News of the World

I have so much news, it's all happened so fast. It feels like every day magic, I got ready for things to happen to me again and they started right away.

1.  We bought an apartment. Got a pretty great price on a place without any catch we could find, did a lot of due diligence and we're taking possession the day we got back from Thailand. I think about this quote I read one time, it was about how somebody lost their fortune, or power, or how a revolution happened or something and he said "slowly, and then all at once."  That's how I feel about buying this place. I had looked a lot and had a short list we decided not to action, and then I was keeping a casual eye on things and I saw this place come up way under market and thought what's the catch, so I went to view it and then within two days we were making an offer. It was pretty incredible. And then the whirlwind of reading contracts and body corporate documents etc. And now here we are about to embark on that next adventure.  It's a one bedroom one bathroom, no car park apartment in the valley, in a 160 unit building that's all long term rentals. It has a lap pool and lagoon pool, outdoor unheated, a quality gym, big entertainment area with couches and a pool table and a rooftop viewing area as well as a reading room and a grassy central area. It's 50 square meters so pretty small but we plan to keep a foot in our house and all our stuff as we get it set up, so no drastic moving and liquidating plans. It's a 12 minute walk from Jeremy's work. I've been jokingly calling it our pied a terre and my birthday present.

2.  Well I am on my way to a week in Thailand right now. We're doing a week, resort style, poolside bar, daily massages, great food, relaxing. It's a detox vacation for Jem basically, it's been a year since he went on vacation and starting a new job and all means he's extra ready for one. But we conveniently planned it over Valentine's day and my birthday so I feel there's a lot there for me as well.

3.  I'm taking off for three months over the winter again, May 15- August 20 or so. I'm meeting my mom in Paris, then we're traveling together on a loop from Paris to Amsterdam (probably) to St. Petersburg back to Munich, the black forest and back to Paris over about six weeks.  Anne and RJ are meeting us in Munich for a group trip there.

Then we fly home with a quick couple day stopover for an art and Claudia trip in Boston. My mom heads home and I head to Ann Arbor to visit Nick and Kimmi, who moved out there last year. Come back about the seventh, girls trip with Anne etc on the 13th weekend, then probably VA and back in Gboro from about the 20th to about the seventh.

August 7 or so I route back out to London, spend a week crashing with Joanna and partying in London and surrounds and then hop my flight to Paris, and home from there.

So it's a big figure eight kind of loop. And I keep my status as a migratory bird.

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.