What's your Secret

I had this tee I painted. I wore it to college a few times. It was two sizes too big but the design was eye-catching - lilies on two panels copied from a Monet print if my memory serves me right.

Anyway I sold it. For 500 bucks at People's Tree (Delhi, CP). A fortune back in 1996 for a college kid whose only source of income was covering the campus beat for newspapers that did not pay. Talk about washing your dirty laundry, it got sold within a day. Some foreigner in hicksville USA probably wears it to bed now.

Not much of a secret really, I gloated about the devious deal like any other conniving college kid would. This is the kinda skeleton you can air every once in a while...not like the real dirty laundy that never gets washed although POST SECRETS is a great step in that direction. A sort of virtual confessional box POST SECRETS showcases the best post cards they receive. I love it mostly because it's black and funny and sometimes so cheerless it makes me feel great about my life.

Waiting for God who?

I saw the play 'Waiting for Godot' ages ago along with a lot of bespectacled Kafka spouting NCB regulars and pretentious Xavier Lit Soc types. I thought the play was a drag, I laughed at all the wrong places (no one else was laughing at all) and generally made by ignorance fairly apparent. Okay so now i have read it and am clued onto all the symbolisms and it isn't even remotely funny...any longer.

Especially since the Waiting part hits closer home. Waiting is what Estragon and Vladimir detest...it is the wait that kills. We are CONSTANTLY waiting for something that really never materialises. And if it does it is mostly not to our liking. We wait for the perfect man, wait for him to pop the question, wait to get married, wait to have a baby, wait for a divorce...and this is just one example in our world of absurdities. You say waiting is a sign of hope, waiting reflects despair.

Truly if you are waiting for something, it is pretty likely it will not happen. Call me superstitious, meanwhile I wait for a comment on this post.

Everybody's a poet

I never thought I would appreciate poetry but it is not all bad or all pretentious aka cafelitarati. Of course it is mostly what has been prescribed as part of the course;) Poetry should be upfront like clean prose and it really should quit being so egostical - TS. Eliot advocated impersonality of poetry, modern day wannabe poets could take the hint and quit focusing on their sorry lives.

Mermaid, Dragon, Fiend - Robert Graves
My Last Duchess - Robert Browning

The Great Vowel Shift

Kids used to put make-up to look older (mostly to get into cinema halls showing A-rated movies - they were strict back then). They grew older and began using make-up for just the opposite effect.

No big relevation there but it sort of applies to my life, not the dolling up bit but the fact that I have actually got around to doing my MA (alebit correspondence). Am I the same person who couldn't wait to get out of college and get into advertising? Does age do this to you?? AAArgh and crazy as it sounds - I actually WANT to study and it's not as if I don't have a choice. Two negatives make a postive. Pigs will fly.

Am I one step away from senility? Besides what earthly good is an MA in my field. None. But working from home, this is the one time I could have a go at it, so there you go - that's my explanation. Besides there is this whole body of literature I wouldn't have touched with a bargepole otherwise. I am no longer petrified of Yeats, Chaucer and Shakespeare....and I am the receptacle of totally irrelevant but nonetheless interesting info like-
1. Why Latin, Celtic, Scandinavian and French crept into the English Language
2 . What the Great Vowel Shift is all about
3. That Jacob 'Fairytale' Grimm was a respected philologist
4. The world's coolest Lit site is this one - Sparknotes.com

While none of these are ice-breakers and I doubt if I could squeeze in the importance of the Great Vowel shift in party banter ..what I can tell you for sure is Asterix and Caeser's Gift uses dialogues from Hamlet...and no it is not TO BE OR NOT TO BE.