More than words

Just finished reading the graphic novel, City of Glass, with the story by Paul Auster and artwork by Paul Karasik & D. Mazzucchelli.

The book has received some rave reviews - both as part of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy series but also as a graphic novel.. but I did not enjoy it much at all. However, this is mostly because of my limitations in understanding it. When I picked it up, I thought it had lot of promise but it turned out to be quite a bizarre story and a bit too surreal for me. I didn't quite follow much of what was going on* but kept reading till the end hoping things would get clearer - but it only got more confusing! I understood that it was about losing yourself in trying to chase the truth.... but some of the deeper and subtler nuances were certainly lost to me. That said, I did appreciate the artwork and enjoyed it more than the story. The panels on the back of the book was what seduced me into picking this up....and that remained the best part of the book even after I was done reading it.

I have not found a link to the back panel and do not want to scan it in myself to avoid any copyright violations... but you may be able to see it via Google Books here. The words on the back panel read...

New York was a labyrinth of endless steps,

and no matter how far he walked, it always left him with the feeling of being lost.

Each time he took a walk, he felt he was leaving himself behind.

All places became equal,

and on his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere.

This was all he ever asked of things:
to be nowhere.

Each line above was one panel in the 9-paneled back page. A couple of panels were completely dark black panels with no words. Like I said, I thought this had great promise and I picked it up thinking this is going to be a very intelligent book about angst, urban loneliness, and such... but it turned out to be a whole lot more (like an amazon.com commenter writes: "There are so many levels in this story you need an elevator"...and perhaps too intelligent for me!

--
* This comment by C. D. Murphy that I read at amazon.com just now has shed some light about the story but even so... there are probably many other nuances that didn't get to me! (Sorry.. not sure how one links to a comment at amazon.com, just the commenter)

... Campbellian march through the four phases of life......look for this as you read it: from his birth as Auster, to understanding language with Stillman, the identity crisis with the father, the mid-life crisis after meeting his namesake, the question of paths during this, the isolation of late life and finally the fading away.

Also, this essay by Bill Johnson breaks down the first few paras of the book.

This story beautifully explores the modern day terrain of what it means to live in an age where so many people appear as fragments not only to others, but to themselves. At each stage of the story, the audience is taken not only deeper to the resolution of the story's surface mystery, it's taken into an examination of the role of chance upon the formation of fragments of personality.

Wish someone would break down the whole book in more simple terms for me to enjoy! Let me know if you know of some such site or yourself have read this and understand more than I did!

Related: Britain finally embraces the graphic novel.

It's a mad mad mad mad world - 3

Scott Adams has a post regarding the freaking Chinese governments intention* to "ban the reincarnation of Buddhist monks without government permission” ... (both above links were found at India Uncut.)

Also, this cartoon about the same.

Reading the comments section of Scott's post, I read about the curious case of an allegedly horny camel!

An Australian woman was killed by a pet camel given to her as a 60th birthday present, police (in Brisbane, Australia) said Sunday. The 10-month-old male -- weighing about 330 pounds -- had knocked her to the ground then lay on top of her in what police suspect was mating behavior, Gregory said.

* What can I say.... they probably will get on the job right after they finish "cleansing" the internet!

Previously: 1, 2

Strange Fruit

What a haunting song....had never heard it or about it before.

Billie Holiday sings the very moving and horrific song, Strange Fruit.



Apparently,the images conjured by the song are so horrific that Billie Holiday often performed it with her eyes closed. This piece in the Guardian traces the song's dark history.

Needed to hear this song a few times after hearing Strange Fruit -- The Blues are Brewing, also sung by Billie Holiday, with Louis Armstrong on trumpet.

When the moon's kinda dreamy
Starry eyed and dreamy
And nights are luscious and long
If you're kinda lonely
Then nothin' but the blues are brewin'
The blues are brewin'

This is where fear leads us

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include - without court approval - certain types of physical searches of U.S. citizens and the collection of their business records.

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you. ~ Dick Cheney

so there you go... your liberty is slowly and systematically eroded. And we are not one iota safer than we were on 9-11. Au contraire.....

Random Links - 16

1. I remember seeing such knife-sharpening bicycles in India - via
2. Now that we have entered the world of CDs and miniature zip drives that can carry hundreds of floppy disks worth of data in a keychain, what do we do with all those floppy disks? Here's a bag... what else can you do? - via
3. Monster Ass Kicking 3 yo Girl... lovely! - via
4. At 25, compact disc faces retirement
5. One thing leads to another - interesting things people built up. Apparently this is from a Japanese tv show - via
6. Apoteket Orkestern. creative website - go see what its all about. Turn volume on if it is on mute - via
7. some jaw dropping examples of next generation image manipulation, and said “I want this in PhotoShop immediately.” Well, that may be happening sooner rather than later. Co-inventor Shai Avidan has now joined Adobe and will work out of their Newtown, MA office. More info on Shai is here - via
8. Recently I read about this whizkid - Facebook's Joe Hewitt. If nothing else, gotta say thank you to him for developing my browser of choice, Firefox. :) (Also, another audio interview from last week.)
9. Radioactive Nanda Devi: India's second-highest peak, at 25,645 feet (7816m), sits in a "sanctuary," surrounded by 21,000-foot+ lesser mountains. This has made it even more of a challenge to climb. Among those who took up the challenge were a 1965 CIA team trying to set up a plutonium-powered device to spy on China's nuclear testing program. That expedition retreated in the face of bad weather, leaving the device on the mountain. When they returned the next spring, it was gone. The Nanda Devi Sanctuary supplies water to the Ganges River, and there were fears that the four pounds of plutonium in the device could escape into the watershed. Those fears have been confirmed. - via
10. 
    

Meaningless but full of messages

Five poems this Sunday morning. Wish I could write poetry again... but the muse seems to have died these past few years.

-

In the window, the moon is hanging over the earth,
meaningless but full of messages
....
If there’s an image of the soul, I think that’s what it is.

- from Village Life, a poem by Louise Gluck, in the New Yorker.

--

Canned laughter in the empty house
Like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

-- from Driving Home, a nice little poem by Charles Simic, also in the New Yorker.

Just learned that earlier this month Simic was appointed as the 15th Poet Laureate of the US. (They really should make these at least a 2 year appointment. Seems like yesterday that the esteemed poet, Donald Hall, was appointed to the post.) Incidentally, Gluck was the12th U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003-2004.

---

But see how each busy capitalist
stares serenely through an exhibit's glass
to gaze at lotus flowers, a phoenix,
or philosophers on a mountain path.

- from a poem, In the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, by Sarah Wardle, who won the Poetry Society's Geoffrey Dearmer prize in 1999.

---

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.

- in Heart by Margaret Atwood, from her book, The Door

---

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.

If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.

If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.

If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

——

Let us touch each other
while we still have hands,
palms, forearms, elbows . . .
Let us love each other for misery,
torture each other, torment,
disfigure, maim,
to remember better,
to part with less pain.

-- Two of the Four Poems by Vera Pavlova, also published in the New Yorker.

Do read the other two poems also - even in translation (from the Russian), this is good stuff. And this interesting interview from 2002 with Pavlova, where she says:

"Men became so female, that women had to take on the male part themselves. How did all this resolve itself? Towards the end of the century, women poets became far more radical than men. Stylistically and spiritually."

and later...

"In art the basic distinction is not between male and female, but between dead and alive."

Post-a-Secret

I cannot remember if I have blogged about this site before --Post-a-Secret. It started with a very interesting concept.. but has since become a major phenomenon on the internet.



Today, I ran into this mini-movie -- Very moving!



It provides a unique reflection of a cross-section of life at its most honest, its most frailest, its most vulnerable... for eg: loved this very poignant / vulnerable one some months back.

No wonder it is so popular and is now even out as a series of books by Frank Warren, who started the blog - My Secret | PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives | A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book | The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book