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May 26, 2004
More Wisdom from Debra Spark
"A dozen bad love affairs had taught me that the problems of the courtship are the problems of the relationship. Sometimes, I'd stop myself midstep and say, "Why am I in love with this man?" The answer was that the losses involved in this love were acceptable...or more acceptable than the losses of other loves. Finally, my sadness about my own life was so profound that I was willing to make a choice that might be wrong."
-Coconuts for the Saints, Debra Spark
Posted by lainey at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2004
Proofreading
The grammatical mistake here is too glaring for my comfort.
Posted by lainey at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2004
Good Read?
So much to read, so little time..
Posted by lainey at 12:28 PM | Comments (2)
Real-life Origami
"My past relationships had taught me this: you are a paper doll being jammed into the wrong spot, or you are the hand trying to force the paper doll into the wrong spot."
- Coconuts for the Saints, Debra Spark
Well, I hope I'm neither and I kind feel that I'm neither lately. Except for the cleaning bit of course. :p
Posted by lainey at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2004
Trouble in the Horizon
A madness is brewing.
Posted by lainey at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2004
WATER OF WATER. Pretty
 |
WATER OF WATER. Pretty lady! Fair and gentle, your empathy attracts others to you. Possibly psychic, you are pure emotion and are more likely to act on feeling rather than practical thought or logic. You think that's just fine because imagination is important. You are the Whore of Babylon with her cup of abominable things, the Medium of Endor and in the mundane world you usually make a good wife and mother. You shine when you are able to give emotional support to others. |
Posted by lainey at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2004
Posted by lainey at 01:56 AM | Comments (0)
The Wants of Lainey!
The other half introduced me to the wonderful world of the amazon.com wishlist.
Now I'm addicted, and I keep adding stuff on.
here goes the wishlist :)
Posted by lainey at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2004
This Week's Readings
It took Philip Larkin to make me pay my library fines. I've been using my grandpa's library card for ages because I refuse to pay my library fines. (blush) Today, I needed to borrow a 5th book which is Larkin's collected poetry. So I swiftly paid my fine and took Larkin home with me. :)
My readings for this week:
1) Collected Poems - Philip Larkin
2) The Plague - Albert Camus
3) Time's Arrow - Martin Amis
4) Ignorance - Milan Kundera
5) Mara and Dann - Doris Lessing
6) Coconuts for the Saints - Debra Spark
I need to read fast enough. And if I finish these six by this week, I shall reward myself with...-thinks- a pretty skirt!*
*Not that pretty skirt, don't worry. :)
Posted by lainey at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
Readings
I've been very free of late.
So I do nothing but read.
I've read :
1) The Outsider - Camus
A quick read with thought-provoking issues. I had initially likened Mersault to apathy, only to realise he is perhaps, the most honest any human can get. He really doesn't care and social construct failed to make him care. Camus's hero - but I think such a "hero" is not enough.
2) The Mismeasure of Man - Stephen Jay Gould
I loved this book, if only simply because it counters what most people believe that science is logic and science is objective. Because, truly, nothing is objective in the world. Not even blind fucking Justice.
"...science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information...It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuiton. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to the absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts."
3) Ungentle Shakespeare - Katherine Duncan Jones
Because I am a Shakespeare groupie. This book disappoints in that there isn't anything I don't know already about Shakespeare that isn't postulated and argued here. Oh, maybe except for this:
Do you know that these words are carved on Shakespeare's gravestone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford:
'Good friend, for Jesu's sake forbear
To dig the dust enclose here.
Blessed be the man who spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones.'
And that perhaps explains the lack of attempts to disinter or reanimate him, and that explains the enigma behind the institution of Shakespeare.
Posted by lainey at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
Man Eater
I believe Van Helsing is a chick flick for all the men I can slurp up in the show....:)
Posted by lainey at 06:02 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2004
Poet of the Moment : EE Cummings
For you
I hope you know why. :)
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Posted by lainey at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2004
"I love you, I hope
"I love you,
I hope you know."
-Reconstruction
Did I mention the film fest is over and did I mention that the one movie that hit me the most is RECONSTRUCTION. For more reasons than one, I loved the movie, the title and the premise of the storytelling. I'm trying to look for the DVD now but can't seem to find it.
The most amazing thing is, during the most obscure moments, I find myself whispering the very words. Some times, I hear the words spoken in my ear. I hear the words when I take a walk. I hear the words as I go about my life. Sometimes, just before I sleep, I say them without knowing why and with no one to hear.
In the movie, the girl slipped a note bearing the two lines into her love's pocket. He, on the other hand, was distracted with chasing another girl he had met earlier. He abandoned her to run after the second girl. Later in the movie, he found the note, but by then, he had already lost her irretrievably.
They have to be the two saddest lines in cinematic history.
I love you, I hope you know.
Posted by lainey at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2004
Quiz
Because it's so hot and I can't be arsed to do anything else.
Ok, maybe swim.
If I were a month I would be: November
If I were a day of the week I would be: Friday
If I were a time of day I would be: midnight
If I were a planet I would be: Saturn
If I were a sea animal I would be: Can I be a mermaid? Hee.
If I were a direction I would be: Diagonally upwards
If I were a piece of furniture I would be: Bed
If I were a sin I would be: Lust.
If I were a historical figure I would be: Queen Elizabeth
If I were a liquid I would be: Massage oil
If I were a stone, I would be: pebble on the beach
If I were a bird, I would be: sparrow
If I were a tool, I would be: screwdriver
If I were a flower/plant, I would be: daisy (was there ever any doubt?)
If I were a kind of weather, I would be: rainy day
If I were a musical instrument, I would be: the piano
If I were an animal, I would be: bear (winks at shwang)
If I were a color, I would be: blue
If I were an emotion, I would be: provoked
If I were a vegetable, I would be: celery
If I were a sound, I would be: wind blowing
If I were an element, I would be: oxygen
If I were a car, I would be: a sleek convertible that purrs
If I were a song, I would be: Wish I Never Saw The Sun Shine - Beth Orton
If I were a book, I would be written by: Graham Greene
If I were a food, I would be: celery and watermelon juice
If I were a place, I would be: Sorrento Ocean Beach
If I were a material, I would be: satin
If I were a taste, I would be: bland.
If I were a scent, I would be: sun after the rain
If I were a word, I would be: cellar
If I were an object, I would be: a ring
If I were a body part I would be: the heart
If I were a facial expression I would be: bored
If I were a subject in school I would be: english literature
If I were a cartoon character I would be: wakko yakko and dot (all three together)
If I were a shape I would be: hexagon
If I were a number I would be: 21
Posted by lainey at 12:16 PM | Comments (1)
May 07, 2004
First of Birthday Wishes
Robert Lowell: AUD75.00 of literary genius.
There's so little of Robert Lowell in local bookstores. -looks longingly at those in Melbourne and grins sheepishly-
Posted by lainey at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
A Piece of History
Arena of The Gods : Vietnam's Colonized History
Posted by lainey at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2004
An Owner's Manual
"and as a clone, you pop off the assembly line with an owner's manual written by the previous you - a manual as helpful as the one that accompanies a 1999 VW Jetta. Imagine all the crap this would save you - the wasted time, the hopeless dreams. I'm going to really think about this: an owner's manual for me."
- Hey Nostradamus!, Douglas Coupland
Posted by lainey at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2004
Love should be the greatest
Love should be the greatest explosion it is reasonable to expect which sends one whirling, spinning, creating millions of other worlds. Never destroying.
- Patrick White
Posted by lainey at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
The Significance of Loss
For Re-minisce, in response to your post:
You know when you've found it
That's something I learnt,
Cuz you feel it when they take it away.
- Amie, Damien Rice
Posted by lainey at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2004
Making Over for The Society
I remember the night with the girls and we watched Extreme Makeover together. A few of us were screaming and eeeeeeking at the plastic surgery process. But the horror is more innate. That somebody has to go through that kind of pain and mutilation, that somebody actually needs to change their skin to be happier.
Unfortunately, as much as we balk at that and want to think we are beyond that, we all need to conform. We all want to belong to some extent.
I know I want to belong somewhere.
I just need to know where.
And please, my eating habits wouldn't be so screwed up if I'm really comfortable with my body type.
A good article on our fucked up, superficial society that we can't really run away from.
Posted by lainey at 10:54 PM | Comments (0)