मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Out in My Old Town Love Canoe


Rachel Cooke:

In the end, though, it's difficult to go along with Wolf's central contention, which is that women can only harness their creativity when in a fulfilled sexual relationship – a thesis based largely, it seems, on a reading of Edith Wharton and George Eliot, and the relationship of Georgia O'Keeffe with Alfred Stieglitz. Her evidence is crudely selective, and strangely unimaginative. Hasn't it ever occurred to her that, sometimes, happiness writes white? Didn't she wonder about the sex lives of art's great spinsters? But it's also, I think, an unhappily reductive way of looking at the world. Sex is a huge part of life. But it's not everything, and we do ourselves a disservice if we try to suggest otherwise.

(Guardian, September 16 2012, review of 'Vagina: A New Biography' by Naomi Wolf)

In middle class culture of  Maharashtra, water for recreational purpose is almost absent. Reasons are not hard to figure: Hardly any perennial lakes and rivers.

Contrast that with gardens built by the Mughals in the Islamic style of architecture. Two of their most important features are running water and a pool to reflect the beauties of sky and garden. No Yamuna river, no Taj Mahal perhaps.

When water, canoe, man, woman, moon come together in the night, they mean  romance and its occasional delightful expression such as in the picture below.




Artist: S D Phadnis (शि. द. फडणीस) courtesy: Official website of S D Phadnis

I said romance but not sex.

I recently read "Love Boats: The Delightfully Sinful History of Canoes".

"Before the youth of America fooled around at drive-ins and necked on Lover’s Lane, they coupled in canoes. Boatloads of them. In the early 1900s, canoes offered randy young guys and gals a means of escape to a semi-private setting, away from the prying eyes of their pious Victorian chaperones...

...As further proof that canoeing had become a hotbed for teenage delinquents, in 1913 the Minneapolis Parks Board refused to issue permits for canoes with unpalatable names. Local newspapers published some of the offensive phrases that slipped past the board the previous summer, including “Thehelusa,” “Kumomin Kid,” “Kismekwik,” “Damfino,” “Ilgetu,” “Aw-kom-in,” “G-I-Lov-U,” “Skwizmtyt,” “Ildaryoo,” “Win-kat-us,” “O-U-Q-T,” “What the?,” “Joy-tub,” “Cupid’s Nest,” and “I Would Like to Try It.” The commissioners unanimously agreed to outlaw phrases lacking obvious moral and grammatical standards, though a few of these clever pre-text-message abbreviations clearly had them scratching their heads...

...But this floating, petting paradise would not last. “When motorcars became more available in the early ’20s, courting in canoes sort of fell off,” says (Roger) Young. “Guys were getting into their Model Ts or Model As and going off with girls for a Sunday drive instead of canoeing.” And what went on in the backseats of those cars? Well, that’s a whole different story."

Following picture too has water, canoe, man, woman, moon together. But the desires are less poetic and more carnal than in the picture above!

 
A comic postcard advertising Old Town Canoes makes an open joke of their preferred use. 

Image courtesy: Benson Gray

Go back to Phadnis's picture above. I can't imagine man and woman  in that canoe making out little latter. I feel even suggestion of sex will spoil that mood. But then maybe I am now old.