swiss roll
there are some moments in life, when you’ve witnessed someone in any sport, art or industry put up a performance of sheer excellence, that take your breath away. you’d know it when you see it, and you’d be thankful that you’ve seen it.
80 minutes for a 3-set tennis match was short, but it was poetry in motion and the memory will linger.
(woohoo i’m still so excited by the match haha)
broadcast thyself
VATICAN CITY – Puffs of smoke, speeches in Latin and multipage encyclicals have all been used by the Vatican to communicate with the faithful. Now the pope is trying to broaden his audience by joining the wannabe musicians, college pranksters and water-skiing squirrels on YouTube. In his inaugural YouTube foray Friday, Pope Benedict XVI welcomed viewers to this “great family that knows no borders” and said he hoped they would “feel involved in this great dialogue of truth.”
“Today is a day that writes a new page in history for the Holy See,” Vatican Radio said in describing the launch of the site, http://www.youtube.com/vatican
wow.
circles in the sand
many times in life we might find ourselves hobbling from one day to another, smarting from whatever whoever can throw at us and barely managing to scrape through. battered and bruised, and with each scar screaming out for attention to its own story, sometimes we forget, that all it takes is just one pleasantry, one smile, one flicker of optimism, or one moment where you feel things might have come full circle, to make the load that we all carry infinitely lighter.
from the least expected sources come the most uplifting moments.
for we are all Brothers
My brother kneels (so saith Kabir)
To stone and brass in heathen-wise,
But in my brother’s voice I hear
My own unanswered agonies.
His God is as his Fates assign -
His prayer is all the world’s – and mine.
- Rudyard Kipling
an empty threat is a threat nonetheless
tomorrow is the very last free day of my current semester and if whoever it is that woke me today start drilling at 9am i am gonna recreate the texas chainsaw massacre
uncompleted
i made no protest as we stood
hidden from the morning light, quivering.
many a familiar face and then some new ones,
all left me standing there drowning.
my shadow towered over me
and grinning, how tall it stood.
other engines moved through the gears and
hidden be i under my hood.
contemporary postcolonial mambo song
Well Jo’anna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy, oh
She don’t care about the rest at all
She’s got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection
But maybe pressure can make Jo’anna see
How everybody could a live as one
(Chorus:)
Gimme hope, Jo’anna
Hope, Jo’anna
Gimme hope, Jo’anna
‘Fore the morning come
Gimme hope, Jo’anna
Hope, Jo’anna
Hope before the morning come
I hear she make all the golden money
To buy new weapons, any shape of guns
While every mother in black Soweto fears
The killing of another son
Sneakin’ across all the neighbours’ borders
Now and again having little fun
She doesn’t care if the fun and games she play
Is dang’rous to ev’ryone
(Chorus)
She’s got supporters in high up places
Who turn their heads to the city sun
Jo’anna give them the fancy money
Oh to tempt anyone who’d come
She even knows how to swing opinion
In every magazine and the journals
For every bad move that this Jo’anna makes
They got a good explanation
(Chorus)
Even the preacher who works for Jesus
The Archbishop who’s a peaceful man
Together say that the freedom fighters
Will overcome the very strong
I wanna know if you’re blind Jo’anna
If you wanna hear the sound of drums
Can’t you see that the tide is turning
Oh don’t make me wait till the morning come
(Chorus)
WWJD
in the first 10 games or so, chelsea were playing with incredible flair, winning matches, plundering plenty of goals and scolari was hailed as the best manager since sliced bread. then it all went pear-shaped as people began to suss us out.
as pressure mounts on the brazillian and calls for his head grow ever more vociferous, i think you can hardly blame the poor guy. this team was built for power and efficiency, to grind down opponents, to be disciplined and defensive, and to score goals from set plays and defend them perfectly and win championships chock-full of 1-0 victories. basically in the very image of jose.
new man comes in, but it’s been practically the same players, and in addition to winning matches and trophies the demand was flowing, entertaining, sexy football, the very way chelsea was not meant to play.
the question remains, what would jose do?
she quotes a lot of annie hall
There’s an old joke – um… two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ‘em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”
Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life – full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.
- from ‘annie hall’
nobody gets too much heaven
a run around my neighbourhood reveals the strangest things. as i finished the longest run i’ve been on for since time immemorial and hurtled onto the soft playground floor, i chanced upon this indian couple not more than 10 metres away. he was, i presume from his horridly mismatched clothes and boots, a construction worker or something like that. and she was in a flowing pink sari, hair impeccably braided, and i could not quite figure out what or who she was.
and they were dancing! totally oblivious to a figure not more than 10 metres away breathing heavily and sprawled on the ground, they would not have looked out of place amidst elephants and snake charmers and flowers being strewn all over the floor and masses of people dancing and roti prata.
as the heaviness of my breath abated slightly i sat and watched. i started a little as they stopped dancing, but in actual fact i was still being ignored. they moved to sit on the sit-up benches where she started to sing to him. but after a few verses she stopped. they might have finally decided to notice me, or just gotten bored, but as they stood up to leave the man smacked her bottom, and they laughed as they left arm-in-arm, not looking back. as for myself, i sat in the same spot i have been for the past 10 to 15 minutes, highly amused.
how very simple.
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
i seek the one with whom i can sit at any nice coffee joint and just read. a good book for each of us both. not a word would pass between us, and in place of an uncomfortable silence would lie a very companionable one.
the new year
so this is the new year.
and i don’t feel any different.
the clanking of crystal
explosions off in the distance, in the distance
so this is the new year
and I have no resolutions
for self assigned penance
for problems with easy solutions
so everybody put your best suit or dress on
let’s make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
as thirty dialogues bleed into one
i wish the world was flat like the old days
then i could travel just by folding a map
no more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways
there’d be no distance that can hold us back.
there’d be no distance that could hold us back
there’d be no distance that could hold us back
so this is the new year
