tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354078682024-02-26T17:34:52.293+00:00Winter HouseSomewhere in the snow. Drowned in the fog. Surrounded by trees all over, deep in the forest, obscured from daylight.
In contemplation...IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-60046609915791485932012-05-17T23:54:00.001+01:002012-05-17T23:56:13.947+01:00A Very British VoteThe recent London mayoral election is in my view something of a revolution. Sure, this may come across as a bit of a hyperbole, but the facts are unsettling: 32% electoral turnout with one polling station in Bristol reporting a measly 6% voting attendance. Not to mention, the Liberal Democrats taking the brunt of the nation’s anger, as they are cornered into fourth place in the race for City Hall by the Greens. These are the facts worthy of mention. Boris Johnson’s re-election and the dire national results for the Tories, well these are merely technicalities – things which were decidedly easy to see looming over the horizon.
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I personally refused to cast a vote. The Boris vs Ken boxing match was a stuffy, malodorous rumble in the urban jungle which only gave endless fodder for the Evening Standard’s editorial section. It was based not so much on promises as political campaigns almost always tend to be, but on a kind of acerbic ego-wrestling which rained pure, vapid negativity onto the already weary electorate. From Ken’s cavalier refusal to clear up his murky tax affairs, to Boris Johnson’s ‘fucking liar’ antics in the BBC lifts, the long-suffering, unemployed, dream-shattered common man became even more of a statistic, as his voice was drowned out by those two proud men’s contumely.
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I was sympathetic to nobody in this election. Ken was more presentable than Boris, nowhere near as clownish but his cheaply populist political decisions, particularly prior to the previous election in 2008 are still hard to ignore. Boris’ politics, on the other hand, seem to rest on what is a typically British peculiarity, namely his quirkiness. You have the messy blonde hair; you have the bulbous face with the Falstaff-like manner: you have Boris. Even his name wades into our subconscious with the trappings of grandeur and that bit more quirkiness. He could effortlessly step into David Jasons’ shoes in Only Fools and Horses, or in more contemporaneous terms, play the lead role in a brusque Little Britain sketch. It is little wonder that predominantly middle-class, ‘leafy’ boroughs of London opted for him and even less of a surprise that my quintessentially British, white workmates swung the ball in the direction of the eccentric Etonian in our own in-house mini-vote. The largely white, relatively well-educated middle class, whose native love for glib remarks and pithy comebacks, vie for his affections. His quirkiness works on a subconscious level for them, and because this segment of the electorate represents mostly people who would usually make an effort to vote, Boris’ chances of winning were ever that bit higher.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-10342872245972787252011-12-17T01:22:00.016+00:002011-12-18T14:00:59.018+00:00HitchEnds<img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 301px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 220px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687272442150436226" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb8Xt7Rk7EAGeSdf1Y6RHLHgH1iozh_fEwEYbtTpaGIlh42AhLP0tXgjh8ZhILnK7H-Jy_0_zHjOm5YwczAkgzUO0H2dzKOzbUe3Hz38eQ8C4SPyBaGqilDcCETbgIWLHdus-s1w/s400/hitchens_cartoon.jpg" /><br /><div>I confess that Christopher Hitchens was a relatively recent literary discovery for me. I got to read his <em>Hitch-22 </em>memoir which was published earlier this year and I developed a liking not necessarily for his views and opinions but for the man himself. A prodigious wordsmith and a rigorous intellectual - he was truly a superior fellow.<br /><br />While I strongly repudiated some of his views in an earlier <a href="http://ipchuk-winterhouse.blogspot.com/2011/08/its-balkan-thing.html">post</a>, I've always been held in awe of the potency of his rhetoric. In interviews, this came across even more brilliantly. Hearing him argue was like listening to David Gilmour sing - a commanding, fatherly voice with an elegantly measured tone. Aside from his brain, it was his greatest asset.<br /><br />If he was drunk for the better part of his life, he damn well sobered up by the end. And a graceful end it was, calmly accepting his fate while fervently rebelling against it. It was a Camusian death, a truly 'happy' one.<br /><br />It seemed to me he always had this inherently human quality about him. He was the arch-nemesis of anything which rendered man soulless, be it a totalitarian regime or an illusive religion, or an empty glass of whiskey. In one of his last interviews, he said he'd like to 'do' death, to take an active part in his own 'extinction'. Rather than falling into a chronic depression, he sought to make sense of his cosmic being right to the very end.<br /><br />Whether it was his belligerent stance on the Iraq War or his revilement of God, you might have agreed or disagreed with him, but you would have promptly declined to take part in a debate against him. Sometimes you may not have necessarily trusted his opinion, but you could always count on his intellect.<br /><br />If I had to pick out a character of literature that most resembled his persona, it would be the the famous doctor and avowed atheist Desplein from Balzac's <em>The Atheist's Mass</em>. Desplein attends Mass strictly four times a year in honour of his dead friend Bourgeat who helped him when he was in dire straits and eventually became his lifelong companion. Bourgeat was a devoted Christian but he never challenged Desplein's outspoken atheism. Upon his death, Desplein swore to regularly hold Mass for him as a kind act of gratitude and respect for their friendship, all in spite of his clinical lack of faith. Though religiously neutral, Desplein proves his humanity and strong devotion to the person he prized most as a friend.<br />Hitchens, like Desplein, was more human than he was Christian but still less of an atheist than he was human. He embodied the principle of not denying anything but nevertheless doubting everything.<br /><br />Indeed, as intelligent doubt transcends blind faith, humanity transcends religion. This is how it is on Earth. Is it the same in Heaven too? It should be, otherwise it would be Hell. </div><br />May the Hitch rest in peace.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-59062686715415384672011-12-15T03:52:00.002+00:002011-12-15T03:55:34.447+00:00Today I Fall In Love Again<iframe height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BQzfLBqr9jE" frameborder="0" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />Forgotten classic from the early 80s - was not on YouTube until now...IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-89582298851546775982011-12-05T13:34:00.003+00:002011-12-05T13:40:34.403+00:00The Tree of Life<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMxL_11d-l2sUOhGjq7SLBGwyekJO5EocM1f75AJ_w41CVgagt5bXTxMO3pJ4bItnrbqdIv7AR7RVRVUMTATmEOGeYjLqDfLBi8fut-t1t6T6tvWNFTB-0C10RnQ0BG-qK6Ku2Kg/s1600/tree-of-life-6.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 210px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5682638601228786322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMxL_11d-l2sUOhGjq7SLBGwyekJO5EocM1f75AJ_w41CVgagt5bXTxMO3pJ4bItnrbqdIv7AR7RVRVUMTATmEOGeYjLqDfLBi8fut-t1t6T6tvWNFTB-0C10RnQ0BG-qK6Ku2Kg/s400/tree-of-life-6.jpg" /></a> <em>“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation ... while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"</em> Book of Job 38:7<br /><br />These are the opening words of wisdom to “The Tree of Life”, by Terrence Malick, starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and to a smaller extent, Sean Penn.<br />I went to see it a couple of weeks ago, hooked on some flattering reviews, including a full four-star appraisal by Roger Ebert himself. The first half an hour or so did not look particularly promising as by then some people had walked out already. Indeed, the 30-40 minutes of continuous creation and evolution was heavy-going. The formation of the universe, of our dear planet Earth, of living organisms, of dinosaurs and marine creatures – it was all spectacularly overpowering. It felt like a National Geographic documentary more than a Brad Pitt/Sean Penn blockbuster, which I was secretly hoping it wouldn’t be anyway.<br /><br />We are then immersed in the life of a typical, 1950s American suburban family - the O’Briens. The father (Brad Pitt) is ex-military and evidently took part in the war. He is a plaintive, Bible-bashing patriarch who insists his children address him as ‘Sir’. The mother (Jessica Chastain) is gentle and diplomatic, and she speaks very little, though she always looks as though she has a lot say.<br /><br />For the majority of the film we slowly follow the three young children around the house and neighbourhood, as they develop as individuals and come to gradually lose their rose-tinted view of the world. We learn at the start that one of the children has died (perhaps in the Vietnam War), and we see the mother and father’s anguish as they cope with this tragedy.<br />The highlight of the film is not its stunning cinematography – this is a device primarily used for perspective. It makes the lens through which we see the world that much wider. Malick’s point of view is that of the Hubble Space Telescope, with huge aperture, peering into life’s cosmic depths.<br /><br />The real beauty of the film is the O’Brien family. We are thrust into their lives, from birth till death. We see the boys growing up. We see O’Brien senior coping with his own disillusionment in life, by being a stern but loving father. He takes his sons to church on Sundays, while teaching them basic self-defence skills back home. “In this life,” he says, “you can’t be too good”. Or else? “People woul’ take advan’age of ya.”<br /><br />Simple words, rendered eternal by the narrative’s slow but effective unfolding. From the point of view of a filmmaker, it is precisely the moment when a character utters such uncomplicated, almost clichéd words, that is the real gamble. Will it work? Will it be derided for being clichéd, or will it be cherished as poetry?<br /><br />In Malick’s case, the gamble pays off. By the time these lines are pronounced, we are so fixated on the life of the O’Briens and have established such rapport with them that we feel almost a part of the family. We discern bits of our own childhood in there, from the mischief in the classroom to hearing your parents’ muffled arguments through half-open windows – these are all simple memories shared by us all. They can cause pain and turmoil when gazed at from a distance and this is what the film is compelling us to do.<br /><br />The only other movie which achieves that very same effect as skilfully is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror. Of course, nothing comes close the Russian masterpiece in terms of pure lyricism and fluidity, but the essence is there, namely a sort of Proustian “<em>a la recherche du temps perdu</em>”.<br /><br />We are periodically carried over to the present where one of their children (Sean Penn), now grown up and an architect, reminisces about his childhood, his parents and his brothers. Something obviously irks him from deep inside. It is a cocktail of guilt and nostalgia, served ice cold in the hourglass of his middle-age. The film itself offers us such a cocktail too and this is where it scores the most points.<br /><br />Malick views art as a form of interrogation. First, it triggers an emotion: neurons are pumped up from one place to another. Then the heart picks up the pace. And then we see a bit of ourselves in there, among the many specks that make up the image we are looking at. The brain’s primary forte is association. It connects all those little dots that make up our consciousness, and then just as fast, it erases other dots and connections. Our mind impresses and represses at the same time. But somewhere along the way, the reverse happens, and there erupts within our psyche, the irksome, long-repressed memory of a distant past. This is what Sean Penn’s melancholy hero experiences as he wanders around the convoluted, almost surreal architectural maze of the city he inhabits – a landscape no doubt reflective of the state of mind he finds himself in.<br /><br />How can one possibly reconcile oneself to this repressed memory? The pain of knowing that this precious little bubble of reminiscence is but an apparition of a moment, lost in time and space, never to come back – it is a shock from which we can recover only by reliving it again through art. It’s a mental simulation, an age-old survival mechanism.<br /><br />Is it perhaps the same thing which deters that Troodon from killing the fallen Parasaurolophus by the riverside, in one of the film’s most enigmatic episodes? Mercy against all the odds? Note how right after this curious scene, we see an asteroid slamming into the earth and wiping out the dinosaurs. Is the Troodon divinely punished for defying its nature? Is this an allusion to humankind’s tendency to lose itself in hubris, revolting against the natural world, denying its own essence?<br /><br />At the end of the film, we see all the O’Briens, dead and at peace with each other, on a seemingly endless beach .They are smiling, kissing and hugging each other. They are tenderly stroking each other’s cheeks with their hands. This is Malick’s vision of paradise. United in death, the family is together, happy and free.<br /><br />Likewise, in its finest hour of great pity and selflessness, the Troodon is killed, along with all of its kind. In Tarkovsky’s Mirror, the faceless narrator dies stroking a dead bird which is mysteriously brought back to life at the moment of his death. It seems that for Malick as for Tarkovsky, tenderness is our most noble invention but at the same time, it is what’s killing us softy.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-9681752871347973892011-11-24T12:58:00.007+00:002011-11-24T14:59:44.232+00:00Derain's London<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6MFR2JW6GfghywcipKm5oaZal54nqm_RhAG6Dz89YA3mtme55e2uHWnIFwRfEzKQ8ubs58nhQGbsVwkaWdi5e2LGUPQKi0ndqvtiAsBvOLwnqNblSoUFPSNxJmBFDk5iesI6LVQ/s1600/ANDRE_%257E1.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 298px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5678546457229502738" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6MFR2JW6GfghywcipKm5oaZal54nqm_RhAG6Dz89YA3mtme55e2uHWnIFwRfEzKQ8ubs58nhQGbsVwkaWdi5e2LGUPQKi0ndqvtiAsBvOLwnqNblSoUFPSNxJmBFDk5iesI6LVQ/s320/ANDRE_%257E1.JPG" /></a><br /><br /><div>The best painted view of London in my opinion is Big Ben by Andre Derain. This 1906 Fauvist jewel of a painting struck me deep upon my first setting eyes on it. The brilliant luminosity, the casual dabs of warm colours set against a vast expanse of cold blues and greens – it’s a mesmerizing artwork. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament are blue – cool, detached and distant. The sky and the water are part-blue, part-green. It’s a vision of a city bathing in dusky nonchalance. The sun’s gingerly rays are subdued, not by clouds or the London smog, but by the city’s inherent alienation. They can be seen only as a wayward reflection on the Thames.<br />This was the London back then. It is the London of today too. Like a badly-kept diary, the city hosts our most intimate experiences and ponderings, at once deeply private and precariously public.<br /></div><br /><div>Derain’s image is a universal one, irrespective of the time of day, or season.<br /></div><br /><div>Having had to constantly commute around London for years, I’ve come to understand the alienation of the big city, as written about in books and shown in films. These days, with the advent of Kindles and Blackberries, it’s decidedly worse. You board a train and every passenger around is glued to the one or the other, or both. You enclose yourself, trying to escape the suffocating mass of others around you, wishing you were home already. At first I was annoyed by this spectral anonymity – cold and impersonal, like Derain’s Big Ben. By the end, I had adopted the same method, only with an actual book instead of a Kindle.<br /></div><br /><div>But whether it is on a train or on the Tube, the sight of a row of people buried in their iPhones, iPads or Blackberries, texting away or playing games is somewhat unsettling. Not that there is anything wrong with it of course, but it is the true face of the big city – its most candid image. No historical landmark or cultural monument can claim to represent the city more authentically than this image. This daily hustle is its pulse. Sure, there are the parks – these are the pages written in invisible ink on the badly-kept diary that is the city: intimate and fresh, and when it comes to privacy, one of the few alternatives to the stuffy back rows of cinema screens. Finding peace and intimacy in London is a rare treat, much like catching a glimpse of the London sunset from Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath – magnificent but seldom cloudless or without fog. All in all, the sun is a marginal character on the London skyline, locked in constant battle with the grey clouds and white mists for dominion over its vast expanse.<br /></div><br /><div>Generations upon generations of organic growth – London is the city of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. One fictional, the other real; one good, the other evil, but both united in their profound knowledge of the city. Holmes himself says in one Conan Doyle’s stories – <em>“the thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle , unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.”<br /></em></div><br /><div>Having been out in London at night on many occasions, I’ve always kept this quote at the back of mind. My chance encounters so far have thankfully never been with any murderers or thieves. But strolling around the centre of the city at the early hours of the morning is the most intense experience the metropolis has to offer. At this point, it sleeps. Gone are the tourists; gone are the commuters; gone is the daily bustle. The city now dreams. Streetlights are reflected on the wet pavements and roads. Famous squares and landmarks are delicately illuminated, ethereal in the cool night air. Only shady clubs and McDonalds restaurants are still open, with crowds gathered outside throughout the night. It’s mostly quiet, save for some light traffic on the streets.<br /></div><br /><div>It’s dangerous but I feel bizarrely safe. Somehow I’ve grown to feel at home on these streets. The city acts as a sort of father-figure, embracing its sons and daughters. If I am walking late at night with a friend, there’s a ghost steadily walking along with us. It is no tiger waiting to pounce over us; it is London itself.<br /></div><br /><div>The city inhabitant (so called ‘urbanite’), is an adaptable creature. He is wary of what’s lurking around the corner, or who is walking behind him. He is confronted daily with human vice, in all sizes and shapes. In any big city, crime is a tradition, a spectacle, almost a ritual. Its dark labyrinthine alleyways enable crime, breed crime, from mugging to murder. The urbanite, engulfed by the ravishing spectacle of ubiquitous crime, becomes infected by its omnipotent presence. He is dwarfed by soaring corporate towers, stifled by congested roads, his voice lost in the buzzing metropolitan beehive. He is no longer the sturdy cowboy his ego urges him to be. Instead, he is a little rose-cheeked cherub, meek and shy, always finding himself around the edges on the epic canvas of city life. Such a peripheral existence makes him somewhat of a coward who sees but does not act. He enjoys the comfortable luxury of anonymity by being indifferent and invisible. A scuffle on a bus is of no concern to him – why risk getting stabbed to death or going through the arduous process of being a witness for the police, when he can walk out in one piece, free of the burden of civic duty? </div><br /><div>With my dad being a bus driver, I’ve heard the same disturbing story time and time again- how when an argument erupts on the bus, or even a punch-up, and afterwards he calls for any witnesses among the passengers, they scowl and quietly depart from the scene.<br /></div><br /><div>This is the urbanite’s <em>la condition humaine</em>. Chin down, eyes low, brows high: snappy but subdued, with a shroud of fog descending upon his face at the first sign of trouble brewing before him.<br /></div><br /><div>In Derain’s painting, little specks of red and orange make up Westminster Bridge and show up on the Thames, and of course the sun itself. They are marginalised however, confined to a nominal existence on the peripheries of the image. Overwhelmed by the ubiquity of the blues and greens, they are nevertheless there. The sun’s rays still manage to illuminate a section of the Thames, and the contours of the bridge are almost entirely painted in red. These warm colours rebelliously assert their presence within the painting. So, in the midst of this dusky nonchalance, there are flickers of radiant warmth, rare and precious. Derain recognised the scarcity of this warmth and understood its true value, hence his defiant dabs of red and orange. He knew that London’s peace and warmth are as frail and fleeting as the colours of its sunset. </div>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-40179624555055325872011-08-30T23:57:00.007+01:002011-09-03T00:54:14.439+01:00It's A Balkan Thing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglnKg8G_34PEEC1SLbesIvLkPkxvyeW4QMADpRK8Jwd1Vx_VL1svVmReHsNqvQ3ucsfQzNevmfpQkej-BHYnCxCsqZhHMATdz6nZ-1zVhV4rNBckZirBwR-6ByXBp0zzsZMP5yFQ/s1600/cartoo2.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 283px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646792037202043602" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglnKg8G_34PEEC1SLbesIvLkPkxvyeW4QMADpRK8Jwd1Vx_VL1svVmReHsNqvQ3ucsfQzNevmfpQkej-BHYnCxCsqZhHMATdz6nZ-1zVhV4rNBckZirBwR-6ByXBp0zzsZMP5yFQ/s400/cartoo2.jpg" /></a>
<br />In a recent <a href="http://secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=31-5-hitchens">article </a>by Christopher Hitchens, one of God’s most ruthless assassins, the Serbian ultra-nationalist issue is discussed from a point of view of religious fanaticism. Prompted by the recent capture of Gen. Radko Mladic, Hitchens sums up Balkan history in a nutshell:
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<br /><em>“It would be nearer the truth to say that the entire history of the region is one long confessional feud that when allied to ultra-toxic nationalism was strong enough to drag the entire modern world into a catastrophic war in the summer of 1914.”</em>
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<br />Except this nutshell is more like a hot-air balloon, inflated by Hitchens’ own ideological expediency.
<br />First of all, blaming the incident of ‘summer 1914’ as the root cause of World War One is a rather crude example of blind historical negligence. It was more of a simple catalyst, a casus belli, an excuse than a truly fundamental cause. The reasons for full-scale war date back to times and events, prior to 1914 and are considerably more complex and certainly cannot be summarized in a single ‘hitchslap’ sentence.
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<br />Second of all, the claim that the “entire history of the region is one long confessional feud” is as vague as it is untrue. The entire history of the region does not revolve around Serbian nationalism and the Serbian Orthodox Church. There are other countries, other nations and other political agendas there – Yugoslavia is not the answer to everything.
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<br />Hitchens then goes on another of his coolly-controlled, anti-religious lectures, concluding that “religion nearly destroyed the economy and society of former Yugoslavia and did deep and lasting damage to its people and culture”.
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<br />Coming from the Balkans, but living in the UK, I have constantly had to contend with a wearisome paradox. I find myself deploring war crimes committed by the Serbs during the appalling wars of the 90s, but on the other hand I feel a fundamental closeness with this mystical region, inescapable and alluring. I know it well; I’ve lived half my life in it. I know its culture, its history, its people. I also know its problems. I remember being childishly awe-struck by the sight of two NATO F-16 fighters cruising in the sky above Bulgaria on a beautiful summer’s day, during the ugly Kosovo War in 1999. I remember the then infamous joke circulating from mouth to mouth around every village and town in Bulgaria, about the Serbs formally apologising for shooting down an ‘invisible’ American stealth plane – ‘sorry we didn’t know it was invisible!’, the joke ran.
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<br />When recently I was discussing the capture of General Mladic with a friend of mine, who is a Politics student, I found his fervent stance on the issue quite disconcerting. With powerful, unwavering conviction, he repeated over and over again: “8000 innocent Bosnians massacred”, “worst mass murder since the Holocaust”, and so on. As a Balkan native, I felt a big catch-22 lump in my throat. I knew I wouldn’t be true to myself if I had simply nodded off his invective against Mladic and the Srebrenica massacre. In such moments I always instinctively feel the need to be defensive; to produce a counter-argument that would instil doubt and suspicion within my friend’s Americanised line of reasoning. Striving to accept my Balkan background and acknowledge it wherever I go and whoever I meet, I find myself delicately exculpating alleged mass murderers such as Mladic. Not because I sympathise with them but because I sympathise with the land that produced them.
<br />Is it to assuage a certain guilt that I bear over the fact that I come from a region largely in disrepute? It is as though the very fact that I am from the Balkans makes me indirectly complicit in any atrocity that happens or has happened there. Sometimes I feel my origin hanging around my neck like Coleridge’s albatross.
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<br />There is nothing in the Serbian Orthodox Church, neither rite nor doctrine that encourages babies to be slaughtered in the hands of their mothers. Hitchens’ reference to the Ustase catholic-fascist organisation in Croatia during the Second World War over-emphasizes the role of religion at the expense of the more accurate case of extreme nationalism which seeking to assert its fundamentalist values expediently utilizes the symbolic and propagandistic power of religion. Religious faith is a mediator not a cause in such conflicts. The prime mover in this case is ultra-nationalist radicalism which has seeped through the region with deadly infectiousness and has done so for decades, exacerbated by the still popular myth surrounding Marshall Tito and the nationalist pride which his name still yields in the hearts of many Serbs today.
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<br />In my experience, Serbia has always been the flagship of nationalism in the Balkans. The Serbs are innately hot-headed, ready to draw knives and guns at the slightest jolt of their patriotic self-identity. They are generally far more zealous in their convictions than say my fellow countrymen, the Bulgarians. Their naturally fiery passions coagulate in an ultra-nationalism that only time will shake off and destroy. And though these passions already seem to diminish and fade from the picture in today’s Serbia, as demonstrated by the relatively minor protests against General Mladic’s extradition to The Hague, the memory of the catastrophic wars of the 90s will be the albatross around the country’s neck. Such guilt is hard to swallow let alone acknowledge. Is it still deep inside, accumulating, and waiting to erupt? Unlikely, considering Serbia’s current pro-Western government, more interested in pragmatics than principles.
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<br />But in light of the media’s scorn for all things Balkan and appetite for murder and mayhem, Hitchens’ painfully biased article is a step too far. This is not a Michael Palin-presented, reader’s-digest travel show demagogically aiming to alleviate the West’s culpability in world affairs, but an essay by one of our heavyweight intellectuals, whose opinion <em>counts </em>and whose words are chewed over and over by many political publications and blogs. His views resound through the net and in print, written with a permanent marker on the white board of Balkan discourse, already graffitied enough with the smears and smirks of Western propaganda.
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<br />A single glance at the ending of Mr Hitchens’ article exposes his means to an end:
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<br /><em>“Religion nearly destroyed the economy and society of former Yugoslavia and did deep and lasting damage to its people and culture. But in the journal of record for American liberalism, the profound connection between faith and fanaticism is treated as if it were a startling exception rather than a grim rule.”</em>
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<br />From the affairs of the Balkans and former Yugoslavia, we are suddenly transported back to the US and find ourselves riding the waves of Hitchens’ life-long polemic against religion, through a critique of American liberalism. In the end, his fiery tirade against religion’s debilitating impact on the Balkans turns out to be nothing more than a vehicle to further his own personal anti-religious agenda.
<br />If you read Voltaire’s <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=352&chapter=53896&layout=html&Itemid=27">entry </a>on the Bulgarians in his Philosophical Dictionary (Part I), you will begin to realise that this ignorance and complacency is traditional and part of the norm in the West’s view of the Balkans. And if Voltaire himself could partake in this tradition, it would seem preposterous to expect anything less from our very own Enlightenment extraordinaire Christopher Hitchens.
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<br />IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-15005942491131857752011-08-01T18:32:00.005+01:002011-08-01T18:42:07.836+01:00The Marquise With Red WineI recall about a year ago I was working as a bar person at this annual regatta - a job a friend of mine got me. At one point as I was pouring yet another pint (it took longer for me to pour it than the customer to drink it) I glanced around, seeing as there weren’t many guests around, my eyes met with those of a well-dressed, blonde middle-aged woman who was peering straight at me, unflinchingly. I momentarily looked back down at the pint and then again turned towards her – she was still standing there at the bar, idle and frozen, and still gazing at me.<br /><br />Though I felt slightly uneasy I only assumed she wanted a drink. I finally managed to pour the pint, after spilling twice its weight on the floor. I approached her and kindly asked her if she would like anything from the bar. Still looking straight at me, she shook her head, her lips gently motioning a silent no. Her head was slightly tilted down, eyes bulging forward – a feline, almost a Kubrickian sort of gaze. I looked at her again and her eyes were still locked onto me, as though she was challenging me on a who-would-blink-first competition. Her gaze followed me around as I moved to the other side of the bar to serve another customer.<br /><br />Not only did I feel slightly uncomfortable but also somewhat intimidated. She was I’m guessing in her mid forties. I said she was well dressed but was she really? She had an office-like, indigo skirt with a matching jacket and a clean, crisp white shirt underneath. Presentable but lacking imagination, as though she was there to oblige a rich husband: she did not in the least care about the regatta. Casually holding a slender glass of red wine in her hand, she was standing by the bar, alone, with nobody, not even a ladyfriend in sight. This regatta was a posh event, with plenty of evidently wealthy guests. She was clearly part of the entourage.<br /><br />Blonde hair down to her shoulders, she was fairly tall, with a shapely frame. Her stillness was stately but her tight-fitting skirt implied a coquettishness that I found particularly attractive. Her face was pretty but pending a wrinkle or two. It was her eyes that I found especially unnerving. I know that look. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it in films; I’ve pictured it in novels. It is the aristocratic middle-aged wife, all polished and accomplished, lonely and unhappy. It’s the sort of high-society woman, like the Marquise de Listomere that Eugene de Rastignac incessantly talks about and desires, in Balzac’s stories: “She has principles, she fasts, takes the sacrament, and goes to balls and operas very elegantly dressed; her confessor permits her to combine the mundane with sanctity."<br /><br />Of course I doubt this woman fasts and takes the sacrament, but you get the point. Did the way she was standing there, completely by herself, detached from the other guests, momentarily removed from the world, peering at me, imply a loneliness of the kind Rastignac sees in women like Marquise de Listomere?<br /><br />Even though I have often been told by guys and gals alike that I am good-looking and I admittedly do receive the occasional eye from girls wherever I go, I’ve often found it hard to accept these compliments and looks without a pinch of salt. Wearing a repugnant, oversized promotional t-shirt compulsory for the occasion, I did not exactly picture myself as an Adonis. And yet because I do get these sort of looks from time to time, I knew this marquise had something in mind. Her eyes were royal green, sharp and penetrating, almost predatory. This was a woman who married not out love but out of pure pragmatism. She was not a mistress or a high-flying prostitute: these women make more of an effort in the sartorial department. No, her bland style could only be of an unhappily married woman of worldly demeanour but sheltered character. And there is me, young and innocent, novice as much as in the pint-pouring business as in life itself. And there she was, the sun setting on her face, with a half-filled glass of red wine in her hand where its crimson rays converge. It’s a curious relationship, that of a younger man with an older woman- a scenario I have often pondered over. I am reminded of Aunt Pelageya’s words to the young Tolstoy that there was nothing better for a young man’s development than an affair with an older woman.<br /><br />This fleeting encounter made me think about the veracity of this statement. There was something feral about this woman’s eyes. Even when I looked back at her and my eyes were interlocked with hers for a few seconds, she did not recoil. In this visual impasse, it was I who withdrew first. Did she purposefully seek to make me baulk under the weight of her gaze? For fun maybe? Were the crafty, alpha-female sparkles in her eyes the last remnants of this woman’s dignity? Behind her firm, unyielding facade, there was a girly vulnerability which I knew was there, hidden behind years of expert spin doctoring for the benefit of someone else. A woman does not seek money or security. Above all, she seeks attention. Constant, unceasing, undying attention.<br /><br />I felt the urge to talk to her. Anything would do. No, it was pointless. As much as the resplendent fantasies of being with an older, attractive woman are alive and well in me and most young men my age, I was overcome by hesitation. I thought I should give her a polite smile, to comply with my good customer service skills. In the end I turned shyly from her and onto the next marquis or marquise, asking for a glass of red wine.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-78157492210945773872011-08-01T09:55:00.004+01:002011-08-01T10:02:19.526+01:00Murdoch Wasn't Yet Born....<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOrRntEs5aw99OuRbiQgN67U7QsMwmwIY4GKeqNb76vRWhqnvKP4Hz1AAAcxhiMBQMjd6AvMmaF16yYwMxxygXTli9joRLoHSLRhM3zSHXbFs8wNEm-sL0IopFQ7IRFaG-L2SjDQ/s1600/news-of-the-world-sign-pic-pa-628011364.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 208px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635809270141136178" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOrRntEs5aw99OuRbiQgN67U7QsMwmwIY4GKeqNb76vRWhqnvKP4Hz1AAAcxhiMBQMjd6AvMmaF16yYwMxxygXTli9joRLoHSLRhM3zSHXbFs8wNEm-sL0IopFQ7IRFaG-L2SjDQ/s320/news-of-the-world-sign-pic-pa-628011364.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>You cannot hope to bribe or twist,<br />thank God! the British journalist.<br />But, seeing what the man will do<br />unbribed, there's no occasion to.<br /><br />(Humbert Wolfe, 1924) </div>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-27172141582089624022009-11-24T03:06:00.005+00:002009-11-24T03:38:24.392+00:00Camus in the Panthéon?<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8375244.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8375244.stm</a><br /><br />The calls to scrap the idea of re-interring Albert Camus in the Panthéon are justified in my view. Last year when I went to France, I briefly stopped by Villeblevin - the little village near Paris where he was killed in a car crash almost exactly 50 years ago. I visited the unassuming monument at the site of the crash. The rural humbleness and charm of the place emanated a soft scent of earthliness and humanity: the unimposing stone relief of Camus's head boded well with this atmosphere. It was simple and modest and perfectly so.<br /><br />As far as I know, Camus himself is buried in a similar sort of place in southern France. He better stay there. The great figures in the Panthéon (Voltaire, Emile Zola, etc) all died in old age - an age befitting the grand classicism of the Panthéon .<br /><br />It elicits admiration without sympathy.<br /><br />There, closer to the earthly world and thus to humanity Camus should rest befitting not his age but his character.<br /><br />While his philosophy makes the individual's mortality easier to swallow, he died too young - he is simply not and never will be ready for the Panthéon because he was simply not ready for death. This calls for admiration and sympathy alike. Let it stay that way.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-36772264509637761082009-09-21T11:48:00.011+01:002009-09-22T09:50:08.844+01:0010 Best Films Still Available On YouTube"Available" is the variable in this case. Hurry up and enjoy it illegally - no YouTube film lasts forever! Great for the casual viewer too.<br /><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384071976484748354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 398px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 90px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5cWwKhlrCs5GmwFwcqE1pxxsnpE1b9uVnw-b3TNn5Fucs-lC5TKs8rVigU4dOurzXrdQrlFIKaXuBw1qDV51fZLQTEOToo5U8X1zBj2I-D7Kx_LlxszF0X8CdQllK0LcgBkHGnw/s320/youtube_logo.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br />10.<em>Gold Rush</em> - This is one is a joke actually - it's too old to be removed from YouTube!<br /><br />9.<em>Goodfellas</em> - Overrated but still fun to watch.<br /><br />8.<em>The Postman (Il Postino)</em> - Not overrated and still fun to watch.<br /><br />7. <em>Andrei Rublev</em> - Recommended by the Roman Catholic Church itself! - the only thing this film and Catholicism have in common and I would like to take the opportunity to thank God for that!<br /><br />6.<em>Ivan's Childhood</em> - Sartre actually wrote a long essay defending it from critics - it's just that good.<br /><br />5.<em>Once Upon A Time In The West</em> - Forget the cowboy hats, forget the gun shootouts, forget even Henry Fonda's blue eyes - this film's real intelligence lies in its central character: The Woman (personified by Claudia Cardinale). In essence, everything revolves around her: Harmonica, Cheyenne - at the core of their heroism is found their genuine wish to protect a brave though still defenceless woman. Harmonica's revenge is not only personal - that's just one of dimension of it: it's also a revenge for the savage taking away of a woman's natural right to have a family to take care of. The noblest type of revenge surely?<br /><br />4.<em>The Seventh Seal</em> - Why did this film leave such a mark upon my consciousness? It's naive and outdated. Bibi Andersson's long, golden hair? - but it's a black & white film! The squire's earthly and cynical magnetism? The humour? The film is 52 years old in cinematic terms and 1052 in comic terms . No, it's the treatment of death - its inevitability is made strangely beautiful.<br /><br />3.<em>Mirror (Tarkovsky)</em> - Directly combining the individual's tragedy with that of humanity as a whole - no film has ever done that so well. Nature itself is like an individual character in it. Greatest film ever? Yep.<br /><br />2. <em>La Notte</em> - The charismatic actors are to blame! It's a boring film but so are all of Antonioni's works. While he does use excessive symbolism, it's not a simple visual play of signifier/signified, it's just a subtler way to probe into the depths of our emotions - I do get it.<br />It's beautiful actually.<br /><br />1. <em>L'Samourai </em>- The Bushido code of the Japanese samurai warrior transposed onto the gloomy streets of 60's Paris, and Alain Delon in the title role. The solitude, spartan conditions and morbidity which engulf the protagonist...it's a different world, an attractive world for all the wrong reasons. The final scene is one of the best ever.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-50035104815344074342009-08-25T00:02:00.014+01:002009-08-25T19:33:10.799+01:00A New Type Of LeadershipI have often imagined what it's like to be one of those great military leaders of antiquity or the Middle Ages: battles, bloodshed, unburied corpses gorged on by ravenous vultures - all sights of vileness and cruelty, potentially combined to end in victory though of the pyrrhic type. The risk involved is colossal.<br /><br />A leader of that type has to take into consideration so many things - all of equal importance more or less - food supplies, intelligence, potential revolts, discipline, tactics, etc. Thousands of lives at stakes; the leader is but one, though his safety is not guaranteed either.<br /><br />Leadership cannot escape the heroic brand it proudly bears. This is because of the charisma which graces the pages of history's great leaders: from the dvinity of Alexander to the megalomania of Napoleon. Let's face it: the battle turning heavy cavalry force is not imbued in the character of everyone. It has to be nurtured.<br /><br />Why do so many children idolise great leaders of the past? Because the charisma required to lead men into the thralls of death is the same as the charisma which would fight back the bullies at school? Or young people - do they think that the charisma required to inspire an outnumbered army to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat is the same as the charisma which could help them win the heart of a woman?<br /><br />Rather than an answer, this provokes another question: how many of those great leaders completely resigned themselves to the ideal of their leadership, refraining from wine and women, preferring war and politics. As such, charisma is buttressed by devotion and self-discipline.<br /><br />Of course I find myself inspired by those straightforward, belligerent, vive-la-revolution sayings like, 'if you want peace, prepare for war', but I also realise that their glory is found in their realism, in their sober, down-to-earth recognition of humanity's only way to get even with death.<br />Sayings like that dig a hole into the concept of conformity, but it's like digging a hole in the ground - the deeper you dig, the more trapped you, yourself become. Thus you lead yourself out of conformity to lead other men into it.<br /><br />You can be the leader of an army, a state, an age - it's all to do with charisma. In their leadership qualities, their charisma, devotion, self-discipline, the noblest, most abstemious prophet and the cruellest, most tyrannical dictator meet and recognise each other.<br />Jesus was charismatic but so was Hitler. They were both leaders in their own, particular way and they were both successful in what they set out to do, though neither of them won in the end, especially the latter. They were conjoined by their charisma however distant they were from each other in terms of their words and actions.<br /><br />That is why the concept of leadership, the very idea of being such a leader is an entrancing one; but one does not have to bother with acquiring an army or instigating a coup d'etait. Why? Because the essence of leadership is the will to accomplish, and it all boils down to leading an age, an epoch - the noblest type of leadership.<br /><br />Armies are slain, states are subjugated; but an age is yet more poweful and resilient because it exists in the heart, forged by the continuous, titianic clash between preservation and progress.<br /><br />The leader of an age, one among many perhaps, is that spear ripping through the air with its sharp, pointy tip, carrying the freedom of man to live in an age which can be called as such; that very same spear on which is stuck and brandished a copy of the epopee which we find ourselves dreaming of living in.<br /><br />We live in Africa, an intellectual one: the times are starving, the age is starving, blogs are starving, and isn't this very thought of the need of this type of leadership the key in which the requiem of the world would be composed?IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-34577679459426057772009-08-12T17:50:00.003+01:002009-08-12T19:22:04.870+01:00CandlesAll the souvenirs on my desk and bookshelf,<br />all the postcards on my wall,<br />and all the posters too,<br />all that reminds me of places<br />that I have been to...<br />whether I've waded through them,<br />or they've waded through me...<br /><br />doesn't matter,<br />because if my room was a church,<br />a temple of the Lord,<br />all those things would the candles be,<br />all bright with a delicate blaze,<br />and in harmony too<br /><br />and if should my room<br />a church become...<br />...and all those postcards, posters, souvenirs<br />into candles be turned,<br />then the delicate blaze,<br />however delicate,<br />will burn me alive on the spot...<br /><br />Like some heretic I will burn then,<br />(there are so many of them 'candles'!),<br />in body, I will be turned into ash,<br />in spirit too, but not because of them 'candles',<br />but because of something else -<br /><br />- nobody ever asked me where I got each one from!IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-25528773292069456552009-08-06T00:05:00.012+01:002009-08-06T13:10:51.899+01:00Tragedy On Both Sides Of The Equation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXSq2qNrwIZweZy7UX10KcU9LNqwbNK0Dyqa9bbz3rm-i-CQxLyu3Cpliccsddh7FUU_mf-0301mKqihN7mFLmRHzDFFhvoWZO__U0Ql4eQEUErY3Loc2VD9Gd9SslMMYg1I98gw/s1600-h/genov.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366629441687158450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 196px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXSq2qNrwIZweZy7UX10KcU9LNqwbNK0Dyqa9bbz3rm-i-CQxLyu3Cpliccsddh7FUU_mf-0301mKqihN7mFLmRHzDFFhvoWZO__U0Ql4eQEUErY3Loc2VD9Gd9SslMMYg1I98gw/s320/genov.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />The text below is a comment I found left by a forum user concerning the death of the Bulgarian actor Antonii Genov, three years ago - an actor of which I am a huge admirer. His characters were always highly intellectual, spiritually potent and strong with a melancholy disposition, mellow but captivating voice and careful, equanimous conduct. He was very popular during the Communist era though he went underground afterwards.<br /><br />He died supposedly of alcoholism brought about by years of solitude and self-imposed exile.<br /><br />I translated the comment and decided to post it here because I think it's nicely written and contains an exact and truthful vision of my beloved bastard of a country which I visited recently - a trip to which I may devote a separate post at some point.<br /><br />Anyway, here it is:<br /><br /><em>"Antonii really was a great actor! Not just with his films roles, but his performances in the theatre too...</em><br /><div><em>What killed him, like so many cultural figures, intellectuals and many other decent people from the various tiers of the social pyramid, was all that happened in Bulgaria after 10th Nevember 1989 (fall of communism), and which became a byword for disillusionment in the minds of people - the so-called 'democracy'. What killed all of them was the eventual structuring of the social system which differed hugely from what they imagined on their 'Aesop-style' theatrical stage and in the images and visions they painted with their quills, believing that there lay the future of the nation they belonged to. People perish like flies, overwhelmed and crushed by fundamental democratic reforms - that is death as imagined today. But the cyclically reproduced by the system greed, aggression, spiritual degradation; the nihilism offered to us by our politicians, serving the economic interests of their western and Russian mentors - all that will end up killing us and our children, slowly and stealthily. All this until we 'federalise' ourselves as a country, until Bulgarian becomes the second most popular language in the land of </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparukh"><em>Asparuh</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_I_of_Bulgaria"><em>Simeon</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasil_Levski"><em>Levski </em></a><em>and </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botev"><em>Botev </em></a><em>and we start dancing our folk dances in late-night clubs - some as emigrants in another country, others as spiritual emigrants in their own land."</em></div><div><em></em></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br />Tragedy on both sides of the equation as I would like to call it - the worst kind of tragedy, no doubt. One thing leads to another, another leads to yet another. The end is but the betrayal of the beginning.</div>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-20420606556568538752009-06-24T13:51:00.003+01:002009-06-24T13:58:53.532+01:00Back on Track, HopefullyThe last post had an air of morbidity about it, I know. Often happiness and me go together like Superman and kryptonite and though it hurts, it heals.<br />It's not the end though. Posts should be resumed at some point.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-11942598502867390772009-05-25T17:04:00.006+01:002009-05-25T17:20:24.458+01:00Last Week<strong>Last week:<br /></strong><br />-<em>A flatmate overdosed on painkillers so I spent most of the night in hospital with her<br /><br />-I had my heart broken<br /><br />-I threw up in a pub<br /><br />-I got so wasted I felt as though my head was going to explode<br /><br />-I got an extraordinarily low mark for one of my university essays<br /><br />-I nearly ruined my relationship with the person who in a matter of weeks has appreciated me as a person better than anyone I have ever met<br /></em><br />----<br /><br />Right now this thought is buzzing over my head like a bunch of flies over a corpse:<br /><br /><em>Sadness can indeed be inspiring but not now, not at the moment...</em>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-29375958180734442452009-05-07T23:36:00.006+01:002009-05-08T13:22:02.145+01:00On FeminismThe rather genteel recent <a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6897489883665972126&postID=1226528540960797664">debate </a>on feminism at <a href="http://reflectionsofthedamned.blogspot.com/">Reflections of the Damned</a> has left my hopes for a bloodier dispute rather empty.<br /><br /><br />So I've decided to be honest, a bit absurd, a bit ridiculous, a bit silly:<br /><br /><em>The true feminist is the type of person who would go on a holiday in Turkey with a couple of friends, and having arrived at the magnificent Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, he/she would suddenly, when there isn't the tinniest bit of expectation in the air, take out the Turkish flag and set it alight in a determined, demonstrative way, to the utter shock of his/her friends.</em><br /><br /><em>At the precise moment before suffering a violent death at the hands of passers-by, he/she would just as suddenly, with no less determination, triumphantly cry out to his/her friends: </em><br /><em></em><br /><em>'Leave me, save yourselves! Run!'</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>His/her unfortunate and clueless friends however, inevitably caught up in the melee, would also be ingloriously slain. </em><br /><br /><br />Hate me if you wish to but there, I've said it! (sigh)IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-15096998718725122122009-05-03T11:41:00.003+01:002009-05-03T13:21:30.140+01:00Pillaging The PastThe ongoing war in Iraq has undoubtedly caused havoc from a cultural point of view. Among the thousands of victims claimed, the country's rich historical past has also suffered major casualties.<br />Even at the very beginning of the war in 2003, the Baghdad National Museum of Antiquites had apparently been ransacked and <a href="http://www.culturasdearchivo.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=pdf&sid=401">looted </a>with little intervention on the part of US troops.<br /><br />Though I am mostly distrustful of reports as to the destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage (American and Iraqi alike) since they may have probably been exaggerated and used as a springboard for the next vituperative attack on the Bush administration, I still somewhat feel more sorry for precisely this cultural cataclysm which seems to have gripped the country as a whole than for the human casualties on the battlefield, so to say. The latter is inevitable, but the former could have been prevented in a way.<br /><br />It's yet another pitiful tale of the disgraceful sack of a major city. The situation, an anarchic mess, is perhaps comparable to the abhorrent and ridiculous nature of the Latin Empire that followed the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the catastrophic Forth Crusade. Just like the revered, valorous but ruthless Latin crusaders, the American troops are the Christian knights in shining armour intent on occupying the holy lands of Islamic oppression in the name of liberty and democracy. In the Fourth Crusade, none but few of the crusaders actually made it to Jerusalem and the Holy Lands as originally planned. In the American Crusade of the last 6 years, the Americans did make it to Baghdad but they left their purported chivalric virtues hanging in the thin air of their alleged 'liberator' personage. <br /><br />Few realise that behind the nobility and courage of the medieval knight there lurked the reality and instinct of the ferocious warrior.<br /><br />Though the war has indeed claimed thousands of victims, if the cultural heritage of a country is the backbone of its very identity, has not the wide-scale plunder and destruction claimed the lives of millions to come?IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-59315246482118108352009-04-17T15:29:00.013+01:002009-05-08T13:15:35.873+01:00Enthusiasm: A Paradox<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu3_fuVeO4tCTbSFgBgYPc196Sjqr277YAKfzKuyEfkXgRFmczeIZLjXS8P73ndapDgq9GTJ4xS5kEdnjoGHW-Mr6YeCrCBCI18QxZ9cmJh5IivoYNfuDdaw00PGJTgKuTKIQeXA/s1600-h/Girl+with+a+Shawl.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325669545495522818" style="WIDTH: 170px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 248px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu3_fuVeO4tCTbSFgBgYPc196Sjqr277YAKfzKuyEfkXgRFmczeIZLjXS8P73ndapDgq9GTJ4xS5kEdnjoGHW-Mr6YeCrCBCI18QxZ9cmJh5IivoYNfuDdaw00PGJTgKuTKIQeXA/s320/Girl+with+a+Shawl.JPG" border="0" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4y19vKhMy4KAlry2FBWCE9-7ciX2eOKK1xrpBHn_MpEHN9vTLT-HfmqfgWya3mw1prc1hda2zVdfWg9vppCmrgKkBt6BrovvaVaLhdP-3pXbQkJmpNEpiQPGyuaes2Xxtb8Q5Q/s1600-h/Fisherman,+Sitting+with+Pipe.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325669215968545858" style="WIDTH: 141px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 247px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4y19vKhMy4KAlry2FBWCE9-7ciX2eOKK1xrpBHn_MpEHN9vTLT-HfmqfgWya3mw1prc1hda2zVdfWg9vppCmrgKkBt6BrovvaVaLhdP-3pXbQkJmpNEpiQPGyuaes2Xxtb8Q5Q/s320/Fisherman,+Sitting+with+Pipe.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGGnpgT5B6hu_TuOupTlyA2Goa4NGWHmoGWhFW50_837M_4L8LNqFIh50VQqnTPFIChDbdYKswqs9N9X1ZyqhQtgFY7RHYM4dlGj78TjoCiWlJvCyPIx0pltjan8YwunU1z421mw/s1600-h/Country+Road.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325669430961802578" style="WIDTH: 272px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 188px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGGnpgT5B6hu_TuOupTlyA2Goa4NGWHmoGWhFW50_837M_4L8LNqFIh50VQqnTPFIChDbdYKswqs9N9X1ZyqhQtgFY7RHYM4dlGj78TjoCiWlJvCyPIx0pltjan8YwunU1z421mw/s320/Country+Road.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZPYYpCOU0P6pvBZggGYfkk_YF744m9igjrFesJogbOodkKWXuBow_4192gyy8cnP9RmHxgHjgacqSNcA7tGQni5lUoQrUCgHstf0Jkkjt5_n4GW7ijNl-V-SrxWERAYnbCZht6g/s1600-h/Mother+with+a+Baby.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325669104115445970" style="WIDTH: 166px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 284px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZPYYpCOU0P6pvBZggGYfkk_YF744m9igjrFesJogbOodkKWXuBow_4192gyy8cnP9RmHxgHjgacqSNcA7tGQni5lUoQrUCgHstf0Jkkjt5_n4GW7ijNl-V-SrxWERAYnbCZht6g/s320/Mother+with+a+Baby.JPG" border="0" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzDrFgBhNmfN7KwdD4wVLv8J6NMSeMcGgJ5v5Z21skKkT7rNmaDrCS_cAf_zvmy8DXbYlM-8a9JV05-qEjp-bu_HB0Vei1LVCx-zNRZudqnzOCcecYk7dkUe3D0XF1EMgFksyT5A/s1600-h/Figure+of+a+woman+(after+Holbein).bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325668585058665250" style="WIDTH: 199px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 284px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzDrFgBhNmfN7KwdD4wVLv8J6NMSeMcGgJ5v5Z21skKkT7rNmaDrCS_cAf_zvmy8DXbYlM-8a9JV05-qEjp-bu_HB0Vei1LVCx-zNRZudqnzOCcecYk7dkUe3D0XF1EMgFksyT5A/s320/Figure+of+a+woman+(after+Holbein).bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUicrmabIuRH0kupfdc3QAOax41sd0w2mH3Xqdha9v9jUjonErTZxfypobgyGqDvp1m8ooYSHxfMCMf297uf1PE5FmKpXsm3bF_s_ATMY42N5agX8-3pg0GDo_PikNYos10QeouQ/s1600-h/Woman+Praying.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325668366462415906" style="WIDTH: 168px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 263px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUicrmabIuRH0kupfdc3QAOax41sd0w2mH3Xqdha9v9jUjonErTZxfypobgyGqDvp1m8ooYSHxfMCMf297uf1PE5FmKpXsm3bF_s_ATMY42N5agX8-3pg0GDo_PikNYos10QeouQ/s320/Woman+Praying.JPG" border="0" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmdb9vxivLSnq-6wpoJzBUQ241iZDSxtWoVuMSuTYpZ2hmf1JMPXPBvhLphHsC88Ee_2wIIXrDeYAhJtzsViMZk-bacjCAZ4RnSzfURJZrmX6F66Rkc8keJV-67oTzxyE_ww0WUw/s1600-h/Worn+Out.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325668275375244450" style="WIDTH: 147px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 258px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmdb9vxivLSnq-6wpoJzBUQ241iZDSxtWoVuMSuTYpZ2hmf1JMPXPBvhLphHsC88Ee_2wIIXrDeYAhJtzsViMZk-bacjCAZ4RnSzfURJZrmX6F66Rkc8keJV-67oTzxyE_ww0WUw/s320/Worn+Out.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div>"What colour is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life", said Van Gogh - a man whose black & white drawings were better than his paintings.<br /><div></div></div>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-38453031470072842702009-04-07T17:13:00.004+01:002009-04-07T17:36:45.198+01:00Highly RecommendedA book I have just finished reading: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collector-Worlds-Richard-Francis-Burton/dp/0061351938/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239121846&sr=8-1">The Collector of Worlds </a>by Iliya Troyanov.<br /><br />It's a fictionalised biography of the great Victorian explorer Richard Francis Burton.<br />Admittedly, I was also interested because the author is Bulgarian (writing in German).<br /><br />The book itself exceeded my expectations. The life of a man thirsty for knowledge explodes before your eyes like a colourful painting. A man thirsty for knowledge, not for power - a key element which all the more exalts him as a character. His explorations of India in the time of the Raj accompanied by Naukaram, his guide and 'servant', are recreated with vividness, brutal realism, and from multiple<br />perspectives.<br /><br />The novel itself is multi-layered, the point of view shifting from one character to another, exposing Burton's often controversial activities in all their splendid variety and pioneering boldness.<br />He learns Gujarati, Hindustani, among a multitude of dialects, astonishing and even frightening the locals. He is often suspiciously looked upon as simply another British colonialist, trying to 'civilize' them, subjecting them in the process. However, it's clear Burton's nature belies the imperialist character of the other British officers there. He does not simply absorb their culture, he practically lets their culture absorb him. He is not there to conquer them politically by force; he is there to conquer his own fears, to defy his seemingly lacklustre background which he perceives as stagnant, bleak and uninspiring. In fact, on a couple of occasions his disdain for his own country is made explicit. His veiled contempt for his superiors, including the great General Napier, is also not spared the reader who is eventually deployed to the Sindh province of colonial Pakistan.<br /><br />Burton's sexual exploits are also depicted in a surprisingly graphic manner. Nevertheless, even the relationship between him and his 'mistress' are complex as he is caught up in a painful love triangle with her and Naukaram. In fact, even the people who accompany him in his tortuous but fascinating travels are richly developed characters, all with their own story to tell - one of the most rewarding aspects of the book, without a doubt.<br /><br />Burton makes the Hajj and publishes his personal account of it, sending shockwaves throughout the Muslim world.<br />The scenes where he finds himself among the thousands of pilgrims in Mecca are reflected upon as we are steeped in the consciousness of the man himself - a consciousness that possesses the lucidity and vitality of water and the fieriness and volatility of oil.<br /><br /><br />His most arduous exploit however is presented in the third main part of the book - his laborious expedition targeting the source of the Nile. Illnesses plague him and his fellow explorer, John Hanning Speke - a person he comes to detest. In fact, ironically he gets along better with the natives and the other foreign participants on the expedition than with his fellow Englishman.<br />Evidently, Troyanov is acutely conscious of this and strives to make it as explicit as possible. I would even venture to say that perhaps he aimed to portray the quintessential British imperialist through the character of Speke who is far more interested in appeasing his ego by hunting the local wild animals than investigating the cultural heritage of the natives. He is quite clearly a foil to Burton. Not that his character given a typically secondary role - his presence is key to the final section of the book.<br /><br />Burton is on his deathbed at the very end. The ending isn't sad though, neither is it particularly dramatic. He dies, but an atmosphere of humour is nevertheless created as a bemused Roman Catholic priest discovers the terrible truth about the man he has just administered holy unction to. It's a clever ending, for it highlights the inscrutable nature of Burton. And indeed, that is at the very core of the book for me: religion normally transcends the individual but what happens when this rule is turned on its head? We are always left feeling small and insignificant at the thought of a religion, foreign or not, which is nonetheless a thing of higher stature than us. We are struggling to fully comprehend it - the very reason for this insecure feeling prompted by an insecure faith.<br /><br />With Burton it is different.<br /><br />It is as though religion itself, Islam or Christianity, is left gaping questioningly at him.<br />He fathoms religion better than it fathoms him. His 'last wish' could perhaps suggest otherwise but I think it merely emphasises his deep respect for it.<br /><br />An intelligently written novel, well-researched and penned by a man who is himself an avid traveller. Burton is a summative character, a symbol for that very same spirit that is able to marvel at all that is foreign and ostensibly incomprehensible. That sort of spirit is a rarity, an extraordinarily valuable one however. It is particularly relevant today with the controversial role that Islamic extremism plays in our lives.<br /><br />The fundamental question is laid out before us: does one need to falsely assume the role of a dervish called Sheikh Abdullah in order to grasp Islam like Burton does? The answer is a simple and straightforward 'nope'. One does not need the various aliases that Burton hides behind in order to understand other faiths and customs. All one needs is that very same inspiration that drives him along, to learn that death is not the only way to transcend earthly life.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-82005614526896033402009-03-24T12:32:00.002+00:002009-03-24T12:49:48.264+00:00There's A Man For You!<p><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oeQu7amOdKw&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oeQu7amOdKw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Now I am not into guys but the sheer admiration I feel for Alain Delon in that interview above is something that must not remain hidden. His detached, cool manner; his deep, sagacious voice; his sharp, penetrating gaze - these all combine to render him such a visually imposing man. Most actors (particularly of today) possess the charm and presence of a stray cat in comparison. </p><p>Men and the French language have never been manlier!</p><p> </p>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-32434594060591908422009-03-09T00:37:00.004+00:002009-03-09T01:02:51.849+00:00Killin'manjaro<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0zi3SrBi2jtQVqhS6nbb-7NZQXaIxk9q1mcTTK5V6YQIZApXEvQtyVQ8yCdX2et5vpcaS02uqXn9ndZU_M7uU70CRahCmv37lKhTHQXLI4IxApYnhzd9z8tyR80baCB8KGpOkQ/s1600-h/0314-01.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0zi3SrBi2jtQVqhS6nbb-7NZQXaIxk9q1mcTTK5V6YQIZApXEvQtyVQ8yCdX2et5vpcaS02uqXn9ndZU_M7uU70CRahCmv37lKhTHQXLI4IxApYnhzd9z8tyR80baCB8KGpOkQ/s400/0314-01.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310982290059129362" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7929888.stm">Nine celebrities have successfully reached Mount Kilimanjaro.</a><br /><br />I can now see why Hemingway shot himself. He knew it was coming. He consecrated this magnificent summit in 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro', portraying one of the most beautiful deaths in literature. Those nine celebrities desecrated it by transposing the false, hyperbolized reality of their social being onto a venerated, mysterious place. <br /><br />Harry indeed died not bereft of hope, but I feel he was not that lucky the second time we killed him, for we killed his hope first.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-40146062992960351592009-02-20T04:20:00.001+00:002009-02-20T04:20:39.967+00:00The Man Of ActionThe more I think about it, the more I gain experience with the whips and scorns of time, the more I feel that a man is no man at all if he is not a man of action. Or perhaps not that he is not a man at all but he is not much of a man to be fair. To act is better than merely to talk - a simple fact yet one which I feel is not fully comprehended by most people and men in particular. This simple fact has immense gravitas, yet it is much like the Moon - the light of its weighty truthfulness is only revealed to us in phases, in crescents and halves, and only occasionally in its entirety. <br /><br />Napoleon, one of the most famous examples of the man of action, himself said that time is most precious to men. We can never recover lost time. Nostalgia, even despair over lost time and missed opportunities is a beautiful feeling just as Keats' Odes are beautiful. That mysterious, twilit tinge of regret that often consumes us is not an arbitrary experience - it is one of the purest, most sincere and profound instances of a man's life. Our most ebullient fear is the fear of having to experience this feeling of bitter regret time and time again. <br /><br />The newborn child's only sensation of existence is the amorphous, hazy consciousness that at the very least reminds him of this very existence of his, frail though it may well still be. The pulse of this primeval sensation resonates through the nightly caverns of the unexplored consciousness as silently and incessantly as the heart that beats within the fortress of our ribcage. Do we feel our heart beating most of the time though? No, I would say - it's mostly silent. We take this pulse for granted and it is only in the effects of its misuse, or certain lack of use that we come to painfully acknowledge its significance. Likewise, we only come to know of the pulse of this primeval sensation when we reflect on its seemingly silent passivity. Up to this point, it was the mere murmur of a brooklet, now it explodes with the force and fury of a geyser; and this marks the point at which we resign almost completely to its sparkling, vivacious candour. Indeed, a man ought not to resign himself completely to anything but this precise primeval sensation - not to a woman, not to a nation, not even to a seemingly convincing ideal - nothing but this single sensation. A man should only completely surrender to this condition, because it is above all, the most fundamental one from which stem all the rest. <br /><br />In the Middle Ages, the huge walls of Constantinople were thought impregnable. Legends and myths of its impregnability made it the focal point of the imperialist ambitions of many conquerors. Of course they were not actually impregnable. The Latin Crusaders and later the Ottomans proved this. But in its glorious history, Constantinople's essence would enchant us with those precise legends and myths of its impregnability. There, <em>that</em> is its <em>elan vital</em>, <em>that</em> is what fuels the eternal pyres of its majestic status in our minds. The same goes for the primeval sensation described in the last paragraph - its importance for our being is precisely its vehement reinforcement of the fact that <em>there is something there</em>. Indeed, there is something there - that is the first sensation that a child experiences in infancy; and it sustains our frail being thereafter with its primeval pulse. The child doesn't know what it is, but it knows that it's <em>there</em>; we may not necessarily know what is there in store for us if we act in accordance to our passions, but we know that there is that something which awaits us – our only consolation. <br />The true man of action has a deep, visceral knowledge of the inner workings of this feeling. It incenses him. It makes him immune to inaction. It empowers him. <br /><br />The primeval sensation with which we greet the world should be the primeval sensation with which we greet other people; with which we read the opening lines of a poem; with which we reciprocate a heartfelt smile. Myths always describe, eulogize in fact certain actions and thus passions are myths seen through the eyes of a blind poet. Close your eyes and act! Tiresias was blind but a prophet; passions can make you blind but they can make you a prophet too. To act – that is what’s important. All myths are actions past; all passions are actions to be. At least that’s how it ought to work.<br /><br />Act, act, act. A man is born to act. A man without the will to overstep the boundaries of his reserved character, cringing his life away, is a man to be swiftly dealt with – severe, inflexible justice. Terror needs to strike him – his ungratefulness towards life and its spirited vibrancy needs to be guillotined away, whatever the cost. <br /><br />From now on, I shall divorce myself from this lonely promontory that is my decency, better judgment and the lot. A man is nothing but a mule carrying the bulky lot of his fruitless diffidence; a real man carries it just as well, with sturdiness, patience and stoical equanimity, but stops and takes breaks from time to time…<br /><br />From now on, I shall write with stubbornness, not waiting there sterile for a spark of inspiration. I shall be a man of action – inertness is too formulaic for me now. <br /><br />My mind is weary, exhausted, rejected – it craves practice. And in Shelley’s little, lovely <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Wanderers">lyric </a>I shall find the compass of my manhood: this weary, rejected mind of mine will find its solace in some secret nest not perched on the feeble twig of some stagnant tree, but on the crest of a billow, forever in motion, forever sure of its course, forever racing towards an end unforeseen. <br />There you shall find me now.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-67197105013359949662009-02-02T15:57:00.005+00:002009-02-03T00:37:36.879+00:00The Hoodie<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbBzEbzeoTcv_TpBtKoEmJuAMQwXs-bxfR1cg0oG3jUtzPn3T1lpjxMJ6_m5W-CzmtxiED_nEapt2Yu37KDNBDMW35MuWFYfAeJYIeTRpC1YedRcXzoLQ3ZaGIixHYXHuPQG3kdg/s1600-h/Image017.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298230326995659458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbBzEbzeoTcv_TpBtKoEmJuAMQwXs-bxfR1cg0oG3jUtzPn3T1lpjxMJ6_m5W-CzmtxiED_nEapt2Yu37KDNBDMW35MuWFYfAeJYIeTRpC1YedRcXzoLQ3ZaGIixHYXHuPQG3kdg/s400/Image017.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div>I have only just unearthed this picture I took of a hooded top during my visit to the Byzantine exhibition in the Royal Academy of Arts. Yes indeed, no mistake there - it's an original Byzantine hoodie from the Middle Ages. It's a charming sight to behold, not least because of its age.</div><div></div><div><br /><br />Nowadays the 'hoodie' itself is the toga of 'chav culture' as this primeval-instinct, Charon-on-your-bus-stop-and-maybe-even-on-your-doorstep, psychopomp 'culture' is popularly referred to here in Britain. Psychopops indeed -they swiftly dispatch you to the Underworld, no judgment necessary. The hoodie - a crude method of concealing your physical identity so as to reveal your mental actuality - lives on. </div><div></div><div><br /><br />Not that I want to associate the Byzantine 'hoodie' with the derogatory term we all know today, but who knows, perhaps on occasions it might have served a similar purpose. </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /><br />And as we all know too from <em>Once Upon a Time in the West:<br /><br /><strong>Harmonica</strong>: There weren't no dollars in them days.<br /><strong>Cheyenne</strong>: But sons-of-bitches? Yeah. <br /><br /></em></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>The 'hoodie' is as universal as the insidious person wearing it. </div>IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-19627972185337638692009-01-29T00:42:00.003+00:002009-01-29T00:57:36.574+00:00Great Writing<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><em>'I've got one more record. - Have you heard "So Long Letty"? I suppose you have. '</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><em>'Honestly, you don't understand - I haven't heard a thing.'</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><em>Nor known nor smelt, nor tasted, he might have added; only hot-cheeked girls in hot secret rooms. The young maidens he had known at New Haven in 1914 kissed men saying 'There!' hands at the man's chest to push him away. Now there was this scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent...</em></span><br /><br /><em><strong>Tender is the Night</strong> </em>by F. Scott Fitzgerald<br /><br /><br /><br />This is the standard by which great writing ought to be judged.IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35407868.post-34661829043385119032009-01-24T01:26:00.003+00:002009-01-24T01:57:53.537+00:00A Dutchman's BeardWillem Barentsz was a 16th century Dutch explorer who sought to find the Northeast passage, running above Siberia's north sea line which would have allowed easier access to countries as remote as India and China. He died on the 20th of May 1597 after his ship got stuck in the ice near the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.<br /><br />Four years later, in 1601, Shakespeare wrote in <em>Twelfth Night:</em><br /><br />'...and you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard...'IPCHUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02245624925228114641noreply@blogger.com4