Oryx and Crake

2011-01-29T20:46:00.001+03:30

Days of homesickness are insignificant per se. They just pass - like they always have - to simply give way to routine and occasional satisfaction. Though the terrible truth of such days is the intuition of future they breed inside the heart of the sufferer: A future when I am bereft of loved ones and close friends. Dark days when I shall miserably stand against the tide of loneliness with no where yet to lean my shoulder. I am speaking of days of old age, which only seem to be far away, but are in truth a few blinks away from reality.

May you never leave your home, nor ever your home leave you to yourself.

2011-01-29T20:44:00.001+03:30

I am brooding over those magical momemts when we embraced, listened to Paul Cardall and wept. What marvelous moments. My teardrops were utterly shed in magical confusion. Why did I weep - I am obliged to ask this of myself.

I wept under the immensity of the moment. I was rendered insignificant in her arms, saddened by the inevitability of separation, overwhelmed by the scent of her skin, absorbed im the magic of the music of my feelings for her, inspired by the prospect of a better future, and in want of salvation from past mistakes.

I believe this to be a representation of 'love'. This may not make sense at all, but is this not the very idea of being in love? Is it not that the very confusion over this beautiful and magical incident is what makes love ever sweeter and more desirable?

I remember one day when I was thinking about love, trying very hard to make sense of this most precious of human capabilities, I came up with a formula based on my past mistakes: love is a potion made from selflessness, immense hope, great optimism, and passion with a final touch of lust.

But still, this is still an effort to try to make sense of love. well, if I should feel so confident about my potion, then I have absolutely underestimated Woody Allen who, with all his genius, has been trying to define love - evermore in vain - over decades. So far his conclusion has been 'whatever works'. So maybe when I was weeping in her arms out of sheer confusion, it was my way of showing love. Maybe not. whatever that might have been, it seems to be working out. I'm in love and it matters.

2010-10-30T21:23:00.000+03:30

True happiness is only a distant longing for the past, and yet a nostalgia which never really occurred. Only that you thought it did manifests its being. So to set it in the future and desiring it as a prospect is only a vain effort, and an inevitable mistake to replace 'success' with 'happiness'.

2010-09-27T14:52:00.000+03:30

These days and months, amongst all the new things that are on the verge of happening to me, my life is mostly articulated by desire and longing for things not long past. While my mind is set on future - on the coming planned years that are to complete me as a man - my senses are driven by painful flows of longing, which begin and finish my hours of wakefulness before drifting me into bittersweet dreams. Indeed, such are curious days when 'time' and 'memory' are equally my sincere allies and notorious enemies.

Remembrance of the resonance of our entwined heartbeats in those autumn nights transcend me to ecstatic moments of peace, which I cherish even if clouded in melancholy. Such are divine moments when I - in between the frequent pangs of desire and remorse - am promised world peace.

2010-09-05T10:34:00.000+04:30

I have always been young only on the outside; and had responsibilities as those of an older man. Now I can realize how the social and biological burdens tormented me because of this early mental and emotional maturity. And alas; for a weak yet responsible and caring individual like me, it was only later that I realized how my tiny unimportant mistakes came to shipwreck my soul and cast me forlorn in the midst of a tempest right when I was supposed to cherish my dreams.

Quite normally there comes a day in the life a teenage boy when he, for all the wrong reasons, begins to realize that his innocence is the most terrible burden.

2010-08-28T17:25:00.002+04:30

And suddenly you turned off the road onto a dirt driveway. That was when the dream ended; leaving no way to find out why. How I wish the dirt driveway was a shortcut not to see the hideous side of events.

2010-08-28T17:20:00.002+04:30

Last night he dreamt that he was passionately in love with a femme fatale; one whose every touch takes you to the depth of ecstasy and forces you to embrace the unimaginable. Last night the little thing dreamt that he then had the courage and confidence to finally embrace his manhood and enjoy real selfhood.

So what happened in the end was that he blinked his dreamy eyes and found himself on a rocking boat sailing and catching fish. When he realized that he had netted the ultimate game, the invaluable goldfish, he gazed right into the eyes of the dying creature and what struck him was her penetrative and dashing gaze.

Wolf Hall

2009-11-09T20:17:00.002+03:30

Take it as a reader response: the pleasing memories of reading Alexander Dumas returned to my mind and that was the great first impression I got from Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. The ’09 Booker Prize winner is a remarkable achievement of prose in which the masterly skill of the author with the 16th century archaic vocabulary makes Wolfe Hall a rather good read even for the modern reader.

At the center of Wolf Hall’s narrative stands Thomas Cromwell, the emblem of self-made manhood: a cunning politician who rejects all the barriers of the strict British hierarchy to rise from the lowest class of society to the highest position in the court of Henry VIII which is only second to the King himself. Although the book represents a detailed history of the beginning years of English reformation and the Kingdom’s break from Catholicism, what makes Wolf Hall appealing to the modern reader is Mantel’s modern and tangible touch on Cromwell’s characterization.

Wolf Hall’s Thomas Cromwell is the most influential man in the English court. Yet driven by the grief of lost love and the loss of his mentor, Cromwell can be studied as a man stuck in a peculiar midlife crisis in which he finds solace in moving up the ladders of a strict hierarchy in which ‘man is wolf to man.’ Perhaps Cromwell’s soliloquies following his encounters with numerous so-called wolf-men are the best representations of his psychic struggles to justify Machiavellian success in his efforts to appease the personal grieves of past.

It is not only Thomas Cromwell but also the society in which he lives which makes Wolf Hall a world for the modern reader to identify with. Mantel’s novel is a universal take on the history of the early years of English reformation which make the reader realize how throughout history the great ideologies or reforming movements, formed through many years of hardship for the secluded thinkers or the suffering people, eventually come to be exercised and put into practice by lunatic politicians and impulsive dictators. History keeps repeating itself and Hillary Mantel represents a lesson to be learned by us modern people who either identify with Thomas Cromwell or with the world in which he mused.

The Capitalist's Cuckoo's Nest

2009-01-24T17:29:00.004+03:30

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is, I believe, a major influence on Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Both novels are strongly influenced by Foucault, Nietzsche, gender issues, and the Marxist movements within Postmodernism. For example gender, particularly men’s issues, is stressed in both works, especially in Fight Club, one theme of which seems to be influenced by Ken Kesey’s words in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “We comical little creatures can’t even achieve masculinity in the rabbit world, that’s how weak and inadequate we are.” (63) Both novels seem to be lamenting the loss of masculine identity, and although both works dismiss homosexuality as a solution, they blame ‘modern matriarchy’ as in Ken Kesey’s novel, and ‘Marla Singer’ as the source of all the “gun, anarchy and explosion.” (14) But what I am aiming to focus on here is the issue of conformity. The idea came to me when I encountered the 2007 edition of Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which had a foreword by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club.

“I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all” ... “I don’t seem like I ever been me. How was McMurphy be what he is?!” These are the words of Chief Bromden the half Native American narrator of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The question of identity is raised on many occasions in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The question of being ‘oneself’ in a society where one is governed by ‘the Combine’, or the dominant authoritative power. However there is one man here, Randle McMurphy, who is a rebel. But his being a rebel only reinforces the foundations of ‘the Combine’. His fate proves so. The Unique rebel, the distinct individual we see in McMurphy is silenced once and for all by the time he is proven to be too much of a threat. And eventually his harsh punishment only reinforces the foundations of the dominating authority. On the other hand, a timid character like Tommy Bibbit, quite the opposite of McMurphy, also reinforces and empowers the system in quite an effective way.

But in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest there is a character like Chief Bromden, whom Chuck Palahniuk, in his foreword published in 2007, classifies as a member of a third group which is neither an angry rebel nor a timid conformist; but indeed a man who is silent but thoughtful, silenced and marginalized but visionary, Bound but not for ever.

Chief Bromden is a man who, by observing a rebel like McMurphy, sees his awareness of society altered in a positive way, and goes on to form his identity and eventually act out in the proper time. The future that he builds for himself is obviously unknown which leaves it open for the reader to judge whether his struggle against the authority reaches its end or not.

Considering Palahniuk’s acknowledgement of Chief Bromden as the third kind of a social subject, it would be interesting to look at his most famous novel, Fight Club. The unnamed narrator, the employee who is dissolved into the routine and pettiness of consumerism is confronted by a modern type of Randle McMurphy: Tyler Durden. Tyler is similar to McMurphy in the sense that he acts upon his will, and does possess one true sense of identity which is coveted by the conformist society. However his rebelliousness is quite different.

Tyler is conscious and fully aware of the pettiness that is encompassing the society and its subjects. He detests consumerism, the new weapon with which ‘the Combine’ governs and controls its subjects. Tyler Durden, like McMurphy urges his admirers to act and stamp a sense of ‘being oneself’ in a postmodern society. Although his acts of rebellion are far more bizarre than those offered by McMurphy, both are acting against their respective societies of particular interests. McMurphy is rebelling against the authority in a mental institution, which could, in a way, be interpreted through symbolism as contemporary American society. Tyler, however, is rebelling against a late 20th century America which is beginning to rot by the pettiness of its own people who are born out of television to work jobs they detest and to buy stuff they need not.

Tyler’s hooliganism, and quasi-terrorist plots of his ‘project Mayhem’ could not match the struggles of McMurphy. But what is obvious is that both are governed by the force of ‘humanism’. Both are struggling to bring a sense of identity to the postmodern man.

Having Tyler Durden and Randle McMurphy on one hand we have the narrator and Chief Bromden, who are quite different characters, at least during the course of the novel and not through the endings.

Palahniuk considers Chief Bromden a visionary who not only chooses not to act like McMurphy, but also despises the idea of being a Billy Bibbit. He is classified as a member of one “third category”, which, although with an uncertain future, offers better hope by his final act of escape from the ward. Bromden seeks a future “that is not a reaction to or an extension of any mental ward where we find ourselves trapped at the present moment.” (xiii)

The unnamed narrator of Fight Club however does not act like Chief Bromden. He realizes, during the course of the novel, that he should delve into Tyler and be one. The narrator becomes so much obsessed with Tyler that eventually finds himself, literally, one Tyler Durden. He becomes fully committed to the cause of Tyler, participating in Fight Club, and starting Project mayhem. However through the end of the novel, the narrator becomes aware of the fact that the cause of Tyler is not the key to salvation of humanity. His harsh rebellious hooliganism and angry efforts against ‘the Combine’ result in nothing because he will eventually be silenced. The narrator, towards the end of the novel, opts to move towards balance. Much explanation is needed to elaborate on the ending of Fight Club, but what is worthy of attention is that the narrator’s sudden break away from Tyler is something to think about.

What is interesting in discussion of the narrators in Fight Club and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is that both choose to eliminate their inspirations and revolutionary muses, but in quite different ways. Chief Bromden kills McMurphy because he has been bullied and tortured enough by the authority, and because he wants McMurphy to remain a legend. The Fight Club narrator, though, kills Tyler Durden because, more than a legend he is in need of mental balance. Putting aside the differences, both the characters eliminate their inspirations to move towards the future on their own, because more than anything they are in need of oneness and genuine sense of identity. One governed not by the government, the ward, Nurse Ratched or the consumer culture; nor even by the Fight Club, Project Mayhem, Tyler Durden or Randle McMurphy.

In the end, Chief Bromden is free to run to the wilderness to gain and regain whatever he has been aiming to fight for. The Fight Club narrator, though, ends up in a mental institution after his failed act of suicide. The road to salvation, for Fight Club narrator, seems to be longer than that of Chief Bromden. Let’s not forget that Chief Bromden and Fight Club narrator belong to two different generations. Although they both are “generations of men raised by women,” and are stuck into the fabric of ‘defining new masculinity’, they belong to two different stages of American contemporary history. The Fight Club narrator, institutionalized, let’s say, in the late nineties has a lot to brood and think about when he watches on a ward TV the World Trade Center collapse in 2001. The legend of Tyler Durden seems to have died with that shot into the narrator’s mouth, but the legend of moving towards balance and oneness is yet to continue. Maybe Chief Bromden is still in the wilderness awaiting the narrator and...a better future.

The Double

2009-01-04T11:58:00.002+03:30

The Double is a philosophical thriller by the Portuguese Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago. The life of Turtuliano Maximo Afonso, the lonely and thoughtful history teacher, suddenly changes when he finds out that one minor actor is utterly identical to him. With bewilderment Turtuliano sets off the journey of finding and meeting his double, eventually to wonder which one is the double? Himself? Or the actor?

There are times in the lives of us human beings, when we realize that the life force in our minds which governs our actions is not unified. In other words we, the modern dwellers or the postmodern oppressed and media governed subjects, all have disintegrated personalities. No matter who we are, Mr. Jekyll or Mr. Jackass, there always exists that other half; one that could even put the very us in wonder. We keep betraying ourselves and our loved ones. They throw their arms around us with utter devotion without even thinking which one is being embraced.

In The Double, as it has been shown before in other works of fiction, the other half of psyche is personalized in reality. But yet the novel is quite unique. Although the book broods over the fact that Mr. Hyde could be quite destructive, the theme of the novel is unique in that it declares what destructs and destroys is not Mr. Hyde in itself. But the obsession that Dr. Jekyll could find with him.

Turtuliano Maximo Afonso is a lonely teacher who becomes obsessed with his double. His double, Antionio Clara is personalized as a minor actor. Life’s a play and us merely actors. In The Double the Shakespearean theme is raised into a more tragic state. Life is a play in which the lonely dweller is struggling to find his identity. Eventually the dweller seeks his double only to realize that the double is another pretending actor. Eventually the doubles take over and throws his gauntlets at the antihero.

What Saramago is trying to say is that if by any chance, we come to win over our doubles; we are ironically left lonely and forlorn. Saramago concludes that without this struggle of men with their dual or multiple identities, life would be hard to live. The irony here is that we constantly suppose that our split personalities hinder us from achieving oneness and a true sense of self-identity.

2008-12-18T17:34:00.000+03:30

I am kissing her deeply on the mouth under the water like I always do. Yet sometimes when the grip of the lips let go water begin to fill us. For me I don’t know why I cannot figure out whence I feel drowned, for I am rowing lonely up there on the surface. Breathing deeply I wonder.

Fight Club

2008-11-05T06:00:00.003+03:30

I think it was two years ago. A friend gave me a DVD, calling it “A Brad Pitt”, go watch it. Well, I didn’t. The cover label felt as if the movie was some boxing gross hit by Mr. Pitt, and I didn’t watch it. A year later a very good friend with great artistic appreciation said, Amir, have you watched Fight Club? And I said I had the DVD and I didn’t. And he just yelled how could you NOT?! ... man, “I was Joe’s grinding teeth.”

I found the DVD again and watched it. I believe Fight Club could dominate the 2000 Oscars. Anyway I’m not to talk about the movie. Worthy it truly was, but the genius lies elsewhere. It was the movie first that introduced to me Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the Fight Club. Palahniuk is one of the many writers of our time who has stormed the literary world with his debut novel. Fight Club is evoking, multi-layered, inspiring, and revolutionary. Chuck has well proved his genius in his seven later novels, but the influence of Fight Club is evident in his later fiction. Well, I’m Joe’s complete lack of surprise.

Fight Club is the account of the final few months of the life of one nameless antihero, later called Jack by the author, who lives in late 20th century America. This antihero, who happens to be the narrator as well, is the prototype of ‘the consumer’ in the capitalist America. He works “a job he hates” to earn enough “to buy things he doesn’t need.” But well, like most of us, consumers as we are, Jack is not fulfilled and satisfied. He is not happy at all and he has no idea why. Jack, the most jaded antihero you could ever see.

The core of Jack’s jadedness is his lack of one true identity, and what he does through the novel is to find, or let’s say, to redefine one. What bothers Jack is the origin of his current identity which is determined by the culture in which “no one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually we are nothing.”

The culture that determines Jack’s identity is based on ‘consumerism’ and Jack is a victim of it. Things he used to own, now they own him. The condo he used to own, now it owns him and, as he says, “... I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue.”

Being tired of such a life style, and wanting to get away from it, the narrator sets off the journey of self-discovery. Well, Palahniuk is not going to lead his hero to salvation. Palahniuk is too realistic to do that. In the chaotic world of the hero, there is no way to salvation and deliverance. The narrator’s journey is not about “self-improvement”. It is about “self-destruction”.

Insomnia marks the beginning of the narrator’s journey as well as the end of it. When you have insomnia everything seems “a copy of a copy of a copy”. The narrator is not able to sleep, so with no where yet to rest his head, Jack waits, like these, on earth forlorn.

Insomnia marks the narrator’s restlessness, the beginning of his awareness, and last but not least, the birth of Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden: a copy of a copy of the narrator. Tyler Durden: the chaotic side of the narrator’s personality; the angry voice of his unconscious; the shrill cry of his split psyche, his hallucination, his friend and his role model. The beauty of Fight Club is that the unconscious of the protagonist is personified. It becomes a character who acts and his presence is felt. And what is Tyler really doing out there? Well, he needs Jack to do him a favour. “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” He is out there to start the fight club.

“Who I am in fight club is not someone my boss knows”, says the narrator. The fight club is the narrator’s first real effort to re-define his disintegrated personality, one which is not defined by the ‘consumer’ society’. Well, it is not just him and Tyler. Little by Little fight club becomes full of city dwellers who want to become “enlightened”, and “feel alive”.

In fight club the narrator is restlessly fighting to re-define manhood and masculinity. There he is learning the fact that he is “the middle child of history,” “raised by television, to believe that he will someday be a “millionaire, a movie star, a rock star.” But he won’t. What the narrator needs is the new ‘manhood’. One which is defined by savages, like in the mountains of Bolivia, where male villagers “beat the crap out of one another, drunk and bloody, chanting ‘We are Men...We are Men.’

Fight club is individual development. Well, at one point the narrator realizes that it is not enough. First one ‘builds up a tolerance to fight club’. Second, ‘something bigger’ is needed which could be expanded in social scales. Revolution is the answer. What is revolution to Palahniuk? Anarchy, destruction, or Project Mayhem.

Project Mayhem seeks to destroy history, destruct the whole civilization and to “force humanity to go dormant long enough for the earth to recover.” The goal is to teach each man he has “the power to control history”. The goal is to cause disaster which is “a natural part of evolution, toward tragedy and dissolution.” Long story short, “justified anarchy”.

After reading Fight Club one becomes aware of the role he is playing in the society. Is it not that we are all jaded and pathetic consumers who get away from depression and oblivion by roaming around in shopping malls and making sure that we use the latest iPhone and sit on the newest furniture? And once we get them we seek the next product or else start to feel depressed. Waking up our Tyler Durdens is not easy and not safe.

Fight Club; by Chuck Palahniuk: 9.0 / 10

Math Level A

2008-10-23T07:28:00.003+03:30

Three men, an economist, a logician and a mathematician are on a train to Scotland. They see a brown cow from the window.

Economist: ‘Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.’

Logician: ‘No. There are cows in Scotland of which one, at least, is brown.’

Mathematician: ‘No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’

And that is why, Christopher, the protagonist narrator of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” loves math. Christopher is a 15 year old English boy, a math prodigy and genius, and a victim of Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild of form of autism.

Suffering from autism, Christopher lives in a world separate from others. His world is characterized by extreme seclusion. He hates crowds and strangers. He cannot be in a closed room with people or he will be sick. He simply cannot understand human emotions. He never allows his parents to touch his hands. He cannot understand any facial expression except “sad” and “happy”. His most beautiful dream is apocalypse. His world is completely abstract. He adores math. He is a math genius, indeed. Math is his looking glass through which the whole world is reflected. Therefore he loves the truth and cannot understand lies. He hates metaphors because there is no math and truth in them, but he likes similes because they are mathematically possible. If he hears a lie he will feel sick.

One night, Christopher finds his neighbour’s dog killed by a garden fork and he decides to find the murderer. Christopher’s Sherlock Holmes’ adventure leads to the dark realities of his own life: that his mother is not dead, and that his father had lied to him because mother left them “to do sex with another man”. Christopher is sick because he has been lied to. He should leave father because father has lied, and it is not possible to live with someone who has lied. “Father might kill him.” So he leaves their small town to find his mum in London. And so the journey begins. To get to his mum, Christopher needs to pass through everything he hates. Crowds, closed spaces full of people, filled with strangers, strangers with different facial expressions. He cannot get it. His mind cannot solve all this not-Math.

The beauty of the novel is Mark Haddon’s striking ability to write about the inner life of someone suffering from autism. Apart from that, Christopher represents any child who has to deal with the implications of living with a single parent.

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” is a good read. The prose is easy, and the plot is very absorbing. However one weak point it that Haddon, at one point, forces his way into Christopher’s mind and, in a chapter hardly relevant to the events of the plot or to Christopher’s concerns, announces his being an atheist. Another weak point is lack of one epiphanic ending, which could be very suitable for such a well-writ novel.

My Rating Out of 10:
Mark Haddon; “The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night Time”: 6.5

...

2008-10-23T07:24:00.001+03:30

From now on, I will include some sort of rating (out of 10) for the books that I read. Here, thus, I include the ratings of the previous novels that I reviewed on the blog. Note that the ratings are impressionistic.

Don Delillo; “The Falling Man”: 5.5
Jean Dominique Bauby; “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”: 10
Chuck Palahniuk; “Snuff”: 4.5
Yann Martel; “Life of Pi”: 9.0
Chuck Palahniuk; “The Guts”: 7
Chuck Palahniuk; “Choke”: 8.5
Grahame Greene; “The Quiet American”: 7
Jean Paul Sartre; “Nausea”: 10
Junot Diaz; “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”: 9.5

Silver Crossing Blue

2008-10-19T07:48:00.002+03:30

“The Falling Man” is a post-9/11 novel by Don Delillo, the accomplished American novelist. The Falling Man, originally, is the title of the famous photograph taken by Richard Drew at 9:41 on Sep 11, 2001. The picture, over the years, has become the emblem of the horrors of 9/11 and consequently has inspired several artists.

Don Delillo’s novel, “The Falling Man” does not directly deal with its title. In fact the novel is the story of a number of people, including one of the terrorists, two of the survivors who used to work in the Towers, one survivor’s wife, and a performance artist who plays the Falling Man in different spots in New York in order to shock people.

The focus of “The Falling Man”, however, is on two major characters: Keith, a survivor, and his wife Lianne. Keith is a pathetic and alienated man who escapes the falling Towers and seeing his apartment destroyed, he goes back to his estranged wife, Lianne. Keith’s life, following the attacks, is never like the life before. He leaves his job and starts touring different casinos, playing cards and gambling, putting his life in risk, while having an affair with another survivor, a woman called Florence. Keith, thus, is the real falling man of the novel. Lianne on the other hand, is trying to gradually adapt to the life without the Towers and all, trying to get used to the new life the way it was “before the planes appeared that day, silver crossing blue.”

Searching for a good post-9/11 novel, I found “The Falling Man” as the best yet-to-be written. However after reading it and surfing about other works written on the subject, I found out that the perfect 9/11 work has not been produced yet. As New York Times review points out, Don Delillo’s “The Falling Man” does not deeply depict one true victim, one which a real survivor reading the novel can identify with. Keith is a falling man indeed, but just an ordinary loser we see every day. The character of Keith does not show the immense alienation; one which a devastating tragedy like 9/11 can produce.

...

2008-10-15T13:46:00.002+03:30

-When you live so far from home, like nine million damn kilometers far, and then the embassy of your own nation in that end-of-the-world does not feel like Home; then what is it the time for?

-It is the time for the last brick of your nation to fall on the last bloody moron who calls himself a 'nationalist.'

"I must have butterfly hearing"

2008-10-07T20:54:00.002+03:30

A Locked-in-syndrome is a rare medical condition in which the patient goes completely paralyzed and yet with an intact functioning of the brain, the patient feels the world just as any else would, but he/she would be unable to move a single limb or utter a sound of any sort. According to the medics, the locked-in-syndrome is "the closest thing to being buried alive".

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is an autobiography by Jean Dominique Bauby, the chief editor of the French magazine Elle, who suffered a stroke in 1995 and was diagnosed with a locked-in-syndrome following a coma. Bauby was left completely paralyzed on a hospital bed for the last two years of his life with his left eye his one and only means of communication with the outside world. And it was this very left eye of his, which reflected one of the best autobiographies you would ever read in your whole life. Yes indeed: with the help of a speech therapist Bauby could write this book by blinks of his left eye and signalling the alphabets.

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is the diary of a man who was indeed “buried alive”, and that is why most readers would expect this book to be a dismal elegy of a man who probably wishes to die every second of his vegetable-life. However, it is not so. Not at all. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is the book which makes you appreciate life fully and celebrate its every minute. This book simply makes you want to take in as much of life as possible. Although Jean Dominique Bauby had, very rightfully so, his moments of depression, nostalgia, and unbearable agony, he was at the end of the day so very full of life force.

He narrates the delightful events of his past life in a very nostalgic tone at times “like a story teller exhuming the legends of a lost civilization,” (86) and he is all filled with regret and remorse of why he did not take in as much of life as he could have. He feels “...remorse for lost opportunities... the women we were unable to live, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away.” (94)

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is book that we should read to learn that life is beautiful and worthy of living for, to learn the lesson that we never tend to learn: to appreciate health and happiness. Take your time and read the following passage from the book. This is written by a man who, I think sort of literally, is “buried alive” but does not give up to fly the butterfly of his mind:

In my dreams “I am occasionally a Formula one driver. That mysterious white racer without a brand name, a number, or commercial advertisements is me. Stretched out on my bed – I mean, in my cockpit – I hurl myself into the corners, my head, weighed down by the helmet, wrenched painfully by the gravitational pull. I have also been cast as a soldier in a TV series, turned back the invading Arabs at Poitiers, helped Napoleon to victory, and survived Verdun. Since I have just been wounded in the D-day landings, I cannot swear that I will join the airdrop into Dien Bien Phu. Under the physical therapist’s gaze, I am a Tour de France long shot on the verge of pulling off a record-setting victory. Success soothes my aching muscles. I am a phenomenal downhill skier. I can still hear the roar of the crowd on the slope and the singing of the wind in my ears. I was miles ahead of the favourites. I swear!” (117)

I do recommend this very touching and memorable short autobiography to you, and in the end I would like to dedicate the following lovely two passage from “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to my friends who are reading this review. In the first extract Jean Dominique is glorifying the value of friendship and friends while talking about the letters he receives from his friends regularly:

“.... I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship. It will keep the vultures at bay.” (84)

“... when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for the wing-beats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfly hearing.” (97)

Jean Dominique Bauby died in March 1997, two days after the publication of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly".

600 dudes... one gal

2008-10-04T18:30:00.002+03:30

“Snuff” is the title of the latest novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The main plot is inspired by Annabel Chong. But who is she?

Annabel Chong was born and raised in Singapore. She was a student at Raffles Girls' school and Hwa Chong Junior College before going on to study law in London under a scholarship. At the age of 21, she went on to graduate studies in photography, art, and feminist studies at the University of Southern California (USC), where she excelled academically. Chong went on to graduate work in gender studies at USC and currently works in California as an IT programmer. However what makes this feminist famous and an inspiration for a novel is not her remarkable academic record. Annabel Chong is one the biggest porn stars in the history of American pornography. She became famous for engaging in 251 sex acts with about 70 men over a ten-hour period in January 1995.

Annabel Chong claimed to be a feminist who sought to demonstrate that a female has the right to show off as a man does; that a female has the right to be a “stud” and not a “slut”. However for Palahniuk, Chong’s famous movie was “The top-selling porn video of all time: a feminist history lesson lost on countless willy-wankers.” (96)

Chuck Palahniuk’s “Snuff” hovers around Cassie Wright, the porn queen, and her new world record, engaging 600 men in a porn movie in a period of one day. The novel is narrated by four characters. Actors, Mr. 72; Mr. 137, Mr. 600, and Sheila; Cassie’s secretary.

Palahniuk is a transgressional satirist who has attacked the materialistic consumer culture in America several times in his fiction. “Snuff” is no exception. Palahniuk digs deep into layers of his culture to see what pornography has done to people, ranging from the porn stars themselves to the simple teenage “willy-wankers” who consume the porn products.

“Snuff” is surely not the novel you’d expect from Palahniuk. The novel lacks those brilliant epiphanies which are typical of Palahniuk’s verse. Impressionistically speaking, it is not the sort of novel you’d sit down to finish in one go. However there are elements of pure human emotion, like the reflections of Mr. 600, the veteran actor, when he thinks of his first real love; when he didn’t have to fuck like animals, “porking and banging and slamming,” for the sake of HD porn DVD, “... but more like our skin was having a conversation.” (157). Elsewhere, in the soliloquy of Mr. 72 we get to this dark and ironic reflection: “Anytime you need to watch somebody die, die for real, check out how they get their orgasm at the end of a porn.” (178)

I would like to finish with an impressive extract from “Snuff”. It is a part in which Mr. 173 is thinking about Marilyn Monroe, the celebrated American Hollywood icon and sex symbol. As the background information, you should know that Marilyn Monroe went under the pseudonym “Zelda Zonk” at some occasions. Zelda, according to Wikipedia means “female warrior".

“Lying naked, drugged to escape the pain, buried in ice for hours, gave Monroe the solid stand-up tits and ass she wanted for day’s work ...... Monroe dreamed of being respected, an intellectual like Arthur Miller, a respected Stanislavsky trained actor. A dignified human being. That’s who Monroe would become as she travelled without make up, without designer clothes borrowed from a movie studio, with her famous hair tied under a scarf, hiding behind horn-rimmed reading glasses. It was that plain, intelligent, educated actress who called herself Zelda Zonk. When she booked airplane tickets or registered in hotels. Zelda Zonk. Who read books. Who collected art. That was who Marilyn Monroe, the blonde sex goddess, dreamed of being.” (183)

Life of Pi

2008-09-25T15:11:00.003+03:30

Pi, the eccentric practitioner of three religions –Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity – survives for 227 days aboard with a constantly hungry Bengal tiger on a lifeboat. The 2002 Man Booker Prize winner “Life of Pi” presents a tale of religion in practice, one which proves that religion and bleak, horrible realism could be reconciled. A story of faith, destiny, and survival, “Life of Pi” was written by Yann Martel at a time when the world was preoccupied with the tragic 9/11 and its bleak consequences. It was written at a time when the world observed the advent of a Third World War potentially because of the war of religions.

Yann Martel is quite a religious novelist. “Life of Pi” could be analyzed in terms of how unbelievable elements in religion could be justified and lead to belief in faith. According to Martel, “[the novel]... is full of elements that are highly unlikely but not impossible”, like living on a boat with a hungry tiger, encountering a fellow shipwreck on the pacific, encountering a carnivorous island which is biologically impossible. However at the end of the novel these elements turn out to be much more believable than the so-called real, true, and heinous story that Pi is forced to tell and which SEEMS more believable and less impossible. Quoting Martell again, “Religion is the better way to interpret the world.”

“Life of Pi” is also a story of growing up from innocence into experience, from naive idealism into bleak realism, from Pi into Tiger: “A part of me did not want [the tiger] to die at all, because if he died I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to [the tiger]. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances. He pushed me to go on living. I hate it for it, yet at the same time I was grateful. I am grateful. It’s the plain truth: without [the tiger], I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story.” (219)

“Life of Pi” is also interesting from a cultural perspective. It is the story of an Indian family from the post-independence India. The family owns a zoo and Pi’s observations and reflections on their zoo and animals is very much symbolic concerning the social issues of colonialism and liberalism. Here is what Pi tells the tiger at the end of the story, when the tiger is set loose: “You have known the confined freedom of a zoo most of your life; now you will know the free confinement of a jungle.” (384)

“Life of Pi” is a multi-layered and quite touching novel. It is a unique experience, because you read a novel filled with dark, gloomy, and grotesque elements. Yet at the end of the last page you feel positive and hopeful. “Life of Pi” offers one of the best Last Paragraphs of my recent readings.

Inhale... Take in as much air as you can...

2008-09-14T21:44:00.002+04:30

“The Guts” is the title of a short story by Chuck Palahniuk which appears in his novel Haunted. There have been some sensational reactions to the story in the United States which is mostly because of its gross sexuality. However what Palahniuk aims for, is not just a fun piece of grotesque and erotic horror.

“The Guts” is not just a bloody tale of the hanging guts of a 13 year old masturbating boy. In fact it is THE bloody tale of a literary genius’ having the guts to fire at people’s sexual awareness right in the place and face-to-face. What I mean is that Chuck Palahniuk likes to read this short story in public to audiences wherever he goes. And really there are people who faint in disgust and nausea after listening to “The Guts”. 73 is the last official faint-toll, and you know what? Mr. Palahniuk brags about that! Just youtube the “The Guts” and you’re going to find some of the speeches and seminars in which people listen to Chuck reading his story while some people laugh like perverts and some faint and then you just want to laugh at this sordid dark comedy directed by Chuck Palahniuk.

First of all, if you are too sensitive of gross scenes don’t read, because the story has a lot to offer in that! Secondly if you have an acute awareness of social and sexual taboos, again, don’t read please. You had the warnings!

"The Guts", a short story by Chuck Palahniuk

"What would Jesus NOT do?"... [That I would do!]

2008-09-14T16:58:00.000+04:30

“What you’re getting here is a stupid story about a stupid little boy. A stupid true life story about nobody you’d ever want to meet."

This is how Chuck Palahniuk begins his tale of Victor Mancini, the sex-addict, parasitic scam anti-hero who ironically forms great intimacy with the reader. Victor’s close examining of sex makes us look closely again at who we are, what we seek, and why we do so. Owing much to Lacan and his psychology, Choke introduces an anti-hero who does his best to get at the missing object of his life. The very missing object and goal that, as Lacan says, is impossible to find. However the individual is doomed to seek this object until his/her death.

In Choke the protagonist Victor Mancini, is a restless and angry anti-hero who is completely alienated from culture, religion, morality, and any possible form of structure and discipline. The only outlet, from which he can seek revenge at society and finally reach freedom of thought, is sex. Victor is a sex-addict whose only jouissance is his addiction. Behind its personal and psychological veil, its intricate and angry characters, Choke is also an American Beauty: a dark and sordid parody on Americanism.

Choke is Palahniuk’s first novel after Fight Club and it sure meets the expectations and the standards set by Palahniuk, this young and thoughtful American novelist. I am really encouraged to go on and read his last novel, Snuff, published in May. I’ll have my say later on.

The Quiet American

2008-08-30T21:21:00.002+04:30

I finished “The Quiet American” by Grahame Greene. It is a moving novel which explores the character of an English journalist, Thomas Fowler, and his relationship with his local beloved, Phuong and also his obsession with an American spy, Alden Pyle.

Thomas Fowler, the protagonist of the novel, broods over a variety of public and personal notions. Fowler quotes on the colonized Vietnam and its people, the First Indo China War and destructive interventions of the United States in Vietnam’s affairs which makes the novel a political prophecy. Furthermore Fowler broods over a host of personal issues including the nature of his relationship with Phuong, old age, loneliness, duty, and God. That Fowler touches different issues on two levels of public and personal makes the novel much appealing to the reader.

Fowler, the unreliable narrator of the novel stands as a cynical European and a Sartrean existentialism. He has non-romantic and unconventional attitudes. Fowler is a cynical Englishman who hates colonialism and foreign intervention in political affairs of the third world. That is why during the course of the novel he insists on disengagement. Although he sympathizes with the local people, and even chooses a local girl as his beloved, he declares that he does not take sides. This turns out to be an irony later in the novel when he is involved in Pyle’s assassination. Although Pyle’s peculiar naivety is of great interest to him, he chooses to take side (against Pyle) later in the novel. This irony reveals that it is impossible not to take sides in a chaotic world where a naive virgin like Pyle acts like a destructive colonial machine.

On a personal level Fowler is a beautiful character. His cynicism does not only concern neo-colonization and the like. He is a deeply cynical man inside his psyche. He is apparently in love with Phuong. His feelings are extremely unconventional for he openly talks of the carnal nature of his affection and calls it love. However he yearns for his definition of love. He is desperately in love with Phuong and the appearance of Pyle as a rival makes him lose his mind and even cry. Phuong for Fowler is no ideal woman. She is not a shining star in Fowler’s life. She is a companion who should accompany him in old age and see him to his grave. Phuong, for Fowler, is an escape from loneliness, and this is what makes her so precious to him. He has had better women, but Phuong is the one whom Fowler “has not injured”; who is simple and obsequious; who is the only person who can see him aging and die. He is not alone with Phuong and therefore she is his true love.

Fowler is in contrasted Alden Pyle. Alden Pyle represents the idealistic American who works for the early neo-colonial United States that seek to intervene in national affairs of third world countries who are wearied by the old Colonial powers such as Britain and France. Pyle is an optimist American who acts as a CIA agent in Vietnam and represents his country as a “third force” that should establish democracy. This idealism stems from Pyle’s naivety. He acts like a prophet of an American religion. Sacrifices don’t matter to him as far as they contribute to the establishment of American democracy in the third world.

Eventually Fowler’s act of stopping Pyle could be investigated in different layers. Fowler could have been jealous of Pyle’s love for Phuong, or he could see him as a destructive yet stupid CIA agent whose ideas were in contrast with his. A mixture of both could describe Fowler’s final act against Pyle.

Whether you like novels full of acute characterization and touching internal monologues, or whether your are interested in historical and political novels, “The Quiet American” is a good choice.

The Dark Knight

2008-08-18T17:24:00.003+04:30

I watched “The Dark Knight”. It had a totally new look on the super-hero Batman. Actually the only Batman I had seen before was Batman Forever, and back then I was sure I didn’t want to try a Batman again, at least because I’m a non-American. However after I heard that it’s Christopher Nolan’s (and to my surprise I didn’t know he had made the 2005 one as well) I decided to try it right away. Not to mention its being rated No.1 in imdb.com. Well I know It’s going to drop once it out of box-office, but imdb.com never lies.

I saw this and I tell you, it was not a pulp which propagates a dull American-hero. I loved the realism and symbolism in it. The images were fantastic: Batman’s dual identity, Harvey Dent the lawyer’s changing into a Two-Face. Even the damsel died! This is all so modern and new for a traditional super-hero movie. The acting’s were also lovely. Good shot and If I were to vote for imdb.com, I’d go for 7.5.

Nausea

2008-08-18T17:17:00.003+04:30

I read “Nausea” by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is about a man, Antoine Roquentin who, like Ulysses, after years of travelling and adventure resides in a small port in France and starts to write a historical book about a Frenchman of antiquity. However as the novel goes on, Roquentin’s life of utmost loneliness results in a series of peculiar contemplations by him during which he starts to look at ordinary and everyday objects and events in a totally new way.

During his contemplations, monologues and epiphanies, he gains a new definition of “existence”. This new essence bears a strong sense of nothingness and absurdity. Roquentin feels this existence, when he is confronted by a so-called feat of nausea. He feels that this new sense of existence is actually the real meaning of the word and that other people are totally unaware of it. In other words, he thinks that ordinary people are so much drowned in their everyday lives that they cannot understand that their whole life is a useless effort in order to escape from loneliness and nausea. In other words people struggle so hard so as to forget their existence: their useless and absurd being. For example the act of writing a history book on Marquis de Rollebon, for Roquentin is a mere medium so that he can forget his being: “Marquis needs me in order to be and I need him in order to forget my being.”

The notion of loneliness is presented in a variety of ways. One lonely person is Roquentin himself, who has chosen to drown himself in his unconscious and contemplating others. Another lonely figure is Anny, Roquentin’s ex-wife who is supposedly a tinge of hope and a prospect of happiness for Roquentin, but ironically she is lonely too, but in a slightly different way. Abhorring her husbands’ eccentric manners, she has left him to seek a better life, but she has only lost herself and has become lonelier than ever. During her life of widowhood, she has pursued an unsuccessful acting career (life is just a play, actors merely fools) and now has come back to France, maybe to reconcile with her ex-husband (but in vain).

Anny is very pathetic, because she is too proud and too paralyzed to accept Roquentin’s offer of reconciliation, thus destroying any chance of a better life.
Another dominant lonely figure in the novel is the Autodidact who is a mere repeater of others. His lacks confidence, lacks courage to think and speak independently. Existentially speaking, although he is condemned to be free and responsible for his actions, he has chosen to stay in a library and read the books from A to Z (unconditional and unreasonable order). The lonely Autodidact envies Roquentin’s former life of adventure, and starts to hate him because of that. His final act of sexual harassment in the library is like a final blow both to himself and to the reader. This conclusion also concludes another kind of loneliness. Drowning oneself into a life of seclusion without giving the permission to oneself to, at least, think independently.

At the end of the novel, Roquentin thinks that it was not wise to write about Marquis in order to forget his being. After listening to an inspiring Jazz song, and going through an epiphany in which Roquentin finds his loneliness parallel to that of the singer (power of music is apparent in two occasions in the novel), he starts to believe that he must have written a book on himself, so that others and most importantly himself could understand him and his feelings better.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2008-08-18T16:37:00.006+04:30

I finished "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz today. The 2008 Pulitzer award winner was an absolute masterpiece. The novel is the history of three generations of one Dominican family with the focus on Oscar, the youngest member of the trend.

The social background of the novel is very important in order to understand it. The history of family starts during the reign of Raphael Trujillo, the evil dictator of DR during the 30s-60s. The US backed dictator ruled the colonially damaged DR in the cruellest fashion. The Dominicans and people and families who suffered from his reign believed in a curse called Fuku. The power of this curse was said to be so immense that it remained in generations and generations of the poor victims. Oscar’s family is an example and that is what the novel is about. Fuku, this superstitious belief is treated in a beautiful way by Diaz who transforms Fuku into a fabulous colonial and hegemonic symbol.

What strikes Oscar’s family from his late grandfather, into his mother, his sister and himself is not really a supernatural curse. Although it’s even worse than a curse – a curse no scapegoat could eradicate. Fuku, I think, is the consequence of Trujillo’s brutality, and Trujillo himself in not responsible. They whole misery goes back to the first European settlers who entered the New World, Hispaniola so to speak, for the first time.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explores how the destructive forces of colonialism, and cultural materialism resulting in the instalment of puppet regimes, could destroy societies, families, and even individuals. As Junot Diaz himself points out in an interview, Trujillo is not a Dominican, but a typical American. A person any American thrives to be like.

Oscar, whose virginity and death opens a psychological colonial approach to the text, is an alien both in America and DR (he is born in DR, though holds a US greencard). It is his unhomeliness, and double consciousness which drowns him in his fantasies and hinders him from fulfilling the real world.

I do recommend you do to read this novel. It is a piece with which you form an intimacy from the first page and which finally moves you up to heaven until the end with its touching epiphanies. It is a debut novel by a fresh voice: Junot Diaz is a young American-Dominican who teaches creative writing in MIT.

http://www.junotdiaz.com/

I'm back!

2008-08-18T16:20:00.001+04:30

Man I'm back! Long time no blogging! Well, I'm not suicidal like I used to be. But well, I want to share my thoughts, mainly about stuff I read.

Since the last time I blogged, I have moved to South East Asia, to this end-of-the world Malaysia. But man I like it. It’s calm and nothing really ever happens. Life’s like shit in Iran so I’m happy I’m not around. However I do miss the place. After all Malaysia ain’t no Switzerland! No Utopia!

2007-07-13T22:35:00.000+03:30

Depression dwells in the soul DOMINANTLY. The tragic fact is that happiness is just a temporary escape, and occupations are mere fucking alibis!

I rejoice and smile, work and go out! O’ Poor pathetic me! Everything is so unreal; like a puppet show in the company of fools!

… and now I’m relieved! Ready to return! Embrace me Monsieur Persona.

Damn it!

Right There

2007-06-18T19:57:00.000+03:30

Somebody, right there, has been through all this before. It’s so appeasing to know yet painfully bitter. It arouses the impression that you are not alone, yet horribly lonely. It makes you realize that you need some action, but right there at the critical moment, you find yourself paralyzed like a Jew in a Ghetto awaiting his death.

2007-05-10T22:08:00.000+03:30

We are defined, recognized, distinguished, and differentiated by our ambitions. That’s a fact. Like the fact that there are nine million bicycles in Beijing. Like the fact that I’m swallowed in the sea.

Until the Last Moment

2007-04-19T22:07:00.000+03:30

This piano virtuoso, Yanni, is a man of pure emotion; a man of fifty with the innocence of an angel. He denotes “composure” in the true sense of the word. The guy is the moving definition of Romanticism. He simply lifts you up to heaven with his finger tips. I watch him perform and look deep into his eyes and see all beauties of the world in a flash of a second. When his hands move on the keys… hey man you got to watch him like a hawk!

Halcyon Days

2007-04-19T13:31:00.000+03:30

There will be a time when grayish strands are yet to be. You securely feel far enough from death. You shut your eyes O ‘tis so quiet so peaceful so harmoniously numbed.

There will be a time when you are calm like a lake. You close your eyes; your sweetheart by your side O’ there she is at last, far away no more, her hands in your hands no matter how sweaty.

There will be a time when you shut your eyes and look ahead. ‘Tis all peaceful and quiet. Feels like floating on your back on the Pacific. And then you feel your sweetheart’s hands go loose as if she is in a dream deep asleep. You feel her head on your shoulder.

There will be a time when you suddenly open your eyes and the colorful world stings you. You unfold your hand from hers and let her dream. Tis late! You are late! Hurry up! Dress up! Hop in the car! Go to work! O’ damn the traffic! You are late! You are late too late too la … Close your eyes and think of happy old days; halcyon days of frustration and agony, break down and headaches. Happy old days hell happy old days…

1115...

2007-03-31T22:10:00.000+03:30

Extract from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

I don’t want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something, just because we never necked or horsed around much. She wasn’t. I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn’t sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or something. Jane was different. We’d get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we wouldn’t quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hands was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

2007-03-27T01:15:00.000+03:30

Fondle my cheeks O' fair e-llusion for I’m ... dis-e-llusioned!

Early Spring Mental Explosion

2007-03-25T19:06:00.000+03:30

…how pathetic man appears when he finds out in his loneliness the culminating point of his paralysis and frustration; that day and night his exciting escapade is a mere escape from THE BITTER TRUTH…come on now don’t you talk nonsense like that why don’t you turn that “She’s Madonna” off it’s more than depressing sometimes go take a walk outside how ‘bout a hotdog with extra hot sauce hu? open the door it’s too hot with that heater on in here it’s early spring ain’t it take a shower or something don’t let me see you like a lump of boredom…

…'d like to see me in a year or two when the UN guys drop me a package of sausages and some bread while they suck the oil out our pipes and you know what we’ve got ATOMIC shit shoved up the monkey’s ass and we all victims of politics and mass media! & people take what they give … & Alas! they now furious with that 300 thing released!

Mira

2007-03-18T10:49:00.000+03:30

Extract from Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov - 1957

In order to exist rationally, Pnin had taught himself, during the last ten years, never to remember Mira – not because, in itself, the evocation of a youthful love affair, banal and brief, threatened his peace of mind, but because, if one were quite sincere with oneself, no conscience, and hence no consciousness, could be expected to subsist in a world where such things as Mira’s death were possible. One had to forget – because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car to an extermination camp and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one’s lips in the dusk of the past.

:-)

2007-03-13T18:45:00.000+03:30

I just finished Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury. Another super-natural piece of art! What an inspiration! It is rather surprising to see how a single Shakespeare stanza could directly drive a mind to create two hundred pages of pure genius.

It is tough, burdensome, and brain-consuming; it requires patience and labor, tough at the end of the day when you finish up the last page; an hour of contemplation and a few pages of criticism will shoot you to the top of that pleasure thermometer. A number one priority for any art fanatic!

William Shakespeare - Macbeth
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
''Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing...

www.soccernet.com

2007-03-13T18:27:00.000+03:30

My Good Lord! The official bastards have filtered a football website, because the address is soccernet.com! This is hilarious!

It seems the mere sound of the word “SOCCER” causes the clergy a sort of sexual stimulation! Or … It’s highly probable that the clergy fancy sucker players! O’ my dear Freud! Where art thou! We have need of thee!

Comedy of Menace

2007-02-26T15:49:00.000+03:30

Harold Pinter had my family and our house in mind when he was writing his great masterpieces. We deserve a Noble Prize for giving inspiration and many things more…

Wakey Wakey..Eggs and Bakey...

2007-02-26T15:41:00.000+03:30

My heartiest congratulations to my endeared cousin:

“You just gave birth to a baby-boy” is one way of referring to the phenomenon, and “You just threw out a poor miserable hapless and compelled “evil-would-be” into a fucking hypocrite wasteland” is another and better way. Welcome to the Grave New World sweetie!

Adroit & Garrulous

2007-02-15T14:18:00.000+03:30

Hello Farzad. You don’t know me, but I know you. I want to play a game. Up until now you have lived through your wits, and every minute of your disgraceful life has been rife with chicanery, pretension and lie. Without your tongue you are a piece of nothing. Are you? Why don’t you prove me and yourself wrong then?

The heavy device on your mouth, as you feel, is pinned on your dearest possession; your tongue. Today, your hypocrite tongue is the cause of your pain, agony, and all that painful stink and taste of blood you feel inside.

Want to come back to your studio? You are given the chance to save your tongue and life. There lies a magic cube in front of you; a favorite childhood toy thing. But this one is a bit different. You have noticed the words on it, have you not? The key to this puzzle is your own words. Out of a thousand possibilities you should find your best ever pretentious appraisal of you-know-who on the magic cube. You have one smart brain and… a minute to save your life.

If by any chance you fail to solve the puzzle, it is going to signal the device on your mouth. The device would leave you then, but… after crushing and mashing your tongue in your locked mouth. And then I’ll watch you suffocate in your own blood. Here we go…live or die…make your choice.

60…59…58…57…56…55…54…

Asshole Takeover Anniversary

2007-02-11T01:33:00.000+03:30

Once upon a time lived a nation; somewhere far away, far far away. They hardly knew who they were. Nor do they now. They hardly knew their thumbs from their dicks. However, now, they do know the latter, though still not the former.

After long a time, long long a time; they were given bread. So there was left no hunger, and thus no occupation. “What shall we do now?!” was what they declared. All all declared. So they thought and pondered till they got the point! “It’s time to pray!” was what they exclaimed. All all exclaimed.

They knelt and looked up; up up and up.
And there fell a pig, a pig a pig a pig.

Notes on a wintry rainy busy day…

2007-02-01T01:29:00.001+03:30

-I’m done with shitty days of idleness. No purpose what. No reason why. What the hell was that all for? O’ my God! Grrrrrr…. But it’s over at last! Well not really over; the main dish is yet to come. But at least I won’t have to devour bits and pieces of dry stone anymore.

-Today, after so long a time, I got the chance to be among the living: people with simple gay smiles on their faces and little seriousness to go down with.

-How different people are in groups. How far they go from their unconscious! It is like a Unity containing a great number of individuals who enter a “negative incapability”; dying as an individual and be reborn as a scion; leaving the man towards the mankind. And you know what? I just see how fascinating it is to be a Mr. President or a Mr. Senator; gripping all mankind in your fist so tight that no soul would venture a return.

-Human Interaction is a necessary set of misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and misconceptions.

Let me Count the Ways...

2007-01-29T22:23:00.001+03:30

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Among Oft-trodden Ways

2007-01-21T22:50:00.000+03:30

As I was walking on a rough road; dusty-muddy and tiresome I came upon a bifurcation. I turned around and looked about to see my giant castle which I well knew and chose to occupy no more: unwholesome with dark dungeons. So I turned back and looked ahead the two oft-trodden ways.

O’ fake sages,
Is not there a third way?

“YES, Turn Around And Come Back.”

So Close... So Far

2007-01-15T00:35:00.000+03:30

People so close by blood,
So far by manners;
So distant by dispositions;
So apart in worlds.

Aliens in a cramped chamber, so in need of interaction;
Unaware of a tiny tinge of what might be inside.

“WHY?”

I can’t believe old age to be like this;
Such gloomy convictions;
Such dark and down spirits;

“Or should I?”

Aries

2007-01-10T23:51:00.000+03:30

Look into my eyes! See anything? It's alright. You ain't a cat, that's why. Even if you were one you couldn't. Cuz nowadays we're through the age of cats the obscures. It's hard to know us cats. Our subconscious levels are deeper than ever; we hardly understand each other; such a pity. Thank Cod I still got a cat or two to befriend.

Hey this is a frienda mine. He's awaiting President Bush's live announcement concerning IraC. He lost his ear a few Septembers ago when a Catdog tried to make love with him; he just tried to be a saint; I'm proud of him. He's always misunderstood.

This one's a carpe diem baby! Many cellas aspire his position, but they have no idea! Or maybe they have? I dunno... I'd better comment not!

This one's from the round-table. He's wondering where the Holy Crail is; One of the few restless Cnights of our age.

Maybe the best thing to do? I'd love to... These days I feel a shadow of some good news. Maybe I can see it better in a dream.

Me Out?!

2007-01-03T23:34:00.000+03:30

Ixamigo dear :-) I’m long out of your gang; hold on your nerves, calm down, keep cool, and eschew anxiety. Because it brings harm to your precious mental activities or else, it shall ruin your already blurred vision. Sugar! Don’t act like a bitchy shrew! You’re too young and more innocent for that kind of crap!

hanged

2006-12-30T23:26:00.000+03:30

One dictator is hanged;
Only one.
The rest are drinking toasts to their healths while fucking the world around.
The mob are exulting and congratulating; “the dictator is hanged, O Yeah!”
O Yeah and the fools are fooled.

One dictator is hanged;
Only one.
We are fooled...

moshtarake gerami...!

2006-12-28T23:16:00.000+03:30

The official bastards filter blogger.com every few days and again and that makes me irritated as if I'm struck by the scene of a rotten rat. So if by any chance I happen to disappear from the web just beware that I’m alive somewhere in this wasteland.

Elegy on a short Fall

2006-12-21T23:33:00.000+03:30

ep
Dad’s too reticent
Love’s far away
Night’s so long
World’s a mess
Mind’s a stormy night
Plans reverberating in head like drums
Mute like Gregor
A lonely shadow in the pizza place
I’m hungry. Mom's asle

Confusion

2006-12-20T00:45:00.000+03:30

America is at this moment developing advanced systems of 'weapons of mass destruction' and is prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public declarations and its own actions is almost a joke. America believes that the 3,000 deaths in New York are the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence. The 3,000 deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through American and British sanctions which have deprived them of essential medicines are never referred to. The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf war, is never referred to. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood."

There's no escape.
The big pricks are out.
They'll fuck everything in sight.
Watch your back.

Harold Pinter Februrary 2003

Green Stain

2006-12-15T20:23:00.000+03:30

On earth, on air, on the walls, on the cars…things are redolent of propaganda. I turn on the TV and see the soccer commentator on air propagating politics and then I say what do you have to do with all this you apple polisher? And then he says we feel a green presence of millions of patriots. I turn off the TV and supplicate hatred and vengeance upon thee, thou hairy ape and you all the ever complaining philistines, scions of the mob. What you deserve is not democracy that you seek on this path, but lumps of filth, dirt, and shit.

On Waking Up Upon a Morning

2006-12-13T08:16:00.000+03:30

I’m an alien among these mundane terrestrial beings. Visions blurred by illusion, fallacious hopes, they seek peace in ridiculous grails. They call their saints, their dead spirits with tearing eyes, and their majesties belly laugh them off.

O’ sages! Kneel down gracefully to your majesty who illusions you by no doubt. Who is to disillusion your souls? I’m afraid your long wrong doings.

I’m an alien among these mundane gullible souls. I try to utter words to them, but they behold me not. There's a lot to say; all of which hidden, there's a lot to shout; all of which muffled.

I am an alien among these democrats, these forgetful souls of hierarchy, and I see them struck by their funny principles. And then I belly laugh them off.

bb

2006-12-10T22:53:00.000+03:30

Driving down the broad road I listen to the blues and wonder how pleasantly sluggish it makes my movements and longer the road. A second is three and I feel the two gods on my left and right with their guitars and I’m driving… But no, I’m riding with the King.

The Dead

2006-11-25T12:31:00.000+03:30

Digging deep down the rich quarry of human soul, and playing with words as if they are musical notes makes Joyce a true legend. I finished his short story The Dead, a few minutes ago and I just can’t sleep tonight. When you read the story, eventually, you find some facet of yourself in Gabriel.

I look at my sweet angel. My eyes are begging her cuddle, her caress, her impassioned kiss… But what is she pondering about? O’ babe why don’t you come closer?

...

2006-11-22T22:58:00.000+03:30

The bitterest deterministic evil power that dooms us all is “culture”. What are you looking for? Some fake ‘Will’ thing? Keep up…

yummy yummy

2006-11-14T23:11:00.000+03:30

We ain’t no cannibals. It’s just that we like a little bit of grilled child.

Irony of Innocence

2006-11-08T14:17:00.000+03:30

Have you ever seen a child playing with a toy-gun so gaily? Have you even seen the little ones playing with wooden-swords so merrily?

If you ever get the chance to stay with some of them you can see their pride in not accepting strangers, their greed for toys ,their envy of their little rivals ,their gluttony for snacks and potato chips, their sloth while sleeping half of their day, their lust and anger when scattering the breakfast table for more peanut butter. They do long for the today-innocent deadly-morrow sins from the very day they open their eyes in our peaceful universe.

Eventually they got to learn these arts someday. Why not now?! The best time for acquiring the necessary skills and artistries of man’s life is indeed the lovely innocent sheep-like childhood.

eLPoiep

2006-11-03T21:46:00.000+03:30

Black Crows

2006-11-03T16:01:00.000+03:30

Three black crows were sitting on a fence
Watching the world pass them by.
Laughing at humanity and its pretense,
Wondering where next to fly...

And they cackled in joy and dove through the air
Like the winds of a hurricane.
And they spread their wings as if to declare
"Onward, let freedom ring!"

Three black crows are sitting in a tree
Looking down on mankind
Loving how it feels to be so free,
Leaving us far behind…

I am nothing ... I see all

2006-11-01T22:57:00.000+03:30

"Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part of parcel of God.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Terracotta

2006-10-27T23:50:00.000+03:30

I'm buying a ticket to China; to the country of past glory and civilization. I'm heading to the Terracotta museum for I'm sick ‘n tired of looking into human eyes. There I'll see clay eyes. Dusty at first sight, but talking of an ever shining past, of glory, of beauty, of people who had majesty. There I'll sit and play Bach on my iPod to read poetry. And to think how glorious it was to be a human.

pPl

2006-10-27T23:24:00.000+03:30

Let them fight. Let them kill. Let them hit their planes into the buildings, let them lie, let them pretend .Let them read shit. Let them watch soap operas. Let them listen to crap. Let them run after their celebrities. Let them sink in tradition. Let them indulge in religion. Let them be soaked in corruption. Let them live their lives.

Sleep Walk

2006-10-17T15:59:00.000+03:30

It starts so smoothly as if a butterfly is winging down the strings. With the first beat of the drums a light delicate feather sets out to fly and enters my brain through my ear. She likes this strange beautiful music and dances to its tune. The man's fingers move gently and delicately on the strings as the feather moves serenely in my head; right on my brain; tickling the aching parts. She has lost her way but she doesn't care; she likes to wander around in my maze because my temperament is giggling. Hey man, I feel better already.

!

2006-09-19T22:54:00.000+03:30

I've learned a great deal from you... You've taught me a great many things...I'll always have the sense of IOU deep in the bottom of my heart. Though I'd like to mention the most crucial lesson: I WILL NEVER BE LIKE YOU.... In many ways.

Stinky

2006-09-06T08:17:00.000+03:30

My very dear daughter,

I just heard about your problems and it made me so sad. But my sweet darling; that's the way it is. We, women, should better keep ourselves calm, quiet, passive and timid. That's what God wants us to be.

Let him oppress you. I know it's difficult. We all have been in these tough days, but it will pass. Believe me darling, it all will pass. Nothing to pay, nothing to lose; it's only your youth that you lose; you see? Not a big price to pay. God will return your beauty in the other world if you keep quiet now.

I can't see why it is hard for you to tolerate it all. You know about my past, me and your dad had the same problems but I tolerated and prevented the great Sin of Divorce and Infamy.

So remember it now and forever; If he doesn't talk to you, if he never smiles, if he doesn't kiss you and never sleeps with you; just take it easy. Tolerate; God will grant you his Heaven.

Mother
-2006/6/9

Ice cream

2006-08-18T18:18:00.000+03:30

*Obscene content; +16
*The reader should better be acquainted with the cultural milieu of the Iranian lower-class.

-Bitch, take it...

And he handed her a cheap ice-cream. Being husband and wife for so long a time, it was so odd an incident; so odd of him. That's what came into her head.

-Thanks... hhh, I ... I don't know what to say... thanks...
-Take it bitch, take it. Just remember that I'm kind. If I hit you, If I punch you, If I whip you ,that's because I know it's good for you. I know you can never think what's good, what ain't. Just know that I'm kind...
-I know.
-That's good... I like to see you so timid... Now guess what, I'm taking you out tonight...
-ohhhh, really? It's been a long ti...
-Just shut your trap... Don't say a word, you know I don't like it this way...
-I know.
-Now come on, don't be so sluggish like a sick rat. Go on 'n put on your cover .Put it on GOOD? I don't want to see others look at you? You undrestand? Youknow what could happen to you?
-Yes.
-I'm out in the yard. Come on...

And he went out. He put on his ebony shoes to set his black pants and shirt. His face was all a round reservoir of black curly hair. Goddamn; even his eyes were black; as an ominous crow.

With great dignity he walked to his blue Nissan pick-up. Opened the door and got in. Pushed his hand on the horn, and shouted at his bitch to hurry.

-Come oooon... What'ya doing in there?!

He ceased shouting and looked at the windshield that was reflecting his black face; his crow like eyes in particular. He gazed at them;

What's she doing in there, what's she doing in there, what's sh... what a tough day it was; doesn't matter at least tomorrow is weekend. Damn I should tell her to keep the kids at their grandma's, they haven't been there for a while, besides I've got business to do at home tonight hahahaahaha!... Dirty bitch, God knows how much I hate her... Yeah, they haven't been there for a while... damn what's she doing in there!.... Hey I should call Esmael tonight, he must have brought those nu sets of knives, God knows how much I longed for them, I do need a nu set. These current sets are too old, get blunt soon... remember? The last time I tried to cut Hashem's ears... But there was just a scratch... shit... they called me a coward... I'll show'em who's the man... Yeah... Good gosh, tomorrow's friday... I can sleep good... I'll wake up at noon for lunch.... Hey don't I forget... I should better call Asghar tonight... We should gather tomorrow night... He promised to bring better beer and nu whores... I'll kill him if the doesn't... shhhhit, what's she doing in there.... I shouldn't have bought that ice-cream; sucking keeps her busy mwuhahaha...

And she closed the door and walked toward the car. She was 23, plain and worn out. Worn out of life; "Dirty life", she said to herself.

Dirty life, dirty life, shitty li.... I hate you, you alchy criminal. I have never hated anyone like you. You're the most pathetic husband. Curse on you mom! curse on your soul mom, It was you and that old paltry son of a bitch dad who made me marry this bushwacker. Now you've kicked the bucket and the old man's in jail. I hate you, I do hate you, you pathetic, you miserable scary scarecrow... I do feel great when I betray on you... I'm proud. You deserve it, you pathetic...

And she got into the car; silent as usual. She tried to focus on the rural music that was playing, so that to avoid the dreadful existence of her so called husband. She was filled with rage and hate; now for no reason at all.

The car is in the street now, it's thursday and another crowded night. He doesn't care. He always drives fast ...so fast that all of a sudden he's about to crash into a little silver daewoo in which are two young college boys. They're so jokingly astonished at the scene;

-HAHAAHA Did you sssseeee that?!
-(laughing out loud)

Free Milk?!

2006-08-16T22:58:00.000+03:30

For God's sake!!! It's just a kindergarten!!! :))

The Big Game

2006-08-07T22:01:00.000+03:30

Thoughts came into my head when I finished a computer game last week. I couldn't bring them into vocabulary until a couple of nights ago, a unique friend of mine powered the thoughts, and now I'm going to share them:

Welcome to the virtual dream vision. You're infront of a door upon which you see a sign saying "GAME NET". You enter and to your surprise, you see billions of weird creatures sitting behind billions of screens with gamepads in their hands.

You start walking along the corridors of systems. You look at the screens to see what they play. The games look so familiar and yet so strange; that's because of the dream. You're right through a dream.

These game fanatics are weird. Some look adorable and lovely. Some, on the other hand, look horrible. You look closely, they really look like angels and demons, sylphs and monsters. One is so happy, another so sad. One laughs, the other cries,another grins.

You stop by an angel and decide to start a conversation. But she tells you, reluctantly, that it's no time to talk, that you have to wait until it gets dark and hope that the game pauses. "Pause?",you ask yourself. Can't she just press the ESC botton herself? What if she gets tired?! Well. You really want to know about these games and this place. So you willingly wait.

It gets dark and midnight. Hopefully the system goes stand-by and the gool looking angel is free to talk.

-Hi?
-Hello. art thou the one I beheld in the midst of the game?
-Yeah, I just found myself here... What's in this place?
-Oh dear stranger! We are playing-Forgive me...I speak like this...The games have affected us all.
-I'm sorry?
-Nothing...You ask about the game?
-Yes... Actually...what you play....looks...so familiar.
-Oh, let me show you a demo if you're so interested.

She takes you into another room, and turns on a PS2; The NEW GAME icon is blocked, but there's an open DEMO icon. The angel tells you that this DEMO thing is acutually the very first version of the game. She clicks the Demo. There are two characters to choose, ADAM and EVE. They remind you of something, but you can't remember what; you can as soon as you wake up...if you remember anything of the dream. She chooses ADAM and enters the password for +5 warning pop-up and starts the game. She explains that a great amount of the modern games require +25, +35 or even higher passwords. Those games are not specifically for angels but for demons.

The Demo starts and its setting is a lovely garden. The angel tells you that this primitive version of the game is called "Eden", and that it was produced by "John Milton", one of the many nicknames of The Master.

The day has just broken, so the angel stands up to go to her own system. She allows you to spend the next day in the corridor.

A bussy day, in the Game Net. Crowded as yesterday. You walk along the corridor, watching the screens.

On the first screen, there are two lovers, sitting on a bench in a park, kissing so passionately. The player is a good looking angel who says the boy is the hero, he's poor and that the play is tedious. Only when he's with the beloved the game sounds enjoyable. The player tells you secretly that she has downloaded some cheats for the game that could make a fortune for the boy. But she's afraid The Master would find out...

On the second one, you see a grown up,handsome gentleman driving a car. He is going to the university. Apparently he's a professor. The player tells you that the game started from his infancy and that she's playing the climax of the game. The man has been a highly succussfull person, an "A" grader at school all the time. He is also the father of a very lovely family; a fair wife and adorable kids. The player insists that she hasn't used any sort of cheat throughout the game. Suddenly an ear-splitting sound of a horn from the speaker distracts you. You see a truck on the screen coming toward the man and his car. The man can't just control the car and crashes into the truck. All you see are split and crushed pieces of brain and skull on the broken windshield of the car. The little angel screams and the game is over. She must shut down the system and wait for a new game.

On the third, there's an old man, sitting on an old wooden chair infront of the window. Window of a house in which he was born, grew up, married, divorced, remarried ,redivorced, got old and was left alone by his children. He's inhaling the scent of memories. That's the end of the game. What a moment!

PARI !!

2006-08-05T15:56:00.000+03:30

Canon

2006-08-02T13:27:00.000+03:30

Look at the picture. See?
These are some best selling popular books read by a nation who claim to have the most elaborate culture on the planet.

War & Peace

2006-08-01T21:50:00.000+03:30

Absurd are those who start a war,
Bird-brained, those who fight,
Bastards, those who support either side.

Look heavenward and ask thy lord,
a warless, religionless world.

Jekyll and Hyde

2006-07-31T10:19:00.000+03:30

TO FEEL oneself only in loneliness, TO FEEL onself only in a small group. It's a tragedy of mankind. Sometimes I feel I'm two...or three? For God's sake it isn't hypocrisy; it is of no harm. It's just that...I can't be myself all the time. They could call me a rebel!

Crake: Never change face...having a hard time? Just step aside...

Two people are talking about "me". No one asks "is it him?" at the end. It's the most irritating thing. Half Jekyll Hafl Hyde, not in its brutal sense. Take it a metaphor.

Scripture

2006-07-31T10:15:00.000+03:30

I stepped inside a bathroom on my left foot this morning and saw this scripture on the wall. Read it and never forget the things you must remember.

NO COMMENTS of Wonderland

2006-07-29T22:01:00.000+03:30

Walking in the streets of Wonderland, I come to pass so many interesting things. I'm happy I have a cam with me.

I'll try to post some pix, whenever I catch'em cool!

Monologue

2006-07-20T17:32:00.000+03:30

Wake up early. Just sit on your bed for a couple of minutes, hands on forehead. Take it easy; it's just one of those usual early morning depressions. Take a shower, have breakfast, watch VH1 or Mezzo, and comeback to your room; close the door and make sure you won't think of its behind, it could drive you crazy. Now feeling fresh, time to start your day! Yeah! Great deal of job to do! Turn on the lamp, open the book and go on. Oh hell oh yeah! Hell of a schedule!

Now let's come back to that DOOR thing. What was behind it? Something to drive you nuts? Yeah I think so, too. Whose fault is it? Yeah I know. It's no one's . What have you done? What have they done? Let me look deep into your eyes, let me touch the palm of your hand; I see a million miles of differences. I feel a million paradoxes. I see people around you, sssssso close as they call it as well as you yourself. I feel their perception of you which is not a fraction of what you really are. And it bothers you, doesn't it? I see them loving you, I see them caring, I feel them living just for you as well as you yourself. I feel them absolutely ignorant of you. How's it possible? I know you think about it day and night. I see you musing on it in your moments of distraction; gazing at a point. I feel you worried, contemplating what all these paradoxes, misconceptions and differences could lead to someday. A very day that something will turn around, and that very thing that must turn up. But I see you strong, me stronger and us the strongest.

Grotesque Fantasies ; "Yeesh"

2006-07-18T22:26:00.000+03:30

Zap wakes up with eyes SHUT. He wants to open them but he can't. He tries another time but the effort is interrupted with a lethal back pain. He can't open his eyes as if the eyelids have been stitched. Another effort; in vain. He stops trying. The pain strikes again .

Zap tries to get up and touch his back, but he can't. Actually he can but the problem is he isn't on his bed. One feels horizontal on a bed, but he doesn't. How's it possible ? One of those usual sleep walks?

Vertical agitated Zap tries again to open his eyes but he can't. He decides to walk and it's when he finds nothing under his feet but a deadly creak above his head, and another breathtaking strike of pain. Not on his bed, not on the ground; what's this painful creaky kind of sound? Suddenly he sets out an unstoppable pathetic scream; he's hung and that's the reason for the cry.

At least now, Zap knows the cause of pain. He must have been hooked right in the back. He knows his physical state, and yet absolutely no idea. The goddamn pain strikes again. He ceases all efforts and cries; static and motionless. He knows how another single move could worsen the pain.

Eyes shut, hung from back, Zap starts snifing. It could give him a clue but he stops and howls like a dog. He tries his best not to smell again but he can't, so another nasty howl; that's the most disgusting cocktail of stink he's ever sniffed.

As motionless as a corpse in a graveyard, Zap listens and shivers as the gothic melody of silence plays. Goddamn it, the very shivering is worsening the pain. A short roar from top distracts him and suddenly his loose dangled body starts to swing. Backward, forward, backward, forward and again and again; each swing faster than the previous. He bursts into cry from the lethal pain, yells God as it goes faster. He feels scalding evl tears behind his stichted eyelids, feels the hook going further and further into his back, feels hot blood running down his waist...and faints.

Zap wakes up with eyes shut. It takes him a couple of minutes to remember what happened. There's no energy left to struggle or to shout, to hawl or even to think. He's no longer hung; He must've fallen off the hook down on something. He faints.

Zap wakes up with eyes shut. He must have been sleeping for hours. He has lost much blood and feels puss all over the degenerating wound. He no longer feels the pain. He must have been numbed.

Eyes shut; on the floor, Zap can't stop inhaling the stinky air. He wishes he could. With these blind eyes he can't undrestand where he is, let alone finding a way out. He moves his hands toward his eyes to touch them, but the very movement of arms and shoulder startle him; the gash in his back- He doesn't care, the hook is gone at least. He can make it. With a great effort he puts his fingers on both eyes and a dismal happines pervades him. He can see small red patches from behind the eyelids; at least there's a glimmering of hope of not being blind and....it's light in here!

Eyes shut, on the floor. Zap's got to find a way to open his eyes. A slight effort in vain. He touches them again and again. It's no stich, seems to be...some sort of glue? Something dried, sere. He fumbles the floor for something....sharp? Its mere thought horrifies him.

Eyes shut, on the floor. Zap starts hearing things. Someone is walking slowly and steadily towards him; footstep jingle footstep jingle and again and again. The sound is becoming louder and louder by every coming step. Closer and closer till the footsteps stop and all he hears is mere jingling. Frozen by terror he feels somebody's existance standing right beside him, surely not going to help him out.

It's all silence save the terrifying jingle sound. Suddenly Zap shudders as some cold sort of metal thing is being rubbed on his belly. The monster guy up there has some jingling metal thing in his hand which could be nothing but a chain. The guy is rubbing the dangled rings up towards Zap's face and the poor miserable off-hooked blind victim is dead silent, trembling in every limb. The chain is right on his mouth and a ring of it hits his nostrils. The anonymous guy lowers his hand as the cold rings of the chain pile over Zap's mouth. Trembling Zap can feel the hefty round pieces of cold metal on his teeth. He's so scared that he can't help keeping his mouth shut while he's teeth are so tight as if his jaws are locked. Indeed they are.

Eyes shut, the pile of cold metal rings of chain on his teeth, Zap suddenly feels two scalding drops on his two closed eyes. In a flash his eyes are wide OPEN; light penetrates them; a dim outline of a man with a long chain in one hand and a bottle in the other. The scene is more frightening than the blind impression of a hook in the back and it becomes even more when the weird sicko guy lifts the chain up and blows it grisly down on Zap's face; just three seconds and the regained vision is lost. All is black, painful, shattered pieces of teeth down his throat. Zap desperately coughs, yells, screams....and wakes up .

The Kiss

2006-07-17T22:28:00.000+03:30

'I saw you take his kiss!' 'Tis true.'
'O, modesty!' ' 'Twas strictly kept:
He thought me asleep; at least I knew
He thought I thought he thought I slept.'

Coventry Patmore

Adios Zizou

2006-07-13T10:13:00.000+03:30

I'll be feeling kinda blue no seeing the white No.5 , the blue No.10 , the bald genius anymore .

No matter what he did , no matter why , no matter whether he won the World Cup for the second time , Zizou was a phenomenon I saw in my life . No one will possibly do in the next 100 years and that's what makes me proud ! Yeah ! I saw Zizou in my time . People will say that , and I'll be remembered .... " HE SAW ZIZOU IN HIS TIME !!! "

literary linx !

2006-07-11T19:14:00.001+03:30

Listen to T.S Eliot's very own voice . He's reading his "The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock"

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . Adorable picture !

King Arthur and Guinevere !

#:-S

2006-07-11T19:03:00.000+03:30

Pffuu ! Ma brain's gon explode ! Somebody help !

Studying so hard keeps one away from many habitual routines ( blogging ! ) . It's happened to me now and I'm kinda loving it !

The way I've chosen is kinda weird . The more I study the more I realize its risk the more I indulge the more I fall in love and the more I keep up the more I regret why I didn't start months ago ; a bunch of material that I should have studied then . Though It helps me a great deal to forget the shitty things around . The risk is worth taking . Yeah !

Well , It's just been a few days . There's a yet a long way to go . I gotta keep strong ! :D

'Ello Summah !

2006-07-06T23:57:00.000+03:30

My third year at college has just ended ,and it has given me contradictory feelings . On one hand I see a much better soul inside me , on the other, I feel disgusted of being a college students here . Being in a so-called top university,I look around and see the sickest educational system and the dumbest scholars and professors , even those I coud never expect them to be .

Well , there's nothing to do about it . Now I could call myself a senior and after two great consecutive summers I'm targeting a better third . I made a decision and now it's time for action . It's gonna be a big risk , I know ; but there will be no regret . I could be on the way to my ideal would-be in two years time . I've started well , let's see how it goes ...

Dr. Faustus

2006-07-06T23:52:00.000+03:30

Dr. Faustus surrendered to Devil . He Indulged himself in the Seven Deadly Sins for twenty four years . And now it is time to travel to Hell . Too late for repentance !

And now , poor soul , must thy good angel leave thee ;
The jaws of Hell are open to recieve thee .

Eden

2006-07-06T18:28:00.000+03:30

Our good-hearted people who are always ready to sacrifice their souls and lives for their faiths haven't yet got the undrestanding to "STOP by the RED LIGHT and MOVE by the GREEN" .

Things happen over and over again everyday , but each day I say come on man ; there're always bad guys around . But this morning I was behind the red light when I saw a big bus crossing the light . A yellow taxi after that . It was about to hit my wheel !

This is just one of the MILLION trivial incidents that happen around us in different levels of society everyday and yet some can't realize this dreadful plunge into the abyss of chaos . From a top University to the humblest surface . Mr(s). Citizen crosses the stop sign and Mr(s). Scholar, the boundary of stupidity .

I'm sure that Mr. Bus Driver could deliver a long lecture on 2500 years of ever-dazzling civilization and then declares that Islam ruined everything when it entered our paradise . He remembers to add the fact that America managed to prevent Shah from rebuiling the paradise and regrets that they have brought the clergies . Finally he swears at the current President and longs for the previous . The audience bring lumps to their throats and applaud heartily at the end .

Passivity , ignorance , corruption , savagery ... Who's to pay ? Who's to suffer ? Youknow what I mean ?

Burn ...

2006-07-02T23:05:00.000+03:30

Lovely couple , aint they ? They're so pure and natural . She sings her innate poetry and he plays from the bottom of his heart .

Who could imagine ?! Richie will never Burn a Fender Strat again ...

:'(

2006-07-02T14:57:00.000+03:30

What is this curse really ?! It seems the Socrodite , the deity of soccer , never has mercy on me !

Being a passionate football fan for all my life , I've never felt like winning a trophy like in this World Cup . But I forget things easily ; Star-crossed England have got the worst luck ever . Pfooh ! Just look at those lucky Germans , Blessed Italians ....

And youknow what ? That's what makes the beautiful game so exciting . That's all 'bout the big passion ; I'm proud of being a goddamn soccer fanatic !

A Raw Youth

2006-06-29T23:56:00.000+03:30

Being a raw youth and reading a novel called A Raw Youth written by a master of existentialism makes you realize an ultimate situation in which you feel the novel is about YOU and YOU are the protagonist .

Fyodor Dostoyevsky makes you undrestand that writing true literature is not all a matter of creative imagination but a matter of being a Super-human . He knows things which are impossible to find in books or to perceive through experience .

I'll read all his works before I die ...

Sewerage

2006-06-29T23:38:00.000+03:30

I wake up in the morning with a ghastly clang . Angrily I look out the window and find out that they're digging the asphalt with those horrible digging machines . My dad tells me that the alley will be ripped open in a few days .

- For what ?!
- Sewerage ...
- C'mon ! We're living uptown . Haven't we got that ?!!
- No one does in this city son !
- Hey it's the year 2006 !
- I dunno ....
- ... ( silence ) ...

Oryx : Youknow what ?! You true are living in the postmodern Wasteland . I call it a "Shit Hole" !

The Lady of Shallot

2006-06-26T01:25:00.000+03:30

Wow ! Suppose that you've got poetry exam in the morning . "'Tis midnight" and you're reviewing . Then you a get a message from a good friend and find out that one of tomorrow's poems is sung by your favorite singer and you haven't noticed that before ! Woohoo !

Loreena Mckennit / The Visit - 1992
The Lady of Shallot / Alfred ,Lord Tennyson

Lady Of Shallot , symbol of a Victorian poet, is a vigorous believer in "Art For Art's Sake" theory . She is kind of justified because she tries to escape from the corruption of the Victorian society . As the poem goes on she realizes the boringness and immorality of the theory and contacts the society . She justifies herself by claiming to be a Prophet figure , but the sad fact is that she's dying as a Poet . The corrupt society never did and never will undrestand her or any other poet .

Happy Birthday !

2006-06-25T22:02:00.000+03:30

Today is a friend's birthday . A friend , who once , wanted to BE so much . We were classmates and roommates when I was a freshman in North . Then I was transfered to Shiraz and heard of him no more .

He was considered my best friend there , so was I his . I don't know why I decided to hear no more of him when I came back here . He was not my type of person , I dunno ... He liked me very much and now I regret why I didn't . Everyone had problems with the guy , so did I , but I kept on my sympathy ... Yeah , That could be a reason for liking somebody .

Today is his 22nd birthday and he could be celebrating that now , but a couple of months ago , on a saturday night at 10:00 he decided NOT TO BE ... Simply he dissolved some two hundred sedatives in water and drank it all . Now he IS NOT .

I know there must be a way up there to read blogs , so ...

Hey dude !

Happy Birthday :- ) . I have no idea how things are going up there , but I hope you're doin' fine . I'm doin' fine down here too . I was just remembering some good and bad memories today after I got the SMS from your bro' ...

Remember that lovely Oscar Wilde performance ? The Philippine prof loved it so much ! I remember ya spoke as GOD ! How ironic it seems now , aint it .

Remember the German old man ? :)) He liked you , but he was so relaxed when he heard 'bout your suicide .Goddamn German spirit !

Well . I still can't undrestand why you did that . I will ask you someday !

See ya late !
Amir .

Good boy !

2006-06-24T21:52:00.000+03:30

A few changes to my routine ahead of a good summer ! I must change some bad habits and bring back some good ones which are so much required for what's gonna happen to me in the next three months .

I'm thoroughly satisfied with the start . Let's see how it goes ... :-)

Some pix ...

2006-06-23T21:25:00.000+03:30

Some super high quality pix of Andrea Bocelli , a favorite tenor of mine :-)

Andrea and Julia Gertseva
Andrea's Amore ( Album Cover )
What a quality !
Woohoo ! He's popping out of the screen !

Darkling Plain

2006-06-22T12:39:00.000+03:30

Never before like today have I enjoyed studying literature this much . To read all the poetry and prose . The authors and poets see life so beautifully . I envy them all , from the most optimist to the most pessimist and cynical . Seeing life is the object .

My soul is my best company ; musing and contemplating , listening to elaborate music , reading poetry and prose . What is the need for society ? Corruption of mind and behavior it is . I love my very own "Small Society" . I love my "Special loneliness" . Curse on all pretensions , social masks . Curse on all lowbrows .

It's so pleasing to find your very own thoughts and beliefs in a good poet's works :

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

DOVER BEACH ,By Matthew Arnold ; 1867

Aged

2006-06-18T14:18:00.000+03:30

I'm in a beautiful park . I've missed a good football match to come and study .

Sitting on a bench with my handouts. I've come with a good dude . He's famous for his liveliness , a funny cute pal . We're full of youth 'n energy . I look at the road infront of me . I see an old man walking toward us with his cane . bald 'n hunchback ;

-Can I sit here for a minute my sons ?
-Oh please ... ( we spare a place for him )

He's so tired , panting as a meek horse . Looking innocent just the way he did eighty years before in a cradle .

Now my friend's reading aloud but I don't listen . I'm looking at the old one instead . From time to time he looks at us from the corner of his eyes . So shrunk a face that I can't see his eyes clearly . But one thing I can see in 'em 'n that's Envy . I leave his eyes and look at his watch on his old vibrating hand . It's a nice watch . I look at mine which is a present from a deared one . I look at his . Different impressions ... I dunno ... ticking of mine ; passage of time toward the bright days , ticking of his ; passage of time toward darkness .

Is he happy ? I really wanna be when I'm his age .

Time

2006-06-16T14:04:00.000+03:30

There's always an Idea about which I think when I'm using my time good : I'm losing this precious thing , moment by moment , second by second , tick by tuck ... And the disastrous thing is that when I am wasting it , the idea doesn't strike my mind !

Hard labour imprisonment

2006-06-16T13:53:00.000+03:30

A future thing I know for sure : I'll never have children ! This branch of the family tree will come to an end . I don't give a damn ! What's it all about ? Ya know what I mean ?!

Cricket !

2006-06-14T21:30:00.000+03:30

Did you know that the young clergies of Qum have got ten cricket teams ?!! A buddy of mine heard it on TV ...

Imagine their league ! ridiculous ! Hooman said it would be like Harry Potter !

This could be a great paparazzi favorite ! The league's leading scorer in his black GMC with Christina Aguilera ...

Trois couleurs

2006-06-14T21:18:00.000+03:30

Great masterpiece by Krzysztof Kieslowski . Of course not my favorite trilogy , but one of the bests I've ever seen . The Polish is the absolute master of visual narration . Watch it and learn to live a better life ! I'm gonna rewatch !

Three One !

2006-06-11T22:16:00.000+03:30

3-1 . A humiliating punishment for those who take everything for granted , for a sick organizing system , for a European man who lets himself treat like an Iranian pervert ,and for the beloved team-melli who can't break up with its long term lover .

This football thing is one of the only and rare opportunities to feel proud of this Iranian being ,and today it let me down again , Hey ya "Pride" thing ! Don't you knock at my door again ! They took you from me long ago and I don't need you anymore ...

World Cup Passion !

2006-06-08T08:55:00.000+03:30

09. 06. 06 . Finally after four years . The date I've been waiting for . I've been a misfortunate fan for the past decade :-( . But this time ?! Seems to be different . The lions are gonna make it this time ! Rooney's gonna be fit . The dream starting eleven ! Cheer up England ! HIIIIIIHAAA ! :D

Look at the old captain ! Holding up the World Cup . I've taken this picture in one of his ecstatic daydreams .Poor godfather ! A bitter farewell to my beloved Team-Melli . Cheer up Branko ! , Cheer up Ardebil ! Cheer up Football Mafia !