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."

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

There's Nothing Sadder in this World than to Awake Diwali Morning and not be a Child!

Erma Bombeck:

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."


Charles Dickens:
 
“Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Diwali hearts, and by our Diwali fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!” 


Sorry, dear old Charlie for my some deft find and replace! How dare I? Because just like Christmas hearts we have Diwali- in my case high BP- hearts and you bet we have Diwali fires and then some. (BTW-Avoid coming to Pune from 7 PM to 11 PM tonight!)


This Diwali I do have a lost friend, lost both parents of a friend,   lost parent, cousin-sister, aunts, grand-ma&pa, artists, teachers, dog, cat, bird, town...And I will shut out nothing...I can't...until of course dementia kicks in
 
Happy Diwali 2012 

Fire crackers have become so weird that if indeed some day I come across a volcano like in the picture below I will think of  it as no more than a flower pot cracker!


Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 13 June 1964 

Tribals in the picture above feel the gods are not angry.

I am not so sure about goddess Laxmi. They say Laxmi Puja Muhurat is after 6 PM today. The goddess Laxmi must be  tough and  fearless because she dare enter our homes during those hours avoiding serious injuries to her limbs, ears and lungs.