all dry and english slow

Sitting still and warmly clad (relatively, of course, to my as-yet-still-recent Indian expeditions) in a hotel room somewhere in northern Finland, on our way to find the northern-most point of Europe.

A recent trip to Amsterdam allows me to fill up some of the impending emptiness of this blog-content with a recommendation, go here: http://www.corbijn.co.uk/

Also, other entertainments of recent times included a minor reunion with some Eurotripping friends, which provided us, the Dutch, that is, with much opportunity for 'my city is better than yours'ness and some proud 'eat this food' culinary mishaps (including a frozen kaassouffle).

Having now caught a cold and ambling along to the tunes of Animal Collective, I leave you with little greetings from Santa-land and some tales of India still on the production line to come.

afterimage ecstasy

(Les Savy Fav at Metropolis, source)

It has been and will be a busy couple of days, so sitting amidst the piles of plans, clothing and items amassed over years and travels, I once again leave you with words not mine to fill some holes.

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more) by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.

I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

scatter like a billion spores

(Hampi, second travel week)

"Padma can hear it: there's nothing like a countdown for building suspense. I watched my dung-flower at work today, stirring vats like a whirlwind, as if that would make the time go faster. (And perhaps it did; time, in my experience, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay's electric power supply. Just telephone the speaking clock if you don't believe me - tied to electricity, it's usually a few hours wrong. Unless we're the ones who are wrong ... no people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for' tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.)"
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start

(Mia Nolting)

Some rather nice drawings I found rather a while ago, that have been patiently sitting in my folder of found wonders, waiting for yet another of my forages for substitute imagery, instigated by my lack of recent travel documentation (it's coming, it's coming!).

I'm back in the lovely lowlands again, calmly doing not very much and slowly reacquainting myself with the ways of reality - bikes, full closets, a far crisper/colder summer and people I haven't seen in too long. So far, I've seen Jamie Cullum play a brilliant set at Parkpop, been out for minor reunions during the evening times and attempted to unpack (the latter being quite easily deviated from, what with the calls of chats, books, cheese, baking, friends and speedy internet, amongst other things).

I'll be getting my photos put into some sort of digital format soon, and will filter through some travel stories too, so the past month of traveling up north - from Ladakh to Delhi to Calcutta to Sikkim to Darjeeling to Bombay - will be fleshed out and coloured in soon!