Thursday, February 15, 2007
wandering word of the week: storyShe was a story-teller. They would come to listen, but more
to watch her long hands weave the story. She caught threads from the air and
brought them into her loom of magic, nimbly coaxing colours to wrap around
each other, for moonlight to shine with the sun. And her stories, they slew dragons,
poured with rain and flashed lightning fire, roaring with the voice of the sea. And sometimes
they smiled gently, a spring breeze nudging Persephone up from under the soil, a rainbow without rain, sleeping breath of a beloved. They came from far and near to listen,
enraptured by the words and images she conjured up from a land far, far away, someplace
they tried to find but drowned on the way, lost in the cadence and glitter of what she wove. They cheered and sighed and wept, grouped around her like
children, faces turned to her dumb as daisies and bright as snow, wishing that
she could see them just once, that her blind eyes would
sparkle with recognition and delight for them the way theirs did for her, that strange
and beautiful
story-teller, somewhere in a mossy
amphitheatre of her own creation, surrounded always by the fairies
of her fancy
Mina at 2:24 PM
[Disclaimer Before Post (prayer before birth. tee hee): i dislike this new blogger nonsense. i don't take kindly to being FORCED to change to google, the blob that is eating all of internet up. BATT. i am looking at wordpress out of sheer stubborn spite. but since anonymouses are fast knuckle-rapping me about my perennial of late grumps i will endeavour to be more chirpsome and write of Other Things.] [a LABEL? how..how...victorian] [yeh buttons kitney badhait hain] [WHAT! why is there an ugly forlorn little profile box on the left, destroying the feng shui of my sidebar?]the people at merriam-webster are cute:
The Word of the Day for February 14 is:
Cupid \KYOO-pid\ noun
1 : the Roman god of erotic love
*2 not capitalized : a figure that represents Cupid as a naked usually winged boy often holding a bow and arrow
Example sentence: Ricco sent Tanya a card covered with roses and cupids on Valentine's Day.
Did you know?
According to Roman mythology, Cupid was the son of Mercury, the messenger god, and Venus, the goddess of love. In Roman times, the winged "messenger of love" was sometimes depicted in armor, but no one is sure if that was intended as a sarcastic comment on the similarities between warfare and romance, or a reminder that love conquers all. Cupid was generally seen as a good spirit who brought happiness to all, but his matchmaking could cause mischief. Venus wasn't above using her son's power to get revenge on her rivals, and she once plotted to have the beautiful mortal Psyche fall in love with a despicable man. But the plan backfired: Cupid fell in love with Psyche, and she eventually became his immortal wife.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
Mina at 2:00 PM
Thursday, February 08, 2007
"HOW WE LIVE MAKES A DIFFERENCE. If we fall victim to the ideology of apathy we go straight down into that Dante circle of Hell reserved for those ‘who wilfully live in sadness.’ The sad shake of the head, the worldly-wise shrug of the shoulders, what can we do? Answer – everything we can do, big and small, and bring up the kids to do better. There might still be time. I believe in second chances and miracles, whatever the weather, whatever the science. Oh God, give it a go. Who is to say for sure that it’s too late?"from Jeanette Winterson's fabulous monthly write, it ties into my mother the ruffled hen this morning at breakfast.
"look at that!" she says, waving the paper at me. it's a front-page article on the hedonist party people in islamabad (why it made the front page boggles me), complete with a wholly inappropriate photograph of a couple dancing together, their faces censored with STN-style boxes. they're wearing the requisite 'western party clothes' and pressed together, the guy's arms around the girl. the article talks about the use of E and other drugs at parties and all the Bad Things anti-WPBers would have a field day with as markers of Pakistan's steady progress towards becoming a Country of Wanton Fornicators (such a quaintly funny word, that) (and as if the anti-es aren't fornicators themselves, the cheek of it).
"amma, you sound like we're responsible for it," remarks sana wryly, eating toast.
"haan, we aren't fornicators," i chip in, eating toast.
the paper also has a little column inside (much more front-page material if you ask me, more important than partiers in islamabad) about a 22 year old woman who went to a hotel to canoodle with her boyfriend and ended up assaulted and murdered by him (and body thrown out of window also). i'm being very flippant about this all, but amma's point was exactly winterson's: bring up the kids to do better. maybe it isn't quite fair to exhort us to bring up better bachay, it being too late for our parents, or for the gooder lot to try and balance the badder ones out- i mean, it isn't fair that the goods feel compelled to stay thus because they 'should' whilst the bads get to have all the parties (because the bads rarely become goods do they) but the point is the doing: the point is not shrugging your shoulders and going with the flow because you can't help it, you can't do anything about it, you just don't wanna. we must remember to push ourselves to do what needs to be done, what has to be, because our shoulds are so flighty and changeable..willfully living in sadness! what a chord it struck, because we really do allow ourselves to flounder in darknesses we could so easily fling aside were we paying more attention. i'm also quite sure wearing my superman t-shirt today has nothing to do with this renewal of noble feelinks. (stop being flippant youuuuuu)
Mina at 2:18 PM
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
production-line lovei must say this before i pop! i was in the card company the other day looking for a card for tanya and obviously was surrounded by valentine's junk which i knocked my head against (some kind of khatarnaak looking japanese doorbell gong). i was at the cash register paying for the one card that didn't have a butt joke ("happy butt-day", "the weirdest thing i've ever seen...is your butt") or a fart joke (red faces and explosions. i kid you not.) when i spied....PRE-FAB LOVE LETTERS. JEE. printed sheeets of paper with an ugly envelope included; a love letter!! in printed stimulated handwriting!! the usual unoriginal goop ("you are my sunshine my heart's flower without you the world is as a day-old helium balloon, wrinkled as an old person's bottom"), with hearts and little artistic squiggles. i continue to be boggled. A PRE-FAB LOVE LETTER?!?! and i KNOW some moron will buy one, probably to chuck into a stalkee's house over the gate, but still! it's a truly terrible, tragic state of affairs when you can go to a store to BUY a love letter instead of sitting down with a pretty piece of paper and a pen....yuck, yuck, YUCK!! capitalism is so tacky and upstarty; dis-gus-ting. sure, go wild with your manufactured holiday, but at least try to infuse it with something original instead of letting your love be just like everyone else's- contrived, misspelt and common. yiii its like stepping in something icky, sick ugly mass-manufactured love letters, my sensibilities are so unbelievably offended :P
Mina at 2:49 PM
Friday, February 02, 2007
i am angry (amongst other things but lets pick this one). i didn't know SHELL (royal dutch-shell) was responsible for killing ken saro-wiwa! DAMN YOU SHELL!! I WILL BOYCOTT FOREVER! bastards! and bastard nigerian government for their sellout! *shakes fist* ooo sometimes i wish we had never progressed beyond hunter-gatherer; good old self-sufficient matriarchies wandering around but nooo let's settle dooowwnn and build housessss and discover spinning jennys!on a related note, does anyone know the citation for the case lodged by saro-wiwa's brother and co. against shell in 2000? can't find it and i need it!
Mina at 12:16 PM
