MoMa

It's good to be back in blogland after a long hiatus. I'm going to take the easy way out and go with pictures instead of words..MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) in NY has some striking, unconventional art on display.

Personally, I like the Impressionists: Monet and gang, but it was hard to resist these..

Radha's blog has some more pics from this fascinating wall.

Word Play

Since I injured my right hand yesterday (blame it on a light door and a strong gust of wind) I've been trying to type with my left hand, and slowly getting better and faster at it. Tedious though. Note to self: become ambidextrous as soon as right hand is back in action.

I've also been using more shortforms than I usually do, in emails and while scrapping, although I try and avoid them usually. But I refuse to use some of this new-fangled language that the internet has given rise too. Some pet peeves:

* It's Could, not cud. Cud reminds me of a cow.

* Would, not wud. Please, lets not lose ourselves in the woods.

* And- not nd. It won't hurt that much to type an additional vowel.

* That- sigh, tat just sucks.

* Girl- I'll never be your gurl if you can't spell straight.

* Friends- frenz is not cool, it's not hip.

* With, what- wit, wat...please, please don't drop your "h's"

* The- d. Imagine "The End" as "D End"

Catchy Lines

JD Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" is supposed to have spoilt a generation of writers by making writing look too easy. I love the book's style, words tripping together to build Holden Caulfield's character and life. There is something very real and honest about the novel as captured by its first line:

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

That got me thinking about other memorable first lines or "hooks" from other books. Here's another favorite from Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude":

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Another brilliant book is "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides, with one of the most creative storylines I've come across. The novel's first line by its protagonist Calliope Stephanides sums up the story succintly:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

Here are a couple of quotes from one of my favorite novels "The Incredible Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera. Although they did not open the novel, they are particularly striking:

"We can never know what we want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it to our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Any more first lines, or memorable quotes from books anyone?

Teasing Eve

I saw this website on Surabhi's blog and was so impressed with it that I had to post it here.

http://blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/

I think its remarkable that women are standing up for themselves and refusing to allow some stranger call them`mirchi' (hot!) on the street. Every woman has been eve-teased at some point. Maybe its just me but I feel that it happened more in India than in the US. But irrespective of where it happened I felt dirty, as if in some way it was my fault, even if I was conservatively clad.

To be appreciated as an attractive woman is one thing, to be viewed as a sex object, another. Most of these conflicts boil down to respect: eve-teasing, abuse and allied issues have a lot to do with how we view women and their place in society. And any real change can only come about if we treat women with the respect we would want our mothers and sisters to be treated with.

Thanks S, for sharing this website. One of the most potent lines of the Blank Noise Project is that `There is no asking for it.'
True.