What a wonderful Lecture
Ah there are times you read something and you feel like....
thats it.... thats what.... .
There may be many excellent words to describe that feeling
but its rare to read some stuff and this weekend i felt great
as i read it... it was sort of wonderful as i re-read it.
Its a very long speech ... So long that i copied some reallly lovely lines
of it so that to find them i the time starved person needn’t
re-read it again and again.
But may be you shoud remember it anyway i thought
if you loved it so much .....
But then what you remember is a feeling ...
.sometimes the way the feeling is
expressed is a beauty unto itself.
I have not read any of his books....but just was redirected
while browsing to this wonderful complete Speech by
The Nobel Lecture, 2006 by ORHAN PAMUK.
The last para where he talks about ‘why do you write’...loved it.
I dont know how happy at heart he may be about the prize but
when i read the last line he made me happy....
cause thats why i write this blog
“I write because I have never managed to be happy.
I write to be happy.”
For people who love reading and are not scared of
scrolling long pages,
i would say the full speech must be read.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writer’s secret is not inspiration—for it is
never clear where that comes from—but
stubbornness, endurance
If a writer is to tell his own story—to tell it
slowly, and as if it were a story about other
people—if he is to feel the power of the story
rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table
and give himself over to this art, this craft,
he must first be given some hope.
Now, many years later, I understand that this
discontent is the basic trait that turns
a person into a writer.
Patience and toil are not enough: first,
we must feel compelled to escape crowds,
company, the stuff of ordinary life,
and shut ourselves up in a room.
he must have the artistry to tell his own
stories as if they were other people’s stories,
and to tell other people’s stories as if they
were his own, for that is what literature is.
our literature, our local world, in all
its beloved detail—and at the other end were
the books from this other, Western world, which
bore no resemblance to ours, a lack of resemblance
that caused us both pain and hope.
To write, to read, was like leaving one
world to find consolation in the otherness
of another, in the strange and the wondrous.
I felt that my father had read novels
in order to escape his life and flee to the
West—just as I did later.
Is happiness believing that you live a deep life
in your lonely room? Or is happiness leading a
comfortable life in society, believing in the same
things as everyone else, or, at least,
acting as if you did?
Is it happiness or unhappiness to go through life
writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony
with all that surrounds you?
For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the
secret wounds that we carry inside us,
wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely
aware of them, and to patiently explore them,
know them, illuminate them, own them, and make
them a conscious part of our spirit and our writing.
What literature most needs to tell and to investigate
now is humanity’s basic fears: the fear of being left
outside, the fear of counting for nothing, and the
feeling of worthlessness that comes with such
fears—the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities,
slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined
insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations
that are their next of kin. . . .
Why do you write?
I write because I have an innate need to write.
I write because I can’t do normal work as other
people do. I write because I want to read books
like the ones I write.
I write because I am angry at everyone.
I write because I love sitting in a room
all day writing. I write because I can partake
of real life only by changing it.
I write because I want others, the whole world,
to know what sort of life we lived, and continue
to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because
I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink.
I write because I believe in literature,
in the art of the novel, more than I believe
in anything else.
I write because it is a habit, a passion.
I write because I am afraid of being forgotten.
I write because I like the glory and
interest that writing brings.
I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because
I hope to understand why I am so very, very
angry at everyone. I write because I like
to be read. I write because once I have begun a
novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it.
I write because everyone expects me to write.
I write because I have a childish belief in the
immortality of libraries, and in the way my books
sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting
to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words.
I write not to tell a story but to
compose a story. I write because I wish to
escape from the foreboding that there is a place
I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to.
I write because I have never managed to be happy.
I write to be happy.
Monday, December 25, 2006
The Short trip in Mid-Air
I seem to have so much on mind and yet i end up writing nothing its like too much clutter. So i thought of going back to something we used to do when in school. Write an essay about..............
So here's it....
That i went up in a flight for the first time pretty unprepared for a flight journey and with way too many other kinds of thoughts on mind is just one part of it.
The rains in Chennai kind of required me to board a flight cancelling my train....and people being being people had just one question which one are you flying....and everyone from my lead to my colleague , friends had one line to say ....when i answered Kingfisher.
"My my thats expensive ....hmmm lucky girl....we all get Spicejet"Heck it was pure chance else the travel organizer for my organization was simply unwilling to beleive that i needed a flight till she got it first hand that trains was cancelled.
Though what really is the differnce i am a bit dense up there i guess... or some day when i fly a lil bit more i may know....All i could spot the differnce was the Air Hostesses were real time eye-candy compared to the others....which explains it for some people .
Rest i honestly couldnt figure out.For me it was like Damn it who wanted to go up in the clouds real time at 5.30 in the morning when i would have happily been dreaming it up in the clouds...usually at that time.
Well finally got in and and i wondered if i'd have those flight problems people talk about. Hmm none whatesover. My permanent worry was my file containing all my certificates (all that i have earned as they say).
Finally when i started looking out of the window and slowly the scenery dissapeared and clouds enveloped all around....my thoughts were like the following.
So beautiful like somewhere near the north pole or south pole covered in snow.....Then it struck me....ah i know i am an earth person who likes being on the ground....thats why even the clouds i realte them to somewhere on ground.As much as i loved those clouds and thought them beautiful somehow they never seemed real to me.In fact next i related those real clouds funnily to the fake ones we see in movies. I was remembering those wooly wooly snowy scenes of fairies and all dream scene sets they show in movies.
Thats the irony of life i guess...reality becomes unreal.
But then as i looked on and on at them and saw the sun coming up like gold among them i realised why some people love flying so much.. i know few....why they become so dreamy when they talk about flying planes....and being up in the clouds.No ,I love my earth its lovely trees and slow breezes , but when you just stare at them and you ve known and seen people who talk of them and imagine them you realise the power, the freedom the longing that flying up there in those hazy bluish whites that some people may feel.
Me well if the take off was cool the landing was like i though i'd go deaf with the pain my ears...but i still hear .Though i hear i do not listen ... and quite some people have it figured out...it seems.... so my lead put me onto Listening Skills training. Next post may be on that.
I seem to have so much on mind and yet i end up writing nothing its like too much clutter. So i thought of going back to something we used to do when in school. Write an essay about..............
So here's it....
That i went up in a flight for the first time pretty unprepared for a flight journey and with way too many other kinds of thoughts on mind is just one part of it.
The rains in Chennai kind of required me to board a flight cancelling my train....and people being being people had just one question which one are you flying....and everyone from my lead to my colleague , friends had one line to say ....when i answered Kingfisher.
"My my thats expensive ....hmmm lucky girl....we all get Spicejet"Heck it was pure chance else the travel organizer for my organization was simply unwilling to beleive that i needed a flight till she got it first hand that trains was cancelled.
Though what really is the differnce i am a bit dense up there i guess... or some day when i fly a lil bit more i may know....All i could spot the differnce was the Air Hostesses were real time eye-candy compared to the others....which explains it for some people .
Rest i honestly couldnt figure out.For me it was like Damn it who wanted to go up in the clouds real time at 5.30 in the morning when i would have happily been dreaming it up in the clouds...usually at that time.
Well finally got in and and i wondered if i'd have those flight problems people talk about. Hmm none whatesover. My permanent worry was my file containing all my certificates (all that i have earned as they say).
Finally when i started looking out of the window and slowly the scenery dissapeared and clouds enveloped all around....my thoughts were like the following.
So beautiful like somewhere near the north pole or south pole covered in snow.....Then it struck me....ah i know i am an earth person who likes being on the ground....thats why even the clouds i realte them to somewhere on ground.As much as i loved those clouds and thought them beautiful somehow they never seemed real to me.In fact next i related those real clouds funnily to the fake ones we see in movies. I was remembering those wooly wooly snowy scenes of fairies and all dream scene sets they show in movies.
Thats the irony of life i guess...reality becomes unreal.
But then as i looked on and on at them and saw the sun coming up like gold among them i realised why some people love flying so much.. i know few....why they become so dreamy when they talk about flying planes....and being up in the clouds.No ,I love my earth its lovely trees and slow breezes , but when you just stare at them and you ve known and seen people who talk of them and imagine them you realise the power, the freedom the longing that flying up there in those hazy bluish whites that some people may feel.
Me well if the take off was cool the landing was like i though i'd go deaf with the pain my ears...but i still hear .Though i hear i do not listen ... and quite some people have it figured out...it seems.... so my lead put me onto Listening Skills training. Next post may be on that.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Some Readin as i was away from this world....
I ve been away from using internet for non work purposes like soo long and its been one long hellish thing getting this net connection....nearly 3 months trying to get one.... i need to write a seprate post on that later....how difficult it was to get it right in the middle of a new residential area.........anyways all wells that ended well so let that be.
Works been too hectic but then so have been other things and amazing just when you need something to relate to the perfect kind of book comes up …just like that. I am one of those who like to be drawn involuntarily to books and like that impulsive feeling I have for some books.
Well I being an absolute quotation lover always loved Nietzsche’s quotes …lot of his were my favorites … and one is the tag line of my blog…” It is hard enough…”….but never really found out much about him except that he was a philosopher and I thought he must be a fine one.
But then reading pure philosophy in these days of life after working late hours at office is close to impossible. So don’t know how but I picked up that short intro kinda books that come from pocket books.
Well and thus I read about Nietzsche and while I like some authors and like somethings about some works of some authors I rarely felt any thoughts as close to my absolute madness that goes in my mind. I mean I seem oh so sane and quiet but then every where I go there seems to be some record playing in my head …some voices …in fact these days its so horrible that even music cannot seem to drown them out.
Its a terribly bad habit this imagination of almost everything , of past…of future…..present seems to be all about that. Ive tried and have been doing my best in the past few years to live in the moment but as I often say to close friends who advise forget the past…. is it really possible. Does the past not catch up ultimately …. And cast it imminent shadow on the future …can we ever escape it….so I thought and write often ........
and the following I read in there
“To live without regrets or nostalgia for instance sounds in a way wonderful. And yet how can one not regret wasted time missed opportunities, failure as well as happiness of a kind that one can never know again.and how can one avoid in these regrets, going in for comparison and contrast the bases of evaluation”
It felt like some one put my thoughts in so prettily ages ages ago….some madman I ve been loving reading about him because my thoughts seems so well mirrored. There are no solutions …there are only question …questions that kind of revolve in the mind like on and on…..
I had written a post long ago on a question someone asked me once I had joined this job newly.That question still remains in my mind “ Why are you so disinterested….in almost everything”
I remembered that again as I read the lines ......
“But what about people who can read him with understanding but still feel that there is no special way that is theirs. It is Nietzsche’s view that they are deluding themselves in order to have an easy time of it, or that they may be right?....If the second then what he says about giving ones lifestyle is irrelevant, and one may wonder what are they supposed to do with themselves- those gifted intelligent cultivated, sensitive receptive people who have no inclination to develop a high profile because despite gifts they are essentially passive.Or is it no one is passive?”
That I have great agnostic tendencies may also be one reason for my loving his writing…..i ve always told myself in this lifetime there is no way that I can ever be an atheist……its hard to give up on a God being nonexistent when you lived more than half your life believing not by tradition but somewhere in heart…..So the only way out is just don’t care…believing that even if God does exist he doesn’t care…not anymore at least….
Then there are our festivals so many of which we hardly celebrate any more….. those temples and what not….its not whether I celebrate them today any more….its about those memories…..of those beliefs…….one never gets over childhood memories.
The book sort of focused on his life and some lines made you feel so much like when it was said
“ Writing was often like taking dictation from an internal voice “ .
Often it feels like that….probably that’s why I keep this blogI have to return the book to the library so may be I’ll note a few lines here to re read them…..
Nietzsche went mad the last decade of his short life….some fetch it too far saying it was feigned . Now in my very own style I put up my defenses coz someone may say well Nietzsche was not that pro-Women ……well who cares that world was different ……. What I like I enjoy what I don’t... to trash.
One of my colleagues during a counseling session post flunking an exam was asked who is your role model…….good thing no one did ask me such stuff anytime coz they’d get a huge dose of individuality from me……but then I guess that’s why no one asks me such questions.
I normally’d have given a long explanatory answer to such a question about why being a follower is no good and I am one of those rare strange creatures who not only have an aversion to being a follower……I hate even being a leader. … I mean I often think who wants to take up the responsibility of a a bunch of no gooders…followers. Though when you live practical life you understand why you need followers…
I mean I tell myself … some one might have designed and imagined a great beauty like the Taj but to make it real you need a whole bunch of dumb quiet followers who live everyday and work the repeated stuff everyday…….(like we poor dumb copy paste engineers do for the great profitable business visionary…hence somewhere somehow everyone is a follower…………a dumb one and loves a leader but then there are few who are unwilling followers….like me…forced by life ….most somehow are such willing followers that they amaze me….. Its like one day one of the team members was like is it a holiday tomorrow ….they should give nah kinda stuff I said well well then go and ask and the group was like you are our Sr engg nah you go and ask ..we will follow you …. Huh how ppl love to follow)
Nevertheless reading the book gave me my perfect one liner“You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you always remain a pupil”
Before posting the post to my blog the greatest question I ask myself is what should be the title ……… its so difficult….i never write coherently on a single topic. Its all so divergent and jumbled up.Well lemme put something anyways….
I ve been away from using internet for non work purposes like soo long and its been one long hellish thing getting this net connection....nearly 3 months trying to get one.... i need to write a seprate post on that later....how difficult it was to get it right in the middle of a new residential area.........anyways all wells that ended well so let that be.
Works been too hectic but then so have been other things and amazing just when you need something to relate to the perfect kind of book comes up …just like that. I am one of those who like to be drawn involuntarily to books and like that impulsive feeling I have for some books.
Well I being an absolute quotation lover always loved Nietzsche’s quotes …lot of his were my favorites … and one is the tag line of my blog…” It is hard enough…”….but never really found out much about him except that he was a philosopher and I thought he must be a fine one.
But then reading pure philosophy in these days of life after working late hours at office is close to impossible. So don’t know how but I picked up that short intro kinda books that come from pocket books.
Well and thus I read about Nietzsche and while I like some authors and like somethings about some works of some authors I rarely felt any thoughts as close to my absolute madness that goes in my mind. I mean I seem oh so sane and quiet but then every where I go there seems to be some record playing in my head …some voices …in fact these days its so horrible that even music cannot seem to drown them out.
Its a terribly bad habit this imagination of almost everything , of past…of future…..present seems to be all about that. Ive tried and have been doing my best in the past few years to live in the moment but as I often say to close friends who advise forget the past…. is it really possible. Does the past not catch up ultimately …. And cast it imminent shadow on the future …can we ever escape it….so I thought and write often ........
and the following I read in there
“To live without regrets or nostalgia for instance sounds in a way wonderful. And yet how can one not regret wasted time missed opportunities, failure as well as happiness of a kind that one can never know again.and how can one avoid in these regrets, going in for comparison and contrast the bases of evaluation”
It felt like some one put my thoughts in so prettily ages ages ago….some madman I ve been loving reading about him because my thoughts seems so well mirrored. There are no solutions …there are only question …questions that kind of revolve in the mind like on and on…..
I had written a post long ago on a question someone asked me once I had joined this job newly.That question still remains in my mind “ Why are you so disinterested….in almost everything”
I remembered that again as I read the lines ......
“But what about people who can read him with understanding but still feel that there is no special way that is theirs. It is Nietzsche’s view that they are deluding themselves in order to have an easy time of it, or that they may be right?....If the second then what he says about giving ones lifestyle is irrelevant, and one may wonder what are they supposed to do with themselves- those gifted intelligent cultivated, sensitive receptive people who have no inclination to develop a high profile because despite gifts they are essentially passive.Or is it no one is passive?”
That I have great agnostic tendencies may also be one reason for my loving his writing…..i ve always told myself in this lifetime there is no way that I can ever be an atheist……its hard to give up on a God being nonexistent when you lived more than half your life believing not by tradition but somewhere in heart…..So the only way out is just don’t care…believing that even if God does exist he doesn’t care…not anymore at least….
Then there are our festivals so many of which we hardly celebrate any more….. those temples and what not….its not whether I celebrate them today any more….its about those memories…..of those beliefs…….one never gets over childhood memories.
The book sort of focused on his life and some lines made you feel so much like when it was said
“ Writing was often like taking dictation from an internal voice “ .
Often it feels like that….probably that’s why I keep this blogI have to return the book to the library so may be I’ll note a few lines here to re read them…..
Nietzsche went mad the last decade of his short life….some fetch it too far saying it was feigned . Now in my very own style I put up my defenses coz someone may say well Nietzsche was not that pro-Women ……well who cares that world was different ……. What I like I enjoy what I don’t... to trash.
One of my colleagues during a counseling session post flunking an exam was asked who is your role model…….good thing no one did ask me such stuff anytime coz they’d get a huge dose of individuality from me……but then I guess that’s why no one asks me such questions.
I normally’d have given a long explanatory answer to such a question about why being a follower is no good and I am one of those rare strange creatures who not only have an aversion to being a follower……I hate even being a leader. … I mean I often think who wants to take up the responsibility of a a bunch of no gooders…followers. Though when you live practical life you understand why you need followers…
I mean I tell myself … some one might have designed and imagined a great beauty like the Taj but to make it real you need a whole bunch of dumb quiet followers who live everyday and work the repeated stuff everyday…….(like we poor dumb copy paste engineers do for the great profitable business visionary…hence somewhere somehow everyone is a follower…………a dumb one and loves a leader but then there are few who are unwilling followers….like me…forced by life ….most somehow are such willing followers that they amaze me….. Its like one day one of the team members was like is it a holiday tomorrow ….they should give nah kinda stuff I said well well then go and ask and the group was like you are our Sr engg nah you go and ask ..we will follow you …. Huh how ppl love to follow)
Nevertheless reading the book gave me my perfect one liner“You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you always remain a pupil”
Before posting the post to my blog the greatest question I ask myself is what should be the title ……… its so difficult….i never write coherently on a single topic. Its all so divergent and jumbled up.Well lemme put something anyways….
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