Boris

Boris Karloff who played original Frankenstein was also the voice of the grinch.  Life is weird.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I've been fooling around starting devilled eggs tonight.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Arundhati Roy's new joint

Her first reaction was to feel her heart constrict and her bones turn to ash. Her second reaction was to take another look to make sure she was not mistaken.   Her third reaction was to recoil from what she had created while her bowels convulsed and a thin stream of shit ran down her legs.  Her fourth reaction was to contemplate killing herself and her child.   Her fifth reaction was to pick her baby up and hold him close while she fell through a crack between the world she knew and worlds she did not know existed.  There, in the abyss, spinning through the darkness everything she had been sure of until then, every single thing, from the smallest to the biggest, ceased to make sense to her.

He ( the dog) drank everything Anjum drank ate everything that she ate - biriani, korma, samosas, hawks, falooda, phirni, zamzam, mangoes in summer, oranges in winter.  It was terrible for his body but excellent for his soul.

" Oh we have ways of assessing the warmth of the welcome," Amrik Singh said.  "We have our own thermometers."
Maybe.  But you have no understanding of the depths of Kashmiri duplicity, Musa  thought but did not say.  You have no idea how a people like us, who have survived a history and a geography such as ours, have learned to drive our pride underground.  Duplicity is the only weapon we have.  You don't know how radiantly we smile when our hearts are broken.  How ferociously we can turn on those we love while we graciously embrace those whom we despise.  You have no idea how warmly we can welcome you when all we really want is for you to go away.  Your thermometer is quite useless here.

In every part of the legendary Valley of Kashmir, whatever people might be doing - walking, praying, bathing, cracking jokes,  shelling walnuts, making love or taking a bus-ride home-they were in the rifle-sights of a soldier.  And because they were in the rifle-sights of a soldier, whatever they might be doing - walking, praying, bathing, cracking jokes, shelling walnuts, making love or taking a bus-ride home - they were a legitimate target.

It was possible for Tilo and Musa to have this strange conversation about a third loved one because they were concurrently sweethearts and ex-sweethearts, lovers and ex-lovers, siblings and ex-siblings, classmates and ex-classmates.  Because they trusted each other so peculiarly that they knew, even if they were hurt by it, that whoever it was that the other person loved had to be worth loving.

Its roof had fallen in and the moon shone through its skeleton of rafters that loomed against the night - a luminous heart in an angular ribcage.

There was more than one patient in every bed.  There were patients on the floor, most of the visitors and family members who were crowded around them looked just as ill.  Harried doctors and nurses picked their way through the chaos.  It was like a wartime ward.  Except that in Delhi there was no war other than the usual one - the war of the rich against the poor.

The young taxi driver . . . whose body had been recovered from a field and delivered to his family with earth in his clenched fists and mustard flowers growing through his fingers. . . He would leave for Kashmir the next morning to return to a new phase in an old war from which, this time, he would not return.  He would die the way he wanted to, with his Asal boot on.  He would be buried the way he wanted to be- a faceless man in a nameless grave.  The younger men who would take his place would be harder, narrower, and less forgiving.  They would be more likely to win any war that they fought, because they belonged to a generation that had known nothing but war.

How to tell a shattered story?  By slowly becoming everybody?  No, by slowly becoming everything.

Nobel prize

Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel prize for Literature this year.

He's my favourite living author. He has written about six books, very diverse in setting, but consistent in theme. He treats almost unbearable poignancy, the simultaneous observation of completely pure, total, and lifelong love and the certainty that it will be corrupted, unrealised and lost. To read his books is a heartbreak, but is also to convince you utterly of goodness.

He was up against Murakami and Atwood, two brilliant authors of probably greater cultural significance who would have each certainly made an excellent choice themselves.

But Ishiguro for me has the most singularly fine writing of any living author. He is one for the ages. Congratulations. 

Warm air

So it's blown up heat wise here and the biggest side effect of that is that the air smells, really good, like walking through syrup, that sweetness. Incidentally it's warm enough now that the honey flows properly which all feels like part of it. 

On the way in this morning you could smell the dew first, that freshcoolness. Then the sugar sweet flowers we walk by somewhere, they trailed the whole way up to the train station. Then hot oil and baked goods from the shops, and then I didn't notice anything on the train but the city has that sugar flower smell combined with like a hint of woodsmoke this morning.

It makes me feel more alive, this start of spring start of summer feeling. And reminds me a little of when I went to Mexico, my first time out of the country and felt like the syran wrap was taken off my life. Colors were brighter, sounds were louder, tastes were fuller, smells more rich. 

It's like when you're cooking something and it starts getting going and you can smell it from the other room. It's like that but with the world, the air starts to warm a little bit and you can just smell and feel the life stirring, everywhere.

Prison sentences

So there's a controversy in Iceland right now about a guy who was friends with the father of the prime minister. He raped his five year old daughter for twelve years and was sentenced to five years. His friend was writing a character letter to get his record expunged. But you know my top take away was, what the hell is he doing out of prison after only five years?

So then I'm trying out this new podcast ear hustle, broadcast from prison. The two hosts are doing 15 and 30 years respectively for armed robbery. "31 year to life for attempted second degree robbery."  But you know my top takeaway was, what the hell is he doing in prison for thirty years?

But you know, not to be reductive but I bet you can guess one of the differences between the two.

Stuff in the sky

On my walk today I saw:
A gala with its underbelly rose like the setting sun.
A bat flapping slowly, in fat furry flaps.
A crow quacking in a budding jacaranda tree.
It's evening now, probably time to head home.

Marley

When I hear Bob Marley songs now I think about Jamaica because of that Marlon James book.

It's silly I suppose because I never really thought of him connected to Jamaica before. He seemed bigger than that or whatever. You know he created/ popularized a whole genre of music. And he's maybe the most international star I've ever seen.

Seriously it was one of the lessons of my round the world trip. People fucking love Marley all over the world. Truck drivers in Peru, bars in Tanzania, clubs in Cuba, on the streets in the air. Mostly poor people. Everyone grooving out.

I never thought about him, with the crime, the corruption of Kingston. It adds a dimension. And while his music is political, I often don't think of him as that punk, but it seems I should.

Look this is my second blog about other random stuff and I feel like I should say, you know Jeremy changed jobs and said goodbye to his old co workers and it was a whole thing, he's at Skedulo now, it's going well, but of course there's been lots of feelings and this just feels a bit public for all that so just know that he changes and it was powerful and moving and good.