Friday, January 29

RIP Reclusive Man



It's always sad to see the departure of the great. JD Salinger was proof that one doesn't have to be prolific to be profound. Rest in perfect peace JD, you've done your part, you left your mark but it doesn't take away the fact that a brilliant light has dimmed.

Thursday, January 14

WORDS



Antilamentation
Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Tuesday, January 12

Andreas Seibert Tells the Epic Story of China's Modernization

















It was during one of those sit-and-reads that i came across Andreas Seibert's Photography of the human sacrifices behind China's economic boom.

What used to be passive, reclusive and ravaged by war and social upheaval, China is now said to be the world's third biggest economy with its sudden increase in car sales and mobile-phone users from 2008 to 2009. But just as you are being engulfed with China's dazzling economic boom, Seibert's documentation of the lives of some of the 130 million Chinese migrant workers, who are mostly coal miners and assembly line workers, will make you rethink things and wonder if these workers are given the same attention as their country's impressive economic achievements.

Apparently, their lives seem to be always interrupted and they are often forced to toil in difficult working conditions.