Un peu de Paradis :)

Nouvelle Vague & Vanessa Paradis - ''Couleurs sur Paris'' (2010) - ''Week-end à Rome''

Asculta mai multe audio pop

Man and Wife

"The stars are like photographs. You can read into them what you will. You can believe that they measure all you have lost, or you can believe that they represent all you have loved, and continue to love."

"Life holds hostage all those we love."

"It was all or nothing with this woman. That's why I loved her - and I can say that now. I loved her. But she wasn't cut out for an affair. The right girl in so many ways, she was the wrong girl to play that role. She was a romantic. Say what you like about those starry - eyed souls, about the upheaval and destruction they always leave in their wake, but there is one thing about romantics that nobody can deny. They never settle for second best."

"Sometimes we have to stay away from the things we love, and learn to appreciate the things we need."

Oranges ARE the Only Fruit :)

To play with Jeanette Winterson's words, this month you can only have oranges... No, I am not imposing on you to only eat oranges, but to only read books that were longlisted, shortlisted or winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction. The lists of books are on the side bar, and you can find more information on the Orange Prize here.
The Orange Prize is all about women writers and the books that you can discover are fascinating: "Gut Symmetries" or "The Powerbook" (Jeanette Winterson), "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (Tracy Chevalier), "The Lovely Bones" (Alice Sebold), "The Time Traveler's Wife" (Audrey Niffenegger) and the list can go on.
I have read books nominated long before knowing about the prize, but a few weeks ago I discovered there's an Orange January/July challenge and I am taking part right at this very moment, reading "The Night Watch", by Sarah Waters.
Hopefully, the next one will be "The History of Love" :)

The Ice Man

"When I cry, the ice man kisses my cheek, and my tears turn to ice. He takes those frozen teardrops in his hand and puts them on his tongue. "See how I love you," he says. He is telling the truth."

Once you rediscover Murakami, there is no going back. :)

"The Ice Man" is a story that you can't forget easily. It's about love that persists below zero degrees. It starts in a ski resort, with HER being drawn towards HIM.
“…I couldn’t help myself. I had to talk to him. This was my last night in the hotel and if I let this chance pass I probably would never have another."



After dating every week in Tokyo, talking only about her, they finally fall in love and decide to get married.
“I fell deeply in love with him, and he came to love me, the present me, apart from any past or future. And I came to love the Ice Man for who he is now, apart from any past or future…the Ice Man was the first person I’d ever truly loved”
Because no one accepts the Ice Man, and by consequence the narrator, she does not have friends or family to talk to, so loneliness invades her.
The story ends “in the coldest, loneliest place in the world”, the South Pole, where she eventually discovers that her heart is frozen, and also that... but here's the whole story. Enjoy! :)

Sputnik Sweetheart

"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do."

My first encounter with Haruki Murakami happened years ago, when I was offered two of his books, "The Elephant Vanishes" and "A Wild Sheep Chase". I liked them, but I also found them a bit strange and I wasn't very eager to go back to other works. That was until I decided to read "Norwegian Wood" for The Japanese Literature Challenge (and discovered that there's a Murakami Challenge taking place as well)but things almost never turn out as planned, so I started reading "Sputnik Sweetheart" instead and I was MESMERIZED. Sure, different times, different self, but what an incredible writer I have rediscovered!!!!




"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."

Murakami's writing is quite different from that of a European writer and the way he takes you into the story and leaves you to wander between the real and the surreal is truly unique.
The story is about Sumire, a twenty two year old girl, with plans to become a (famous) writer and K., her best friend and madly in love with Sumire but whose love is never returned. Once Sumire meets Miu, a sophisticated businesswoman, the plot starts to develop and we find Sumire drawn towards Miu, while K. is the spectator of their (strange) relationship. The love traingle turns into a mystery when Sumire suddenly disappears on a Greek island and Miu calls K. to help find her. This is the moment when K. discovers things "out of this world" about Miu and a possible answer to Sumire's disappearance.

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."

Murakami gave the story such a surprising ending when six months later Sumire calls just to say “Hey, I’m back. Come and get me.”, then the phone cuts off. Is it a hallucination or Sumire is really back, and back from where exactly?
I found the whole story intriguing and it left me thinking if such things are possible... What things? Well, you'll have to read the novel if you want to know more.:)

"The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time."

Emotional

Banana ... Yoshimoto

"I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy." (N.P.)

I heard about Banana Yoshimoto a few years ago, when Humanitas published her novel "Kitchen", but I didn't manage to read it or other books by this author,whose real name is Yoshimoto Mahoko, until this week, when I came across N.P.



N.P. (North Point) is the name of an old song and the book of ninety seven stories that an obscure writer called Takase Sarao wrote before committing suicide, and the newly found ninety eighth story makes its translator kill himself as well. The characters seem to linger between possessing and being possessed, moving towards one another with the slow pace of the burning sun during a hot summer day.
Kazami, the narrator of the story befriends Takase's twins, Otohiko and Saki, but later in the novel develops a strange relationship with Sui, the lover but also daughter of Takase himself. Between incest and melancholy, the characters go in search of passion just to find the obsession of suicide, as a curse for those who get near the ninety eighth story... Will they go beyond this presumed curse to find just the sad love story of a summer? It's for you to discover...

Book Binge

"If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited."
— Schopenhauer



More often than not I am trying to stick to these words, but then I find myself wondering: "What makes a book worth reading?". I usually read books whose authors I am familiar with and I really enjoy their style, but this has also been the year of new discoveries: ONE DAY by David Nicholls is still among my top ten favorite books; Tony Parsons is a writer I will keep on reading, since I love the authentic way in which he portraits relationships and people in their 30s with the (un)necessary struggles they have to face; I finally read Borges - Aleph - a collection of stories - and I found him too cryptic for my taste; I had a second and yet unforgettable encounter with Alice Sebold and her "Lucky" memoir and with Marc Levy whose third book "Le premier jour" I am about to finish, but what thrilled me the most in these six months (bookwise) was reading the letters of Anais Nin and Henry Miller. The passion between them was out of this world and I am sure it's going to be one of those books I will always return to.
What other books await me? I will be going back to Haruki Murakami due to the Japanese Literature Challenge I entered and I will keep on reading about teaching ESL reading for my dissertation. Also, I will try to discover why FRENCH WOMEN DON'T GET FAT, but that's for another post :)

Word of the Day 5

JAYWALKING

Lucky

"I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand"



"Lucky" is the story of a girl being raped; it is in fact Alice Sebold's memoir of her own rape that had taken place eighteen years before the publication of the book. If you are familiar with "The Lovely Bones", then this book, rather unfortunately, is better written, with short sentences that aim for the heart finding you with tears in your eyes. If you haven't read anything by Sebold, then it's high time you got down to some powerful, yet sad reading. Why? Simply because life is not just about laughter.

P.S. Careful! This is not a comfortable book. Some phrases might leave you speechless, since Sebold's confessions are gut-wrenching and disturbing.

"I knew, now that I had been raped, I should try to look good for my parents. Having gained the regulation freshman fifteen meant that my skirt that day fit. I was trying to prove to them and to myself that I was still who I had always been. I was beautiful, if fat. I was smart, if loud. I was good, if ruined."

"No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

Getting Old(er) and Wise(r)...

Shakespeare Rapping :)

"As you sow, so shall you reap" - Paulo Coelho and his secrets

Question: What do you do after you meet your favorite writer, that is Paulo Coelho?
Answer: You read his official biography! :)

After having read "A Warrior's Life: A Biography of Paulo Coelho" I could not help but marvel at Paulo's incredible strength and character. Surely, people interested in glimpses of his life before becoming the best selling writer that he is today know about the time he spent in psychiatric hospitals, his travels around the United States and Europe with of without (a) wife, his involvement in witchcraft... BUT this biography brings along facts and details never mentioned before, mainly due to the fact that Paulo's official biographer, Fernando Morais, had access to 170 handwritten notebooks and 94 cassette recordings that the writer has kept for more than thirty five years and which he wishes to be burnt when he dies.



Thus, we are able to read extracts written decades ago about Paulo's struggle to become who he is today, his insecurities, his black magic rituals and their effect on him, and we are amazed to discover that he is an incredible person with an incredible dream who had his doubts but never gave up. Here are a few interesting facts about his life:

* the small, white ponytail some 10 cm long is a sikha, the lock of hair worn by Brahmans, orthodox Hindus and Hare Krishna monks.

* he performs a short prayer at least three times a day and also when a plane takes off/lands or a car drives off.

* his favorite cigarettes are Galaxy, a brand found in Brazil.

* after his Pilgrimage brought hundreds of pilgrims a day to Santiago de Compostela, the Galician government named one of the streets of Santiago "Rua Paulo Coelho".

* Hotel Le Bristol of Paris, where Paulo sets parts of "The Zahir" has named a drink from the book as "Le chocolat chaud de Paulo Coehlo".

*when he was young, he didn't enjoy dancing, thinking it would make him ridiculous. (from my experience, he has no problem now :))

* Paulo wrote a parody of Kipling's "If..."

"If you can ask your friends and enemies for a chance.
If you can hear a 'no' and take it as a 'maybe'.
If you can start from the bottom and yet still value the little that you have.
If you can improve yourself each moment and reach the heights without succumbing to vanity.
Then you'll be a writer."

TO BE CONTINUED. SOMETIME.

Bodies

“Bodies”, written by Susie Orbach is one of the books that made me better understand the relation between body and mind. In a world in which the fact that you do not fit the pattern imposed by the ones around you becomes a great tragedy, psychoanalyst Susie Orbach explains why we are anxious when it comes to our bodies and why we sometimes end up hating it so much as to mutilate it, keep diets that make us risk our life, become anorexic and endlessly be preoccupied with the way we look and if we look according to the rules imposed by a society that supports shame towards our bodies through the ideal images imposed by it.

"Like many of us, the people I work with wish to and do reshape their bodies in both small and dramatic ways. They find fault with their bodies and say it makes them feel better, more in control, to improve them. Like most of us, they do not like to believe that they are being unduly influenced by outside pressures and may disdain such an idea, with its crude sense of manipulation. Whether followers of fashion or health trends or not, we take for granted that looking good for ourselves will make us feel good. And yet there is a subtle tracery of outside urgings which works on us, creating a new and often dissatisfied relationship with our bodies."

"The slim aesthetic – with pecs for men and ample breasts for women – bedevils those who don’t conform, and even those who do happen to fit can carry a sorrowful insecurity about their own bodies. A constant fretfulness and vigilance take hold for many from the moment they wake until the time they fall asleep. Their bodies are on high alert. The norm has become to worry. In another time, we would have called such anxieties an illness and, seeing how many suffer, we would have called it an epidemic. But we don’t. We have become so implicated in variants of body preoccupation ourselves, and girls and women in particular so colonized by it, that the preoccupation has become second nature – almost ‘natural’ and invisible."

The majority of the examples and cases presented in the book are shocking and they demonstrate the power of those around us to influence our psyche, whether those around us are tv commercials or our own parents.
“Bodies” has revealed how vulnerable we are to exterior stimuli and it has made me rethink the attitude I have towards my body so that this does not turn into a daily burden.
In short, we are more than our own bodies and from time to time it is of utter importance to remind ourselves of this fact.

My Life in HER Books

The incomparable Jeanette Winterson is talking about the books that marked her life.

Jeanette Winterson: "My Life in Books" with Ann Robertson from pedalo on Vimeo.

Word Clouds

Word clouds

View more presentations from Marisa Constantinides

Bitch?

Bitch

by Carolyn Kizer (1984)

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,
I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.
He isn’t a trespasser anymore,
Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.
My voice says, “Nice to see you,”
As the bitch starts to bark hysterically.
He isn’t an enemy now,
Where are your manners, I say, as I say,
“How are the children? They must be growing up.”
At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,
The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper.
She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe.
Down, girl! Keep your distance
Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain.
“Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him.
She slobbers and grovels.



After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal.
It’s just that she remembers how she came running
Each evening, when she heard his step;
How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly
Though he was absorbed in his paper;
Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen
Until he was ready to play.
But the small careless kindnesses
When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,
Come back to her now, seem more important
Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.
“It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say.
He couldn’t have taken you with him;
You were too demonstrative, too clumsy,
Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends.
“Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag
As I drag you off by the scruff,
Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”

I Love Reading about LOVE

David Levithan's book "The Lover's Dictionary" is a true poem, some even call it a prolonged haiku. I sipped every word hoping I would not have to finish it so soon; I even allowed myself only a few definitions a day in order not to spoil their beauty by taking in too much. When the book ended I wanted to wrap myself up in half the definitions so I would not forget them. Then, I remembered I had a blog :)

* AUTONOMY, n.
"I want my books to have their own shelves," you said, and that's how I knew it would be okay to live together.

* CORRODE, v.
I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open, and it started to rust.

* HUBRIS, n.
Every time I call you mine, I feel like I'm forcing it, as if saying it can make it so. As if I'm reminding you, and reminding the universe: mine. As if that one word from me could have that kind of power.

* QUALM, n.
There is no reason to make fun of me for flossing twice a day.

* YEARNING, n./adj.
At the core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.

Happiness anyone?

Hafiz

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket to protect you.