Ignorance Milan Kundera

While reading "The Bastard of Istanbul" I was introduced to Milan Kundera. He was the favourite author of one of the character in the novel. Yesterday when I went to the book store to get something to read I decided to give Kundera a shot. I couldn't find any of his bestsellers at the store so I bought "Ignorance" instead. I haven't been engrossed by a book to this extent in a very long time. The prose is very lyrical and remarkable.

Unless there's emotion love stretches like a desert where one can die of sadness. (Page 72)

It is so tiring, faithfulness that does not spring from true passion. (Page 82)

There are so many lines in the book which stay in your head even after you have read the book. It is a very short book and I just finished it but I thought I'd post one of my favourite chapters from the book on the blog. The book comes highly recommended.

A human lifetime is 80 years long on average. A person imagines and organizes his life with that span in mind. What I have just said everyone knows, but only rarely do we realize that the number of years granted us is not merely a quantitative fact, an external feature (like nose length or eyes color), but is part of the very definition of the human. A person who might live, with all his faculties, twice as long, say 160 years, would not belong to our species. Nothing about his life would be like ours- not love, or ambitions, or feelings, or nostalgia; nothing. If after 20 years abroad an emigre were to come back to his native land with another 100 years of life ahead of him, he would have little sense of a Great Return, for him it would probably not be a return at all, just one of many byways in the long journey of his life.
For the very notion of homeland. with all its emotional power, is bound up with the relative brevity of our life, which allows us too little time to become attached to some other country, to other countries, to other languages.
Sexual relations can take up the whole of adult life. But if the life were a lot longer, might mot staleness stifle the capacity for arousal well before one's physical powers declined? For there is an enormous difference between the first and the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth, or the ten thousandth coitus. Where lies the boundary line beyond which repetition becomes stereotyped, if not comical and even impossible? And once that boundary is crossed, what would become of the erotic relationship between man and a woman? Would it vanish? Or. on the contrary, would lovers consider the sexual phase of their lives to be the barbaric prehistory of real love? Answering these questions is easy as imagining the psychology of the inhabitants of an unknown planet.
The notion of love (of great love, of one-and-only love) itself also derives, probably, from the narrow bounds of time we are granted. If that time were boundless, would Josef be so attracted to his deceased wife? We who must die so soon, we just don't know.

Chapter 34, Ignorance by Milan Kundera

Photo Credit: Alexs-art

Attention deficit

7347 files, 672 folders, 29.3 GB (i.e. 31,468,023,808 bytes!!) and couple of days later I have finally been able to organize my music. I decided to be a responsible citizen delete the tons of music I downloaded thanks to Limewire and instead rip my entire CD collection to the laptop. It is always so tiring to clean the mess in your life and ripping the CDs wasn't easy either but I feel I have achieved something substantial. I know you must be thinking that I have a lot of time in my hands and seriously I do. All I am doing nowadays is waiting for some news to come my way and until that doesn't happen I have to find ways to entertain myself. Now that the Cataloging of the music is out of the way I can reading either the "The Bastard of Istanbul" by Elif Shafak or "Heat" by Bill Buford. I have decided to start with Elif Shafak's book.
Other than waiting there isn't much happening in life so there isn't much to blog about but I hope soon the tide would change and there would be a lot of action taking place and a lot to share. Until then I hope the books can keep me entertained and I will talk more about them once I am done reading either one. The last book that I read which was based in Istanbul was Orhan Pamuk's 'My Name is Red' which I really liked. Of the little of "The Bastard of Istanbul" that I have read I am kind of missing the sights and sound of the place as Orhan described them. But it's still too early to pass a judgment. I am going to wait and see if the book is able to hold my attention. I have a really short attention span and in case the book starts to linger endlessly I stop reading it. The same goes with other things in life be it hobbies, career choices and relationships!! If the gratification is too hard to come by and there is a lot of waiting period I usually switch to the the 'next channel'. I know I am ruthless but I am working on it so please stop staring with the condescending and reprimanding look.

Garlic and Sapphires

I am still having no luck with being able to view the blog on my computer. Luckily I can post and receive you comments. Thanks you all for your encouraging comments to the post "Not a people person". I guess that has always been the problem with me - I worry too much. Yesterday I had gone to a book shop and was in the basement where there wasn't any cell coverage for a while. Later I received a message which showed 3 missed calls from my Consultant. I tried her number but she had already left for the day. I presumed it was bad news and could sleep well (the consultant has been a harbinger of bad news of late). When I called her today I realized she had called to inform me that things were going on smoothly at her end. Phew what a relief!!
I don't read much but when I do I usually get stuck in a particular genre or style of writing. Nowadays it writings about food. After having read French women don't get fat by Mireille Guiliano I have now started to read Garlic and Sapphires: The secret life of a critic in disguise by Ruth Reichel. I started with the book last night and found it to be a good read. I will write more on it once I have read the entire book.
I may not be able to reply to your comments but I surely do read and appreciate them. Thanks NSSG, Firehorse and Tom Cat.

French women don't get fat

Life is strange. For the past few weeks I had been feeling that my life has been static and I was moving around in circles with nothing much taking shape. Today has been a welcome change. The morning started with the Cartomancy session and in the eveninga freind of my dad's called. He owns a night club and was hosting an Indian Reggae singer settled in UK called Apache Indian and invited me over. I was reluctant as always because I hate going to clubs but this was the second time that he had called and I thought it would be rude to say no therefore agreed. The performance was as good but not something I'd enjoy and therefore I left after having a few Caprioskas. I am not myself after some alcohol and so didn't wait to eat and came back home. I was very hungry when I reached home so decided to fix me up something for dinner. I have been reading a book called "French women don't get fat" by Mireille Guiliano (more about it once i finish reading it) and inspired by the book I decided to fix me a healthy dinner. This is the recipe of what I cooked up:

Mix mushroom diced into small pieces, diced cashew nuts, grated cheese (I only had cheddar and little Parmesan so I used those), chopped parsley, grated butter, freshly ground black pepper and salt and an egg white to bind it all together. Stuff this mixture inside a boneless chicken breast. Secure the filling inside the breast by tying some thread around the breast. Make a dressing by mixing some white wine, extra virgin olive oil, freshly ground pepper, rosemary, salt, and honey (i didn't have lemons so I didn't use it but you could add in some lemon juice and grated lemon zest too). Put the chicken breast into a dish and pour the dressing over it. Grill the breast for about 10 minutes on one side and then another 5 minutes on the other, check to see if the chicken is cooked.

I served the chicken with some deseeded and diced fresh tomatoes tossed with some chilly oregano seasoning, fresh coriander and Colavita Pepperolio as an accompaniment to tingle my almost dead taste buds (thanks to the overly spiced and seasoned Indian food).
It came out much better than I expected and I was happy and satisfied with my effort. It's was healthy and a welcome change from the monotonous Indian food I had been having and just what Guiliano had ordered. I will write more about my inspiration from the book "French women don't get fat" soon. It is an interesting book more so because of the recipes and stories about the French way of life. It much more than a diet book or just a plain old cook book.

Snakes and books!

I usually don't dream and even if I do I don't remember them. It's only rarely that I do remember my dreams and when I do I try to interpret them to the best of my capability. But the Internet makes things much easier. Day before yesterday in my dream I saw a snake who wasn't hostile but by the end of the dream he suffered a tragic end and was killed by someone I know. When I woke up I was disturbed and wanted to understand what it meant or signified. This is what I found at a website called experiencefestival :

1. In Indian tradition, moving snakes symbolize the stirring of kundalini.
2. In Freudian terms, snake is a phallic symbol.
3. Jung, however, interpreted snakes as symbolic of the conflict between conscious attitudes and instincts.

To see a snake or be bitten by one in your dream, signifies hidden fears and worries that are threatening you. Your dream may be alerting you to something in your waking life that you are not aware of or that has not yet surfaced. The snake may also be seen as phallic and thus symbolize dangerous and forbidden sexuality. The snake may also refer to a person around you who is callous, ruthless, and can't be trusted. As a positive symbol, snakes represent transformation, knowledge and wisdom. It is indicative of self-renewal and positive changes.

That's real complex but in a lot of ways holds true for my current situation. Well almost a lot of it does. Though deep down inside me I know that things will change for the better, and things that didn't work out was for the best ,but somehow I feel life is stuck and that I am moving round and round in circles wasting my life when I should be doing better things.

So just to keep me busy and to get all the depressing thoughts out of my mind I went out to a bookshop that had a sale on. It's hard for me to not check out a sale even if I don't need anything. So I went and got some books:

1. Tantra - Indra Sinha
2. Sivananda beginner's guide to yoga
   
3. The concise Larousse Gastronomique

But the weird part is that because of all the stress that I am in and due to the uncertainty about the future I just can't seem to get down to reading any of the great books that I bought so instead I just browsed through some magazines like Travel and Living and Digit (computer magazine), waiting for something substantial to take shape so that I can get down to enjoying the good things in life!

Constantine P Cavafy

I was introduced to Constantine P Cavafy's poetry through a friends profile on a website. I read a few of his poems online and I fell in love. The raw sensuality and simplicity of the poetry struck me.  He was born of Greek parents in Egypt and worked as a Civil servant. His poetry was in Greek but translations are available online. Cavafy was  homosexual and his most well known relationship was with Alexander Singopolous. I am posting a few of his poems here and more can be found online.

Desires

 

Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown old

and they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,

with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --

that is how desires look that have passed

without fulfillment; without one of them having achieved

a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn. 

Body Remember

Body, remember not only how much you were loved

not only the beds you lay on. 

but also those desires glowing openly 

in eyes that looked at you, 

trembling for you in voices- 

only some chance obstacle frustrated them. 

Now that it's all finally in the past, 

it seems almost as if you gave yourself 

to those desires too-how they glowed, 

remember, in eyes that looked at you, 

remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices. 

He vows

 

Every so often he vows to start a better life.

But when night comes with her own counsels,

with her compromises, and with her promises;

but when night comes with her own power

of the body that wants and demands, he returns,

forlorn, to the same fatal joy. 

One Night

 

The room was penurious and common,

Hidden over a disreputable tavern,

The alley could be seen from the window,

Unclean and narrow. From below

Came the voices of a few workmen

Who were playing cards and having a good time.

There on the vulgar on the humble bed

I had the body of love, I had the lips,

The sensuous, the rosy lips of wine,

Rosy with such a wine, that even now

Here as I write, after so many years,

In my solitary house, I am drunk again. 

Photo credits: All the paintings are from artists at deviantart and if the artist wants I'll remove them from the blog.

My name is Red

I have nothing much to do nowadays. So all I do most of my time is listen to music, watch movies, read blogs and try to read some books that I have been meaning to read for a long time. One book that I read of late which I enjoyed was "My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

The book is written in a very interesting fashion where each chapter is narrated by one of the characters of the story. In the beginning it takes a while to get used to but it makes the book even more interesting. The other thing that I really enjoyed was the description of Istanbul in such detail that I wanted to just get up and leave for Turkey that very moment. Now it is a part of my 'Life List'. The things that I intend to do before I die along with learning to play the Violin, learning to swim, etc etc. Maybe someday I will make an entry on the blog about my 'Life list'.

The book also explains in great detail the art of Islamic miniature painting. At times it may be a little too descriptive but does add to the charm and element of exotic in the story. I am a believer in the Sufi way of living so for that reason some things about Islam interest me. The book comes highly recommended.