February 2012
10 posts
“What are you reading?”, I ask. This only the second time I’ve seen her. I already like her. I am very nervous.
“Oh, some Conrad”, the voice confident and clear.
“Do you read much?”, she asks
“Oh, a lot. Mostly Tom Clancy shit though. Need to read more intelligent stuff”
Giggle
“I wish my brother would read more. I hate buying books...
Maps and compasses →
Seth Godin on the topic:
The compass, on the other hand, is more important then ever. If you don’t know which direction you’re going, how will you know when you’re off course?
And yet…
And yet we spend most of our time learning (or teaching) the map, yesterday’s map, while we’re anxious and afraid to spend any time at all calibrating our compass.
Sweep
The police constable’s boot goes straight for Seenu’s jaw.
*Thwack*
It’s a sickening sound and a quarter of the coach I am in turns around to see where it came from. I am 3 ft away from it.
There’s a howl of pain for an instant. Then silence. The rhythmic clack of steel on steel suddenly roars. Dies. And roars again.
“How dare you enter these coaches? Have I told...
That Father Lost →
As one commenter notes, this sublime piece of writing is a meditation:
Two griefs: the first, the departure of him whom we had loved, demands suspension of our normal lives. The second, the departure of those with whom we had grieved, demands resumption.
Also: On fathers and loss.
“No one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to...”
– Philip Pullman
“Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial...”
– Alan Moore
“There’s no remaking reality. Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take...”
– Philip Roth
“That’s what so many people didn’t understand about life. The real world is the...”
– Orson Scott Card
Benaras
Namit Arora shares his experience of visiting Varanasi in this lovely piece on 3QuarksDaily. Go read that.
My only visit to Varanasi was at the end of 2008. Accompanied by a friend, it was a stop on a 6000km pan-country journey whose purpose was somehow never defined, nor spoken about the minute the first train pulled out of the platform.
Getting off at Mughalsarai, we rented an incredibly...
