Essays in Love: Books that fall into your life..

On a spring day in Neemrana, I was handed Essays in Love. There were so many things happening then, that shed light around this event like rainbow crystals, so many tears, so much joy and some of the days that surely I would remember as the most difficult in my life. So when the book fell into my life it was something that I wanted to throw out before I even picked it up.

Alain de Botton irritates me.. this maybe because I started at the wrong end of him, Somewhere in the middle of a messy break up do you really want to be handed a book that explodes the frailty of coupledom and love right from inside.. that forces you instead of looking at a cataclysmic moment in your life, rewind and look at your life like a bomb exploding caught in slow motion that makes it seem like the catastrophe started happening just minutes after the first post coital moment you had together.

Ah!!! Now that i think about it.. I can see the seeds of destruction in that conversation already. (riiiight!!!)

But there are good things to say about him as well. Alain De Botton takes away all anxieties from imperfect people who worry that they look bad in this light and from that angle, whose arse looks large from the side and whose stomach protudes a bit, whose teeth might be askew and whose hair (and this is meant for you, you perfectly coired AfroQueen.. who just went bald before this post went up!) doesn't quite ever discover its true personality (am i straight, curly, rough, silky???)... Anyway for all those flawed, Alain De Botton gives hope.. he says you never fall in love with those who are perfect in every light from every angle.. you fall in love with those who reveal their beauty in a suddenness .. only in a certain light (soft yellow lighting, left side only please)

The Romantic Movement is a better exploration of what the woman goes through during the course of an affair, though it actually ends up being more patronising. Very sweetly at one point he admits that he's the intelligent man's self help book, akin to why couples fight or men are from mars, women are from venus, and you wonder why he quoted the whole galaxy of philosophers to you.

To take a slight detour .. if you've seen the movie Elizabethtown (one of Cameron Crowe's not so great films) .. it has within it one of the most amazing gifts that a human being can give another. A road map for the body, soul, a music map, a map of sights, of sounds, of places to eat and of trees under which to dance alone and of farmer's markets where to find the one they could love...

If I had to make that map to deal with loss of a feeling so dear to your soul, then Alain de Botton is one of those brightly blinking lights on that map, for sure. To argue with, to lie down next to still bickering and complaining, to smooth your lines and put you to sleep, to slip in the slenderest of erotic possibilities of the future into your soul and still hold your hand and watch you the next day as tears fill your eyes at what you've lost.

i definitely got my boobies...

cheeky bookish thoughts

Close, close all night by Elizabeth Bishop
(this poem on the underground in london.. though you never see the graphitti version actually, only the glossy clear version of it on the side of the tube... )

Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,

Close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.


.....
but it always makes me ask ..

what if i'm a voracious reader
what if i want a pulp novel thats fast and racy
elmore leonard winking at me, and then getting over soon
with no traces the next day but a buzz, a sense
that i could turn the corner and someone with a gun smoking
and a drawl will be standing there, somewhere reminescent of
china town strung between hilarity and tragedy
- she's my sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter

what if you want a sweet lesbian short story, what if you
want an anthology collection of lesbian erotica, what if
you want a pornographic story of O, with plots and twists
that make you cum and then leave your brain next
day wet as a sponge, unable to absorb anything except
someone murmuring.. so how is pussy cat today?

what if you want to read that favourite book again, but speed read
what if you only want to read certain chapters, or rather just
be able to say when this book prances up to you of its own will
and you reach out to it, we'll read chapter 9- the emergence of the anus

what if you want the dizzy graphic novel, with surreal images,
drunk nights and super heroes dashing into the sky to save
the world that you're desperately trying to escape

what if you want to write into a book, make notes, help it out
and tell it .. your grammer sucks man, and your sense of narration
really?? what if its a good book gone bad, or awry, atleast for you..
and you're like .. oh please, and you just let it be
.. and life happens because pages turn

what if you want that book on beauty to fall into your lap
to swivel past you in stunning glory, to fill you up as it leads
you up the steps, winks and turns to you, stands by you and yet
laughs at you and with you.. what if you then also become a book
and we nestle our pages together, sweetly turning, spooning each
other on different shelves .. and in turn and in different ways

what if you write that book into existence, what if you read
that other book into yourshelf .. what if you have a whole
library, what if there are too many interesting books
in the world that you're just dying to read, what if it
never ends, what if desire chases around and around, what if
one book never replaces another, what if tears blur the words
we read, what if our sight is always clear and is always reaching
for more....
what if it never ever ends...
and then when it seems like it might..
you can see all those movies they've made of books .. and you can start all over again..

one reason why i love closer: its gives a toaster to bob

in my spitting of online venom about closer, i find this .. awww, the internet is my saviour from bitterness.

enough angst: 10 reasons why i haaaaate closer

1. it only deals with paradigms of monogamy and fidelity. in the same way that stupid academic discussions critique heteronormativity on grounds of monogamy (as if thats the only thing wrong with it??). Which in any case is ridiculous because monogamy doesn't exist amongst heterosexual couples.... if at all, it exists in lesbian relationships :-D

2. it gives one the illusion that you fall out of love and in love oh so easily by looking. I see .. Natalie Portman with red hair - press button - enter state of love. I see idiotic man asking me ridiculous question about inane sexual encounter while I was not obligated to him, for the thousandth fucking time (BTDT, BTDT i.e. been there, done that) ... press button.. fall out of love

Yeah, right.. if it was that easy?

3. good music, repetitive music, music that holds you.. music that can then start irritating you to the point that you want to break anything

4. hmmmffff... it fucks iwth london. don't fuck with london. i like london. fuck with new york. i haven't been there.

5. there are apparently only 4 options in this world to fuck. and even amongst them there are only the obvious heterosexual counterparts... apart from not allowing even the slightest teeniest weeniest glimmer of queer readings. its like someone took a huge scissor and said - i'm going to make sure these film scholar types have nuuuuuuthing to work with. no no no queerness. snip snip snip.

6. now apart from that.. no one fucks or even flirts with anyone else but the four. where did the rest of the world go? seriously????? are they just backdrops.. cardboard characters who walk around in the gallery opening. so this is how it is.. someone's legs have opened for you and you will not take the effort of finding anyone else, because loook.. these are like the penultimate people .. we paid so much money to get these stars.. no you can't fuck anyone else
so what if we've already seen that in your idle hours you are in cyber sex chat rooms and willing to meet the worst cyber sex-er in person

7. the women never really smile.. unless its in the first stages of being coquettish and getting the guy. from there.. weeeeeee... its a downhill journey
the men don't smile at all.. if they do later on, it looks like a - you know, i rather be wanking off alone than doing this relationship crap - grimace

8. Stupid questions like -- did you go down on her? did she go down on you? Is s/he better in bed? Ofcourse he went down on her.. if you are a woman worth anything, you should have whip lashed the man into going down on a woman. It doesn't matter how jealous you are... its necessary, so shut your own trap.

if anything you should be ashamed if he sticks to those familiar patterns that some men have -- oral sex as a glorious gift only to be delivered on good behaviour, oral sex as the new penetration (i always thought finger fucking was kinda sexier, and then i made out with a woman and figured out why.. there' s something about oral sex that is actually more distant), or sex first and then oral sex.. which is okay, but its kinda nicer if i'm already there atleast somewhat..

9. sex can be compared apparently. In closer one of the women says - he's rougher than you in bed, but i prefer you. since when did fucking different people become excel sheets on matters of hardness, prettiness, skinniness... its not, its usually very different experiences.

10. contradictions, contradictions .. according to closer (yes, i do really hate it) contradictions are embodied in different people separately.. not in one person. so no one can simultaneously be in love, hate, be affectionate, patronizing towards someone.. or just have the space to be slightly schizoid.

we're all one singularity contained within the limitations of one skin ...

11 (one extra reason!). i just hate it.. is that enough?

Trafalgar Square, 27th March, 2007

I finally concede beauty to another country .. and ofcourse strangely it is england from a half japanese household, england with tea and biscuits, london with luvs and poncy arse fuckers (oh so many!) .. two feet from daffodils and a knowledge of dover bitch vs dover beach I must say (imagine faint whiskers on old lady's chin) that this strange land with its customs and habits has a flair uniquely its own ..

(apparently poncy arse fuckers is objectionable according to my current travel companion. he says he hasn't really seen any.. )