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Friday, April 22, 2011

References

Comparing mom's multi tasking to a thousand armed Guanyin in Years of Red Dust- stories of Shanghai by Qiu Xiaolong
The stories are such that you read them in one go.

All the Chinese proverbs and sayings fit in right well except for two references of River styx and Furies.

A guest comparing his family crab dinner to the one in
Dream of the Red Chamber

Legend of white snake

Walls have ears. Indians and Chinese too have this saying.

Chinese have Five Evils. Different from Sikh'sFive Evils.

poet Bai Juyi

Hark to the Lark

Bald Coot and Screaming Loon even though compiled in a question answer format, it is not academic, thanks to the informal tone of the Niall Edworthy

Tube noses
Fieldfare
Dovekie

The book is about birds and what they eat(or what we should or should not feed them), where they live and all the other things they do. He degrades them in the beginning to put them on the pedestal after the introduction.

I have read a Q&A book on birds before that didnt sustain my readership for too long. Compared with that, this book is an eye candy with accurate, lyric and funny illustrations. Its an ear candy too with the poems in it. My favourie is Dixon Lanier Merrit's poem in which he rhymes pelican with '(his bill can hold more than his)belican' and '(But i'm damned if I see how the) helican'.

If you are a beginner, you will learn a lot about how the birds 'flying' rules all of its other activities - molting, what organs it can or cannot have. For a bird with scavenging habits, you cannot have feathers on your neck. The most amazing fact to know for me was the duration of day that it takes to make an egg. Again its the need to fly for food. Bird mommy gets no maternity leave. That they discard their nitrogen in a way very differet from mammals which again goes back to how it cant bloat itself so that it can fly. Dusting. Anting and many other phenomenon.

If you have not done birdwatching before, theres a how to.

With so much going on about air controllers caught sleeping while on duty, a patrol crane with a stone held in its feet might have a way out for waking when you fall asleep.

When the author describes how the birds drink water, from what I have seen or remember, I think they posess a soaking ability. I will have to watch more keenly and look for them to hold their head back to gulp it down.

If you are not a beginner, still there are many new things that will you make you wonder about the bird world. That swifts cant walk very well like other birds, having chosen the fast life. The technique of Albatroses and others with their tubenoses that desalinate might help us too. If you knew all this about birds, there are still many quotes, poems and anecdotes to enjoy. The best i like is by Emily Dickinson - 'I hope you love birds,too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven'.


I have added a new item to my wish list. To watch a mass migration.


Beauty brains

Marisa Silver

Grosgrain in Alone with you
Toby is found reading Pnin

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Notes to the reader

1. If there is a meeting of people, then there is going to be parting.

If Dream interpretation is the popular genre in prison libraries, what is the popuular dream?

Myth loaded

All these birds by Richard Wilbur

Philomela

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Monday, April 18, 2011

What we hoard

When Graham finds a stash of biblical notes in Legacy of a Pack Rat, I didnt realise the significance not knowing that Billy Graham was an evangelist.

Choice

What element of myth is picked from the myth orchard for your wreath, brocade?

Ichor in Death by Aesthetics poem by Mona Van Duyn

words like chirreting,unchinking logs,

Buzz

Blunderbuss in Message from a cloud of flies: On Distraction

I keep the patio door open to let the fresh air, summer light, dust, bumble bee, flies, black stranger cat with green eyes in.

The fly is insistent in doing certain number of rotations and revolutions before getting out.

Once in a while, starlings hop <2ft into the air.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

A sneeze

in an empty apartment sounds like a basketball thump

Common Thread

I wonder if Dakota Spiritual geography and Bird cloud will cross path in experiences.

The fountain of western Classics

Dont judge the book by its cover

All things Shining

Bringing out the truth of a cliche was one of Wallace's writing principle. This is something solid about David Wallace. The more I come across this writer, the more he gets shrouded. But for now, authors Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, have bottled good wine in bad bottle.
After reading 'David Foster Wallace's Nihilism' chapter, I am left wondering making sense of 'no constraints whatsoever to the meaning we can construct for our experiences'. The text leading to puzzles likes this skillfully ties the Luther's obsessive confession disorder to Wallace's agonizing writer self. Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert are shown as whats right with the literature world in their works dealing with forging ahead instead of portraying whats wrong with the past. This being common, their philosophies are shown different. Wallace with lack of 'sacred' in his dictionary, experiencing an unbearable quality(pain) in the opposite(bliss) and Gilbert seeing an artist as a medium are pitted as two opposites. A middle ground is subject of the concluding chapter.
Many book characters walk in and out to prove the author's points regarding God perceived by other thinkers in their works.
In the third chapter, the authors go into movie snippets or summaries to illustrate their line of thought on fate and meaning in life. The reader can judge Homer's morals and learn of the Roman Fortuna (with no prejudice) and Grecian concept of lady luck smiling on the chosen.


People or book characters who know what they are all about.
David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert about how to go forward in life than duplicate the dark of life in their writing.
Obsessive confuser Martin Luther.
Wallace's non-belief in God and self as perpetrator and Gilbert's self view as a medium for art are at odds.

Book fancy

Klezmer in Running the books
I didnt try to decpher the cover, thinking it to be some letter combinations. They are date stamps of book returns to a library.
The author ran in laser tag. I move so cautiously trying not to get tagged.
The prison that produced Malcolm X housed Whitery Bulger too.
Yuppie
Fleet week