Mustafa

is all new and shiny and organised now, which takes away the fun. But it does still have signs that point to (a) stationery, (b) artificial flower (yes, just the one), (c) furniture, and (d) gardening/car accessories.

Overheard - a man on his handphone somewhere behind the next shelf: "You want big or small?...How much? One inch?...One inch cannot lah..." To which all the women and gay men of the world agree.

this weekend

I read Thud!

The library came through after all.

I also (re-)read Homecoming and The Runner, after borrowing sl's (argh) Come a Stranger that day.

And I painted my room! With my father helping to shunt furniture about and paint and rearrange the room and rebuild shelves (the do-it-yourself kind that's all unpainted wooden planks and bolts), though I have much less shelving space now.

And I found books that belong to various people, mostly Minz. I will return them. Really.

I'm going to get flowers tomorrow to put in the house.

mm

Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop (very early on in Bishop's writing life):

I can't help wishing you would sometime in some way risk some unprotected profundity of experience; or since no one admits profundity of experience, some characteristic private defiance of the significantly detestable. Continuously fascinated as I am by the creativeness and uniqueness of these assemblings of yours - which are really poems - I feel responsibility against anything that might threaten you; yet fear to admit such anxiety, lest I influence you away from an essential necessity or particular strength. The golden eggs can't be dealt with theoretically, by presumptuous mass salvation formulae. But I do feel that tentativeness and interiorizing are your danger as well as your strength.

why attempts to clean up my room inevitably fail

1. I have too much stuff. It's not a question of tidying my room; there's nowhere to tidy the stuff to. In? What I need is a grand purge.

2. I am easily defeated (see 1).

Although I did find $30. And my Columbia graduation certificate. (Wonder where the Oxford one is? Did I graduate?) Proving that tidiness brings its own reward.

Addendum (9.11 pm): I found two bricks in my room. Why?

Aalto

Becaus I found these notes in my notebook:

"For Aalto, wood, rather than metal, was the 'form-inspiring, deeply human material'." [I think from a sign in some museum.]

Aalto, early 1960s: "Churches don't need art, churches don't need ornament...at least not in the sense of 'art for churches'...Whatever their shape, they need purity of form and piety. That kind of purity of form is...the outcome of artistic work."

Before Sunrise

1. Beautiful movie. Perfectly shot.

2. Julie Delpy is luminous.

3. Also slightly annoying, the way twenty-something angst is. But only slightly, which speaks well of Richard Linklater. (Or perhaps I'm not very receptive to just-out-of-college angst at this point.)

4. Of course they slept together.

5. I think about you almost all the time.

Following the old tradition

I'm starting the year late and slightly hungover.

Happy new year everyone! Let it truly be a beginning.