Tongue in Cheek

Nasrudin was talking to a friend, who asked him:

‘Have you never considered getting married, Mullah?’

‘I have,’ replied Nasrudin. ‘In my youth, I resolved to find the perfect woman. I crossed the desert and reached Damascus, and I met a lovely, very spiritual woman, but she knew nothing of the world. I continued my journey and went to Isfahan; there I met a woman who knew both the spiritual and the material world, but she was not pretty. Then I decided to go to Cairo, where I dined in the house of a beautiful woman, who was both religious and a connoisseur of material reality.’

‘Why didn’t you marry her, then?’

‘Alas, my friend, she was looking for the perfect man.’

~ Paulo Coelho

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Plastered

This layout is dope ( image courtesy of newyorksocialdiary.com)

I'm in the grip of a slightly manic antiquing bender since I espied a lovely old Meissen porcelain plaque with a pastoral theme in one of the shops down at St. Ouen. I've been tacking these can't-eat-out-of-'em plates in soft blue and white over my bed in a passably artful manner since I don't have a headboard.


Over the past few weeks when I'd actually had the time to stay in I've been channeling my inner Roehm for French country-luxe-bohemian ( but I might just end up with a Kemble Nu Yawk boutique hotel room-wannabe instead ).

The last time CJ came to visit, he'd warned me not to overdose on toile. "You want to be lush, not fussy," he remarked as he tsk-tsked over my wallpaper and fabric choices. He educated me a bit about xeriscaping over lunch, then helped me pick out lavender and water globes for my window box. That evening, he went out and bought some light fixtures for the "dead spaces" in the great room of my apartment, and he promptly installed them before dinner with borrowed tools from my neighbor. I'm a lucky, lucky girl :D

Sometimes I wonder about my neighbors, whose tolerance I believe is verging on indulgence over my frenzied repositioning of stuff right and left like a bitch with a chip. I try to make it up to them once in a while, hosting the occasional get-together. A recent event was the gout-inducing brandy and Truffaut movie night masterminded by film buff Colbert. Following my introduction to French New Wave, Colbert toasted my design efforts with his customary sageness: "There are elements in a space, in a plot, or in a sequence that never attract much attention to themselves, but which for that reason catches the eye so amazingly. Sometimes you have to let some things remain just so to bring out their true aesthetic virtue."

I think what he really meant was: "Your sofa is indeed hideous but my poor nerves would prefer that you don't drag it scraping and keening all over your apartment."

Man. I still have a long way to go.


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The Audacity of Hope

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

photo credit: www.patrickmoberg.com


And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

Yes We Can...may God Bless the United States of America.*



Congratulations, sir.


*Read the rest of Barack Obama's speech

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Menagerie

We dream of hope. We dream of change. Of fire, of love, of death. And then it happens. The dream becomes real.

The huge elephant in the room that had eyed me balefully for the past several months suddenly went on the attack last night.

It jumped over the couch, sat on me and wouldn't let me breathe.

"Address me," it said.

"I can't," I responded.

"Then I'll keep haunting you."

Suddenly, the change in your life that should have been wonderful, comes as a betrayal. It may seem cruel, but the goal is nothing short of self-preservation. Survival.

I gestured around the room. There was an panda perched on the bookcase, an anteater curiously nosing a box of granola on the coffee table, and a Bengal tiger stalking the length of the kitchen.

"Suit yourself."

Evolution is an imperfect, and often violent process.The question of good and evil, reduced to one simple choice: Survive? Or perish? Where do we run, when things we believe in vanish before our eyes?

The most important question of all: Can we ever change what we really are?



quotes courtesy of Mohinder Suresh (Heroes)

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