Khaosanroadsunrise

All of a sudden an incandescent blob
has popped up right at the end of the road,
it might be a nuke test, like in Alamogordo,
but only a fat tourist here is called gordo.
A few seconds later we can breathe again,
the overweight guy can return to Spain,
the light is still there but this is not Nagasaki
and the noise we've just heard is of an old Kawasaki.

Economics

I am walking down a busy sidewalk and I badly need to pee. I remember that at the end of that narrow alley on the right there is a public toilet. I rush. When I get there I am reminded that to unlock the toilet gate you need a 10 baht coin. I don't have any. There is no one around who can give me change.
My nearly exploding bladder is enhancing my resourcefulness: I have an unexpected idea. I remember seeing a nice lady with a radiant smile squatting on the floor at the alley entrance, begging the passersby for some spare baht. Hadn't I been distracted by my body needs I would have already dropped a coin in her bowl. I grab a 20b note out of my pocket. For most people this note is worth double a 10b coin. And that, of course, includes the lady with the lovely smile. However, I want to pee now, and I need the 10b coin, which I don't currently possess, and that makes it priceless for me, no matter what's worth for you or anyone else.

Modern slavery

Modern slavery is not imposed,
no weapons needed, nor nets or chains,
the enslavers operate like fishermen:
they drop a bait that the slave will bite:
it could be an iPhone, a BMW or a penthouse,
the slaves will wake up at 6am,
suffocate for hours in the morning traffic,
sacrifice their eyes for the sake of a report,
arrive home late more sleepy than hungry,
wake up at dawn more drowsy than horny,
watch TV programs that promote mental numbness,
scroll over fake posts that help them feel real.

The last days of Socrates - Plato

All we know about Socrates was handed down to us by his pupil Plato - one of the most important western philosophers - as we have already seen when talking about the Symposium.
In this book Plato tells us about the end of Socrates' life: his trial, his imprisonment and his death by poisoning (not really a suicide, as this was actually the court sentence).
Socrates typical argumentative method is exemplified in four different sections.

Rendez-vous

A man and a woman enter a bar.
What made them a pair is no longer there,
yet something remains, or is born anew
out of the ashes of that vanished bond.
They sit at the counter, the barman draws near,
he doesn't know who, only what and how.
He breaks the ice twice, it's ice of two types:
one needs a tool, the other a joke.

De profundis and other writings - Oscar Wilde

De profundis is a letter that Wilde wrote to his former friend Bosie while serving his sentence at Reading jail.
It's a long, beautiful and very sorrowful text where the author tries to explain the sequence of events that lead to his imprisonment, what his friend's responsibilities were and what mistakes he himself made (mostly out of weakness and kindness, in his opinion).

The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma - Thant Myint-U

The author of this book is an American writer of Burmese descent. His grandfather was a colleague and close friend of the heroes of Burmese independence and the Secretary-general of the UN from 1962 to 1971. Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was a frequent guest at his family's house in New York, before the 1988 uprising.

Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer - Friedrich Nietzsche

Another book against traditional morals by F.W. Nietzsche. This means a book against traditional religions and philosophy, as they have put forward a supposedly "real" world, accessible through reason or faith, as opposed to the "false" world offered by the senses.
This is a mystification. Morals tend to inhibit passion in order to avoid all possible negative consequences. The mistake lies in trying to extirpate passions rather then spiritualize them. Morals should help human life by removing any obstacles to happiness and free expression of natural instincts. Yet, they do exactly the opposite: they oppose life, instincts and the senses.

The TV car - Bangkok, Thailand

The usual crowd sits in two rows:
football, curries and cheap beer
flood with good mood the atmosphere
and help all conversation flows.
A sudden force engulfs the scene
and in seconds every movement stops,
spoons are hanging in mid air,
all the faces turn as one.

The Antichrist - Friedrich W. Nietzsche

Let's start by stating that this is not a book against Jesus Christ, meaning the historical person, the religious prophet or the revolutionary philosopher. This is definitely a very harsh criticism of Christianity, the Christian church and its founding fathers (the Apostles, Paul of Tarsus, the Popes, the priests), of its roots planted in a corrupt version of Judaism (corrupt when compared with the original form of it) and of the German Lutheran reformation.
One might not agree with Nietzsche's conclusions, judgments, opinions and some creative historical interpretations, which I do find extremely fascinating and often very convincing, at least much more convincing than most of the orthodox ones - the idea that the Greco-Roman tradition was bled by Christianity from inside (as opposed to destroyed by a natural catastrophe or a military invasion), that the middle age crusades did contribute to obliterate the advanced Moorish civilization in Spain and that the German Lutheran reformation did a similar thing to the Italian Renaissance cultural-revolutionary movement, is a brilliant historical intuition.

The Palazzina is safe - St. Julian's, Malta

A stroll down the promenade
by St. Julian's bay,
from Spinola to Balluta
on a warm autumn day.
The sky is clear,
the wind is strong,
people in swimsuits
read books or doze off.
At Paradise Exiles,
a hip bar by the sea,
locals and foreigners
have snacks and cold drinks.
A sailor from here,
tattoos on dark skin,
with longing reveals,
while sipping beers,
that in two or three weeks
high waves and big rain
will gradually sweep
the magic away.

The wild iris - Louise Glück

What might at first seem a sequence
of conversations of a mad voice
with singular, plural, material
and imagined listeners,
suddenly becomes clear
and beautiful as well,
when you finally understand
the underlining pattern.
The book starts when spring begins
and ends when summer finishes.

Combustion - Bangkok, Thailand

At six in the evening
as hell replaced heaven,
a skyscraper was scraped,
by the clouds up in flames.

In praise of sincerity - Montesquieu

In this little book, as the title suggests, Montesquieu praises sincerity as a virtue. This is done at two different levels.
In private life sincerity is advised as opposed to indulgence. A real and useful friendship should always be based on absolute honesty, even when this leads to conflicts with personal pride, or especially when that happens.

On the passion of love - Blaise Pascal

In this short treaty, Blaise Pascal - who for the most part of his life worked as a scientist - expounds his views about love and passion. He tries to point out the relation of these feelings with all the other aspects of life.

Nobel prize for literature awarded to Han Kang

Han Kang, a female Korean writer, was just awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. This is what I wrote down after reading some of her works a couple of years ago.

Convalescence, Human acts, The vegetarian - Han Kang

The spice-box of the earth - Leonard Cohen

As in Let us compare mythologies, in this collection Cohen also alternates Garcia Lorca's style inspired poems - assemblies of images, sounds and loosely connected symbols - and other compositions that can be more clearly paraphrased and literally interpreted, with an explicit message. Those of the second type might be slightly more numerous, while the style of the first batch is even more mature and inspiring than in the previous book.

Ibis trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of smoke, Flood of fire) - Amitav Gosh

I first read a book by Amitav Gosh more than twenty years ago, during my first trip to Myanmar, when two Italian ladies on a boat ride along the Irrawaddy river gave me a copy of a short story collection by this Indian master. A few years later I got to admire his talent after reading "The glass palace" and since then I've read anything by him I've happened to come across.

Taking (contradictory) sides

I’ve noticed that, save for an irrelevant minority, people tend to stick to either one of the following groups: 1) those who are against Israel invading Lebanon AND in favor of Russia invading Ukraine or else 2) those who are in favor of Israel invading Lebanon AND against Russia invading Ukraine. The bullshitting-pseudo-noble-reason they might claim they took those contradicting sides for doesn’t matter much, like any other bullshitting-pseudo-noble-reason for that matter. It’ll be something about imperialism, capitalism, communism, totalitarianism, nationalism, fascism, racism, terrorism, zionism, islamism or any other “-ism”. What’s sure is that they are taking sides against one invasion AND in favor of the other one. Either one.

Haiku - Various authors

Haiku used to be the name of the first stanza of the Japanese ancient poems. It finally became itself a literary category. The shortest form of poetry, a haiku is always composed of three verses: five, seven and five syllables each.

Lady on a red boat with parasol - Firenze, Italy

On the bridge parapet sits a girl who reads 

against a misplaced blue-lagoon background

while the Oltrarno and the Historic Center swap

tourists turned hostages of their own accord.

Twilight over the Arno - Firenze, Italy

Molten gold seeps underground,
late summer vapors taper up,
a glowing bridge paints and repaints
the sky and the river two-tone blue.

I'm calling the police - Irvin D. Yalom

This is a very short autobiographical story about a Jewish friend of the author who managed to escape the Nazis and flee from Budapest to the USA when he was only 17 years old, by himself, with basically no money, no contacts and no knowledge of the English language. And who then went on to become a top-skilled, world-famous heart surgeon.

Three - Brno, Czech Republic

Tri-substantial
Human triptych
Triple praying
To a trinity

Spoon River Anthology - Edgar Lee Masters

This is one of the most famous books of 20th century American poetry.
Unlike the previously reviewed Poet in New York by Garcia Lorca and Let us compare mythologies by Leonard Cohen, most of Masters' poems can be easily paraphrased. The text always tends to "mean" something easily understandable by the reader.

Three illusions and a truth - Bangkok, Thailand

What looks like a Lego brick is a walkway tile,
What looks like a holy shrine is a wooden hall,
What looks like red paint is a filtered light,
What looks like a child is indeed a child.

Cinema speculation - Quentin Tarantino

We all like to watch movies. And most of us, those I know at least, love Quentin Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino the film director, I mean. We've also had plenty of opportunities to enjoy his skills as a screenplay author, as basically all the movies he directed are based on his own scripts.
Few of us might actually know him as a full-fledged writer though. I mean fiction and non-fiction writer. However, he has already published at least two books. One is a novelization of his big hit "Once upon a time in Hollywood", which I haven't read yet. And the other is the subject of this post: a collection of "free-style" movie reviews, which might be better termed as essays.

Let us compare mythologies - Leonard Cohen

Most people, including myself until recently, know Leonard Cohen as the deep&warm-voiced singer and songwriter of beautiful folk songs, the most famous one being "Hallelujah".
Before switching to music, though, he began his artistic career as a novel writer and poet (even after he started singing he remained horrified of performing in public for a long time).

Poet in New York - Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca died young, at the beginning of the Spanish civil war, probably killed by the falangists, either for being homosexual or socialist or both, or else for more private reasons. Nobody knows for sure.
A few years earlier, between 1929 and 1930, he traveled to the American continent, spending time in New York, Vermont and finally in Cuba, before returning to Europe. He managed to witness the '29 Wall Street crisis, therefore experiencing both the excesses that predated it and the desperate times that followed it. He wrote this collection of poems during those months.

The flowers of evil (Les fleurs du mal) - Charles Baudelaire

This collection of poems by the epitome of the Poètes Maudits has inspired generations. Baudelaire was the first great poet to make an extensive, almost morbid use of sex, alcohol, drugs and death as the main themes of his work.

Fervor de Buenos Aires - Jorge Luis Borges

Borges is an outstanding South American author. This is a collection of poems in praise of his hometown, the capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires.
Unlike other works about the city, this doesn't deal with the usual (stereotypical) topics such as the port districts, tango, Italian and Spanish heritage.

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future - Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche's work, unlike Plato's Symposium, does not read like a story, with a plot, characters, action and dialog. It's a collection of anectodes, philosofical thoughts, not necessarily easy to grasp and sometimes quite contradictory.

The ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, the famous Irish author, was incarcerated in Reading jail due to a homosexuality-related scandal.
In this work, a ballad as rhyme and metric are concerned, Wilde talks about a man who is sentenced to death penalty for having murdered his wife.

Symposium - Plato

In this book Plato, the great ancient Greek philosopher (some would say the greatest of them all) - expounds his views about the subject of love.

Not a painting - Padova, Italy

Cotton balls,

dipped in lead,

weighing down

on worn out roofs.

Smell of storm,

moistened lips,

hurrying steps 

on fake fruit slabs.

Eyes transfixed

I watch that scene,

I sense a monster

watching me.

Blinking lids,

shiny eyes, 

am I enthralled

or terrified?

The air explodes,

my heart restarts,

I'm the only madman,

who doesn't rush.

The ground is blue,

the sky gray-white,

It's reversed reality,

more than just art.

Angela's ashes - Frank McCourt

I'm not sure how Frank McCourt managed to write such a heart rendering story about poverty, alcoholism, child mortality and hunger that still paints lots of smiles on the reader's face. It's a wonderful gift for an author and a story teller in general.

Princess - Jean Sasson

Sultana, a princess of the Al Saud royal family, decided to tell the story of her life through the pen of Jean Sasson, an American author. Her main purpose was to expose the pitiful situation, at the time of her youth, of women in Saudi Arabia, a country dominated by men, where the most significant event in their lives seems to take place when they are handed over as private property from their fathers to their husbands, which in most cases they are not allowed to choose by themselves.

Haruki Murakami - After the quake

This is a collection of short stories. Every story takes place few days or weeks after the terrible Kobe earthquake of 1995. Each one of them is based in a different Japanese place, though none in Kobe itself.

Napoleon - David Chandler

David Chandler is one of the most celebrated English speaking expert on Napoleon Bonaparte's life. His most critically acclaimed work on the subject is The campaigns of Napoleon, which contains a lot of military related details. Even though I'm not a fan of that side of the story, the life of Napoleon is an extremely interesting topic, as the Corsican was not only a military genius but also had a profound impact on European and world history, society, politics, law and culture.

Polarized - Patong, Phuket, Thailand

 

 

Hard like steel, soft like cotton.
Dark like an eclipse, bright like a star.
Still like eternity, floating like a leaf.

The 25th hour - Patong, Phuket, Thailand

 

Ineffable, elusive
Pathologically shy
Spotted by few people
Just when dawn steps over night
Barely one time photographed
By the man who took this shot.
Ladies and gentlemen
This is a rare chance
The 25th hour
Was there for nearly an hour
And about an hour later
It got swallowed by the past.

 

The enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie

This is not the first book by Salman Rushdie that I read. He somehow reminds me of Umberto Eco: impressive historical references, wonderful command of the language and astonishing creativity.
The main locations of the novel are Mughal Hindustan and Florence, Italy; many chapters, though, are based in between those two places: Uzbekistan, Persia and the Ottoman Empire above all.

Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar

This French literary wizard managed to write the imagined autobiography of one of the most important ancient Roman leaders, the third of the so called “five good emperors”.
Throughout the book Hadrian is going over the most important phases of his life, “the literary excuse” being a letter addressed to his adopted grandson Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher who would then become emperor himself.
Hadrian is a strong, clever, wise and erudite man, a great military and political chief, in love with Greece and Greek culture, and Yourcenar manages to revive the workings of this man’s mind by means of a refined and beautifully rendered prose.

Jerusalem: the biography - Simon Sebag Montefiore

The history of the holy and mystical city par excellence from King’s David reign to the intifadas.
This is a marvelous work by a famous historian who manages to tell the history of the city basing it on written, oral and archeological sources, stating merits and faults of all the people, civilizations and religions that had a part in it.

The city of Joy - Dominique Lapierre

Back in the seventies Father Stephan Kovalski, a French-Polish priest, arrives to one of the most infamous of the Indian slums: Calcutta’s “Anand Agar”, also known as the “City of Joy”. Being driven by a fervent faith and an equally ardent desire to help those in need, he definitely landed in the right place: notwithstanding its name, the slum is one of the poorest, dirtiest and socially problematic neighborhoods in India and probably in the whole world. As a western Roman Catholic priest in a slum full of poor Indian Hindus, Muslims and a few Christians, at first Kovalski is looked upon with skepticism. Yet through his willingness to share the same harsh conditions of his neighbors and help them, he slowly manages to win their trust. Towards the end of the book a rich, young and equally committed American doctor - Max Loeb - will join Kowalski’s group of volunteers.

Chilled distilled life

All of a sudden, for no apparent reason,
I want to be sitting at one of those courts
where Thai people go for beers and snacks.
An occasional foreigner can be spotted there,
brought by his local date, disoriented, out of place,
too dumbfounded to even be amused.
I want to be more bewildered than him,
for I'd go there alone, on my own accord.
I want to be a stuttering weird-worded weirdo,
speak Thai with a waitress
who’s expecting English.
I want to feel self-conscious,
stared at, gossiped about,
at least in the perceptual trap
of my paranoid thoughts.

Einstein's dreams - Alan Lightman

There have always been speculations about Albert Einstein getting his most inspired ideas while he was dreaming. Even though this has never been confirmed, it is true that our brain develops new connections providing insightful ideas during REM sleep, precisely when we are dreaming. Those of you who want to know more about what happens to our body and mind while we are comfortably slumbering on our beds can have a look at “Why we sleep”, a great popular science book written by Matthew Walker.
In “Einstein’s dreams” Alan Lightman, who is both a writer and a physicist, tries to figure out all the dreams that the famous Nobel prize winner could have had over the months preceding the publication of his revolutionary paper on relativity theory and specifically about the concept of time.

On the black hill - Bruce Chatwin

I’ve had Bruce Chatwin on my author list for a long time. I thought he was mainly a travel writer: I remember some friends of mine referring to “In Patagonia” and “What am I doing here” as great travel literature. When I found “On the black hill” on the shelves of one of my favorite used book stores I realized that he wrote fiction as well.

M@mm@Mi@1234

If you can remember your password
You got a bad password.
If you find this funny
You got only bad passwords.

The namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

We’ve already met this outstanding Indian-American female writer when we talked about her debut work: the short-story collection “The interpreter of maladies”.
“The namesake” is a novel that deals with the life of an American born Indian guy, who is named Gogol, after the great Russian author, for reasons related to his father’s past.

The great philosophers: from Socrates to Turing - Edited by Ray Monk and Frederic Raphael

When I was a restless and immature high school student, I used to ignore my philosophy professor’s lectures while talking about silly topics with my classmates or doing the hell knows what. Most of the time, at least. Yet, something managed to sink in and the spark of curiosity ignited by that great teacher has never died. Ever since that confused phase of my life, I’ve tried to fill the gap by reading textbooks such as Russel’s “History of philosophy” and Gaarder’s “Sophie’s world” or some works by the most prominent western and eastern thinkers.