico Iyer Sachiko”, eager to find how this sweet love story between Pico Iyer and Sachiko (not her real name), his Japanese girlfriend, had  ended in reality. Actually, what I longed to see was that it had not ended... And indeed, I felt on this.

Pico Iyer goes to live for a year in Kyoto. And falls in love with the country and Sachiko, whose sweetness permeates the Western male reader. The book is of course not about relations, but about Japan. Pico Iyer has a very good eye for situations, and a fantastic language. But, I am ashamed to admit, I read summarily all those deeper paragraphs looking for the next one with the name Sachiko in it. Her awkward language, her child's eyes, her colorful clothes. A very interesting book about a country that actually never was a priority for me.  It now has become one.

*Such a book really exists (written by Xavier Deutsch). Although it sounds more like a paradox than anything else.

Multikulti

___________________________________________________________

“Can you wait at the window and watch me until I've disappeared around the corner?”

“Of course.”

“I'm so afraid I won't see you again,” said Ka as he closed the door.

He locked the door and dropped the key into his coat pocket.

He wanted to ensure that he'd be able to turn around and take a last, leisurely look at Ipek in the window, so when he reached the street he kept several paces ahead of his two bodyguards. When he turned around, there she was, like a statue, at the window of Room 203 of the Snow Palace Hotel, still wearing the black velvet evening gown, her honeyed shoulders now covered with goosebumps, from the cold. Standing there bathed in the orange light of the bedside lamp, she was his image of happiness. It was the image that Ka would hold close to him during the last four years of his life.

He never saw her again."

____________________________________________________________________________

τί διάβασα το καλοκαίρι;

"Twice a week, when Olivia is not in the car, he offers to drive me to G.B. Road, the Delhi red lght district. “Just looking,”he suggests. “Delhi ladies very good. Having breasts like mangoes.”

Yet he has his principles. Like his English counterpart, he is a believer in hard work. He finds it hard to understand the beggars who congregate at the lights. “Why these people not working?” he asks. “They have two arms and two legs. They not handicrafted.”

“Handicrafted?”

“Missing leg perhaps, or only one ear.”

“You mean handicapped?”

Yes. Handicrafted. Sikh peoples not like this. Sikh peoples working hard, earning money, buying car.”

Ignoring the bus hurtling towards us, he turns around and nks an enormous wink. “Afterwards Sikh peoples drinking whisky, looking television, eating tandoori chicken and going G.B. Road.”

___________

“...The Machiguenga verb system was complicated and misleading, among other reasons because it readily mixed up past and present. Just as the word for “many” -tobaiti- was used to express any quantity above four, “now” also included at least today and yesterday, and the present tense of verbs was frequently used to recount events in the recent past. It was as though to them only the future was something clearly defined. Our conversation turned to linguistics and ended with a string of examples of the humorous and unsettling implications of a form of speech in which before and now were barely differentiated.”

_________________

“A veces creo que el infierno, si existiera, consistiria en poder ver, en el preciso instante de nuestra muerte, lo que estan haciendo en ese mismo momento las persons a quienes hemos querido.”

_________________

An expert of India, Paul Theroux falls madly in move with an American entrepreneur living in Calcutta. And by madly I mean the kind of love that penetrates somebody to the point that sex becomes more or less irrelevant. We don't expect such a love to have a happy ending, do we? But still, in describing love in such a suffocating city as Calcutta, there is no other travel writer that I know of that can describe so precisely the déjà-vus, the weak points of the lonely traveller. Read this, for example:

“When you're alone in a distant city, floating as foreigners do, and someone is kind, the kindness is magnified and so is your gratitude. If you're a man and that kind person is a woman, you might feel you've been touched by an angel.”

Later on, in an astonishing part of the book, the main hero of the book meets... Paul Theroux, the real one! In this way, Paul Theroux proceeds to a self-criticism through the eyes of an unsuccessful writer meandering in India:

“What I knew about Theroux was that everyone knew about him. He was known for being intrusive, especially among the unsuspecting -strangers he met on trains, travellers who had no idea who he was, people thinking out loud in unguarded moments. I suspected that much of what he wrote was fiction, since he'd started his writing life as a novelist. And I knew the temptation to improve quotations or to dramatize chance encounters and far-off landscapes, to make people and places more exotic. But he was too explicit to be convincing. Life was seldom so neat, and never neat in a city like this. I indulged in a little fictionalizing myself, but I always felt this colouration was in a good cause. Like most writers, he was ruthless in using whomever he met.”

Summer 2010.

First came Roland Garros, and then it was over, with Nadal biting the trophy. Then Wimbledon started, in a brand new Stadium to protect from the rain that never came. In between the World Cup had started, and the vuvuzelas: an African invention that sounds like millions of bees. Then Wimbledon was over, with Nadal biting again the trophy (amazing teeth!) and with it the longest match in history, won by Izner with  70-68 -games, not points- in the fifth set and a bit more than eleven hours on the court!  But the World Cup kept going, and then the Tour de France came. Then the tour de France was over, and the World Cup as well, and the Germans were disappointed not to win the Eurovision AND the World Cup, despite the octopus poll , that had it all figured out, and I felt like writing to the TV people and asking them to please put them back, I really enjoyed these afternoons and evenings, sweating it out on the sofa! 

Now that my existence has lost its sportly meaning, I decided it's time to leave for a better climate. But not before I recommend some books for your already heavy suitcase.

Iμαρέτ

Ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο για μια περίοδο που δε διδαχθήκαμε στο σχολείο: αυτήν αμέσως μετά την επανάσταση του 1821, όταν η Ελλάδα ακόμη μεγάλωνε και πριν γίνει αυτή που είναι σήμερα..

'Το κισμέτ, Νετζίπ! Κάποτε οι κύκλοι όλων κλείνουν. Και τώρα το θέλω κι εγώ να κλείσει ο κύκλος μου. Νικητής απέναντι στο θάνατο κανένας δε στέκει. Όσο για τη ζωή, νικητής είναι εκείνος που φήνεται στη τρέλα της νιότης, δίνεται κατόπιν στην οικογένειά του και κλείνεται όταν γεράσει στη σοφία του, ξαναζώντας μ' έναν άλλο τρόπο όσα πέρασαν. Όμως ποτέ να μην λησμονεί πως η σκιά του μεγαλώνει και μικραίνει καταπώς χτυπάει ο ήλιος,  κι ακόμα, όταν κοιτάζει ψηλά, να μην ξεχνάει τα παπούτσια του που πατούν στο χώμα.'

_________________________

Grumpy old men

Probably my best advice for summer 2010. A grumpy old man expresses himself on everything that matters, while at the same time being his honest self: a grumpy old man. Very funny in an obscure, manihaistic  way, but who cares. And I know I'm being grumpy, but you don't even know the meaning of the word "manihaistic", don't you? Don't worry, the check spell equally ignores it…

“THE FRENCH
The French are also rubbish at rock music. French rock’n’roller Johnny Halliday has never crossed over in this country, despite being quite a bit more rocking than our Cliff Richard. Perhaps this is because what the French like about rock is the attitude – all that rather dated leather jacket, cigarette and motorbike stuff. To the French, that says, “Vive le rock”. To the rest of the world, it says, “I like men.”
…
SPORTS CASUAL
Once worn by fit and healthy athletes, sportswear is now the badge of the unfit, the large and the idle. Sportswear worn by the unfit is vile and unattractive, like jewellery worn by pigs. We don’t see our finest athletes dressed in brown trousers held together with string and old jumpers with moths flying out of them, so why do the big fat slobs wear sportswear? Easy: because sportswear is stretchy and loose, and so ideal for concealing rolls of fat and big bums.”

…
CALL CENTRES
“Hello. Thank you for calling Dodgycorp. Your call is very important to us, which is why you are listening to the voice of a woman who got sacked three years ago to be replaced by nine people in Delhi. For security reasons and to give us a good laugh at your continuing frustration, this call can be monitored by teenagers and recorded. If you wish to report a fault, press nine to be transferred to our customer relations department, or, to be honest, a faint hissing sound which will go dead after you have been holding for 20 minutes. If you wish to cancel your account, press seven to listen to a fake ringing tone as no way are we going to make it easy for you to get out of your contract. If you wish to speak to a customer services operative, press three and your call will be transferred to our customer services centre in Bombay. As the operative lives several thousand miles away from where you do, and on the wages we pay her, she will never be able to share the lifestyle you enjoy, she may have difficulty understanding the nature of your enquiry. But listen, as her job consists entirely of reading answers off a piece of paper with the words TEN QUESTIONS THAT THE CUSTOMERS ALWAYS ASK, she should be all right. Thank you for calling Dodgecorp. This call will now abruptly terminate, its only lingering shadow the amount it cost on your phone bill.”

IKEA
…
The whole thing is a mess. Just because we don’t have any chintz – and apparently only murders and nonces do -  we are expected to put up with a day in a warehouse for bastards. The very names of products are annoying, names like Billy and Sigbog, which suggest that every single item in Ikea is named after a Scandinavian village idiot.
ASTROLOGERS

;;;;
Even  when they get an obvious one, they cook it up. There’s a constellation up there with five stars in, three at the top, two at the bottom. Everyone who’s ever seen it says “Oh look, a giant W”. Not your ancient Greeks. They said, “Blimey, it’s a beautiful maiden chained to a rock”, and called it Cassiopea.
…
Astrologers! They’re not even real gypsies.

HAVE TATTOOS

Hey! If you’re going to get something that will last your entire life, try and get, say, some diamonds, or a castle, or a million pounds.  Not a drawing that stretches with age. Or – worst of all – “Celtic” tattoos. These look like bits of burning newspaper and are tattooed around the bulgy bicep like so many bitemarks. They are meant to indicate that you have a spiritual side, but really signify that the person who tattoed you had run out of coloured ink, pictures of anchors, and any good ideas. Celtic tattoos probably look great on some woad-covered warrior, running broadsworded-up to lop the head of some Roman. They look rubbish on a junior IT consultant from Tring

THE NATIONAL LOTTERY
“It could be you”, is their slogan. Statistically speaking, a more accurate slogan would be “It couldn’t be you”.

_________________________

Biografi

A stunning book about Petar Shapallo, the unfortunate guy who served as Enver Hoxha's , the Albanian dictator's body double, during a period when the sigourimi, the national secret service, ruled and made everyone's life miserable.

"A more likely contender was the First Earl of Inchcape, whose lunch at his castle ain Ayrshire was interrupted by his butler with news that a visitor from London had arrived to offer the Earl the throne of Albania.
The Earl wiped his mouth with a napkin and asked: “Where is it?”
A letter of formal offer arrived the next day:

I do not know whether this is the first time in your career that you have been offered a kingdom, and I fully realise of course this is a matter that you could not consider seriously, especially in view of the fact that the new King would be expected to do all in his power financially and politically to help in construction of railways, roads, schools and public buildings throughout the country.
            Perhaps next time you are cruising in the Mediterranean you would feel drawn to put in at Valona or Durazzo in order to express your sentiments, whatever they be, in connection with the offer which I am seriously putting before you.
            In any case, if you turn it down entirely, perhaps you would feel called upon to suggest the name of some wealthy Englishman or American with administrative power who would care to take up the cudgels on Albania’s behalf, thereby securing the honourable positionas Albania’s King."

_________________________

Lo verdadero es un momento de lo falso

Un libro de Lucía Etxebarría sobre todo lo que se debe saber sobre todo. Una enciclopedia acerca de las relaciones humanas con Pumuky, el personaje central, una joven artista con tendencias suicidas. Alrededor de ella un análisis profundo de todos los protagonistas, de sus relaciones, sus calidades, sus angustias, sus felicidades y desgracias. Un Etxebarría típico aunque que ya ha escrito algunos mejores.

         "   -Pues sù. Si tanto me amas y yo no te amo , mejor serà que te mates y que dejes de perseguirme. Porque cuando se ama se muere del mismo amor, ? no ? Dimelo tù. Y se de verdad me amas ; te agradecerùia mucho que me dejaras vivir en paz.
            Pumuky se dio la vuelta, sin decir palabra, y ella se sintio milagrosamente aliviada. Fue la ùltima vez que lo vio. Se entermo de que el la habia dejado para siempre de la misma manera que se habia enterado él de que ella le habia dejado : por la tele."

_________________________

Poo

When my kids were still very young, I always tried to have a funny story available to tell during the difficult moments of the day. Or the night. It was not easy. It was actually not moments, but whole hours, and I could not possibly have a smart story available  at late night hours, for example,  or while force-feeding them Nutricia hypoallergenic food (would it sell so good if they put a crying, spitting baby on the box?). Until one day I realised I did not have to invent clever stories to make them smile: Just pronouncing the word "kaka", "poo", "pipi"  and other similar, smelly vocabulary brought the biggest Mickey Mouse smile on their faces and put them in a sweet disposition! Always!
I miss those days when things were so easy. They never look at me the same way when I use the same words today. But if you are experiencing the same kind of problems with young children, try my advice and bring this book with you. You will thank me when you're there.
Exists also in mini version, roughly the size of an iPhone, and costs much less.

Click on the picture for a glimpse

_________________________

Comptez-vous parmi ces gens qui s'inquiètent même en vacances? Qui pensent que la fin du monde est imminente? Que l'on va jamais sortir  de la crise, que la nature humaine est mauvaise et les Américains les seuls vilains au monde? Ces deux livres ne vous décevront pas. Au contraire, ils vous rappelleront même au milieu de votre crique perdue en Méditerranée que ceci n'est qu' une illusion, que le futur ne recule jamais, qu'une catastrophe globale n'est que partie remise. Et si ça devient grave, lisez Poo (voir plus haut). Ca devrait aider.

« Et pourtant, comme la “crise des tulipes” a pu, en 1637, ouvrir la voie à cent cinquante ans d’ une formidable croissance des Provinces Unies, la crise des subprimes , première véritable crise de la mondialisation, pourrait accélérer considérablement la prise de conscience de la nécessité de mettre en place, un jour, un égal accès au savoir, une demande mondiale stable, un salaire mondial minimal, une socialisation de l’ essentiel des fonctions monétaires, instruments de la souveraineté, un état de droit mondial, prélude, à terme, à un gouvernement mondial. »

            As the United States struggles to impose order on Iraq, along with a regime that will be subordinated to U.S. interests, another crisis threatens to erupt in North Korea.
            In the so-called axis of evil, North Korea is the most dangerous member. But like Iran (and unlike Iraq) it failed the first of the U.S. criteria for a legitimate target: It was not defenceless.
            North Korea has a deterrent-not nuclear weapons (at the time of writing), but massed artillery at the demilitarised zone aimed at Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and at tens of thousands of American troops just south of the border. The troops are scheduled to be withdrawn, outside of artillery range, arousing concerns in North and South Korea about U.S. intentions.
            In October 2002, the United States charged that North Korea had secretly begun a program to enrich uranium, in violation of a 194 agreement. The nuclear brinkmanship since then has reminded some observers of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This year (2003), Washington has taught an ugly lesson to the world: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat.
           

_________________________

Letztlich fiel das Buch nicht so interessant aus, wie es anfangs vermuten ließ. Ein Trost bleibt, dass man es billig in Flughäfen kaufen kann, was auch ein nützlicher Hinweis für alle wegen eines Vulkan-Ausbruchs auf den Flug wartenden Passagiere ist, die in dieser beinahe nie endenwollenden Zeit Gesellschaft brauchen.

"Auf dem Grabstein steht mein Name – und das ist schon mal kein guter Anfang. Was mir die Stimmung zusätzlich vermiest: Mein Name ist auch noch falsch geschrieben. Ich bin bei so was normalerweise wirklich nicht kleinlich, aber bei einer derart existenziellen Angelegenheit, also ich weiss nicht, ich finde, da darf man doch etwas meht Sorgfalt erwarten."

------------------------------------------

"Class
The Belgians have a simple class system: everyone is middle class. Belgium is a monument to the values of the middle class, and its values are the ones that they hold most dear.
            There are rich and poor, good families and less good families, but the democratic educational system and easy social mobility mean class hierarchies are not a big talking point. It is a great sin, however, to be vulgaire (pronounced with a shudder in the voice). This does not mean low class so much as boorish, or lacking in social graces.”

…
Culture
            Even Magritte, one of the few artists to have become a legend in his lifetime, insisted upon his ordinariness to the point of eccentricity: like an office clerk, he would breakfast, put on his hat and coat, hang his umbrella over his arm, kiss his wife good-bye, then walk round the block, re-enter the house, hang up his brolly, hat and coat, put on an overall and begin his day’s work at the easel.”

"Manners
By misinterpreting the word “freedom” the Greeks often confuse good manners with the servile behaviour they had to assume in order to survive under the Turkish yoke. As a result, they believe that manifestations of politeness are only fit for slaves.

...
Systems
On the other hand, it is equally probable that in a United Europe the Greeks may be a bad influence on the other Europeans, subverting them into enjoying life more, working less, and letting tomorrow take care of itself.
One thing is certain: wherever you have an appreciable body of Greeks, very soon the particular system they are involved will start functioning their way."

..."

"The Germans long to be understood and liked by others, yet secretly take pride that this can never be. After all, how can outsiders understand such a complex, deep, sensitive people? What can they know of the German struggle for identity or the tortured German spirit searching for release?
They would like to be respected for their devotion to truth and honesty. They are surprised that this is sometimes taken as tactlessness, or worse. After all, if I know you to be in error, surely it is my duty to correct you? Surely the Truth is more important than pretending to like your ghastly short or sports coat? Foreigners just cannot seem to appreciate this."

"It is not surprising that Italian males find it very difficult to leave home. Their mothers make it hard for them to do so by making sure that their sons are so cosseted that they have no real wish to leave. Even when they are married, they continue to behave as if they aren’t, taking their clothes home at least once a week for their mother to wash and iron.
They end up treating home as a hotel, just like teenagers in northern European countries. Why give up a life of luxury and financial security with a woman who treats you as the Son of God for un uncertain future with a woman who might ask you do things around the house that you have never learnt to do, like making your bed or drying the dishes?"

excellent! very good! good just good don't...

__________

“People think of our life as harsh, and of course in many ways it is. But going into the unknown world and confronting it without a single rupee in our pockets means the differences between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, all vanish, and a common humanity emerges. As wanderers, we monks and nuns are free of shadows from the past. This wandering life, with no material possessions, unlocks our souls. There is a wonderful sense of lightness, living each day as it comes, with no sense of ownership, no weight, no burden. Journey and destination became one, thought and action became one, until it is as if we are moving like a river into complete detachment.”

“…Sexuality in India has always been regarded as the subject of legitimate and sophisticated inquiry. Traditionally it was looked upon as an essential part of the study of aesthetics: sringara rasa – the erotic rasa or flavour – being one of the nine rasas comprising the classical Hindu aesthetic system. The Judaeo-Christian religious tradition, which tends to emphasize the sinfulness of the flesh, the dangers of sexuality and the idealisation of sexual renunciation and virginity, begins its myth of origin with the creation of light. In contrast, the oldest scripture of the Hindu tradition, the Rig Veda, begins its myth with the creation of kama – sexual desire: in the beginning was desire, and desire was with God, and desire was God. In the Hindu scheme of things, kama remains one of the three fundamental goals of human existence, along with dharma, duty or religion, and artha, the creation of wealth."

excellent! very good! good just good don't...

All my everlasting love    

..."        It was true that the common gave him other pleasures. He loved the memory of his tiny daughter planting acorns at the path sides in the confident expectation that they would be trees by the weekend – but he was always sad on the bench. It was there he learned that nothing works out as it should.
            Since Froggy’s day he had walked that hill and lain in the bracken with other lovers, and had come to see that places are only precious because of the ways in which one has loved there. There was a sandpit  near Sweetwater where he used to sit and write love poems to Froggy and those who came after, always, it seemed, accompanied by patient collie. Near the Hurst there was a small woody glade of bluebells and kingcups between two ditches, which became at first the site of future solitary romantic misery and, later on, an enchanted place to take a rug and make love on the moss in dappled light.
            Certain locations have the ability to retain the emotions of generation upon generation, until they begin to exude them like the resin that forces itself out the veins of a pine. On Maclachlan’s bench at the top of the Busses Common, in sight of Blackdown and Chanctonbury Ring, Peter would always think that others must have been able to feel what had happened to him. It was the natural place for rendezvous, and since Peter and Froggy’s youth there had been any number of lovelorn village teenagers who had ineptly failed to meet there."...

________________________

"The twins worried about virginity individually, and they worried about it together. But the most basic problem was one they never talked about: sex was something they couldn’t do together. Someone had to go first, and then the other would be left behind. And they would each have to pick different guys, and these guys, these potential boyfriends, would want to spend time alone with one or the other; they would want to be the important person in Julia’s or Valentina’s life. Each boyfriend would be a crowbar, and soon there would be a gap; there would be hours in the day when Julia wouldn’t even know where Valentina was, or what she was doing, and Valentina would turn to tell Julia something and instead there would be the boyfriend, waiting to hear what she was about to say, although only Julia would have understood it.
It was a delicate thing, their private world, it required absolute fidelity, and so they remained virgins, and waited."

_______________

"We talked for a while about bad feelings and good ones. I stressed that every person has both, that having bad feelings didn’t make you bad. I don’t know if these therapeutic platitudes did any good, but by the time Miranda called her, Eggy seemed relieved. I know that what’s said is often less important than the tone of voice in which the words are spoken. There is music in dialogue, mysterious harmonies and dissonances that vibrate in the body like a tuning fork."

________

Christmas 2009

A book by the fireplace. I've been wondering if I have a book to suggest that goes well with a fireplace. The cracking of fire inside and minus ten degrees outside. Hélas, I don't seem to be reading any such book at the moment...But this one comes with my best wish to you: Travel. Arriving is irrelevant.

___________________________________________

(10/12/2009)

"You are the weakest link. Good bye!"

Greece is slowly going bankrupt , Iceland- or Dubaiwise. And the question is:
Who is the next weakest link?  
Who is the first cuckoo of spring?"
Who needs three hours to watch a two-hour video?
Who needs rebooting and who needs booting out?"
Etc etc…

Here’s an excerpt from an article about the current crisis written by my favourite economist, Robert J. Samuelson.

The great escape: How we narrowly avoided a depression

“ "Depression" is a term of art. It’s more than a serious economic downturn. What distinguishes a depression from a harsh recession is paralyzing fear –fear of the unknown so great that it causes consumers, businesses, and investors to retreat and panic. They hoard cash and desperately curtail spending. They sell stocks and other assets. A devastating loss of confidence inspires behaviour that overwhelms the normal self-correcting mechanisms (lower interest rates, inventory resupply, cheap prices) that usually prevent a recession from becoming deep and prolonged: a recession.
…
But this improved confidence is not optimism. It is the absence of terror. The consumer sentiment index is still weak, and all the rebound has occurred in Americans’ evaluation of future economic conditions, not the present.
…
The good news today is that the bad news is not worse.”

Newsweek, October 12, 2009

_______________

...      "We continued to pay daily visits-so many people had called on us- and thus acquired a good knowledge of the home life of distinguished Tibetans. There was one point in which we could compare the people of Lhasa favourably with the inhabitants of our own cities. They had always time.
            Tibet has not yet been infested by the worst disease of modern life, the everlasting rush. No one overworks here. Officials have an easy life. They turn up at the office late in the morning and leave for their homes early in the afternoon. If an official has guests or any other reason for not coming, he just sends a servant to a colleague and asks him to officiate for him.
…
            "It is clear that in these critical times the Government desired to mobilise not only the material means of defence but also the spiritual forces of the people. For this end, religion, the most powerful element in the life of the country, had to be invoked. New ordinances and new officials were employed in the service of this policy. The officials were given plenty of money and a free hand to organise the campaign. All the monks in Tibet were ordered to attend public services at which the Kangyur, the Tibetan Bible, was to be read aloud. New prayer flags and prayer-wheels were set up everywhere. Rare and powerful amulets were brought out of the old chests. Offerings were doubled and on all the mountains incense-fires burned, while the winds, turning the prayer-wheels, carried supplications to the protecting deities in all the corners of heaven. The people believed with rocklike faith that the power of religion would suffice to protect their independence. In the meantime, Radio Peking was already sending out messages in Tibetan promising that Tibet would soon be freed."

______________

"The Germans long to be understood and liked by others, yet secretly take pride that this can never be. After all, how can outsiders understand such a complex, deep, sensitive people? What can they know of the German struggle for identity or the tortured German spirit searching for release?
They would like to be respected for their devotion to truth and honesty. They are surprised that this is sometimes taken as tactlessness, or worse. After all, if I know you to be in error, surely it is my duty to correct you? Surely the Truth is more important than pretending to like your ghastly short or sports coat? Foreigners just cannot seem to appreciate this."

_____________

Summer 2009, which as we all know, IZOVER!

I have been wondering lately, what would be the shortest definition of the good book?
And came up with this one:
A good book is one that keeps you awake in the night.

Some of my summer books definitely had this effect...

--- : ---

Llosa. One of my favorites. I wish it never ended. All books do.

“Are you still in love with me?” was her opening remark, to break the ice.

“The worst thing is that i think I am,” I admitted , feeling my cheeks flush. “and if I weren’t, I’d fall in love all over again today. You’ve turned into a beautiful woman, and an extremely elegant one. I see you and don’t believe what I see, bad girl.”
“Now you see what you lost because you’re a coward,” she replied, her honey-colored eyes glistening with mocking sparks as she intentionally exhaled a mouthful of smoke in my face. “If you had said yes that time I proposed staying with you, I’d be your  wife now. But you didn’t want to get in trouble with your friend Comrade Jean, and you sent me off to Cuba. You missed the opportunity of a lifetime, Ricardito.”

“Can’t this be resolved? Can’t I search my conscience, suffer from heartache and promise to reform?”
“It’s too late now, good boy. What kind of a match for the wife of a French diplomat can a little pissant translator for UNESCO be?”
....

"One afternoon, when we were sitting in the garden at twilight, she said that if it ever occured to me one day to write our love story, I shouldn’t make her look too bad, because then her ghost would come and pull on my feet every night.
“And what made you think of that?”
“Because you always wanted to be a writer but didn’t have the courage. Now that you’ll be all alone, you can make good use of the time, and you won’t miss me so much. At least, admit I’ve given you the subject for a novel. Haven’t I, good boy?”

--- : ---

Simply brilliant ! Hussein will keep you haunted for nights...

“Look at me, Mariam.”
Reluctantly, Mariam did.

Nana said, “Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

--- : --

Sad, intimately sad short stories...

-

...

“Don’t be foolish, honey. What could happen in a town like this? Anyway, I left you a note.”
“I didn’t see any note, sweetie.”
“I left you a note. Just so so you wouldn’t get anxious.”
“Where is it, this note? What did it say?”
“I don’t remember, honey.” Mr Gardner now sounded irritated. “It was just a regular note. You know, saying I’d gone to buy cigarettes or something.”
“Is that what you’re doing down there now? Buying cigarettes?”
“No, honey. This is something different. I’m gonna sing to you.”
“Is this is some sort of joke?”
“No, honey, it isn’t a joke. This is Venice. It’s what people do here.” He gestured around to me and Vittorio, like our being there proved his point.
“It’s kind of chilly for me out here, sweetie.”
Mr Gardner did a big sigh. “Then you can listen from inside the room. Go back in the room, honey, make yourself comfortable. Just leave those windows open and you’ll hear us fine.”

--- : ---

Read this Daniel Chavarria and you'll see Cuba autrement...

"Alicia, now in complete control of the situation, pushed him gently back down on the couch and continued: “It’s my turn to talk, goddamnit. You listen and don’t interrupt.” She paused, and now it was Victor who lit a cigarette to stop his nerves from giving out on him.. “You listen to me. I don’t know who the fuck you are, Victor. I don’t really know if that’s really your name. What I do know is that you’ve been lying to me and using me from the moment I met you. First you convinced me that you were interested in  me and even led me to believe that we might have something together. Then I find out you’re a class A peeping Tom and all you wanted to do was recruit me to put on shows for you and your precious Elizabeth. All of a sudden it turns out that you’re an ex-delinquent and an ex-con, that Elizabeth was a man, and that after fucking your boss for three years, you want me to help you fuck the rest of his family out of four million dollars with this cockamamie plan to kidnap a corpse. What the hell am I supposed to think?”

--- : ----

The other side of the Cuban story..

"Parece que todos los que me habían dicho que la comida oscura no me convertiría en africano tenían razón. Pero lo que ellos no sabían era que un vuelo corto en un avión bastaría para transformarme de un niño blanco a un "spic". Y que siempre me lo recordarán en este paìs cada vez que tengo que llenar una planilla que califica al "hispano" como una raza distinta: una raza aparte de "blanco" o "caucasoide"

--- : ---

Definitely not for weak stomachs!

"Cruzaron el parque Maceo. Se sentaron sobre el muro. Ella se recostó a una columna y abrió las piernas. Tenía una falda amplia que le llegaba a los tobillos. Rey se acomodó de frente, sacó su animal, que se endureció apenas olfateó el bollo apestoso y ácido de Magda, y allá mismo copularon frenéticamente, mordiéndose por el cuello."

--- : ---

Shost stories. A bit boring for once...

("In the devil’s domain")

"I was painting a picture, but it was coming out too pretty. I put on Mahler.. Symphony Number 10 in F sharp. I turned the volume right up. Mahler was thundering out. All the chords were shrieking. But not even that helped. The motherfucker refused to get any rougher. It just stayed as it was, pretty, immaculate, dumb, stupid. It was eleven in the morning. I don’t smoke or drink before midday. Perhaps that was the problem. I may on the floor and closed my eyes. Only Mahler and I existed. We embraced and there was mutual penetration.”

--- : ---

An extremely funny guide of a country that (almost) does not exist.

The country where "Pelvo!" means "Welcome!"

see inside 1

see inside 2

--- : ---

see inside (some may recognise Lola !)

An excellent comics book!

--- : ---

Και δύο ελληνικά...

"Αυτό που μ απασχολεί είναι ότι είχες πει ότι θα μ αγαπάς για πάντα"

--- : ---

(δεν το άντεξα...)

Two short stories for your beach towel! Nice holidays to all of you!

story No 1story No 2

_________________________

“You reached the National Hotel in twenty-five minutes. A fine pile of antiquated, lordly brickwork. Must have been built in the forties. French Rivièirish, high ceilings, lots of class, good service, the sea in front, an enormous inside garden, lofty palms, a swimming pool...And right in the centre of Havana. The bonus of a city with sea.
            The perfumed, humid heat of night transforms you into an exotic character, the protagonist of an adventure. It excites you, like in the carnivals of your childhood, with the sweat of of women and smell of ether. Suddenly, your tiredness has dissipared. You want to walk for a while around the city, meander, fill in time...”

_______________________________________________________________

"Many love interests are skin deep. With male characters, "cobalt blue eyes" are a telltale symptom; in female characters, beware of "long, blond tresses." In a movie, when Scarlett Johansson appears, and the male lead instantly falls for her, we see why. In a novel, we see the same typeface we've been seeing all along. The most impassioned, eloquent description of Angelina Jolie naked will not have the impact of five seconds of poorly shot video; and while millions of years of evolution might have programmed us to respond to size, it is not font size. Worse, without such instinctive responses, we are all too likely to resent characters -even of the opposite sex- for being ideally gorgeous. This doesn't mean your love interests shouldn't be good-looking, only that they must also have a lovable quality. At the very least, they should have a quality.
            Remember: blonde, brunette, and redhead are not personality types.

..."

_______________________________________________

“I knew this kind of north Oxford interior from visits I had made over the years to various professors of science. It was a vanishing type, now that non-academic money was buying off the suburb. The conversion had been made in the fifties or sixties. The books and a few pieces of furniture had been moved in – and since then, no change. No colours, but brown and cream. No design or style, no comfort, and in winter, very little warmth. Even the light was brownish, at one with the smells of damp, coal  dust and soap. There would be no heating in the bedrooms, and it looked like there was just one telephone in the house, a dialler kept in the hall, far from any chair. There was lino, and grimy electrical piping on the walls, and from the kitchen, the sour scent of gas, and a glimpse of laminated shelves on metal brackets supporting bottles of brown and red sauce. This was the austerity once thought appropriate to intellectual life, unsensually aligned to the soul of English pragmatism, unfussy,honed to the essential, to the collegiate world beyond the shops. In its time it might have appeared to strike a blow at the Edwardian encumbrances of an older generation. Now it seemed a perfect setting for sorrow.”

________________________________________________________________________

"…
-Ayyy, mi amor…,es que yo no puedo vivir sin ti. Sola soy nadie.
            Por ahí siguen un rato más, pero me niego a reproducir esa sarta de ridiculeces  picúas. Eso está bien para la realidad. La literatura es otra cosa.
            En fin, sólo reproduzco la última frase de Yeilín. No tengo fuerza de voluntad para renunciar a este bocadillo:
            -Chino, la regle me tiene que bajar el 24 de este mes. Y abundante porque últimamente soy un río. Si no me baja, ya tú sabes. Te llamo en seguida y empieza a buscar dinero pa la canastilla. ¡Y los pañales de Yesuancito tienen que ser bordados a mano! ¡Todos!
…"

________________________

"Les urbains vivront de plus en plus loin des centres; un ménage habitant intra muros en 2007 habitera huit kilomètres plus loin dans dix ans plus tard, et quarante kilomètres plus loin en 2025. De nouveaux métiers apparaîtront pour organiser la logistique de ce nomadisme.

La neuvième forme continuera ainsi de créer des conditions d' une vie urbaine de plus en plus solitaire, dans des appartements de plus en plus exigus, avec des partenaires sexuels de plus en plus éphémères. La peur d' être lié, la fuite devant l' attachement, l' indifférence apparente deviendront (deviennent déjà) des formes de séduction. L' apologie de l' individu, du corps, de l' autonomie, de l' individualisme, feront de l' ego, du soi, les valeurs absolues. l' érotisme deviendra un savoir ouvertement revendiqué. Les formes les plus diverses de sexualité seront tolérées, à l' exception de l' inceste, de la pédophilie et de la zoophilie. L' ubiquité nomade et les communautés virtuelles créeront de nouvelles occasions de rencontres, marchandes ou non."

…
"Les classes moyennes, sédentaires par nature, prendront peur des maladies dont le nomadisme accélerera la propagation. Ils revendiqueront le droit à l’ enracinement, à la lenteur. ….Pour ces classes moyennes, s' assurer et se distraire seront les réponses majeures aux enjeux du monde. S' assurer: telle sera leur obsession. Se distraire: leur façon d' oublier.
Les industriels de l' assurance développeront pour ces milliards de sédentaires des produits spécifiques couvrant les risques de précarité, de chômage, de maladie de mouvement, d’ incertitude, de désordre, et ce dans tous les domaines, économiques, financiers, culturels: ils pourront même un jour s' assurer contre le chagrin d' amour, l’ impuissance sexuelle, l' insuffisance intellectuelle ou la privation d' amour maternel."

___________________________________________________

(Excerpt from the book, on luxury:)

"It was not my train because, one, it was too expensive: it would have cost me around $9,000, one way, from Paris to Istanbul. Reason two: luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express their opinion, seem as though they are from another planet. It was also my experience that one of the worst aspects of traveling with wealthy people, apart from the fact that the rich ever listen, is that they constantly groused about the high cost of living -indeed, the rich usually complained of being poor."
…
(Excerpt from the book, on Niyazov, the leader of Turkmenistan

"Niyazov had recently built a vast space-age mosque and named it after himself, Saparmyrat Hajji Mosque, and encouraged his people to visit it annually, as a rewarding pilgrimage, a national haj.  His portraits, some of them hundreds of square feet of his unappealing features, were everywhere. In some, he looked like a  fat and grinning Dean martin wearing a Super Bowl ring: in others he was a nasty faced CEO with a chilly smile, smug, truculent, defiant. One showed him as a precocious child of gold, seated in the lap of his bronze mother. The most common picture portrayed him, chin on hand, squinting in insincere bonhomie, like a lounge singer. Smiling was an important part of his political philosophy. He had Italianate features and was sometimes posed with a stack of books, like an insufferable author in a book-tour shot. He was sixty five. He had declared himself "Leader for Life". It was the will of the people, he said. Everything associated with him told you he was out of his mind. He had banned beards, gold teeth, and ballet.
            Absolute ruler and head of state, and with much of the gas revenue in his own pocket, Niyazov was crazy in his own twisted way, and Ashgabat was an example of what happened when political power and money and mental illness were combined in a single paranoiac.
            "He renamed bread after his mother", someone had said to me before I went."
…
(Excerpt from the book, on China

"The Chinese word for hooker is gai, chicken.
            "Are you a gai because you like men?"
            "No, I don't like men. I like money."
            China exists in its present form because the Chinese want money. Once, America was like that. Maybe this accounted for my desire to leave. Not revulsion, but the tedium and growing irritation of listening to people express their wish for money, that they'd do anything to make it. Who wants to hear people boasting about their greed and their promiscuity? I left for Japan, reveling in the thought tat I was done with China -its factory-blighted  landscape, its unbreathable air, its unbudging commissars, and its honking born-again capitalists. Ugly and soulless, China represented the horror of answered prayers, a peasant's greedy dream of development. I was happy to leave."
About Tokyo
"Tokyo was like that, a twinkling wonderland of dignified vulgarity that defeated my imagination. At Shinobazu Pond, in front of my hotel, token wildlife, either ducks and pochards, nosed about the reeds, leafless willow trees drooped at the bank people strolled from shrine to shrine in Ueno Park and ate ice cream, or else looked preoccupied in ways I found daunting. Out back, narrow lanes of bars, beer joints, noodle shops, massage parlors, love hotels, tattooed mobsters, streetwalkers, and clubs catering to every fetish. At some clubs, waitresses were dressed as schoolgirls, at others French maids or nurses or terrifying bitches in black lipstick carrying whips. Sweet-faced girls in tailor suits were also popular as sex workers. Many establishments called themselves lingerie bars, the female staff in undies, and one was actually named Undies Bar. After dark, women loitered in alleys, hoping to be hired for about $37 to sit next to a man in a bar while he got drunk and fondled her. "And if she likes you, she'll fondle  you, too."

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"Nachdem Hanna die Stadt verlassen hatte, dauerte es eine Weile, bis ich aufhörte, überall nach ihr Ausschau zu halten, bis ich mich daran gewöhnte, dass die Nachmittage ihre Gestalt verloren hatten, und bis ich Bücher ansah und aufschlug, ohne mich zu fragen, ob sie zum Vorlesen geeignet wären. Es dauerte eine Weile, bis mein Körper sich nicht mehr nach ihrem sehnte; manchmal merkte ich selbst, wie meine Arme und Beine im Schlag nach ihr tasteten, und mehrmals gab mein Bruder bei Tisch zum besten, ich hätte im Schlaf "Hanna" gerufen. Ich erinnere mich auch an Schulstunden, in denen ich nur vor ihr träumte, nur an sie dachte. Das Gefühl einer Schuld, das mich in den ersten Wochen gequält hatte, verlor sich. Ich mied ihr Haus, nahm andere Wege, und nach einem halben Jahr zog meine Familie in einen anderen Stadtteil. Nicht dass ich Hanna vergessen hatte. Aber irgendwann hörte die Erinnerung an sie auf, mich zu begleiten. Sie blieb zurück, wie eine Stadt zurückbleibt, wenn der Zug weiterfährt. Sie ist da, irgendwo hinter einem, und man könnte hinfahren und sich ihrer versichern. Aber warum sollte man."

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Γράψε αν μπορείς στο τελευταίο σου όστρακο
τη μέρα τ’ όνομα τον τόπο
και ρίξε το στη θάλασσα για να βουλιάξει.

Γιώργος Σεφέρης
Γυμνοπαιδία – Σαντορίνη

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"The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high...
Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose...
Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man...
And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's."

TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG, by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

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“The category “failed state” was invoked repeatedly in the course of the “normative revolution” proclaimed in the self-designated “enlightened states” in the 1990s, entitling them to resort to force with the alleged goal of protecting the populations of (carefully selected) states in a manner that may be “illegal but legitimate”. As the leading themes of political discourse shifted from “humanitarian interventions” to the redeclared “war on terror” after 9/11, the concept “failed state” was given a broader scope to include states like Iraq that allegedly threaten the United States with weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism. In scholarship that (approvingly) traces the historical roots of the Bush doctrine, the concept “failed state” has been extended to include the “power vacuums” that the United States has been forced to fill for its own security, as Americans “concentrated on the task of felling trees and Indians and of rounding out their natural boundaries.” “