Every immigrant is broken, sometimes beautifully.
-Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master Find another migrant in the world who is as beautifully broken as I am (smile)
There is a strange phenomenon. Britain is getting older. In fact, the population is older now than it has been for over a century. Yet at the same time our culture has never been more adolescent. Young people may be a dwindling minority, but they exercise an extraordinarily powerful influence on the cultural stage, from television and newspapers to film and art.
Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Kafka on the Shore of New Castle
Swimmers of the year at a school do not just happen; they are natured. When was it last time you experienced a truly great mentor? You know - someone so engaging that it simply captured your child imagination and drove you to tell others about it? Characters like Marta Chamillova, Russell Cope, Patricia Azarias, Jim Collins and Mary Wood do not swim in many rivers of our lives. Their leadership and teaching is never accidental. Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I admire, I can: all of them make me feel like there is a miracle in every simple feather. Somewhere, somehow, a swimming coach and water polo coach created an atmosphere for my 14 year old daughter to value champions. The intangible value of coaching ebb and flow in our lives, but there is no question that without these great personalities who take genuine joy in the successes of those under them we would be very poor (no pun intended). No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. Enjoy the swimmer of the year award Alex... so never ever stop dreaming and always treat triumph and disaster in the same way. St Patrick’s mentors assert, We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope...
Kafka on the Shore is many things: the title of a song, for one, a painting for another. And the novel's central character is Kafka Tamura -- though he doesn't actually spend much time on any shore. Not any real one, anyway. But this is a Murakami novel and, as in all Murakami novels, as one of the characters observes: "The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura". No doubt: the kid is practically drowning in that metaphor -- but then aren't we all?
• More like a curse than a prophecy
• · Sydney Taxi Literary Drive to Ryde
• · · Gone are the days when the air here used to be permeated with the elements of community and innocence. In the past few years, something strange has happened. Thanks to the spread of mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet, surveillance technology that was once mostly the province of the state has become far more widely available. Move over, Big Brother - via Tomalak's Realm
• · · · AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT... GOOGLE, whose mood seems to parallel mine today, directs my attention to the news that Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons has won Britain's 2004 prize for bad sex in fiction. "We all knew this was coming," she says. So to speak. The Inevitable Is Announced
• · · · · There Ain't No Sainty Claus