Books. June 10, 2008

Starting with stating the obvious, it is incredibly hard to choose a favourite something. Can I name my favourite food? No. I can say what I will retch at, namely praline, but there are too many things I would love to eat before they sink me in a muddy hole. Can I name my favourite song? Again, I have to confess I can’t. My idea of torture, though, I can give you: a lifelong sentence of, say, Children of Bodom interspersed with Cascada would do the trick.

So when I tried to make a list of my favourite books, I knew it would be Mission Impossible:IV. The list kept growing longer and longer, and I felt compelled to add almost every good book I have ever read. But as I hate those ’Top Ten Books You Should Read’ lists, because they make you feel guilty for not having read anything by Ian McEwan, and they keep pushing the same revered old dusty shit at you, I am not even going to make any suggestions. No “you should read this because…”. No “society will label you a dumb fuck if you don’t read…”. Just a list, not exhaustive in the least, of a couple of books I love.

Umberto Eco – ‘The Name of the Rose’: absolutely awesome in the original sense of the word.
Douglas Coupland – ‘Life After God’: bloody damn great.
James Jones – ‘From Here To Eternity’: I fell in love with Robert E. Lee Prewitt, the main character.
Takashi Matsuoka – ‘Cloud of Sparrows’: beautifully written doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Nelson DeMille – ‘Gold Coast’: nothing like a good thriller once in a while.
Adelheid van Beuningen – ‘Terentia’: I love history.
Gabriel García Márquez – ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’: still, I have an irrational hate for the main character.
Robert Louis Stevenson – ‘The Master of Ballantrae’: Stevenson is one of my favourite authors.
Bernard McLaverty – ‘The Anatomy School’: utterly compelling.
C.J. Sansom – ‘Sovereign’: a detective AND history in the same book? I am bound to love it.
J.R. Tolkien – ‘The Hobbit’: I read this in one go, couldn’t put it down.
Brett Easton Ellis – ‘Glamorama’: very interestingly written, I like the way he shifts perspectives.
Jane Austen – ‘Pride & Prejudice’: must-read classic?
Zadie Smith – ‘White Teeth’: I have read it countless times.
Albert Camus – ‘L’Étranger’: vraiment fascinant.
J. D. Salinger – ‘The Catcher in the Rye’: what can I say? I read it every year, now shoot me.

And one book that I have just started on and is definitely going to end up on this list: ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce. His writing style, use of language and play with words are enough to keep me from my work.

Serenity now. June 6, 2008

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
I would rather give them to the morningbright person who came up with that saying and see how he would get along. When lemons come in the shape of Arabic vocabulary, it is just that tad bit harder to add some sugar, stir and gulp it down as if it were an amazing thirst quencher.
Bitching and whining aside, I have got exactly seven more minutes to get my lazy bum off this chair and get to work, so what better than to start my day with some wishful escapism in the form of music.
As some of you might know, Admiral Freebee is one of my favourite artists, and his ‘Mediterranean Sea’ is one of my favourite songs.
Maybe because I have trouble staying in one place for too long – the song reminds me of the countless lazy travels I had, evoking sounds and smells that contrast sharply with those of work and stress. Cars rushing by, my nervous tapping on the keyboard, the smell of a recently run shower and the scraping sound of a knife buttering toast…all pushed away for a blissful moment, replaced by the smell of dusty, dry, hot summer air and the sound of curled up leaves crinkling under my feet.
I am glad that I can be off travelling again in a couple of weeks; I am happy as long as I am moving. Sometimes the feeling of going somewhere is just as satisfactory as actually being in a place other than home. I suppose it is a kind of restlessness stemming from wanting to leave it all behind for a while. And once in a while I can indulge in this escapism through music, saving myself the packing of bags and the emptying of my piggy bank. I am going to stare at this picture of our holiday last year for a bit, wishing I was there and not here:

And now, off to work it is.

Mille Fiori. May 31, 2008

Every time I come home, our garden looks different. Yesterday was I greeted by a plethora of poppies where only a week before there was a sea of blue and yellow irises.
I confiscated my dad’s camera again (until he finds out where exactly I have muffled it away), and here are some of the results of lying sprawled across cobblestones to get the right shot:

 

 

 

If only I were a little better at this photography lark; these pictures don’t really do our garden justice, but you get the gist.

The Middle Lane Hogger. May 25, 2008

You all know them. You have all at least once directed words at them pertaining to the ‘one that performs lone sexual acts’ category. Tosser seems to do it, quite often. You have repeatedly given them the death stare while clenching your steering wheel in a death grip to keep from overtaking them in the wrong lane.

I am talking about the Middle Lane Hogger.

This special subspecies of man exists solely for the purpose of annoying the shit out of you. There are two types: those who shouldn’t be allowed on the motorway because they live to instill road rage in their fellow drivers, and those who just shouldn’t be allowed on the motorway full stop. Both of them have a tendency to drive people-carriers, Vauxhall or Renault being favourites, preferably decorated with stickers, those sun shade-y things they seem only to give away with double packs of Johnson’s Baby Oil, and at least one fluffy animal staring at you from the back of their vehicle of doom. There are of course many others, such as the Suzuki-driving granny, or the single middle class man who really shouldn’t have bought that Audi RS4 because he just had to remortgage his flat, and now he is afraid to damage his piece of german überness made for tearing down hairpin roads in the Alps. Point is, I just had an encounter with the first kind: the people-carrier driver. More about that later.

 
A tad bit too extreme?

How to recognize type A, i.e. the full-blown ‘yes, I carry a box of Kleenex with me all the time and it isn’t because I am very emotional’ tosser, from type B, i.e. ‘yes, I carry a box of Kleenex with me all the time because our youngest/my Cocker Spaniel shits all over the seats’?
Because, my friends, type A always makes that fatal mistake of looking smug. He might even point to his lovely pine-scented air freshener in the shape of a teddy bear’s head dangling from the rear-view mirror to let you know that he does have the whole family car theme thing covered. He is armed and prepared. Poised to strike. You were thinking of switching lanes? Well, you can forget about that and just nicely crawl along behind that lorry, because the Middle Lane Hogger has got you boxed in. That is what you get for always nicely moving back to the slow lane.

Only two hours ago did I have the pleasure of encountering a Middle Lane Hogger. I was nicely cruising along, singing along to Duran Duran’s ‘The Reflex’ only to shut up after noticing my dad’s discomfort. I was minding my own business on the motorway, when all of a sudden I spot a black Vauxhall Zafira. Shit. Bumper sticker. And a learners’ L. A young man, about my age, with his mother.
Now, here I have to mention that I myself was driving a Vauxhall Zafira (new series, loaded with dad’s stuff from work) with a learners’ L in the back. But! But, before you say I am a pot calling a kettle black, hear me out.
If I would ever dare to hog the middle lane, my dad would glare, point to the slow lane, and make a lesson out of it. This young man’s mother just sat there staring at the cars that were passing them by on either side. She was basically encouraging him to keep hogging the shit out of that strip of tarmac.
I overtake him, not even having to go above the speed limit. For fifteen minutes, I could see him in my rear-view mirror, falling further back but holding just about everyone up. Meanwhile, I am still sticking to the rules of proper driving. Then, all of a sudden, this tosser comes speeding by – in the middle lane, of course. Now it was personal. How very dare he. The impertinence. He had boxed me in and I had to fall back, get around him again and carefully move back to the slow lane. He didn’t give up though, and kept hogging. He had just done as much as flipping me off with his behaviour. I was about to turn this into a petty pissing contest, but luckily for him, I had to get off at the next junction. I hope someone else stole his victory away from him. I hope someone else shook their head in a ‘tsk tsk’ motion at his mother.

Now, don’t lie to me and tell me you wouldn’t at least get a tad bit annoyed. Maybe you would even engage in some moral finger pointing yourself, never endangering other drivers like the tosser who feels the need to take the piss out of a rule that is understood by every normal driver: don’t. hog. the. middle. lane. Ever.
So to prepare those new to driving, some good nigh-on scientific literature: How Motorways Work.

All I can say is: you won’t win, Middle Lane Hogger. You won’t win. The middle road isn’t always a compromise.

The lady doth protest too much. May 21, 2008

It is that time of year again when exams are upon everyone happily – or not very much so - trotting along in the education system that is university. I have ploughed through what is not even a fraction of what I am supposed to be struggling through, but I think it is safe to say that we all know that feeling.
When you know everything should speed up and you are supposed to go into highly-caffeinated, sleep-deprived mode, but you fail to do so and everything just slows down. You, others, the world around you. Oodles and oodles of time, when the air is warm and comfortable and sleep lulls on the breeze like a song tinkling from a music box – so very captivating and enchanting.
If not for that calendar on my wall that stares at me with angry red numbers, I would stay in this eerie calm forever, have the hours seemlessly tick away into summer like time unmarked. The soft hum in the back of my head that I recognize as panic and stress has not yet made its way to the surface, and therein lies the harm that carries the eye of the storm.
For the life of me, I cannot concentrate; so it is to spending hours and hours of browsing whatever I can browse I turn, anything to take my mind off the impending exams. Leaping from one thing to the next, and this time I have ended up on literature. That seems to happen more often than not.
I feel quite melancholic, hence the highly dramatic content of the following snippets.

N’enquerrez de sepmaine
Où elles sont, ne de cest an
Q’à ce refrain ne vous remaine
Où sont les neiges d’antan?

~

Nulla rosa est.

~

On the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

~

Et iam summa procul villarum culmina fumant
maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.

~

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silenced and the hunched courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crow black, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

~

It is too late now to retrieve
A fallen dream, too late to grieve
A name unmade, but not too late
To thank the gods for what is great:
A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart
Is greater than a poet’s art.
And greater than a poet’s fame,
A little grave that has no name.

~

Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.

~

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

~

I am armed with more than complete steel – the justice of my quarrel.

~

And a word of courage (or rather despair) to those who feel like the stacks of books are only getting higher:

Priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre.

Pretty rough if you are an atheist like me.

New York, New York! May 18, 2008

Yes! I am going to the US!

I have been wanting to go for ages, but unless I was going to hide on some cargo ship and hope for a hole in the fence at US customs, it was never going to happen. I got really lucky, though!
No, really, thanks to all my hard work and starving myself in order to save some money, I have accumulated enough dollars to make the trip across the pond. Blessings unto thee, Sir Richard Branson, for providing such cheap flights.
The East Coast is the place I be at chilling, from Boston all the way down to Charlotte, NC. Word.
Now, here are some childhood dreams that I absolutely have to experience:

The Statue of Mother-effing-Liberty!
The Empire State Building!
Dunkin’ Donuts!
TGIFriday’s!
Kool-Aid!

Oh, man. I am going to have such a good time.

Wistfulness. May 12, 2008

What do you do when you have got a paper due in under twenty-four hours? Exactly: nothing. I didn’t know you could get writer’s block on a paper; bother for me! Meh, no stress, I will finish it tonight. I might even get ’round to doing some other stuff for university; stare at books, maybe arranging them in stacks, line them up. Scribble down a few words, underline. Nothing like feeling productive without actually being it: fulfillment at its best!

Yesterday I took out my bike and went cycling, just because. The weather is still absolutely wonderful, and it is pretty pointless sitting inside and doing fuck-all, so I figured I could go waste time outside. I had no set destination, but intuitively I cycled towards childhood memories. The problem is that by returning to those places that gave birth to my memories, you add to them or alter them, leave them with just a little bit less of their perfectness. The neighbourhood I grew up in, the routes I used to cycle with my parents, the places I used to pass on my way to my family…It is the same but not at all the same. Eventually I ended up on the cemetery and in front of the farm that is the cradle of my childhood. Wistful.

Black: childhood. Blue: what ruined it from age seven. I hate you with a passion, tomato factories.

It is rather sad when you don’t have one, but two graves to visit in the same cemetery at not even twenty years of age. Being confronted with death on such a beautiful day was all my own doing of course, and it is not like I am the only person in the world to have ever lost someone. Two is nothing. But the fact that I lost the people most dear to me, that is what really cuts me up. All pain is relative and time heals all wounds – the stoic who really believes that might want to protect their most private parts, I have a pretty fierce kick.
It is just one of these truths in life that are not true at all – if it is a comforting lie, well, then it fails to accomplish its goal.
You see, I am very rational, practical and calculated to the point of machiavellian, all for ‘the show must go on’. The queen of the blank, arrogant face. A blatant liar. But I could never tell another person to his face that wounds will heal. Sure, scar, dull, but never really heal. Time might numb pain, but it still feels like a remote, throbbing ache.
And in a way, I find that ache more comforting than being devoid of any memory or feeling of an inflicted wound. Maybe it is just me, but I rather live with that pain and never forget, than be left with a perfectly smooth surface. Perfectly smooth surfaces aren’t even devoutly to be wished. That is what makes calamity of so long life. It is more soothing being able to return to that small kernel of grief and to blow it up beyond proportion when you feel like it. When you feel like you need to feel. You don’t have to blank it out, like so many other things. You guessed it, I would rather bear those ills I have than fly to ones I know not of. I will be a coward, then.
Also, part of me should really have been born just before the turn of the twentieth century – I can be the epitome of spleen sometimes.

 

Spring flowers. May 5, 2008

We have a very small garden, but it’s chock-full of goodies. We even have a pond with a fountain – one metre diametre. It has one fish in it.
Here are some of the beautiful sights to behold in our tiny piece of what should be considered a garden, but is just a very carefully coordinated and yet slightly overgrown patch of earth.

   
 
Seeing the pictures put together like this, it all looks rather garish, but I like our garden nonetheless.

In Rainbows. May 2, 2008

Zero dark thirty and I have just finished baking the second cake in two days. Another side effect of caffeine, then. I am slowly building up my coffee addiction again, just in time for the exams. That’s me, practical as ever!
I am watching Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, and I have a whole host of stimulant-induced questions: when did Robert Downey Jr. get so fricking hot? Was the person that designed Ross’s tie on hallucinants? How much would I pay to touch Michael Aspel’s perfect hair? The answers have to be: ‘five minutes ago’, ‘do you even have to ask’ and ‘at least twelve pounds’.
Sadly, Gwyneth Paltrow is boring me a little, so maybe if I quickly change channels to National Geographic I will be just in time to catch the conclusion of Aircrash Investigation or something. I think the conclusion will be ‘yada yada yada and thus, it crashed’. Well, eff me. Highly surprising.
Also, on a completely different note, I saw the prettiest rainbow since…well, the last prettiest rainbow I saw. I think it was Wednesday, it was pissing down with rain like the bloke up in the sky was an incontinent drunk, and I was getting pretty annoyed about having to cycle through it multiple times. But then the sun came out and I got this view from my room:

 

It would have been nice if the pictures actually matched up.
If you look hard enough, you can see it was a double rainbow, and both were full arcs. I was going to call my homeboy in Mobile, Alabama to tell him there might be leprechauns, and thus gold and/or crackheads, but the rainbows had faded already. I Guess I missed out on two pots of gold. Damn, there goes ‘how to get rich’ plan A. “If that was plan A”, you ask, “then what on earth is plan B?”. If I tell you, I will have to kill you. AlI I can say is that it involves a yeti and George Bush. Don’t even ask about plan C.

Twilight. April 17, 2008

Another lazy day, and as I am student, I of course have fuck-all to do. If I was taking a major in ’sitting on my arse all day with interludes of strolling through the city, engaging in light physical activity and food gathering at the local supermarket’, I would graduate magna cum laude. And still, I pass all of my exams with mostly very good grades. I baffle myself sometimes.
So what do I do? Read, listen to music, watch films, write, be out and about. I always have the intention to do something productive, but then I get distracted and I am left watching half a season of Scrubs. Somehow I think I cannot keep affording the luxury of doing fuck-all. Meh. I will worry about that later. When it is too late.

While honing my skills in ‘fuck-allery’, I stumbled onto a goldmine of Twilight icons on ONTD. Trust them to make me say things like ‘lmao, omg! lolz!’ out loud.
And as the interwebs is made for sharing, I shall share with thee icons! And pictures! And giggles!
Somehow, I love doing these Twilight-related posts – any excuse will do to post some more Rpattz, am I right?

       

     

 

The best for last:

Flipping dazzling.