Just started reading Best American Essays 2006 and came across a couple sentences in Poe Ballantine's piece 501 minutes to Christ*, which I would classify as quotable quotes.

"Like pornography, the news is a lurid concoction that panders to the basest emotions."

True indeed of much of what is on TV these days!

Another good quote (written in the context of a crazy woman, narrating weird tales to fellow passengers on a bus, being on the wrong bus...but I think it applies more widely to life in general!)

"I suppose the joy of finding an appreciative audience is better any day than some feeble notion of a destination."

Also, a few sentences from the Introduction by the editor, Laura Slater, that one can appreciate in our darker cynical moments: (emphasis mine)

"Sickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future.

The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between. They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness......"

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* I just found out that the essay can be read online (pdf) for free at its original publication in The Sun Magazine. Do read it...the author takes you on a wild weird ride on the kind of journey we'd never take, to places we'd never go to...and yet can associate with its basest moments! Isn't that what reading is all about? :)

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. - Cicero

1) Life in 4 pictures (more of the artists work here.) Poignant and conveyed in such a beautiful way!

2) 3-D Glass-Art

3) The International Illustrated is a free e-zine, collaboration effort of international illustration artists around the world to create and submit an artwork on every issue’s topic. - via

4) Paper Art

5) I'll add something here later...gotta run!
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Many more interesting art work, if you be so inclined, at a post where I compile interesting art and photography from around the web.

Perusing through the Pulitzer prize winning pictures by Renée C. Byer (found via Amit Varma's blog today), I got all teary-eyed by the time I got through the first half a dozen pictures!

A dose of perspective early in the morning as sulky-me wakes up to another day... this one supposed to be special in some way because its a birthday and all! And what a day it's already been - between the pictures and the Stephen Dunn poems I read this morning! (The poem that resonated the most is reproduced below for your pleasure. A great beginning and a delectable ending... hallmarks of a good great poem - not the rest of the poem was any less enjoyable! Now I know what tristesse feels like!

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Emptiness

I've learned mine can't be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it's become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I've hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I've donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.

Better, I know now, to dress it plain,
to say out loud
to some right person
in some right place
that there's something not there
in me, something I can't name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn't said a word.
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.

But she's amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won't let it go.

(c) Stephen Dunn
Published in his book of poems, Everything Else In The World.
The poem previously appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Prairie Schooner .

While listening to some jazz music on Last.fm, I heard a piece just now called Shuba Yatra*, from the album, Outdones by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and though what I heard was NOT jazz, in my opinion, my interest was piqued as it sounded like Indian classical music, mixed in with some western classical music. (*You can listen to it on Rhapsody - free subscription required.)

I had never heard of Bela Fleck and so looked him up. Seems, Bela has associated with musicians from around the globe -- hear, for example, the album Tabula Rasa, with the musical genius Vishwamohan Bhatt and famous erhu player, Jie-BingChen)...and that explains the Indian music influence!

Anyways, their Greatest Hits Of The 20th Century album should be a good introduction to their music though there is a good sampling of a live performance available at the Internet Music archive.

Do read this post from the Presentation Zen blog.

Happiness, decisions, & the paradox of unlimited choices

It is a follow-up to a previous post at the blog and mentions a presentation from TED on the "liberating effects of constraints." It also mentions a 2004 book, The Paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz, where he put forth ideas on how pursuing the maximizing of choice is not as liberating as one may believe but in fact is a cause for unhappiness.

Aah... don't we all ride the satisfaction curve!

Also read this Business Week article the post links to…
Creativity Loves Constraints ...but they must be balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible.

…and a response to the article: Opportunities, Constraints and Barriers affect Creativity

Also see this great cartoon - Less is More is Less

April is celebrated (not by all!) as National Poetry Month since the Academy of American Poets started

My myriad interests and lack of focus will prevent a poem-a-day feature that many sites are hosting for the month, but here is a quote that signifies the importance of poetry in my life.

Poetry exists not to simplify our sense of life and death but to absorb its complexities and mixed tones. - W. S. Di Piero

Reading Amit Varma's post, I had to look up the word tristesse since it is a new word for me. In doing so, I found there is a book called Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan. (Btw, Webster gives the meaning as melancholy.)

Thanks to amazon.com reader, I gleaned the first para of the book...which moved me and left me feeling tristesse, if you will.. (Maybe that's what they call non-coital tristesse, Amit?)

A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today, it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

Even in translation, that was something! Never heard of the author before today but makes one want to read more!

Disclaimer: Maybe it was not the words that moved me. Maybe, I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Am spending the morning surfing as I listen to Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, and Ella...oh...Ella....God Bless her soul!

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Updates:

1) The wiki entry for Francoise Sagan, says Bonjour Tristesse means "Good Morning, Heartache." So, what am I feeling - melancholy or heartache? I think it may be nothing that serious - just ennui.

2) Also, wiki enlightens that and the title Bonjour Tristesse is the French translation of this Billie Holiday song. Nice coincidence!

3) The wiki article also tells us about some of the troubles she had in the last years of her life before her death in 2004 due to tax evasion problems with the French government...sad end to her life!

4) Here is a Paris Review interview with the author.

Just saw a feel-good kinda pod on current.tv and so thought I'd blog about it instead of the usual depressing stories from Iraq and such (which I have tried to ignore for some weeks now!)

Unfortunately, the video is only for tv and not available for viewing on their website. The song that went with the video was very appropriate and it was an enjoyable three and a half minutes of watching.

Anyways, here is the webpage for this meme.

Sometimes, a hug is all what we need. Free hugs is a real life controversial story of Juan Mann, A man whos sole mission was to reach out and hug a stranger to brighten up their lives. In this age of social disconnectivity and lack of human contact, the effects of the Free Hugs campaign became phenomenal.

Actually, the video is on youtube and is linked to at the above page and seems the music/song that I quite liked is by a group called Sick Puppies. Also, according to the wiki page for the Free Hugs Campaign:

The video on YouTube was released on September 22, 2006 and has over 40,000 ratings at an average of 4/5 stars, and over 11.1 million page views, over 21,000 comments and has been favorited over 65,000 times (as of March, 2007), making it the 12th most viewed video on the site. The video clip was voted "Most Inspirational" in a YouTube poll released on March 27, 2007.

Picture at the website shows that the guy's already made it on Oprah too. Obviously, I'm a little late advertising his effort! :)

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Update: The phenomenon has spread outside of the countries where "Juan Mann" started this i.e. Australia and England .... including, the US (picture 4 in slideshow at the link), Italy, Switzerland, Taiwan, and with not-so-good results in China.

Of course India has the original 'free hugger'.. Mata Amritanandamayi, the "hugging saint" but I am trying to imagine the stares one would get if one tried this in a mall in Mumbai, India. Hmm... the possibilities.

Like I had written before, I had indulged in some wishful thinking about wanting to see/hear live some of the great names in West African music....

...well, earlier this week, en route to my dentist's office to pick up some x-rays, I noticed that Toumani Diabaté and his Symmetric Orchestra are going to be playing at the Somerville theater here in the Boston area. I HAD to go to this event and at $28 a ticket, some would say it was a steal to see the world's finest (video) kora (a traditonal instrument in Malian music, essentially a 21-string harp-lute) player from Mali and his assembly of very talented musicians from Mali and other West African countries around Mali.

Much joy comes anticipating the concert... I'll blog again about the experience soon. In the meantime, go hear some of the songs and see a video from their recent album, Boulevard de l'Independence, which was apparently 'recorded in two weeks' worth of all-night sessions in Bamako'. Also at the site is a preview of Toumani's collaboration with Ali Farka Toure, In the Heart of the Moon - which was recorded over "three unrehearsed, improvisatory two-hour sessions at the Hotel Mande, on the banks of the Niger river, in Bamako, Mali."

Also at the Somerville theater, on April 21st the great Mali singer, Salif Keita will be performing. I am very tempted to buy tickets again despite the fact that it is almost sold out and available tickets are in the very last few rows of the theater. For now, listen to Keita's haunting voice on this song, where he sings with Cesaria Evora, Cape Verde's finest and most popular female vocalist.



Incidentally, Cesaria Evora will also be performing in Boston at the Berklee Performance Center in June.

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See previous posts on music from Africa - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Heard the Mali group, Tartit, on Andy Kershaw's show on BBC Radio. The playlist for the weekly show provided a link to Tartit's page on myspace.com, where you can enjoy four of Tartit's songs.

Such joy...some day I need to go to Timbaktu!

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also see previous posts on music from Africa - 1, 2, 3, 4

The world would be a lot less funnier if it were not for kooks like this, who seem to abound everywhere.. :)

A Florida theater has changed the name of The Vagina Monologues on their marquee in response to a driver's complaint. The new name? The Hoohaa Monologues.

Serious....not making this up though it sounds like something out of The Onion...it is so funny and so stupid on so many different levels. Damn... now I know what that perv Al Pacino kept saying in the appropriately titled movie, Scent of a Woman.

Now someone explain to me what haahaa-heee means and I will know what she meant by Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee :)

Larry Stewart, known to the world as Kansas City's Secret Santa for his practice (from 1979 to 2006), died at age 58 on January 12, 2007.

He had made a habit of anonymously handing out small amounts of cash, typically in the form of hundred dollar bills, to needy people. The total amount he gave away is estimated to be 1.3 million dollars. Stewart successfully kept his identity hidden until 2006, when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which would later claim his life. He chose at that time to reveal his identity as part of an effort to encourage others to practice philanthropy.

David Rattray, a well-known historian and tour guide of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu war in South Africa, was brutally murdered on January 26th at his farm in KwaZulu-Natal in circumstances that are under investigation by the South African police.

Molly Ivins died last week (Jan 31st) of breast cancer. What a loss...so now which Texan will pick on the Bush family's exploits!! Expectedly, tributes pour in for this fiesty lady...

Alan MacDiarmid, 79, Professor of Chemistry at UPenn and Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry in 2000 along with Alan J. Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa for the discovery of conductive polymers, died yesterday.

He apparently died "after a fall down stairs in his home in the Drexel Hill suburb of Philadelphia while rushing to catch a flight to his native New Zealand, said his wife, Gayl Gentile. Dr. MacDiarmid was ill with myelodysplastic syndrome, a leukemia-like disease, and had expected to live only a few weeks, during which he wanted to go to New Zealand to say goodbye to his siblings, his wife said."

He is one of the few Nobel laureates I have had the luck to hear/see in person... having attended a seminar he gave in University of Akron in 2001-02.

And lastly, today, a sudden end to a bizarre life....

Reality TV star and former Playboy playmate (sorry..no links! :)), Anna Nicole Smith, is dead at age 39. She was pronounced dead after being found unconscious in her Florida hotel room.

Woman on the wrong bus lost for 25 years

A woman who boarded the wrong bus on an attempted shopping trip from Thailand to Malaysia has returned home after 25 years. Jaeyana Beuraheng told her eight children she accidentally boarded a bus bound for Bangkok instead of Malaysia, and once there she boarded a second incorrect bus because she could not read or speak Thai or English, The Times of London reported Wednesday.

Beuraheng, who speaks only the Yawi dialect used by Muslims in southern Thailand, said the noise and traffic of the big city confused and disoriented her, leading her to board the second wrong bus to Chiang Mai, near the border with Burma. The woman said she spent five years begging on the street in the city and was often mistaken for a member of a hill tribe because of her dark skin tone. She was arrested in 1987 on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant and was sent to a social services hostel when authorities were unable to determine her origins. However, last month, three students from her home village arrived at the hostel for training, and they were able to communicate with Beuraheng and help her find her way home.

Or in other words, I cannot make up my mind if I should rejoice at the amazing new find of a rare species or cry at the loss of an amazing creature...

Rarely seen 'living fossil' shark caught off Tokyo

A goblin shark -- a rarely seen species often called a "living fossil" -- was caught alive in Tokyo Bay but died after being put on display, an aquarium said. The grey, long-nosed shark was caught in fishermen's nets around 150 to 200 metres (500 to 650 feet) deep. It was discovered by officials of the Tokyo Sea Life Park when they took a boat with local fishermen on January 25.

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Related links: A piranha seems tame compared to the Candiru (via.) Also, see an ocean sun-fish and a rare shark captured on film, and a not--so--lucky giant squid. Also, be amazed by the bio-diversity in Antartica.

I am temporarily suspending all blogging activities and taking a hiatus to focus on some other things in my life. I do not think I had any readers here (except people who may have accidentally passed by here) but if there are some lurkers, rest asssured, I will return to blogging at some point in time. Until then... take it easy, have fun, and be happy.

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for a delectable year ahead! :)

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A year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. - Hal Borland

More new year quotes here, for those so inclined.