The big scary thing on it? That's Druk, the Bhutanese Thunder Dragon. He's holding jewels to symbolise wealth.
Found this in an old folder on my computer. Sweet dream. Still remember it really clearly. The reason it's "we" is because I emailed Cat so I didn't forget.
Had the most hilarious dream yesterday – we were on Primrose Hill looking for the dog walker who was with Evie. Anyway so off we trot and eventually overtake her, only she keeps calling Evie ‘Vanessa’ instead. Evie, naturally, isn’t listening and instead is running around in circles. Then she catches my scent and runs over, all low to the ground and waggy waggy and puts my hand in her mouth. So we roll about and play fight and it’s really fun and I’m all happy she remembers me and then you jump on and join in too and then all three of us did rolly-polies down the hill like we did at Laura Beth’s birthday and the view is like Cat-dog-grass-sky-Cat-dog-grass-sky.
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.Walter Bagehot
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. Lord Byron
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. Truman Capote
The pen is the tongue of the mind. Miguel de Cervantes
Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. Winston Churchill
When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. Cicero
A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. William Faulkner
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. Benjamin Franklin
All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. Kahlil Gibran
If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. Goethe
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector. Ernest Hemingway
In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. Ernest Hemingway
Keep in mind that the person to write for is yourself. Tell the story that you most desperately want to read. Susan Isaacs
Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie. Stephen King
Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. Anaïs Nin
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. E.L. Doctorow
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. Ernest Hemingway
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Charles Peguy
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath
I try to leave out the parts that people skip. Elmore Leonard
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Ernest Hemingway
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. Mark Twain
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. Anton Chekhov
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. Francis Bacon
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. Flannery O'Connor
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. Joan Baez
Every writer I know has trouble writing. Joseph Heller
An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts. Juvenal
If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. Don Marquis
As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out. Mark Twain
As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. Virginia Woolf
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. Norman Mailer
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? Friedrich Nietzsche
True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. Alexander Pope
Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life. James Norman Hall
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world. G.K. Chesterton
No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. Van Wyck Brooks
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. Samuel Johnson
The best style is the style you don't notice. Somerset Maugham
There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. William Makepeace Thackeray
Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. Goethe
Do not put statements in the negative form.And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. De-accession euphemisms. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague. ~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"
Fascinating article by Andrew Marr:
President John F Kennedy and the art of dirty politics
Fifty years since he was elected US president, there is still an aura around John F Kennedy's White House, yet arguably the dirtier side of modern politics has its roots in his rise to power.
Get the picture right, and your history will take care of itself. Jack Kennedy always got the picture right. Even now, it is hardly possible to glimpse the gleaming white smile, the sunlit hair and the perfect First Family without a lump in the throat.
JFK became the icon of democratic optimism, the man who inspired half the world. Cut down in his prime, he never grew old enough to betray, disillusion or bore his legion of admirers.
Who is President Josiah Bartlett of The West Wing but the liberal fantasy of a mature Kennedy - pin-sharp, hard as nails and bright with idealism?
So it comes as a shock to properly study Kennedy the campaigner. The story of how a rich, preppy party boy from Massachusetts managed to raise a roar for underdog America loud enough to carry him to the White House is gripping. But uplifting it certainly isn't.
Yes, it's a tale of soaring and risk-taking rhetoric, partly fashioned by the late lamented Ted Sorensen, and of a candidate with remarkable energy.
It is also, however, a tale of big money, smears, bribes, wire-pulling and bottomless cynicism. If you are asking what has gone so wrong with modern politics, Kennedy's 1960 election campaign is a good place to start.
And in that campaign, West Virginia, the impoverished and sidelined state where Kennedy polished off his main Democratic rival Hubert Humphrey, is better still.
West Virginia is still the wooded, hilly, coal-mining-ravaged place of small towns, military volunteers and neighbourliness it was when the rivals clashed there.
On the one side came Kennedy with his private plane, a present from Daddy, and huge amounts of money for campaign commercials.
He came with promises about more money for the state but above all he was selling an image - the naval war hero, the glamorous wife, the kids, the homespun family with their little sailing boats.
Earlier politicians have had a "back-story" - log-cabins, Welsh cottages, you name it - but Kennedy was the first to sell his lifestyle.
Kennedy's father Joe, the former (and unfriendly) ambassador to Britain, had made his fortune in steel, movies, whisky, stocks and property.
With an obsession about building his family into a great political dynasty, he had squared many of the key newspaper owners for his son, who in turn was a master at flattering their reporters.
He was ruthless and properly understood the rising power of the advertising companies - the world of Mad Men taking shape at the time.
As JFK later said, his father wanted to know the size of the eventual majority because "there was no way he was paying for a landslide".
The Kennedy machine, an awesomely well organised instrument, had some obvious problems. Joe Kennedy was rumoured to have been a bootlegger, had been brought back to the US in 1940 having announced that "in Britain, democracy is finished", and was a close ally of Senator Joe McCarthy.
Above all, he was a Roman Catholic at a time of fierce anti-Catholic prejudice, including in the overwhelmingly Protestant West Virginia. Yet the Kennedys knew that if they could beat Humphrey and win there, they could win anywhere.
Against them, Hubert Humphrey had a classic old-fashioned campaign. He had been too ill to fight in the war. His finances were meagre.
His wife was homely and old-fashioned. He had no private plane, but a bus - with a broken heater - instead.
He was one of the most intelligent, compassionate and literate politicians in modern American history, who had taken on Communists, organised crime and racialism when these were very dangerous fights to pick, and who understood middle America far better than Kennedy. But he was about to be crushed.
The Kennedy team dealt with their Catholic problem above all by smearing Humphrey as a draft-dodger. They saturated the state with advertising, money and helpers.
By the end, a stunned Humphrey, who had compared his fight to that of a corner store against a supermarket chain, was reduced to using the few hundred dollars he and his wife had saved for their daughter's education to pay for a final campaign ad.
Having smeared Humphrey and trashed his reputation, the Kennedys washed their hands and denied it all.
Well, you may say, that's politics. Kennedy went on, after all, to see off the grandees of the Democratic Party - Adlai Stevenson and the rising Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson (who became his running mate) at the Democratic convention in LA.
Then he narrowly beat Richard Nixon after those famous televised debates when Nixon's heavier growth of beard, badly chosen suit and tendency to sweat persuaded viewers Kennedy was the better man.
When I met some of those involved, including Kennedy's TV adviser in 1960, I came away freshly awestruck by his presentational audacity.
For instance, in that first debate, Kennedy politely excused himself for a "comfort break" a minute before the two men were live on air. He did not come back.
As the studio manager was counting down the final seconds to going live, everyone - Nixon included - was aghast. Just as the count ended, there was Kennedy, smiling at the podium. "Psyching" an opponent doesn't get smarter than that.
And yet… Kennedy beat Nixon not simply with his ads, his sound bites, his jingles, the carefully posed photographs and the downright lies he told about his health. He beat Nixon by not standing for anything beyond rousing banalities.
On the "missile gap" with the Russians, Kennedy knowingly hyped the danger. Nixon, as vice-president, knew the real facts but also for reasons of national security, could not reveal them. (And Kennedy probably knew that, too.)
On the other great issue - civil rights - the Kennedy team sent one message to black audiences and another to middle America.
Did it matter? I came away thinking the mix of big money, smearing, a feel-good blur where policy should have been, and the selling of the candidate like soap flakes, added up to a fairly shameful record.
Even then, he barely won. The younger Nixon, who was liberal on race and more economically mainstream than he became, could well have made a good earlier president.
In office Kennedy made some terrible overseas blunders (though kept his nerve over the Cuban missile crisis) and was slow on domestic policy, particularly civil rights. Had he lived longer, I think he would have had a lower presidential reputation.
The 1960 campaign is not the story I had expected. It's a far more interesting one. It has been obliterated by those images of the handsome young father and husband, then the young king cut down in his prime.
But today we live in a world that has become profoundly cynical about politics. I think we owe it to ourselves to look past those images and ask: aren't there better ways of doing democracy than Kennedy's?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2wmKcBm4Ik] "...in a man's life, there are two important dates : his birth and his death. Everything we do in between is not very important."
In the early 1950s Brel achieved minor success in Belgium singing his own songs. In January 1955 he supported in the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels the performances of the Belgian pop and variety pioneer Bobbejaan Schoepen. After some success his wife and daughters joined him from Belgium. By 1956 he was touring Europe and he recorded the song Quand on n'a que l'amour that brought him his first major recognition.
By the end of the 1950s Miche and Brel's three daughters had returned to Brussels. From then on, he and his family led separate lives. Under the influence of his friend Georges Pasquier ('Jojo') and pianists Gérard Jouannest and Francois Rauber, Brel's style changed. He was no longer a Catholic-humanist troubadour, but sang grimmer songs about love, death, and the struggle that is life. The music became more complex and his themes more diverse, exploring love (Je t'aime, Litanies pour un Retour), society (Les Singes, Les Bourgeois, Jaurès), and spiritual concerns (Le Bon Dieu, Dites, Si c'était Vrai, Fernand). His work was not limited to one style. He was as proficient in funny compositions (Le Lion, Comment Tuer l'Amant de sa Femme...) as in more emotional ones (Voir un Ami Pleurer, Fils de..., Jojo).
In 1973 he embarked in a yacht, planning to sail around the world. When he reached the Canary Islands, Brel was diagnosed with lung cancer. He returned to Paris for treatment and later continued his ocean voyage. He was also a keen pilot and owned several small planes, including the eponymous 'Jojo'.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UINbFfP-84E]
[audio http://dysonology.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/02-cinematic-orchestra-_-channel-one-suite-tom-tyler-remix.mp3]
[audio http://dysonology.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/06-all-things-to-all-men-feat-roots-manuva.mp3]
Love these guys. Don't listen to them too much though. Get the blues and stuff.
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
By John Masefield (1878-1967). (English Poet Laureate, 1930-1967.)
- From the Wikipedia entry on him: It was not until about the age of 70, that Masefield slowed his pace due to illness. In 1960, Constance died at 93, after long illness. Although her death was heartrending, he had spent a tiring year watching the woman he loved die. He continued his duties as Poet Laureate; In Glad Thanksgiving, his last book, was published when he was 88 years old. In late 1966, Masefield developed gangrene in his ankle, which spread to his leg, dying of the infection on 12 May 1967. According to his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Later, the following verse was discovered, written by Masefield, addressed to his ‘Heirs, Administrators, and Assigns’:
Let no religious rite be done or read In any place for me when I am dead, But burn my body into ash, and scatter The ash in secret into running water, Or on the windy down, and let none see; And then thank God that there’s an end of me.
:(
It's actually quite a long song... [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCR1MP5d_pU]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEBIw0hHadk]
...as drawn by a seven-year-old boy.
Dad sent this - kids' answers to science questions... Q: Name the four seasons. A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink. A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.
Q: How is dew formed? A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
Q: How can you delay milk turning sour? A: Keep it in the cow.
Q: What causes the tides in the oceans? A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
Q: What are steroids? A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.
Q: What happens to your body as you age? A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty? A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.
Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes. A: Premature death.
Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g, abdomen) A: The body is consisted into three parts -- the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels A, E, I, O, and U.
Q: What is the fibula? A: A small lie.
Q: What does 'varicose' mean? (I do love this one..) A: Nearby.
Q: Give the meaning of the term 'Caesarian Section.' A: The Caesarian Section is a district in Rome .
Q: What does the word 'benign' mean?' A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight
An article by Frank Bures from The Smart Set. It talks about the difference between learning and living a language - you can't understand a foreign language until you can translate their thought and intent as well as just their words. -
It was getting dark. Paulo had been walking with me for half an hour. He'd invited me to dinner at his house, up near Mount Meru, and now we were going back down the dusty road to my neighborhood in Arusha, Tanzania. I wondered when he would turn around. I kept telling him I knew the way. But he kept walking.
“It's OK,” he said. “I can escort you.”
The last thing I needed was an escort. I enjoyed walking by myself. But I didn't realize how much had been lost in translation between Paulo's chosen English word, “escort,” and the Swahili word for what he meant, kusindikiza.
In my dictionary, kusindikiza signified “to see someone off' or 'to accompany someone part of the way home.” I had read these definitions, but I didn't really understand them. Why would you want to accompany someone part of the way home? That is often the problem with learning new languages: You are taking an idea from one world and transporting it to another. The edges of the word, the shape of the idea, do not fit neatly into their new box.
Delving into a language is always partly about exploring a new emotional terrain and figuring out how new notions go with a new set of words. According to linguist Steven Pinker, this is the essence of language: “People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache,” he writes in his book The Language Instinct, “they think in a language of thought.” Pinker says this is sometimes called “mentalese,” and it isn't the same as what we speak. Instead, we translate our thoughts into words, which is why many foreign words are so hard to translate: You need to understand the ideas behind them.
Words in other languages are like icebergs: The basic meaning is visible above the surface, but we can only guess at the shape of the vast chambers of meaning below. And every language has particularly hard-to-translate terms, such as the Portuguese saudade, or “the feeling of missing someone or something that is gone,” or the Japanese ichigo-ichie, meaning “the practice of treasuring each moment and trying to make it perfect.” Linguists refer to the distance between these words and their rough translations as a lacuna, which comes from the Latin word for “pool” or “lake.” There's a space we need to swim across to reach the other side.
For me, this is one of the great joys of traveling the world and learning different ways of thinking, of feeling, and of being: to land on some new shore of the mind, to look around and admire the view.
Of course, not everyone feels this way. A few years ago, a French businessman and thinker named Jean-Paul Nerriere noticed a trend among non-native English speakers he encountered at meetings: They were using a stripped-down version of the language, and they could communicate more easily with each other than with native English speakers. It was as if they had found a way to drain all the lacunas and meet on a tiny island where only the most utilitarian words would be needed.
Nerriere identified about 1,500 of the most essential English words, dubbed this shorthand Globish, and pronounced it a new global language. Now British journalist Robert McCrum, who has written a book called Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language, is claiming that it has passed beyond the sphere of American and British influence and become a “supranational phenomenon.” McCrum asserts that Globish will be “the linguistic phenomenon of the 21st century.” He is probably right: Globish will be useful in many ways. But its limits will come to light as people become aware of everything that's not being communicated, everything that simply cannot be communicated with a handful of words floating on a vast ocean of feeling. Globish will either grow and morph into something rich and complex, or shrink and die as we realize how many of our thoughts are getting lost in translation, and how many lacunas still separate us.
It takes time and patience to learn the meaning of words in another language. You have to fill in the space around them. It was only with time that I began to understand the meaning of kusindikiza. I learned it when people stopped to talk with me on the road. I learned it when they invited me to sit with them for tea. I learned it when I translated the Swahili proverb Wageni ni baraka. It means “guests are a blessing,” and I finally understood that people meant it when they said it, and that theirs was a world filled with gestures that showed how they enjoyed your company, how they valued your presence, and how they would walk for miles to show you that your friendship meant something to them.
Those are the feelings that cannot be included in the Swahili-English dictionary and that will baffle Globish speakers, but that are also among the rich rewards waiting on the other side of the lacuna. Night had fallen on the road from Mount Meru when Paulo finally said goodbye, turned around, and headed back up the hill. I remember feeling bad for making him walk so far. But I also remember feeling strangely good that he had accompanied me all that way. And even now, years later, living in the United States, when I leave a friend's house and hear the door shut behind me, part of me wishes there were someone to walk me halfway home. • 12 November 2010
Frank Bures is a contributing editor at World Hum, where his stories have won several awards. More of his work can be found at frankbures.com.
