To the point

After reading this book I am able to appreciate what Richard Mitchell means by 'since time and place mean nothing to an alien trying to understand humanity' in his book 'The Gift of Fire'.
It was interesting to read about the observed motion seen in a timescale of many years contrasted with human life's dot appearance. Now I understand what a professed utilitarian that I know was trying to say with why should humans think themselves superior compared to other animals.
I really liked the statement where Scott says imagine the cosmos is gone sort of things.. while in fantasy you see the existence of new worlds.. I think he is creative when he says forget about things we know itself for a while..
It was even more interesting to read his explanation of Gods Debris

Jan 10, 2007

Good writing with a purpose

I like how the myths are woven into the story and prose. I cannot believe that what began as a funny account of a mother trying to make sure that her son does not take to drinking due to post war trauma ended up this way - telling the story of Laguna people, their attachment to the land and cattle even in the times of drought and vanishing land.

Aug4,2007

National Geographic Vol 179, No.5 May 1991

Elephants find Lianas tasty. While the Aka people in the article are in Africa, another Aka community with an undocumented language has been found.
Forest elephants prefer Monocots
A tamarind tree is a dicot. I say that from tiny green grass like stalk that have two seed leaves. After rain they were more prominent on the ground. Fresh green.

Beneficiaries of the elephants bull dozing. ... crested mangabey monkeys

Treculia
Balanites
Cauliflory
dehiscent
exstipulate

In Chicago, old women made Varenyky for their church. The feature on Chicago had a good comparision with NY city style of anyone can make it here Vs if you can make it here..

Another Six questions

This Socrates,Mr Philips, should have asked fewer questions. The questions in the beginning are in a realm, easily 'connectible to ' of a common man.
As you approach the middle of the book, one feels that as a very inquisitive present generation Socrates, he should have rephrased the questions or found answers relevant to the question. This disappointment is a show-stopper.
The answers in themselves deal with people of diverse backgrounds, as the discussions of philosophy are held in various parts of the world. You come to know of various cultures and their viewpoints.
A question on virtue just focusses on harmony, moderation on modesty. This steering of the answer to just one side, rather than a wider view could be partly due to a community's 'similar thinking'.
Even if just the first question was put to all the different groups, the book would have done the real job of exploring philosophy and its relevance to modern man.
One question well answered is better than any many questions that can be raised and never answered.

Aug 19 2005

Poet or not

This book is for anyone who has ever had to think if they could/should write or not. On a general note, if anybody had to sit and think if what they are doing is what they really want to do , they could glean some inspiration that all the questions that arise will lead you to 'worth the effort' results , if pursued, that can make a difference to your and many other lives.

Sep 19. 2005

Books are for

DHL has a very consistent way of writing. Each of his book only adds to the superset of his way of thinking.
This book has very few characters but strong ones at that. You can derive your philosophy from them. They can do the living at an abstraction which seems the most appealing to those who always look at the 'true core' of things. The characters will go through all the travails that are the outcome of an impossible living and finally descend back to the ground.
There are a gamut of feelings that can be felt by a man, its not possible to experience them all by ourselves and this book is one such, which lets you live the life of such intense people within the covers.
Miriam's character, as a person who draws life out of all things worth appreciating by vaccuming their essence into her, like say smelling the flowers so barbarously that they are devoid of their fragrance...
In today's life , where conversation cannot go beyond everyday needs, its hard to recognise such different traits in people. DHL's characters are so different. The feelings they have, the way they reconciliate to them.. how they realise that they go beyond the flesh and are more related in spirit .. making transactions in this not-ordinary space and then having the practicality to realise that life cant be lived like that .. the point abut how 'feeling life like souls' but 'need to live like humans'..
Oct 11, 2005

Push cart 2010

I want to speak for just one essay - 'The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies' by Sallie Jiko Tisdale.In the essayists words it is a rewrite of Dogen's Sutra of Mountains and Waters as a natural history of flies, in Buddhist terms. I read this essay last night. And today I could make something of a housefly. I saw the four stripes on its gray thorax. I saw the 'halteres'. If I can tell that much of a fly, it has to be a dead one with its limbs detaching at the slightest touch. The fly is on a path of decay. The essay not only leaves you with the knowledge of what happens to our bodies when we die but it goes into suffering identified by Buddha.
It is a long essay. If you cant get your hands on it, you should read the excerpts of it on 'Dharma Rain'. [...]. After reading this essay I was reminded of an essay 'Not found Not Lost' by Joel Agee.

Other essays that I liked and recognized from magazines: 'Time and Distance overcome' by Eula Biss and 'How to succeed in Po Biz' by Kim Addonizio

Jul 17,2010

A poem by its other name

This poem with title 'race' had me guessing the end with some injustice. Race is such a high power word that it masks its homonymity.
Homonym

A summer day

we felt a cool breeze
like we were by the beach
As unbelievable as the mirage
it did happen

poems

Both these poems have been used as epigrams in Anne Lamott's 'traveling Mercies' book.

Another quote used in the same book.

Spider Monkeys

I wasnt prepared for a shrunk image of monkeys at the Monkey Village. In 'Wild Justice', a study, it was interesting to read of one of the priviliges of affiliative behavior. A point that I liked in this book of two opposing concepts of Darwin's survival of the fittest and Kropotkin's Mutual Aid's role in evolution.
Phoenix zoo had whistling ducks too in the exhibit as both come from the same South America.
Unwanted Norway rats. Hanta Virus.

Listen to your author

What is the difference between an accomplished writer and one who is interested in writing? For one, he can say what a novice only thinks he wants to say and two he can convince that it had to be said. He can write what he thinks and just call it a book. Although I would not call it a book in the regular sense, I would like to read what an author like him thinks. Is he the thinker who writes?
Moral of the story. Man has made a big mess of the earth. Not new to our knowledge. But authors writing on an issue in current life makes them so easy to relate to.
12.31.05

Yesterday's question

Reading of a book in NYTimes, I wonder what might ethics in archaeology refer to. Terry Tempest in Refuge with her frequent digs, hints in pg 190 and I get that the excavators could appropriate the digs before they get into Museum Inventory Management System

sense and predation

While deer evade us through their sense of smell, another set of life, mosquitoes find us through the same sense.

Smell is not the only sense that aids animals. What does heat sensing fall under? 'moment of Impact' video on PBS about snakes thermal mapping and woodpeckers with their flexible tongues that wrap around their skulls to handle the pressure while they tap at the wood made me wonder how todays generation can learn so much more.

In Remembering smell, in the 'smell, memory' chapter, author Bonnie says that, Memories are remade with each act of rememberance and its evolutionary purpose was to enable learning; thus it must be highly fexible and subjective.

Experimenting even when the lab shuts down. olfactory cuisine. Achatz survived tongue cancer.

Word book

Meaning of Tingo

This book has words from other languages for which there are no equivalents in English.
The words have been sorted into chapters with hello ( the first any one should know in any language),clothing,love,marriage,divorce and so on...in the order they occur.
There are boxed English words 'False friends' which mean quite something else in other languages.
It is extremely interesting to see some 20 odd words for camels, snow and Thailand's capital when spelled totally takes up three lines .

June 8, 2006

Essay series

Best American Essays 2007

Afternoon of the sex children - Mark Greif
Shakers - Daniel Orozco
Passion flowers in Winter - Molly Peacock

writing:

Dragon Slayers - Jerald walker
Disappointment - Richard Rodriguez

May 24, 2010

THL

The History of Love
If escher's paintings left the easel and went through a typewriter, this is what would come out..
An author's last lap of life belting out a novel,who has already written his 'the novel' on his love in his life as 'The History of Love', A young girl named Alma's (after a character in this book)attempts to find out about the character she is named after, excerpts from the 'THL' novel itself, the story of the believed author of 'THL' and many more such yarns with coinciding story lines.
All this might sound like a jumble, if you are not used to the concepts of novel in a novel and more.
A cautious author would want to have a centralised control over the characters and just have one narrative. But Nicole seems to be very good at churning out as many narrators as the characters.Its one thing to have anarrator speak for each character and another to do what Krauss has done.

Jan 14, 2006

Wide Awake

Watching this movie, you calmly wait to see in what form, Night's creativity is going to unfurl in front of you. Its a nice experiment.
The kid in search of God, trying to look at all other religions in the world is so trying to expand his consciousness at such a small age, which great artists are known to do at the age of 20 and more.
For all those in search of something, here is your 'The signs', that you should go on...

Aug 21, 2005

Margaret Atwood's

the Blind Assasin

It is an amalgam of nested story lines. Unfortunately 'synergy' did not work to Atwood's favour.
The story of two sisters is very uninteresting. I still read on, to find out why the book is called so. The fictionary tale about the blind assassin's is worth the perseverance.
There is more suspense in the assassin's life than in the death of Laura Chase, the novelist.
I would have given a 5 star to this book, if it was TRULY JUST the story of 'The Blind Assassin'.

Aug 19, 2005

Diving

In Ponape chapter, in Zinsley's book,The rapture of the Deep, he comfortably dons the role of a marine biologist introducing you to Tunicates that are a link between vertebrates and invertebrates and the move on to the customs of the Pohnpeiian. The anthropologist then winds up marvelling at the ruins of Nan Madol

I happen to be in the posession of Grays Anatomy, so here's the beginning of me waxing about the bones.

Bones - Long
short, flat
and mixed

Spiced

Bourdain has already written on how a year just goes by in a kitchen in his confidential. Of burns too which will not elicit any balmy response from any of the coworkers. How different can a pastry chef's life be? The hours of kitchen call on you to be an automaton. That is how your success as a chef is measured, with the orders that you stack. It must be a welcome break to try perfect a new recipe to be on the menu for a while. Other breaks, when a national disaster brings in chefs and critics under one roof to send relief to the rescue teams. Then changes, when your workplace changes. You break into a place, everyone loves your work. After a while, the well of customers dries up. Time for new place, new recipe.

chocolate maki, Kalamansi Colada sure fire those dessert juices.

The book is well written and dispels the romantic chef image of ratatouille.

Silk Parachute

'Silk Parachute' essay brought out a sense of disbilief as I was reading it.
'Spin right and Shoot left'- This essay's beginning didnt get me hooked into it, but I could connect more to it from the part where he mentions 'lax rats'(muggles of non lacrosse world) - another club member then.
'Checkpoints' - on fact checking at NYorker.

'My life list' was felt ronic compared to the birders list. Its kind of funny, the hundred kinds of tea he has in the wild. The point wouldnt have been driven home, if I hadnt read earlier in a survival-in-the-wild book about having pine tea. In this and the 'checkpoints' essay I noticed a similarity in the small sections being non -sequential - seeming like different takes on the whole run. A ploy to keep in mind for future writing.

June 6, 2010

Writing down the bones

When you come across the writing techniques, at first most of them seem like they might not be of much help. Like for example, writing down the verbs and nouns and looking at new combinations. This activity can be appreciated only if something leads you to see the connection between writing in words and thinking from memories.
I like the way the author has put forward some concepts- Metaphors fit well when they occur to the writer in thinking process. One of her masters metaphor seemed ridiculous.
As a want-to-be-a-writer, if you had to deal with seperating and merging life and writing, she says writers live twice.
Read back your daily journals. You will know what she means by an idea bearing the stamp of the moment it was inspired and how each time you read it, your interpretation differs giving you more thoughts to write..

Nov 22, 2006

Story Machine

The development of formalism to help Brutus, the story machine write a story using betrayal is interesting to read.
The story by Racter, a machine makes you see how mechanical a writing it is capable of.
The Bodenesque creativity definition will get you thinking about 'what is really creativity?'

June 8, 2006

Secret Life of Bees

"Stingless bees tell other workers in the colony about a new food source by laying a scent trail between it and the nest."

(...)

While we are the workers at the nest, Sue Kidd is the 'talking bee' whose book ' The secret life of Bees' is the trail scent left to find the amazing food source , the book itself.

The novel has been excellently written, with stories rolling out of characters effortlessly. While I came across a line .. 'take everything T.Ray was not, shape it into a person, and you would get Walter Cronkite'.. I felt, I had already seen this usage in this book. Later on, I realised that I had come across it in Thomas Hardy's novel "The Return of the Native". But Kidd's style is very different and sweet like honey ... You will appreciate the author's success in coming up with a good style thats so easy to read.

Sep 3, 2005

Wallace Stevens

Within reading the first few pages, one can feel the surge of guilt for the unjustice done to all the words we dont use anymore. Disuse of words defends the trashing.

Nov 23,2009

The Books that we cant read

Having read a little on African art in the Menil collection, I found that some rituals in Things fall apart made sense. Proverbs and sayings of elders appear in more than smattering numbers. Further into the book the quoters are not restricted to elders. What is the fascination with using the sayings even after having got the point across? Thats what a set of Bon mot do.
With this in the recent past, Contemporary African writing caught my attention. I wanted to know more about it. But when my eyes caught some words of war and unrest, that did it for me. As the times of war or peace have an effect on the kind of writing, how can the search for literature be complete?

"Five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."- Orson Welles

Peace may not be essential for great works, but some can never be relished.
Angelas Ashes had a good style of writing, but I couldnt read on. About a person with alcohol problems. If it were by the alcoholic himself, it might have a different kind of appeal like in When Things Get Dark. This would (I had to desert this book too for the same unmeetable reasons) have adult perspective with damage to a knowledgable self and not others. Reading Frank Courts memoir through his childhood eyes comes with a bitter taste of swallowing your own tears.

I am not alone in turning my face away from Angelas Ashes. Adair Lara in 'Naked, Drunk and Writing' points that 'A number of people I know couldnt bring themselves to read Angela's Ashes because it was too grim: alcoholism, humiliation, poverty, dirt, disease, untimely death. But for me the dry humour throughout the book tempers the meanness and provides hope'.

Best American short stories 2009

Stories that made me find more about what spurred them.

A Shadow table - Alice Fulton. Should I come across her collection of stories - 'the Nightingales of Troy'- Big yes. Couldnt find if this was a real custom.

Now Trends - Karl Taro Greenfield. The elements of the story are as interesting as the real and vicious(reading) experiences its gathered from.

May 16, 2010.

Hidden life of deer

The author makes it fun to be a deer and play Hide and Hide.

With the oaks going barren one year(they have a mind of their own just like one of the cats in the book) - helter skelter in the animal kingdom but a great opportunity at Thomas residence to do
back yard deer watching - their social behavior.

Reading about the effects of introduction of non native species to a place makes me wonder about how mysteriously evolution works. If here subspecies are lost, isolation breeds different species like in the Grand Canyon squirrels. Geography dictating breeding season.

Now who knew scats held facts in them. If someone got a look at the scats at Montezuma Castle in time, then they could tell the direction in which the cliff dwellers left in haste.

The concept of Predator urine was interesting.

All in all, there are so many things happening in the natural world that call for observation for comprehension, with some mishaps in the domestic world - hysterical macaws, hyper rats and passive cats.

snow mountain

The clouds behind the superstition mountain in a higher cone like a shadow.

Evening

Eating samosa yesterday, aloo with the amchur taste. When we eat things, over many times, at different places, the sameness of the encounter of a familiar food on the buds, builds on and you havent had the samosa just that one time but over years, the affair has been going on, reliving it each time.
At the end of it, we would have had a huge samosa like the big biscuit ad of a car insurance company. Like how a bunch of candles fuse into one in the heat. In an imaginary funeral rite, it would be a mighty bolillo roll and a half chewed milk truck. Add to the list,Giant apple, orange like Roald Dahl's cherry.
Talking of which, a limo followed by many cars flashing their hazard lights on the highway, was the first time I saw it being used as the exit chariot.

Many Loves, a poem by Allen Ginsberg sung on A prairie Home Companion.

Seraphine

Books

at the library book drop.
The Agony and the Ecstasy, a biographical novel of Michelangelo by Irving stone.
The Butcher boy

What lies ahead?

on Berchtesgadener Hochthron mountain in North face movie, Kurz and Hinterstoisser look like they are at the edge of a ship. Mountains as look out points.

Azzannare (Italian)

to sink ones teeth into

This has been todays motto until the visix Imaging software let 18 pictures of my teeth be mounted on it. If the xray machine could wonder, it wouldnt pass up thinking if the tube holder was focused on the right end of the dental patient. this patient would not mind if told that the teeth xray actually showed toes. Humors the dentist too. Whne I asked the assistant what the film holder was called.
'Rinn'1 she said.
'Wren' I heard.
Rinn expected a wide mouth. For a narrow mouth, resourceful assistant came up with a 'Snapper ray' which looked like a mix of clothespin with a sharp snap, geometry compass. Life saver.

Dental terms: Occlusal, Lingual, buccal, Overbite.

I saw a gray bird with black on the tail end. May be catbird. It played with the air for a while like it were dribbling.

1 Rinn

When they report

All the media, newspaper and radio were trying to open my ears to the 'construction sounds' going on in the neighborhood, or wait is it in the world cup? I cant believe I bore that noise thinking that the sawing was going on at some building.
All in a click.

wordy distraction

This morning between birdwatching and making a lunch appointment, I had some miscalculated time on my hands. I had books but I didnt have the space. When I took the via point as a starbucks in a safeway, I was hoping for a place to sit. There were places to sit with either too much sun light facing east or no natural light inside. Shade of a tree next to a bike rack was the pit stop. When I had enough sun that I could take, I shut off boston cream pie's chatter and went with Tiramisu cake. Before billing , what should catch my eyes, a shelf full of books under the reading tree program. So now I have a Collins Italian- English dictionary to pair with a websters Spanish-English one.
A Different Angle - Fly fishing stories by women -
Wild Animus - Rich Shapero
Free falling and other student essays
1989 Europe- Fielding guide
On the road with Charles Kuralt
52 Florida weekends - Janet & Gordon Groene.

That was aperfect distraction for a time that I would have suffered to spend inside missing the sun. I was so much into sifting the books that I missed an announcement about some cake, which my Tiramisu reminded a lady next in line.

During a dry spell of new non fiction

Alive Day - Tom Sullivan
A blind man and his dog. Does the dog understand that his friend is blind? What about blind animals? Atleast for rats, rabbits and dogs there doesnt seem to be much future if they are blind in both eyes. Their behaviour has been reported in popular science monthly Nov 1902 - Apr 1903
(Science gleanings in Animal Life - John Gibson)
Blind fish in mammoth caves. Flat fish. Is there really a cap on snakes venom production?
Proceedings of the society for Experimental zoology and medicine is a very easy to read science book.

Older adults

Recently I heard that IV therapy was not recommended for an elder person. I did wonder why. The V in it has the answer. With varicose veins and complications of overfluiding and haematoma, it does sound like more trouble. Growing up, paediatric is a much loved subject, but geriatrics seems like a field on its own.

Under test

I am undergoing a test now. Test for TB. I havent reached the quarter mark. An interesting day at the clinic. I learn a thing about my self. My left little finger does not pulse. Should I believe the Finger pulse oximeter? Mostly because its all bone. Its a pity that little fingers and toes get so undermined. Ever notice how the tiny toe gets squeezed and out of shape with no 'leg room'.
The doctor asked if I took BCG. If I were from my parents generation, I might have scars, the vaccination marks to tally. I just read of the small pox vaccination and the bifurcated needle. You dont want to know any more of it. If you thought this calls for the curtains, we should all throw a brownie party to whoever replaced
tine test with any other test. Why positively its like four dentists at work on your teeth. That experience is its own story.
I ask about BCG. I find it fascinating that there are ways to learn of vaccines administered, other than the marks. I have not thought much about vaccines other than that they need to be taken. But on careful pondering over it, it seems like staging a drill in your body for a fire or such adverse event. Its a watermark that stays in your body for as long as you live.


How about a scare tactic to make children learn their geography? BCG vaccine's efficiency varies with longitude.

A parent tried many visits to a government hospital for BCG to her kid, but they were always out of stock.

The Images we carry

long narrow roll of paper, Rene used as a stethescope

Stop and smell the flower?

is not a good idea for all
If a plant is on the left
on the lunch table and you
are leaning to the right,
with your nose suffused
with the natural smell
Now you know another reason
for the artifical in
the flower vase.

once for all you will know
to stop and smell the flower
or not
If the bees didnt swarm
the flowers, an allergic person
could help Solomon
sometimes bees swarm people

Gag gift

A colleague once gave me a pack of wood shavings claiming it to be a mensa puzzle. As kids, we marveled at a perfect peeling of a wooden pencil with the sharpener, hoping it wouldnt break off.

Habitational Expressionism

I came across this term in this book weird California. I have seen auto dealers offices each replete with a theme. One office was a mini Monroe museum. Another had a 5 feet model of an airplane hanging from the top. I am likely to store parts of a tree - seeds, pods, flowers - collected on walks.

Yesterday while taking the turn to Mission Viejo, I wondered what laguna Niguel on right had. This weird CA book had the answer. I heard of the annual event last July, but did not register the name of the place. In Old town San Diego, a look at 'Whaley House' had me thinking on the lines of what cuisine it might be while the building seems to be content haunted. Same is the case with Hotel del Coronado.

Whose claim

Dido stole a flute as a kid. Herzog stole a camera as a young man. A grown up version of a ritual.

More drawing lessons

Beginning this book with some 'before'sketches, what was to be a sketch of my grandmother turned out to be a young woman of a different race. If this were some shamanistic drawing, it would send me on a distant voyage to find my ancestors. when I drew a self portrait, my roomate thought I drew a hag. next time I am going to draw a distorted me to get it right. Some exercises in the drawing book seemed easy. Filling one side of the vases (which also form the face contours) looking at the other. I was using my left brain which I should not have for the purpose of letting the right brain kicked in. Recognising Einstein's from an upside down picture. Now that deserves a pat. The most interesting exercise of this book was drawing pictures upside down. That is a surprise. Another interesting one was drawing negative spaces. I now have a picture which looks like the opened mouth of an animal seized in time whose dentition should baffle any zoologist.

Stoke the Line

While looking at
Old Tree and Horses in The Art of Book of Chinese Paintings, I recognised the horse. Well, I have drawn some of them which resemble cattle and beasts of burden. Ming Deng, the author of the book thinks its 'Zhao Mengfu's confidence in his painting skills shows in his willingness to use very simple lines to depict horses at difficult angles.'
These horses are from a picture in Rita Mae Brown's 'Animal Magnetism' book.

Map Literacy

If you looked at this map, for a minute ignore the text, what would you make of the routes like tributaries reaching different places. You do not have the advantage of reading the title of the book, that I saw the map in.
Imaginary traveler, that I was already in Spain, so all I could make of the map was take the return routes of the pilgrim walk. Only when the author of the book started in France to get to this place, did I realise that all those roads have to be taken to the left to reach the talked of destination - Santiago de Compostela. It could be the reading from the left to right that we practise or taking in the simpler details first.

Brush with architecture

While playing pictionary, I had to depict shingles. Now that without knowing what it means but misunderstanding that it is aural. In this book I came across stoughton house with shingles. In a while, I havent walked to the next door grocery store, blaming it on winter. Last weekend, when I was walking to the store, to get some ingredients for sour cream banana coffee cake, I realised that circle K has three rows of shingles running on the top along its facade. What a circuitous way of finding it!

then

Today I tried the peppermint altoids and was reminded of the candy we had as kids.. pipperment.
Hygiene hypothesis. pinworms in kids.

Life has flavor. Life has risk

Cupcakes. People love them. Not a surprise. Bacon can go into it. I am prepared for more surprises. You can spend hours searching for recipes. If not for the limited mixes, it would be the case of a donkey in a hay circle. I cut the process short by walking to the store and found white cupcakes as the morning chicks. Berry Poke, the suggested recipe with strawberry fill, quite appealing did not ooze natural,fresh feel. In the fruit section, yellow mangoes beckoned as well as brown-green kiwis. The next morning, as I peeled the fruits, the chill taste in the morning mouth had me wary of the fruit add-ons. I added half of what I could or should have. When I tasted the baked mango, it was soft. Would a bitter or sour one taste different? The ones who got kiwis kept looking for it, may be it almost melted.

In a day long course meant for project management, the lesson I learnt was to win that day, I should have taken risk as it was a dummy project. But even in the board game, where I try to invoke the lesson, I find myself sticking to the safe route.

In 'Going Away to think' Scott Slovic pits flavor against risk in the choices that we have of leading life. It has happened a couple of times that I read the book in a gender's persona and am then surprised when they break the congruity.

My roomate was looking for pomegranates. She had a recipe for it. I had not found it in the fruit section mentioned earlier. She kept trying store after store, I kept running my not seasonal spin, not even knowing its season. In the northern hemisphere it is from September to February.

I am on my way to break two misconceptions. In one case it is lame. I shied from trying a recipe with king oyster mushrooms as I didnt like the 'oyster' name in it. I have always hated the papaya seeds, and hence the fruit. Now I have a shredded papaya. There is a little cheating here. This is whitish green, so not totally taming the orange/yellow papaya but atleast some kind of papaya.

Buildings

I came across a huge framed photo of a pair of buildings in the office hallway. I asked for their name and I was told of the building I was in. The buildings were not known but I was pointed to the photographer who was out in a meeting. I couldnt find the email address in the company directory.
How on earth is it possible that my today's section of the skyscrapers book should have the first page with these two buildings which remind me of Buddha with their petal appearances. Marina city. Chicago.


Paradox of skyscrapers:
Few storeys seems huge. Too many, the point is lost because we get too small to catch whole of it and we were to balloon up like a monster then we will feel like we are in a model city.

vision follows the line till it ends.

I like this German law 'that no employee can be more than 25ft from a window'. When at that make it in the line of sight.

Accepting zombies

would be easier if we didnt walk upright. In movie space, we are not that particular on being our feet.

The Innocents Abroad

One can never tell what sentence affects a reader.

In Kratchner Caverns Neil Miller included the following from Mark Twains book, The Innocents Abroad:

The memory of a cave I used to know was always in my mind, with its lofty passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its fleeting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations.

Only part way into the book, I havent come across this sentence. So I will be on the look out. My pick from his Versailles trip :

The trees in no two avenues are shaped alike, and consequently the eye is not fatigued with anything in the nature of monotonous uniformity.

Next time I have a complaint with the landscape, I will try to see how one rock is different from another. Or make an imaginary one of my own.

Brother West

I came to this book, after coming across glib Cornel west in Examined Life.

His childhood behaviour piques the reader's curiosity about his future, which known, has one interested in knowing of what caused the turn around. A Good story's element.

A formulation was taking shape in my mind and heart: that the centrality of vocation is predicated on finding ones voice and putting forth a vision.

Louis Kahn's architecture

Looking into this Salk Institute picture, at the ground, it makes me wonder if I am looking at the length of the building. When a gull takes off parallel to it, even then I let the length of it speak.

Where the nouns may lead

When I read Ramses the Great in National Geographic's april 1991 version, I did not think of what I would remember and what not. Today reading of Wayne Shorter's Nefertiti, I was reminded of Istnofret. When words in our domain, become connecting words to new ones, the net widens. Now I have to include Nefertari to that. That speaks for our initial resistance to it.

can we predict sound?

When a person opens a door behind you, you expect it to close in a decent 30sec or so and do not get alarmed when it closes. Recently I found myself shuttering my eyes at a delayed closing of the door. To begin with there was an unexpected movement in the front with a persons appearing but the door shutting amplified it. Can the brain get confused with auditory and visual inputs this way if they dont meet the scheduled occurences?

Catalogue

Recently a student approached a music teacher, to learn to recognise songs. When the teacher realised that the student did not want to learn to sing, he was dismissed. When I heard Low Down of Boz Scaggs, I had already researched on the song and the singer and knew that I could recognise his name if I saw it again. When going through the newsletter of Palo Duro Canyon it was a eureka moment. I had a recent bout of frustration in pinning down India Arie's song Promises. The coffee shop where I first heard it could not place it as it was run as an assortment. Should they not have a catalogue like the assortment chocolate box where the pictures match the name? Now to recognise a song this way from a bunch of them, would call for time on the listeners part. There should be an LCD display of the active song.
Going back to the not yet student, the teacher lost a chance to make a music student.

Iris Murdoch

Around 8 years ago, I got a pointer to this novelsit, but never managed to read her books. If not a book, then a plot. I read 'The Bell'. I wonder how do authors come up with such long drawn, complicated plots. Am I as baffled as a kid who can read the words but not make sense of them in a whole sentence.
Watching the movie 'Iris', with her slipping on the stairs in her red dress, if everyone where to see a quick movie of their life, it would be interesting to see and recall all the incidents that get included and see if they make up the same or an altogether different person.

Plough

Pictures plough the mind better than words in raking memory.
Looking for a picture of Moldboard plow which was used by Steven I. Apfelbaum in his book Nature's second chance, I recalled how as kids we hitched a ride on the wooden rectangular base of a leveller.

Harbinger of spring

I have gone cuckoo over Pablo Neruda's Dazzle of Day more so over the spanish version with its trim words like 'sin tregua' for endlessly and 'sin tabajo' for effortlessly.

OutLast

The worlds shortest man passed away recently
but can the shortest man really ever die
or for that matter any of the
extreme

then incomparable

What is a horse?

Looking at a new horse toy - pink, from the back, with a flat seat equals the tameness of a Beetles looks.
It has none of its body. But still it has its mane and tail. While reading 'Architecture and Cubism', my search led to two giant horses. I will need more time to see the horses.
To sculpt an elephant Henry Moore chips away what is not an elephant.
So what is not a horse?

Kidding

A kid under 5yrs wanted to try eggs today because she forgot how they taste. She kidded her mom about not having peas this day. That is not a surprise, having being kidded before by a child of that age.
When I was around 10 or so, I told myself that I forgot all I read along in the year and thus began an annual spate of learning. Thats not the first time that I forgot. Countless times I repeated the same things to my father. How and when do kids understand the concept of remembering and forgetting? There are some adults too who forget that they are retelling what has already been told before. Opposite of deja vu.

Play

Wrapping my fingers around your eyes, beginning to close from the blinding approach

Recall

Today I was reminded of Pledge

Magritte Dreams

The Enchanted Domain by Rene Magritte.

Going through Magritte's paintings, I recalled the cover page of the book
Embracing the wide sky. Not only does it have the bowler hat man but also the sky filling as in The Great Family

Magritte has used his leaf like post as tree and a pigeon in other paintings, if this book cover is inspired from his then it puts not only the repetition to use, but with the reversal of figure and ground and all in the same work is a collage of similar things.

Brain The complete mind

Survival and Extinction

Island birds didnt need flight for lack of predators. Later they became easy baits for the travel itchy vermins.
What would have been culled earlier lived a little longer.

Sources: The Last flight of the scarlet macaw, Bruce Barcott
David Attenborough , Life of birds - part 1

Nightscape

For a while now, I have obliterated nights view from my life. To make the best of what a window can offer, I moved my table and chair next to it. What sounded like water hesitating in a pipe was a band of rock pigeons. They sent a whirr of air when two cars turned around the corner, before taking to air.
Morning glory has started to bloom in the parking lots. The bushes must have been there a while, but only the flowers made me notice them.

Visitors on Wings

Day before yesterday, in the morning, I saw a bird soaring high above the building. For the past three years, the only birds that claimed the premises are humming birds, roadrunners, gila woodpeckers, grackles, mourning doves and some other chirpies.
There was no crow to foretell.

Whats that on the ground - Melting fast

Yesterday afternoon I was at my friends house. It was raining slant heavily. After feeling its measure, I ignored it when a visitor staring at the rain got our attention to the hail stones. I have seen them more than 15 years ago and didnt ever think if I will see them again.

With the tilted rain, I find myself on a wooden deck. The uneven, isolated stage of Wozzeck.

Later in the evening, I noticed some cacti by the freeway on the red background of soil and found that the roads were lined with a good number of trees. Thinking of this I was reminded of King Asoka's efforts in a similar endeavour. I wonder in which memory stack was this Ashoka tree buried. When I came close to the corner of my apartment complex, I saw pine trees alternate with eucalyptus and thought this feature fills the scape well. Mindscape As Landscape. The choice we make in remembering what we see, in seeing what is there. If I remember the trees by the roadside, I tend to fill the ground with grass in my mindscape.
A few days ago I decided that I should notice something new on the everyday route.

moonscape in Mali,essay in Nomads Hotel, Cees Nootebaum

Books of Past

An interesting manuscript by Al Khalil had a pictorial representation of metre in a circle.

Mud brick mosques

Picture book on Kenya

A locust invasion can not be explained in words as well as in a picture. Some mountain in the background. Transportation - its speed and limits. Hotels. Game. Grevys Zebra. Rothschild Giraffe. Cheetah's run fast but tire so too.
History of bank.
Cheetahs for hunting bucks.

In the Head

Headache

Brain The complete mind How it Develops, How it works, and How to keep it sharp
Michael S Sweeney

trawhile

Readerly present in Gambia through Cees NooteBoom's 'Lady Wright and Sir Jawara: A Boat trip up the Gambia' in his book Nomad's Hotel, I was wondering as a traveller having broken into the foreign land if we ever stop and ask how the actual was different from our expectation.
I had a route in my mind, but was not sure if there was a path to walk. While not spilling coffee walking is still something that I have to master, with 21 sec to cross half the road, I gave myself the liberty to watch a nest in a tall bare palo verde at the corner. A yellow nest made from dry grass. What would an African weaver think looking at this which is so different from its green house. The medicinal smell of weeds being sterilised, reminiscent of the farmers spraying their crops with pesticides, I would only envy spraying colors part of the job.
The path ahead of me is about to vanish. Ahead a saguaro with its two arms on the right side as an upright matador about to start the bull fight. On the right, a grey wall cuts off the plaza that I know my way around. I wont be far from where I should be, I can always retrace. I had a doubt if there was a way out, but the whole point of the walk was to find what was ahead. looking at the tree accesible to the second floor, I already imagined staying there, but soon realised it not possible as it is for senior living.
As I was taking a left turn, yellow reflective signs turned around the corner. A skinny mocking bird on what seemed the size of a black trash can. The neighborhood had me in its thrall again with me living around. Reaching the corner with its name and purple flowers.
The sight of a bus stop brightened me with the prospects of a trash can to get rid of the long empty cup. Only the soon to be moved stop had a make shift plastic trash bag- serves the purpose.
I was wishing on the pavement. As a field came into sight, the path ended. A red tailed hawk was just displaced from one wooden pole to another by another. Discontent with the arrangement, the ouster approached the next pole like there was a kho kho game on. The first hawk only complied, but not before taking a float in the wind. A tree with many branches announced the presence of the noisy birds. I waited to see the occupants. soon they flew onto the wire on the right. Mourning Doves.
When the hawks flew out of sight, I was still on an unpaved path, walking like my shoes were acupunctured with thorns of Puncturevine. Like a stork, on my left leg, I tried picking the thorns out of my right shoe. Taking turns and balancing. After which my eyes skimmed the tiny rocket weed and another braodleaf weed on the ground. Soon on the path, predictability returns.

Talking signals

Why didnt I ever wonder why the 'walk sign is on' speaks.

History of burn treatment

As I imagined tannic acid being used to treat burns, I was registering in my mind that tan is helpful as an info and then I had to halt and make a U-turn that Dr. Francis D Moore had a better way of applying gauze, which was later and better than the tan method. I have to remind myself that most likely all ways of doing things have not been the same right from the beginning.

I read of him in the best American Science & Nature Writing series. Essay 'Desperate Measures' by Atul Gawande

To do list of a Mom

Right in the jaws of rearing a child, invent diaper.

I read of her in the book The spirit of invention

Digging up flags

When the movie was about to end on a happy note, I had a feeling of dejavu of having watched it before. Recently my roomate shared a similar experience. It is quiet ironic that we should feel the cognition of having seen the movie only at the end.

Intercept hot bread at dough station

Reading an essay 'A Natural History of the Plastic Pink Flamgo' by Jennifer Price with pink flamingos being sold at $2.76 a pair at Kmart. To know the new culture rage, visit the stores.

How long

do we have to stay in a place before we know everything about it? The first I knew of manzanita was as a university dorm name. On a hike, the bark did attract my camera. In Mountains Next Door, Janice Emily Bowers

The Manzanita whose seeds must burn before they can germinate tempts us to believe that we too must pass through fire if we are to consume to fruition.

had me run for the know-it-all google. Sometimes I feel that there is no end to this new words on bits of paper. I know of no other method to claim the unknown other than from looking for the unnamed.

In this book, I liked learning about the composite flowers - disk flowers, ray flowers, umbelliforms. I couldnt stop comparing watching birds and flowers with their little brown jobs & damned yellow composites link.

The essay on the isolated mountain ecology was great.

Placing people

Recently it happened with two people, the way I recognized that I know them from somewhere else. I see a person in place A more than 3-4 times but dont notice them as much. Then I see them at place B too. Nothing seems out of place. Only when I see them back in place A do I recall that its the same person.

someday

All you can remember

This morning I was looking for a glass tumbler, which I had just washed. I insisted in searching given that it hadnt been long since I placed the glass within my vicinity. It cant be as hard as the looking-for-lost-pencil exercise. While I was trying to figure what could have happened to it, the culprit was having its merry-go-round in a microwave. Why do we register some stuff and not some about the same thing?
In How the Mind works by Steven Pinker, there is a reference to an experiment where a toy duck is taken out of a bathtub and a polaroid shot is taken and the duck is put back in the tub. Normal children expect the photo to show the duck in the tub while the autistic dont.

Cattle guards

Temple Grandin in her book Animals in Translation lists changes in flooring and texture as one of the details that scares farm animals. Is that how cattle guards work?

community psychology

Just when I thought having read Catcher in the Rye, I wouldnt have much to know about J.D.Salinger from his obituary, I came to know of his disentchantment with publishing.

Spare them Animals

When I came across ligers, my imagination went really wild and I thought it was lizards crossed with tigers, but the hybridisation by accident or intent is between lions and tigers.

From what they sing

Listening to a dog in the neighborhood dog bark, along with Grover Washington's jazz, the bow wow wow seems musical. Music with its variations, is such an accomodating art that you can go at it as cotton candy and keep filling your bag and keep it light. How you hurry to share what you find in a song to tell someone of the form that a thing has taken. A form enough to be what you would have told if you knew it well enough yourself. By latching onto one form, you have beaded it into your hair for ever, looking for the matching beads on others.

Color blurs

As I look at yellow Gazanias and then white ones with purple streaks out of the core, I wonder why or how there are two flowers of same kind but different color. I am then reminded of yellow Columbines that I saw on a hike followed by a picture of a purple Columbine Thinking if such a thing is possible in birds.

History in Brand

I looked at Barnum's animal crackers in the afternoon on a colleagues desk. Later in the day I came across P T Barnum in Wild Blue
Thinking about infamous eponymous historical events, Madoff pulling the Ponzi scheme. Madoff's name will be lost but for the good, history does not have to be record of every event, especially if its something we are better off without those events.

Hope for Animals and their world

When I first saw the cover of this book, I dont think I was ready for the book to read a tome of a single person and a chimpanzee. It is possible cos of the experience of Wauchula Woods accord book about retired celeb animals did not leave a good taste. Charles Siebert's writing was good but the meaning he found in his encounters with the animals is locked in him.
When I read of Jane Goodall being the first person to notice that chimpanzees do 'tool use' in Timeless Earth, the neglected book got a 'pop out'. The book greatly enchances the knowledge of dying species, lost and found species. The efforts of some people in saving species are commendable. Sometimes people come up with such ingenious methods - like feeding ficus to an animal which likes gooey stuff, condors end up feeding glass and other dangerous stuff to their babies, these were removed by the enthusiasts monitoring their entry into wild.

The writer as migrant

I have never thought about what it means for a writer to write in a second language.

The Professor and other writings

The essays on Art Pepper, Georgia O'Keefe and Agnes Martin are about the artists with a person side to them.

The joy of knowing

I think today I understand the meaning of The Good bad and the ugly , not all of it, but I have made peace with the good and bad, need more enlightenment on spotting the ugly. The fun and fat of Mayonnaise.

Why we need flowers?

Few days ago while leaving the apartment for work, I looked at a tree in the yard and wondered what it was. Today while running errands of tugging the grocery in, amidst a zigzag of branches I spotted lavender flowers and now I know the tree is jacaranda.

My visits to grandparents village had a lot of colour in them with Lucky nut flowers. I can now see why they are called Yellow Oleander. The leaf structure is same. But the lucky nuts leaves are fresh green.

Trees and shrubs for the southwest: woody plants for arid gardens. Mary Irish

More claims

A man used a stick to urge him forward on a skateboard instead of his foot. This is paddle skateboarding. The stick was stuck into a tennis ball.
A kid whose steps were balancing the heavy box he was carrying. I peeped a little to find a pet pup in it.
A dog with a pig snout.