George Bernhard Shaw on the three demands of the British Shipwreck

The typical British shipwreck, Shaw wrote, had three “romantic demands” in particular: that the cry “Women and children first” should be heard, that all men aboard (“except the foreigners”) should be heroes, and the captain a superhero, and that “everybody should face death without a tremor”.

~ from the guardian, apropos Costa Concordia

When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so fuckin’ special

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

I don’t care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice when I’m not around
You’re so fuckin’ special
I wish I was special

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell I’m doing here?
I don’t belong here

She’s running out the door
She’s running out
She runs runs runs

Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You’re so fuckin special
I wish I was special

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong here

~ Creep, Radiohead

Those visits home, the way the young
come back and still follow you around
or find you on the bed reading
or writing, to lie down at an angle or

sit cross-legged. No secret between you,
not even trouble quite though
it isn’t ordinary, the way the world unravels
through them: what he said, what she

never, who traveled where, that things—
how exactly—splinter and break
and cut. It trails off then. Both of you,
which one to speak but thinking

better of it. And the book is just a prop,
what you were writing perfectly weightless
in this silence. Child, oh fully no longer,
out there tangling, untangling.

~Marianne Boruch

Fitter, happier, more productive
Comfortable, not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym 3 days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries

At ease, eating well
No more microwave dinners and saturated fats
A patient better driver, a safer car, baby smiling in back seat
Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no paranoia
Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole

Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then
Will frequently check credit at Moral Bank hole in wall
Favors for favors, fond but not in love
Charity, standing orders, on Sundays ring road supermarket

No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants
Car wash also on Sundays
No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
Nothing so childish

At a better pace, slower and more calculated
No chance of escape, now self-employed
Concerned but powerless
An empowered and informed member of society

Pragmatism, not idealism
Will not cry in public
Less chance of illness
Tires that grip in the wet
Shot of baby strapped in back seat
A good memory

Still cries at a good film
Still kisses with saliva
No longer empty and frantic
Like a cat tied to a stick
That’s driven into frozen winter shit

The ability to laugh at weakness
Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig in a cage on antibiotics

~Fitter Happier, OK Computer, Radiohead

1) “Learn from the mistakes of others… you can’t live long enough to make them all yourselves!!”

2)”A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and Honest people are screwed first.”

3)”Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.”

4)”There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.”

5)” Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.”

6)”As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.”

7)”The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.”

8)”Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.”

9)”The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.”

10)”God is not present in idols. Your feelings are your god. The soul is your temple.”

11) “A man is great by deeds, not by birth.”

12) “Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.”

13) “Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.”

14) “Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.”

15) “Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.”

~ Chanakya

Pessoa was right; there’s no point going to Constantinople to see a sunset; they’re the same the world over. But you do it anyway; you go to Constantinople and Phnom Bakheng and everywhere else, and while you’re there, you catch the sunset. While traveling, in fact, watching the sunset gives the day a purpose and meaning it can otherwise lack. Even so, few things seem more idiotic than waiting on a sunset. Waiting on the sunset becomes an activity, an exercise in abeyance. Idleness, doing nothing, is raised to the level of sharply focused purpose. Expectation becomes a form of sustained exertion. You wait for it to happen even though it’s going to happen anyway. Or not happen.

Geoff Dyer, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It:

The Lord gives everything and charges
by taking it back. What a bargain.
Like being young for a while. We are
allowed to visit hearts of women,
to go into their bodies so we feel
no longer alone. We are permitted
romantic love with it’s bounty and half-life
of two years. It is right to mourn
for the small hotels of Paris that used to be
when we used to be. My mansard looking
down on Notre Dame every morning is gone,
and me listening to the bell at night.
Venice is no more. The best Greek Islands
have drowned in acceleration. But it’s the having
not the keeping that is the treasure.
Ginsberg came to my house one afternoon
and said he was giving up poetry
because it told lies, that language distorts.
I agreed, but asked what we have
that gets it right even that much.
We look up at the stars and they are
not there. We see the memory
of when they were, once upon a time.
And that too is more than enough.
~ Jack Gilbert

The 6 mistakes men keep on repeating century after century according to Cicero :

The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others.
The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying.
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

~ Cicero

“In the country of dentists, whose daughters order clothes /
from London catalogues, . . . /
I, whose mouth houses ruins /
more total than the Parthenon’s, /
a spy, an interloper, /
the fifth column of a rotten civilization…”

New Yorker on Brodsky: A Literary Life, May 24, 2011

- My father was a sheet-metal worker, my mother a dinner lady. The missing link? A grammar-school education. I’m a classic product of post-war settlement. And I read a lot of books — my understanding of the world became much more complex.

- I grew up in one culture and my education took me to another. School wasn’t just about education — I started feeling at ease in different social worlds. So much that has happened to me I now can’t explain to my parents.

- I’ve never had expensive taste. The price I pay for not taking a taxi is far outweighed by the gain derived from taking the bus — not having to have a job. It’s all part of that package of being free to do what you want.

- No writing gives me more trouble than the sex stuff. But it’s impossible to ignore now, everything else is being itemised so painstakingly. People always want funny sex scenes, but in my limited experience, it’s never seemed particularly funny.

- Asking if I wanted children would be like asking me if I’d had homosexual urges. Kids give your life meaning, but I’m at ease with the meaningless of life. The question “Why are we here?” is just kids’ stuff. The only big question to answer is how to live.

- I got married late, in my forties. I held out for happiness — you have to respect the way a person relates to the world, that they are not just nice to you. And they have to be beautiful, otherwise whenever you’re at a party, you’re wishing you’re Ashley Cole.

- I’ve always loved sport. My wife says I shouldn’t have been born a human, but a dog. She thinks I’d be happiest if someone were throwing a ball for me to catch. It’s just a lovely thing to do.

~ Geoff Dyer @Times Online