I prefer not to reproduce lengthy excerpts on my blog, but when I read Anushka Jasraj‘s Radio Story in Granta, I found myself scribbling and tweeting lines as I went along. The entire story is elegantly rendered without losing the grittiness that is the ultimate residue of truth and human behavior. You can read it here in its entirety, but this…
Category: A thing of beauty
Beloved refrains and unforgettable extracts from books, films, music and other special places
Why I love… In the mood for love
“This lyrical beauty, almost archaic.” I am listening to you. And I am agreeing. “The sway of the hips, the look. Where does it happen except in this magical, fictional space?” The intense deliberation. Each look towards and away. Each inhale of smoke & exhale of defeat. The crushing elegance of it all. “The hand…
The heart asks pleasure first or Why I love… Michael Nyman
My love, Have you ever heard of Michael Nyman? He is a composer. He composed the score of Jane Campion’s film, The Piano. This is amongst my favorite tracks. It is perhaps the musical equivalent of the dreadful possibility of loss. The desperate, wild look in the eyes when faced the sudden idea that this might be the last…
Read maps like you read love letters – A new cartography
The image you see above is called “The Night Sky”. It is a composite of several drawings linked together, and the stars charted to make the map directly above Boylan Heights, a small North Carolina neighborhood that became something of an obsession for Denis Wood beginning in the ’70s. An obsession that has produced something of a “poetics of…
Stumbling over Henry
“I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don’t already know, and make me laugh. I don’t care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble…
Why I love… Jack Gilbert
Who else will give me quiet tears shed for the beauty of words? Who else will churn the milk of my heart with the tenderness of a down feather? Who but you, Jack, can reach inside my chest, pull out my heart and replace it with your own? Rain – Jack Gilbert Suddenly this defeat….
Why I love… midweek serendipity
A chanced-upon Jack Gilbert and a beautiful German word make for all that’s all right with my world right now. The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart by Jack Gilbert How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko,…
Neruda. What’s not to love?
‘And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us. … and so beneath my mouth you see again the unfulfilled plant of your life putting out its roots toward my heart that was waiting for you.’ *Images Copyright Mahinn Ali Khan
‘Date a girl who reads because you deserve it.’ – Rosemarie Urquico
A few months ago, Charles Warnke wrote an online article for the Thought Catalog, which, at first, I described as rich with soppy romantic regret. It’s rather beautifully written, if not unabashedly sexist and it’s called You Should Date an Illiterate Girl. Now, if you are even remotely a feminist, you will notice the sensation of…
part-broken, part-whole 