V e r i t a s . S o p h i a . I u s t i t i a

i

The monster, fire-breathing gargoyle, slain, fallen idol into its own sulfurous smoke, and lifting my head above its evil stench, at last I'm see a former greatness smashed, in broken pieces, ground into a fine dust that clogs the breath, that has yet to settle but will, and what a wondrous sight it is, such buds that blossom from the utter annihilation of that which towered and cast its hefty shadow, over on days directly under, across when faraway, like jagged dagger to needle point from nigh to eternity.

ii. The best beats, yearbook 2008

1. The Killers, 'Human'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d97XFGR_IP0

2. Beyoncé, 'If I Were a Boy'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3811N79n_R4&annotation_id=annotation_959262&feature=iv

3. My Morning Jacket, 'I'm Amazed'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzdoOGUsEKg

4. Coldplay, 'Viva la Vida'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE

5. Santogold, 'L.E.S. Artistes'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CtzFEAGHcw

6. Beyoncé, 'Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

7. Beck, 'Gamma Ray'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o3IYGZD-lQ

8. Estelle feat. Kanye West, 'American Boy'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6dFZF1-bcE

9. Pink, 'So What'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bNDr1A6dTU

10. Leona Lewis, 'Bleeding Love'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-ctIC65PV0

Oh, I can't believe I forgot this glorious number by TV on the Radio...

TV on the Radio, 'Golden Age'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXq0z1mVfzQ

Our new Year Ones will register this coming Friday and I've been tasked to speak for five minutes about the school's special art program. At least it's something to do... Strange, I've simultaneously and paradoxically been bored to distraction and loathed to do any work. Uh well, something's gotta give.

Shopping spree after receiving December's bonus. I know I should be saving, but hey at least I paid off all my debts before I embarked on The Rape of Orchard Road... bought a pair of Evisu jeans, a dress watch from Cerruti , a shirt from Calvin Klein and a pair of loafers from Tod's. Christmas sales. Love 'em.

Trifecta of R&B-slash-hip/hop CDs- Ne-Yo's Year of the Gentleman, Beyonce's I am... Sasha Fierce, and Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak. So far, very satisfied. Reading going very slowly... Roberto Bolano's 2666, a mega- and meta-detective novel containing five separate narratives that converge on an apocalyptic scene of mass-murder in a Mexican border town. This from the blurb of course. I am barely 150 pages into its near 1000 pages...

Feeling like a zombie today. Slept through the whole of yesterday. LITERALLY. Bad, bad move. Woke up hourly through the night and got up eventually at seven this morning with fingers and knees that couldn't stop shaking, sheets and all scattered all over the floor... and vaguely remembering a dream/nightmare in which I was watching some twisted version of Hitchcock's Psycho with a black Anthony Perkins (with an Afro) making off into the sunset carrying his mother who gradually grows (regresses?) into a wrinkled nymphet flirting incestuously amidst girlish giggles. Ugh.

No more whole-day sleep-ins. Gym today and tomorrow. Most definitely.

I cannot have a conversation with my mother without it turning into a full-fledged war of words. I am smothered by all the accusations of ingratitude, insinuations of incompetence, silken sighs of resignation that only thinly veil her contempt for all the ambitions and expectations I haven't met. I cannot live with a mother who cannot hide that she needs to steel herself- a tiredness, an agitated impatience fleets across her countenance, she inhales sharply- whenever I open my mouth to speak, as if in anticipation of the stupidities that I will utter shortly. I cannot stand having conversations in which she hears what she wants to hear and not what it is I am saying. "Will you shut up and listen to what I am saying?", I grimace in the end, when I can take her chiding my invisible alter ego no longer, and that she hears, and that I realize is the person she has been speaking to for the last, what is it, 20, 30 minutes? I don't think she can even see me anymore. I know I must leave this house, leave this country, leave a mother who no longer knows me and a father who openly despises me, not only in order to save myself but to keep together what shreds of family ties remain, be as far away as possible from the noxious fumes that are smothering all of us. I count the days. I have two more years of this purgatory to live through. "Help me", said the note pinned to his chest when they turned him over.

K has a shelf of 91 unread novels. The books are ordered alphabetically by the name of the author. Here are some of the books on K's shelf: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Berlin Novels by Christopher Isherwood, Under the Net by Iris Murdoch, Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth, and Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.

If K wanted to, he could re-order the books according to when he purchased them. He knows why each book attracted him, and why each has not (yet) been read. Take Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence. It was snapped up as soon as K had finished Lady Chatterley's Lover. Browsing through Lawrence under 'L' at the book store, K read on the blurb of Women in Love that it is considered the author's masterpiece.

The same principle of purpose follows for most of the other 90 unread novels. The Remains of the Day followed Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Libra followed Don Delillo's Underworld, The Swimming Pool Library followed Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. One of K's greatest frustrations is that he tires of a writer's style very quickly. That is not to say he has no wish to revisit the oeuvre of the author at a later date, but K has never read two books by the same author consecutively. Which begs the question, why must K immediately possess Women in Love after Lady Chatterley's Lover, Libra after Underworld. K cannot quite fathom the reason himself.

K despises his own literary tastes sometimes. He is well-read but he knows he is something of an elitist snob. He reads masterpieces. He reads Booker Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel prize winners. He has no sense of adventure. He couldn't tell if a book were good or bad without a critic's review, and even then, K only goes by the New York Review of Books or the Washington Post, sometimes The Guardian.

K convinces himself he is a busy man and the reviews and awards help "distill" the bad from the good, but still, K wishes he has a mind of his own or at least the time to develop such a mind. Today, K begins to read Home by Marilynne Robinson. He read Gilead in 2006. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Love, K

It's been a good week at the record store. I decided not to get the Kings of Leon, though from the way I've been obsessing about it, I'd probably not to an "if" but a "when". I hate that good music comes out all at the same time. A little like the Oscars seasons, when you spend a whole year watching 'Wedding Crashers II' and 'Hollywood Chihuahua' before *cue breath for God* they shower out cineplexes with the likes of 'No Country for Old Men', 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' and the best picture I've seen since 'Brokeback Mountain', Paul Thomas Anderson's 'The Will Be Blood'.

Anyway, I digress. It's been a good month for music, especially with Miley Cyprus and the Jonas Brothers going off to hybernate while us true rockers peel back the blue-screen to discover Sigur Rios was behind that loopy soundtrack... the Kings of Leon are knocking back a few to the tunes of Kid Rock and right across the street on soundstage, The Killers are strumming Mr. Bojangles with Nina Simone. The Cure's teaching Madonna how to play the electric guitar, it's right laugh, man. Katy Perry's picking daisies for Pink. Who has a thing for Sergio Mendes.

Life is beautiful.