“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction.”

~ Stranger Than Fiction

Ars Poetika
Allan Popa

Sa isang teorya sa pisika
walang anumang dalawang bagay
na maaaring ganap na magtagpo.
Mapipilit silang paglapitin
ngunit di kailanman mapagdidikit.

Laging may espasyong
papagitan sa kanila, gaano man
kakitid. Tulad ng mga paa
ng anghel na hindi sumasayad
sa lupa. Kaya tayo dumadama:
tinutulay ang pagkakahiwalay
upang humanap ng karamay
sa ating walang-hanggang pag-iisa.

sumasalat tayo ng kahulugan:
hibla-hibla ng kawalan na sinusulid.
hinahabi natin ang nadarama.
Ang mga katahimikan at patlang
sa pagitan ng bagay-bagay.

* Mula sa multiply site ni soleil.

from
Selected Poems of W.H. Auden
by W. H. Auden
Vintage

I
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
II
O the valley in the summer where I and my John
Beside the deep river would walk on and on
While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above
Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,
And I leaned on his shoulder; ‘O Johnny, let’s play’:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall
When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,
The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud
And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;
‘Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let’s dance till it’s day’:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera
When music poured out of each wonderful star?
Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down
Over each silver and golden silk gown;
‘O John I’m in heaven,’ I whispered to say:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O but he was fair as a garden in flower,
As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,
When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade
O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;
‘O marry me, Johnny, I’ll love and obey’:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,
You’d the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,
The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,
Every star rattled a round tambourine;
Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:
But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

Some say that love’s a little boy,
And some say it’s a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that’s absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn’t do.

Does it look like a pair of pajamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It’s quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I’ve found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
it wasn’t ever there:
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton’s bracing air.
I don’t know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn’t in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all it’s time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my shoes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

w.h. auden

Slavoj Žižek. Photograph: Mykel Nicolaou/Rex

Slavoj
Zizek, 59, was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is a professor at the
European Graduate School, international director of the Birkbeck
Institute for Humanities in London and a senior researcher at the
University of Ljubljana’s institute of sociology. He has written more
than 30 books on subjects as diverse as Hitchcock, Lenin and 9/11, and
also presented the TV series The Pervert’s Guide To Cinema.

When were you happiest?

A few times when I looked forward to a happy moment or remembered it - never when it was happening.

What is your greatest fear?

To awaken after death - that’s why I want to be burned immediately.

What is your earliest memory?

My mother naked. Disgusting.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, the twice-deposed president of Haiti. He is a model of what
can be done for the people even in a desperate situation.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Indifference to the plights of others.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Their sleazy readiness to offer me help when I don’t need or want it.

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Standing naked in front of a woman before making love.

Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?

The new German edition of the collected works of Hegel.

What is your most treasured possession?

See the previous answer.

What makes you depressed?

Seeing stupid people happy.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

That it makes me appear the way I really am.

What is your most unappealing habit?

The ridiculously excessive tics of my hands while I talk.

What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?

A mask of myself on my face, so people would think I am not myself but someone pretending to be me.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Watching embarrassingly pathetic movies such as The Sound Of Music.

What do you owe your parents?

Nothing, I hope. I didn’t spend a minute bemoaning their death.

To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?

To my sons, for not being a good enough father.

What does love feel like?

Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

What or who is the love of your life?

Philosophy. I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

What is your favourite smell?

Nature in decay, like rotten trees.

Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?

All the time. When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks.

Which living person do you most despise, and why?

Medical doctors who assist torturers.

What is the worst job you’ve done?

Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

What has been your biggest disappointment?

What Alain Badiou calls the ‘obscure disaster’ of the 20th century: the catastrophic failure of communism.

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

My
birth. I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been
born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

To Germany in the early 19th century, to follow a university course by Hegel.

How do you relax?

Listening again and again to Wagner.

How often do you have sex?

It depends what one means by sex. If it’s the usual masturbation with a living partner, I try not to have it at all.

What is the closest you’ve come to death?

When I had a mild heart attack. I started to hate my body: it refused to do its duty to serve me blindly.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

To avoid senility.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

The chapters where I develop what I think is a good interpretation of Hegel.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

That life is a stupid, meaningless thing that has nothing to teach you.

Tell us a secret.

Communism will win.

***

Grabbed from Lala’s Multiply Site

1. Requited love is an impossibility.

2. "We love what we can’t have, and we can’t have what we love

3. Eroticizing their possessions will be the pinnacle of your sexual fulfillment.

4. Anything that distracts you from the pain of your loss is good. Some people are more successful in this regard than others.

5. Hook up with someone. Live with them. Sleep with them. Tag along. Don’t be fooled. You are only a transitory distraction. Ask for commitment. Declare your love. Watch the set up evaporate.

6. The most potent way to exist is to occupy someone else’s imagination.

7. Desire is kept eternally alive by the impossibility of contact.

8. Modern communication enabling technologies will only heighten your sense of desolation by making you more keenly aware of the fact that no one is trying to call.

9. You will fall in love only once. Obstacles will prevail. The rest of your life is spent recovering. 

***

text from Milky, photo from The College Hill Independent

LONDON, England (CNN) — A picture of an overweight
woman lying naked on a couch, painted by British artist Lucian Freud,
set a record Tuesday night for the most money paid for a painting by a
living artist.

The 1995 life-size work, "Benefits Supervisor
Sleeping," fetched $33.6 million during bidding at Christie’s auction
house in New York. The previous record was for "Hanging Heart," a
painting by Jeff Koonz that sold for $23.5 million, said Rik Pike, a
spokesman for Christie’s.

"Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" depicts
Sue Tilley, a manager of a government-run job center in London, lying
on her side on a worn-out couch with nothing to hide her folds of flesh.

Christie’s
calls it a "bold and imposing example of the stark power of Lucian
Freud’s realism," depicting "the forceful and undeniable physical
presence of people and things."

Tilley, 51, said she was
initially embarrassed to pose naked for the artist, but they soon grew
comfortable in the studio — so comfortable, in fact, that she
confessed to falling asleep while posing.

"I didn’t mind if he noticed," she said.

The
painting challenges modern notions of beauty and elicits a reaction
from everyone who sees it. That may have been precisely the aim of
Freud, who told London’s Tate Gallery in 2002 that he wanted his
paintings to "astonish, disturb, seduce, convince."

Though some
regard the painting as shocking — ugly, even — that is also the
appeal for collectors, said Michael Hall, editor of Apollo Magazine in
London.

"There’s a reaction against art that’s regarded as too pretty," he said.

Hall said he thinks a more conventionally beautiful painting would not be able to fetch such a large amount.

"It’s
the sort of thing that everyone immediately wants to voice an opinion
about," he said of the painting. "It challenges conventional taste …
and people do find that rather exciting and interesting to talk about."

Collectors may also view this as a rare chance to buy something by a prolific artist painted at the peak of his work, he said.

Freud,
85, has been described as Britain’s greatest living realist painter. He
is the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and came to London from
Germany when he was a child.

With Tilley, Freud said he was "very
aware of all kinds of spectacular things to do with her size, like
amazing craters and things one’s never seen before," according to the
2002 interview with the Tate. He added, "I have perhaps a predilection
towards people of unusual or strange proportions, which I don’t want to
over-indulge."

Freud painted the portrait of Tilley over nine
months in 1995. Tilley said she posed for eight hours a day, two or
three days a week.

She had been introduced to the artist through
a mutual friend, Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery, who also
posed for Freud. It was Bowery’s idea for Tilley to pose for Freud, so
he arranged a meeting.

Tilley knew the meeting was more of an
interview for the job of Freud’s muse, and she didn’t find out until
later — through Bowery — that she’d gotten the job, she said.

"Lucian just said to Leigh, ‘Oh, tell Sue she can start next week,’ " Tilley said.

Tilley
still works full-time at the job center in London’s West End and calls
her newfound fame "a bit bizarre." She laughs as she describes how she
now has to arrange her schedule to accommodate media interviews.

She said she’s excited to find out how much the painting will sell for, but knowing that it could set a record is "a bit scary."

"It’s hard to put your head around it, really," she said. "But it’s all good."

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/05/13/freud.art/index.html

Sa mga nadadayo sa blog kong ito, baka gusto nyo ring sumilip sa isa ko pang blog sa IMEEM kung saan ko itinambak ang mga luma kong papers/ exams, among other things.

Salamat at padayon!

Whoa! Pilipinas
Datu’s Tribe

Napakarami pang kagiliw-giliw na mga bagay na maipapamalas sa bayan ko na maaaring hindi nyo nakita nung kayo’y unang bumisita rito.
Kaya’t halina’t tuklasin ang ilan sa mga kaganapan at tanawin na higit na makapaglalarawan sa mga hindi binabanderang aspeto ng
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Nangingibang-bayan ang aming masisipag at matatalino
Ang pangunahing eksport nami’y nagugutom na mga desperado
Kinabukasan ng nakararami’y sinasalalay sa Lotto
At ang mga pag-asa ni Pepe’y tumitira ng rugby sa kanto

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Umiimport kami ng mga binabasurang produkto
Mga mamamahayag nag-eendorso ng alak, gamot at shampoo
May mga titser na nagbebenta ng insurance, damit at tocino
Karaniwang pasahod kasi’y sapat lang bumuhay ng aso

Whoa! Pilipinas

Ang bagong relihiyon ng masa ay tele-pantasya
Kaya mga artista dito’y mga pulitiko rin at vice-versa
Andaming kampon ni Bonifacio na nasa center na ng mga elitista
Na nagiging tambayan ng mga bagong burgis na dating aktibista

Whoa! Pilipinas

Galamay ng  sindikato ang mga pulis at sundalo
Nagiging congressman ang mga sugarol at babaero
Pwedeng-pwedeng maging milyonaryo sa sweldo mo sa gobyerno
At umuupo sa pwesto mga di naman nananalo

Halina’t bumisita
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Halina’t bumisita
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Nang inyo nang makita
Mga di ninyo nakita 

Halina’t bumisita
Whoa! Pilipinas
Halina’t bumisita
Whoa! Pilipinas
Nang inyo nang makita
Mga di pinapakita sa inyo

Mga di pinapakita
sa inyo.