10th may 2005
Flowers are Man's little sisters.
11th may 2005
I only went to Buscot for the gardens; I didn't realise that the house holds an excellent collection of pictures, as well as a few portraits of those types whose voice could be heard across three counties.
12th may 2005
Looking up Indian poets; thinking, how well they do languor (Pauline Kael once wrote, rather cattily but then I don't trust the woman, that the male characters in Ray's films tended to be horizontal men); came across Tusar Roy, who died in 1977 at 43; who walked backwards in traffic with his eyes shut to see what would happen; who once ordered (in metre) a mounted policeman to doff his hat to him, the poet; who wrote this delicious poem, simple and domestic as a Gary Snyder: Only Snow Drips Down Silently
Under cloudy sky of the queen of hills - Tusar Roy (translated from the Bengali)
18th may 2005
Does anyone know (Ray? Ray? zu hilfe!) where this comes from, as Google doesn't - it's heard it around, but that's all: Momma don't want no trumpet-playin' here
Momma don't want no trumpet-playin' here Poppa don't care what momma don't 'low so we got trumpet-players anyhow Momma don't want no trumpet-playin' here You can make up your own variations as to other maternal strictures, and generate an infinity of verses.
19th may 2005
Time flows slowly, a river of stones. He sits in purple on a palanquin, watching the birds fly through the court. Chief of his village: chief of many villages. He looks out over flat roofs to flat country, which is his country. In the heat of the day the yard is empty. Red dust lies still; not even a dog. He waits in the shade of the fig tree that his ancestors planted, the first of men. The afternoon is quiet, golden yellow. He drinks a little from a calabash, beneath the branches of the fig. He sits in purple on a palanquin, watching the birds fly through the court. Time flows slowly, a river of stones.
23rd may 2005
The top fifty words entered on this site over the last three years or so. When processing this I vaguely thought 'moon' might come first - 'sea' was totally unexpected in the top spot with 96 inclusions, whereas 'moon' only made 28, behind 'sun' even. At position 50 was 'trees', with 21 mentions.
25th may 2005
'Good morning,' said the little prince.
'Good morning,' said the merchant. This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink. 'Why are you selling those?' asked the little prince. 'Because they save a tremendous amount of time,' said the merchant. 'Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week.' 'And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?' 'Anything you like...' 'As for me,' said the little prince to himself, 'if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.' Me, if I have 53 minutes spare, I like to surf the net.
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It's raining, I have a bottle of wine, six volumes of dastans - what else could I ask for?
- Ghalib |