Two minutes to midnight, according to the numbers that dwelled beneath the cracked screen of my phone. At this point I had waited for the bus, that clearly was not coming, for about twenty minutes.
Having been possessed and ensnared by cheap demons who did not allow me to spend forty bucks for a cab ride, I was left with only one choice.
I gazed at the gigantic building that was reflecting the full moon's light, masterfully so, as the building's white arched edges were intertwined with the clouds above. I took the lift and entered the Terminal. The appearance of a terminal at midnight is quite predictable. A single person stretched on a row of seats that were intended to accommodate four. Children running around their weary parents. Luggage everywhere. Waiting. Just waiting. This is how people get old, I thought to my self.
I sat down at a corner table in the only cafe open in the whole terminal. The white clock that was hanging above the sleeping African showed 12:10. I knew that the first bus in the morning comes at 7. I ordered a cup of coffee and opened my book (Trauma by Patrick McGrath).
By 3:00 I have had another cup of coffee, finished my book and was observing the night life of the terminal. The children had fallen beside their dozing parents. The few Europeans present were head-deep in their tablets. The cleaning crew had decided to take a rather long smoke break. The moon was at the opposing side of where it was when I came in. As my non existing audience has by now came to expect from me, what I was looking for, and as usual, did not find, was meaning. At least nothing more grand than waiting. Waiting as the meaning of a scenario, since it was all this whole night represented.
By 5:00, to scape the mind-numbing monotony of a terminal at halt, I sat next to the east window and watched the sky for the first bright spear of sunlight to appear. To laugh at the sunrise since you've been up all night is a paroxysm that I think is the manifestation of something that one can call pride.
Two hours later, as I boarded the surprisingly crowded bus I thought to myself, perhaps waiting is necessary. Perhaps for our mind to out-run our body. Or maybe so a bad writer can have something to write about.
Wednesday 18 June 2014
Thursday 12 June 2014
On "A Hanging" by George Orwell
In "A Hanging", Orwell shows us how the prisoners are regarded as none-humans. Their cells, are as cages of animals. How they are considered dead before their execution and any attempt to prolong their lives is questioned and is found surprising by the guards who look at it as an attempt to tamper with their predetermined fate.
Orwell shows us that this regard for the prisoners is not racial as it may occur to some, but an effect of power, As the Burmese royalist laughs the loudest at the humorous remarks made about the dead prisoner.
The translucent moment experienced by the narrator brings him this meaning: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less."
Orwell shows us that this regard for the prisoners is not racial as it may occur to some, but an effect of power, As the Burmese royalist laughs the loudest at the humorous remarks made about the dead prisoner.
The translucent moment experienced by the narrator brings him this meaning: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less."
Wednesday 11 June 2014
On "Why I Write" By George Orwell
I wish I had read Why I Write before I attempted to read any of Orwell's books, because as he said himself, we can not know a writer's intention without being familiar with his earlier work and his background in general.
In this essay he answered a couple of questions that I had queried while reading his books.
One of which was his intention for the structure chosen for his books. In his own words :"I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. ANIMAL FARM was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole."
An other question will surely be his motives to write and how he came to acquire them:"What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art'. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant."
He also talks about his childhood habits, which most of us I think can relate to easily.
Also He listed the four motives that he believed drive each prose writer and are present in all but in different fractions. these four are:
1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.
3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
4. Political purpose. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.
In this essay he answered a couple of questions that I had queried while reading his books.
One of which was his intention for the structure chosen for his books. In his own words :"I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. ANIMAL FARM was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole."
An other question will surely be his motives to write and how he came to acquire them:"What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art'. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant."
He also talks about his childhood habits, which most of us I think can relate to easily.
Also He listed the four motives that he believed drive each prose writer and are present in all but in different fractions. these four are:
1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.
3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
4. Political purpose. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.
Friday 6 June 2014
On "Spike" By George Orwell
George Orwell spent a night in a workhouse (spike) near London and this short essay is based on his real-life experience as a vagrant.
He talked about dealing with confinement. "It is a silly piece of cruelty to confine an ignorant man all day with nothing to do; it is like chaining a dog in a barrel, only an educated man, who has consolations within himself, can endure confinement." I derive from this a comment on the nonproductive system of the spike, not necessarily a cry about the unfair state of treatment that tramps receive, aside from Orwell's view on living within limits.
The dialog with the young carpenter marks an interesting point in the essay. "It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes."
Keeping in mind the earlier conversation between them that included the carpenter's opinions on why the spike is in this condition and that a tramp (a true tramp) is lazy and unproductive by nature, I think Orwell is portraying the character of the carpenter to further emphasize this simple point. Hence justifying the judgmental tone that is sensed throughout the essay.
The ending:"he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand." a tramp is displaying kindheartedness while also shoving the expected and explained uselessness. A delicate touch.
He talked about dealing with confinement. "It is a silly piece of cruelty to confine an ignorant man all day with nothing to do; it is like chaining a dog in a barrel, only an educated man, who has consolations within himself, can endure confinement." I derive from this a comment on the nonproductive system of the spike, not necessarily a cry about the unfair state of treatment that tramps receive, aside from Orwell's view on living within limits.
The dialog with the young carpenter marks an interesting point in the essay. "It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes."
Keeping in mind the earlier conversation between them that included the carpenter's opinions on why the spike is in this condition and that a tramp (a true tramp) is lazy and unproductive by nature, I think Orwell is portraying the character of the carpenter to further emphasize this simple point. Hence justifying the judgmental tone that is sensed throughout the essay.
The ending:"he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand." a tramp is displaying kindheartedness while also shoving the expected and explained uselessness. A delicate touch.
Sunday 1 June 2014
On "Mary" by Vladimir Nabokov
Once again I am taken by Nabokov's stimulating and profound understanding of the human condition.
In Mary, his debut novel, we can clearly see the genius of Nabokov's style. Characters carefully chosen, to play a certain part in the story. To reminisce about pre-revolutionary Russia (Podtyagin) , which is Ganin's hope and home, where Mary had been captured by his mind. Where Mary had waited for him when he was late. Where Mary had held his hands through the woods that Nabokov describes in such a rousing way. Mary is not as melodramatic as Lolita, though still poignant at times.
An interesting point suggested by a review I read, that in this book we get a stark sense of Nabokov's Russian origin, Compared to his quite American Lolita.
The train, shaking the Pansion by each passing, is Mary's recollection. As Nabokov said:" Memories and shadows. Images of the past that roll through the mind like smoke escaping the bellies of locomotives. A photo. A certain scent. Mary. Mary is coming."
I have to admit, in spite of foreseeing that Mary will never enter the story as her present self, her telegrams aside, I did not expect Nabokov to end this novel with a translucent moment of despair. A defining synchrony.
In Mary, his debut novel, we can clearly see the genius of Nabokov's style. Characters carefully chosen, to play a certain part in the story. To reminisce about pre-revolutionary Russia (Podtyagin) , which is Ganin's hope and home, where Mary had been captured by his mind. Where Mary had waited for him when he was late. Where Mary had held his hands through the woods that Nabokov describes in such a rousing way. Mary is not as melodramatic as Lolita, though still poignant at times.
An interesting point suggested by a review I read, that in this book we get a stark sense of Nabokov's Russian origin, Compared to his quite American Lolita.
The train, shaking the Pansion by each passing, is Mary's recollection. As Nabokov said:" Memories and shadows. Images of the past that roll through the mind like smoke escaping the bellies of locomotives. A photo. A certain scent. Mary. Mary is coming."
I have to admit, in spite of foreseeing that Mary will never enter the story as her present self, her telegrams aside, I did not expect Nabokov to end this novel with a translucent moment of despair. A defining synchrony.
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