Merry Christmas

Had this been a time to celebrate
in my own calender
I would've wanted nothing more
or less
than the red flowers I found this evening
on my desk, waiting
for a name to be put on them.

it is I,
Mrs. Dalloway
who's arranged them
to be put there
by simply being a very good
daughter and cousin.

Çoban Çalılığı Anıları

babamdan kaldı bir geyik,
zaten onun çoğunu da yedik

The Turkish March According to Zizek

This comes very timely, after I have purchased a book on Opera by Zizek (and in German to boot!)- I guess he doesn't treat them any more or less discerningly than he does film, so I should be alright, I think :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/opinion/24zizek.html?ex=1199163600&en=47c5664276e90d20&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Maps for Lost Blitcons

I have just finished reading the very very sinister Maps for Lost Lovers, and turning to the internet for help have found unequivocal praise for it. TLS and London Review of Books do not report, but the Guardian does, in laudatory terms.
Every single ill that you can imagine that is attributed to Islam can be found in this book, it's almost like a check-list.
However one thing I find very hard to stomach is that the book implies that blind Islamic adherence is also at the heart of the fact that abortion is condoned in Pakistani communities if the baby is female--- subhanallah- so far as I know Koran is the only holy book that speaks of the plight of just such babies when speaking of judgement day: "And when the female infant buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed (so she may testify against those who killed her)" (81:8-9)
Blind adherence to Islam would stop anyone from messing with female foetuses, methinks.

Conversation Starter/Stopper

Overheard at a dinner party

the rah-rah-rah son of landed gentry: (addressing the crowd) ... I can never get my father to read that rag
the racial/social debu/dilittante: What does you father do?
rah-rah-rah: He's the Minister of Defence
debu/dilittante: Oh

Zauberberg

She came to me with the tell-tale signs of her distress
An urgency to the step
A shortness to the skirt,
And the kohl reluctantly smeared over the eye-lid

It took her some time to name it

Here they had dined together
And here, they had had coffee
This mountain was the mountain from where
They had observed the villages beyond

And it took a giant’s reserve
To keep my mouth shut or exempt
From asking questions as I
Gorged chocolate covered pineapples and bananas
under the cacaphony of the Europe’s biggests christmas tree,
Thinking, everyone to their own devils
(oh, that sofa, the sofa, the hands, the shoes, the receding hair
and whispered questions below the decibels of the general conversation
the hand shake, the promise unkept)

The day wore on, and another
And then the goblin confronted us
With an outstretched hand and a smile
And she fed her with fruits and conversation
And when it was time to go to bed
She made one last offering

“Take him!” she said to me
but I had heard these cries before
I had heeded such words before
And knew them to be the false maps they were
For the uninitiated
For the disinterested,
for the little hopeful girl I once was.

But now I sail through life
With not a care in the world
And these goblins,
these magic mountains,
these false friends,
the ghosts of Europe
can’t touch me anymore
for in my breast pocket I keep
enough eastern promises
to last me a life-time.
***
darling, darjeeling
dear, deer, darjeeling.