The Girl without a fixed Postcode

Weightless

2010-09-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

Outside, just killing time and making noise
Outside, the daylight comes, the daylight goes
Weightless affairs that weigh less than air weighs
Make no stairways, just stairs, goes nowhere
Don�t dream that it�s a dream it is what it seems
That it�s a dream it is what it seems

Climbing from over-stimulated states
To hearing cold radio and license plates
But don�t dream that it�s a dream it is what it seems
That it�s a dream it is what is seems

Behind every desire is another one
Waiting to be liberated when the first one�s sated

Water-skiing, the water�s soft, the water�s hard
You act nice, a black birthday card, I threw it away
Grown-up life is like eating speed or flying a plane
It�s too bright, it�s too bright

White and black hats
Hide behind each other�s backs
All the time

Behind every desire is another one
Waiting to be liberated when the first one�s sated

The 20th Century's 100 Best Books in English

2010-02-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

This list of 100 novels was drawn up by the editorial board of Modern Library. Where possible, book titles have been linked to either the original New York Times review or a later article about the book.

1. "Ulysses," James Joyce

2. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce

4. "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov

5. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

6. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

7. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

8. "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler

9. "Sons and Lovers," D. H. Lawrence

10. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

11. "Under the Volcano," Malcolm Lowry

12. "The Way of All Flesh," Samuel Butler

13. "1984," George Orwell

14. "I, Claudius," Robert Graves

15. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf

16. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser

17. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Carson McCullers

18. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut

19. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

20. "Native Son," Richard Wright

21. "Henderson the Rain King," Saul Bellow

22. "Appointment in Samarra," John O' Hara

23. "U.S.A." (trilogy), John Dos Passos

24. "Winesburg, Ohio," Sherwood Anderson

25. "A Passage to India," E. M. Forster

26. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James

27. "The Ambassadors," Henry James

28. "Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. "The Studs Lonigan Trilogy," James T. Farrell

30. "The Good Soldier," Ford Madox Ford

31. "Animal Farm," George Orwell

32. "The Golden Bowl," Henry James

33. "Sister Carrie," Theodore Dreiser

34. "A Handful of Dust," Evelyn Waugh

35. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner

36. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren

37. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder

38. "Howards End," E. M. Forster

39. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

40. "The Heart of the Matter," Graham Greene

41. "Lord of the Flies," William Golding

42. "Deliverance," James Dickey

43. "A Dance to the Music of Time" (series), Anthony Powell

44. "Point Counter Point," Aldous Huxley

45. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway

46. "The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad

47. "Nostromo," Joseph Conrad

48. "The Rainbow," D. H. Lawrence

49. "Women in Love," D. H. Lawrence

50. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller

51. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer

52. "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth

53. "Pale Fire," Vladimir Nabokov

54. "Light in August," William Faulkner

55. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac

56. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett

57. "Parade's End," Ford Madox Ford

58. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton

59. "Zuleika Dobson," Max Beerbohm

60. "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy

61. "Death Comes to the Archbishop," Willa Cather

62. "From Here to Eternity," James Jones

63. "The Wapshot Chronicles," John Cheever

64. "The Catcher in the Rye," J. D. Salinger

65. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess

66. "Of Human Bondage," W. Somerset Maugham

67. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad

68. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis

69. "The House of Mirth," Edith Wharton

70. "The Alexandria Quartet," Lawrence Durrell

71. "A High Wind in Jamaica," Richard Hughes

72. "A House for Ms. Biswas," V. S. Naipaul

73. "The Day of the Locust," Nathaniel West

74. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway

75. "Scoop," Evelyn Waugh

76. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Muriel Spark

77. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce

78. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling

79. "A Room With a View," E. M. Forster

80. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

81. "The Adventures of Augie March," Saul Bellow

82. "Angle of Repose," Wallace Stegner

83. "A Bend in the River," V. S. Naipaul

84. "The Death of the Heart," Elizabeth Bowen

85. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad

86. "Ragtime," E. L. Doctorow

87. "The Old Wives' Tale," Arnold Bennett

88. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London

89. "Loving," Henry Green

90. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

91. "Tobacco Road," Erskine Caldwell

92. "Ironweed," William Kennedy

93. "The Magus," John Fowles

94. "Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys

95. "Under the Net," Iris Murdoch

96. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron

97. "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles

98. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain

99. "The Ginger Man," J. P. Donleavy

100. "The Magnificent Ambersons," Booth Tarkington

J. D. Salinger: Tribute to Author of my favourite Book!

2010-01-29T02:39:00.000-08:00

Catcher in The Rye:
This i believe to be the best book ever written, only second perhaps to 'The Great Gatsby'

Below is a times piece on J.D.Salinger, a writer perhaps only known for 'Catcher in the Rye' which is also a poem by a different author
After receiving critical acclaim for his short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish, which was published in The New Yorker in 1948, J. D. Salinger shot to worldwide fame with his novel The Catcher in the Rye, which appeared in 1951. With its disenchanted adolescent anti-hero, perpetually at war with adulthood, especially as embodied in his own parents, it seemed to encapsulate the mood of an entire generation. Perhaps more remarkably it simultaneously exercised a considerable effect on that generation’s behaviour.

Its protagonist Holden Caulfield instantly became the symbol of teenage alienation in America and his influence spread rapidly across the Atlantic. Not merely, as is so often the case, for his own generation, but for those that followed, the character of Caulfield continued to stand for the seeming impossibility for the younger generation of communicating in any meaningful way not only with their parents but also with the friends and associates of those parents. When the Sixties opened, with teenage rebellion in Western society taking on a different hue and, under the influence of rock’n’roll, sexual emancipation and drugs, having apparently a different set of preoccupations, the gospel of Catcher in the Rye remained as potent as ever. The novel continued to sell about a quarter of a million copies a year.

Such a critical and popular success, positioning its author as it did, as the apostle of adolescence, was hard to follow. Like many authors before and after him, Salinger could hardly be expected to match it. Indeed, the rest of his creative life was not prolific and he retired to New Hampshire where, as a semi-recluse, he attempted to fend off biographers and fans. In this he was largely successful until in succession in 1999 and 2000, a former lover and the daughter of his second marriage published their memoirs which, as such things will tend to do, caused a great sensation on the score of what they revealed about Salinger’s apparent shortcomings, in the first instance as a partner in a relationship, in the second as a father.

Jerome David Salinger was born in New York in 1919, the son of a kosher cheese salesman of Polish ancestry, and his wife, who was a convert to Judaism. After attending a number of state schools, he was educated for his ninth and tenth grades at McBurney School in Manhattan, where he threw himself into acting.
But with his father determined that he should not be an actor, and his mother, as he saw it, overprotective, in 1934 he entered Valley Forge Military Academy, Pennsylvania. He spent two years there, graduating in 1936. While there he edited the academy’s yearbook Crossed Sabres. More important, in this robust and not wholey congenial ambience he began writing short stories.

He spent what he called a “happy tourist’s year” in Europe, where he had gone ostensibly to learn about the meat importing business at his father’s behest, in 1937-38. Altogether he attended three universities: New York, Ursinus College (Collegeville, Pennsylvania), and Columbia. The result of this was, he later tersely wrote, “no degrees”.

In the spring of 1942, a few months after America had been drawn into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Salinger was drafted into the US Army, where he was to serve until demobilisation in 1946. After training he was posted to the 12th Infantry Regiment in the Fourth Infantry Division of the US Army — most of the time as a staff sergeant — through five campaigns. As the build-up of American forces in Britain developed apace with the preparations for the Allied invasion of occupied Europe, he was stationed in England, at Tiverton, Devon, and he was among those who landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

He saw service throughout the Allied advance through North West Europe, notably during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944-45. He was assigned to a counter-intelligence unit in which he interrogated German prisoners. His wartime experiences, which included witnessing the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp, affected him deeply. He later told his daughter: “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nostrils — no matter how long you live.”

One of the personal benefits of the war was that Salinger met Ernest Hemingway, a writer he much admired, who was working as a war correspondent in Paris. He found Hemingway to be utterly unlike the rough, tough, brusque, outdoors, literary lion he was expecting and shyly mentioned to him a story Slight Rebellion in Manhattan, which he had written in 1941 and offered to The New Yorker. The magazine had accepted it, but on the outbreak of war had changed its mind. The story, with its disaffected adolescent Manhattan hero, was very much a sketch for The Catcher in the Rye, and scarcely exemplified the qualities of manly fortitude that an America under attack by a deadly foe was expecting from its young generation. The New Yorker eventually published it in 1946.

Salinger had, in fact, published his first story, The Young Folks, in the magazine Story in 1940; he felt this at the time to be a “late start”, but he continued to publish short stories at regular intervals throughout the war.

These created a good deal of interest among the discriminating, but it was not until The Catcher in the Rye, his first and only novel, that he achieved acclaim. It became not only a bestseller, but soon achieved the academic accolade of being set as a text for examinations in English speaking countries all over the world.

It is the story of the teenage Holden Caulfield — told by himself in the form of a meditation while he is confined in a West Coast clinic some months later — adrift in New York for several days, after he has been expelled from his school. The Catcher in the Rye, undoubtedly Salinger’s most important book, gave a first-person account of a late adolescent for whom everything is in suspense; he seeks to make contact, but meets only “phonies” (the book gave this word an added dimension which it has not lost). The one teacher he likes turns out to be homosexual, and he cannot relate to him. The only person he can relate to, in his semi-articulate despair, is a ten-year-old girl, his sister. Salinger here gave an absolutely authentic pre-hippy, pre-dropout account of postwar youth’s drastic rejection of its parents and their values.

Later and more aggressive sociological manifestations of this rejection, though different from Holden Caulfield’s, remain rooted in it. Apart from conveying an almost dazzingly pure impression of an essentially innocent young man lost in a hostile world, unable to find love when he needs it, The Catcher in the Rye is a historically important documentary account of disaffected youth, more effective perhaps than many a non-fictional analysis of the condition.

With the appearance of this book Salinger became acknowledged as a classic writer, and, despite the long silence of his later years, no one has seen fit to challenge his status — even if a few have expressed reservations about the measure of its literary achievement. In its own inimitable way, The Catcher in the Rye is as firmly entrenched in the American literary canon as Huckleberry Finn.

I would like to stop thinking

2010-01-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered what and how it would feel like to just stop thinking?
Because i cant stop thinking,when i am talking to people my mind cant help wandering off to far away lands, my heart skips a beat and i have to stop,put my hand to my chest just to make sure its still there, i stop to feel my heart beat and are grateful when i hear the tiny murmur
I stop, heave and sigh of relief, smile and raise my face to look at him again;

At this stage, i release a small laugh,as i just remembered a joke he made minutes ago

2010-01-04T11:43:00.001-08:00

"Those lips that love's own hand did make"

Those lips that love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said "I hate,"
To me that languished for her sake.
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet.
"I hate" she altered with an end
That followed it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who, like a fiend,
From heaven to hell is flown away.
"I hate" from hate away she threw.
And saved my life, saying "not you."

Am not in love with you..BUT

2010-01-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Hogmanay! I was there and it was the highlight of this year

2010-01-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year from Edinburgh’s Hogmanay.

I never thought i could miss someone so much

2010-01-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

Some how i thought i could change you
You were a jerk some of the times, but you also make me smile and laugh
I love how you had the biggest grin,a boyish grin that made you get away with any thing
The best day was discovering that hidden spot where it felt we were on top of the world and away from everyone, thats the day i changed my mind about you
I like how my hand fit perfectly in your hand, and how i felt right at home walking right next to you and with you
I liked that our conversations never run dry and we talked about the most random of things, it didnt matter because i liked listening to your theories
You said life is a movie, and everyone you encountered was an extra, somehow i thought i was your leading lady and not an extra
Our story wasnt a fly on the wall, i actually thought it could be edited a little bit longer, scenes added to it, story lines included
I guess in the end i too was an extra, not your leading lady like i had thought
One would think i'd be mad, but i am not.
I miss you, and i am glad for the happy memories we had, chats we had, kisses shared, hugs that felt right at home
I wont forget you and wish you all the best with life, i pray that you will find what it is you were looking for

Very Interesting

2009-11-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

Apparently men now have to be coached on how to be gentlemen!

This one is called; How to Exit a Room Like a Man
So how do you leave a social event without being awkward and offending your host? And how do you make sure people remember you fondly?

Below, we set out some guidelines so you can leave a social event with confidence and class.

1. Know when to leave. No matter how smoothly you do it, it’s impossible to leave a social event politely if you exit at the wrong time. Even if you know the party is a disaster from the minute you walk in, you have to put in minimum cameo time. For a come and go kind of function, this minimum is about an hour. At a dinner party, this comes after the after-dinner coffee has been served. If you need to leave before these times for an important reason, tell the host or hostess as soon as you arrive. But generally, if you can’t make it for the minimum cameo time, it’s better not to come at all. It’s awkward to leave in the middle of dinner or to circle the room once before exiting back out the door. Your first and last impression will be one in the same, and not a very good one at that.

Once the minimum time has been met, either wait to make your exit as the party starts winding down or, if you’re having a terrible time, simply make the executive decision to get the heck out of dodge.

2. Stand up. When they feel it’s time to leave, most folks start to squirm in their seat and say things like, “Weeelll…. it’s getting late.” Then they just keep on sitting on their duffs looking awkwardly at their watch. Don’t dilly dally. If you’re ready to leave, then show that you are. Standing up shows you’re committed to leaving.

Now, don’t be abrupt about it. That’s just as awkward as squirming in your seat and looking side-to-side for a means to escape. Stand-up smoothly and confidently. While you’re standing, simply say, “Well I must be leaving.” Never give an excuse for why you have to leave. An excuse can make your hostess feel unimportant and force you to sheepishly explain yourself all the way to the door.

If you want to be particularly suave about your transition from sitting to standing, try this trick. When you’re ready to leave, wait for a pause in the conversation and start a short story. Make it an engrossing, entertaining story. You want to leave them laughing. As you tell the story, start standing up. You can even start putting on your coat and hat as you spin your yarn. Walk next to your host when you reach the story’s climax. Give a quick wink to the group, and…

3. Hold out your hand. Alright, you’re standing up. What do you do now? This is a crucial moment. If you don’t continue on your path towards the door, your host and the other guests will likely start wrapping their tentacles around you to hold you hostage for another round of Parcheesi.

As soon as you’re on your feet, offer your hand to your host. Give a good firm handshake. If appropriate, offer a man hug or kiss on the cheek if it’s a lady or a European dude. Most people who are socially adept will see that you’re serious about leaving and will usher you to the door and see you out. However, some people will still try to get you to stay.

4. Say “Thanks!” and “Goodbye.”As you’re shaking hands, thank your host or whoever you’re with for the hospitality and the conversation. Look them in the eyes, give them a big smile, and compliment the host on something specific you enjoyed about the evening. “Thank you for dinner! Your pumpkin pie is the best I’ve ever had!” Give a pleasant “goodbye” or “see you later.” Also, direct your goodbyes to the other people in the group.

5. Gather your things. You don’t want to leave anything that will cause you to come back after you’ve left. This only opens up the chance of getting sucked back into social purgatory. And it bursts the warm memory the host and remaining guests started forming about you as soon as you left. Grab your coat and hat and your wife’s coat and clutch. Make sure you have your cell phones. If you do happen to leave something, wait until tomorrow to come pick it up.

6. Walk to the door with confidence. Inertia can get the best of a man at this point. If you don’t start walking towards the door, you might find yourself sitting back down. Once you make your move to the door, do so with confidence and determination. Don’t stop to admire Grandma’s china cabinet or you risk getting a 10-minute lecture on the cabinet’s history from the Civil War to the present day.

7. Open the door.You’ve reached the door. You’re almost there, but you’re still at risk of having your departure needlessly delayed with awkward chatter. A well-mannered host will open the door for you and see you out. However, some people have either not been taught this bit of courtesy or if they have, they’ve forgotten it. The individuals in the latter group also seem to be the type that will strike up conversations in the doorway for another 15 minutes. If you don’t take matters in your own hands by opening the door, you’re doomed to listen to your wife’s co-worker talk about how she has a busy day making name tags for a convention tomorrow and the eating habits of her cats. If your host doesn’t open the door for you, do it yourself as soon as you reach the door. Once you open the door, step out. Keep your feet planted outside; even if the host continues to talk to you, the inside/outside dichotomy will soon compel them to close the door and send you on your way.

8. Walk away. Say your final goodbyes and pleasantries and walk to your car. Tip your hat (you are wearing a hat, aren’t you?) for the final charming touch. Mission accomplished! A few minutes more and you’ll be back in your man chair, sitting by the fire, and reading The Art of Manliness.