Jeez.
I have tonnes of unread books at home. Loads of albums I haven’t listened to properly, music videos I haven’t seen. Hajaar literary ideas floating around in my head. A dozen or so computer-games I haven’t started yet. “Cult” movies I bought/wrote, but haven’t seen yet. Lots and lots and lots of printouts to peruse.
And as always, I wonder what I am going to do over the weekend.
***Excerpt from a couple of book reviews found here***
DREAM COUNTRY –
I urge you to do two things: read all of the SANDMAN books; and read them in order. You must do the first because these books are great literature and great literature will affect you. I urge you to do the second because though each volume is complete in itself, the series is one epic tale. You wouldn’t read War and Peace starting at page 168, would you? Approach SANDMAN in the same manner, begin at the beginning and end… well, at the end. If however, by some strange twist of fate, you should find yourself with DREAM COUNTRY in your trembling palms, begging your attention and you haven’t yet had the pleasure of the first two volumes, you have dispensation to read it.
A GAME OF YOU –
Alice in Wonderland meets Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and The Wizard of Oz, as directed by Joseph Campbell, A GAME OF YOU is what your favorite bedtime story grew up to be.
:-D
Major Sandman resources on the ‘Net :
The definitive Neil Gaiman page
Annotations to the comics
Dave McKean’s Artwork
Neil Gaiman is this awesome writer I fell in love with once upon a time….he was one of the guys who made comics part of the literary mainstream, with the epic Sandman series…went on to hunt out other Gaiman works, his novels “American Gods”, “Stardust” and “Neverwhere” among others, articles and idiosyncratic collaborations ( note to 
2fargon and psasidhar and everybody else into H2G2, Gaiman wrote the unofficial guide to the series, called Don’t Panic.
This little gem was something I discovered in “The Mammoth book of Vampires”….a fitting end to the collection.
Vampire Sestina
I wait here at the boundaries of dream,
all shadow-wrapped. The dark air tastes of night,
so cold and crisp, and I wait for my love.
The moon has bleached the color from her stone.
She’ll come, and then we’ll stalk this pretty world
alive to darkness and the tang of blood.
It is a lonely game, the quest for blood,
but still, a body’s got the right to dream
and I’d not give it up for all the world.
The moon has leeched the darkness from the night.
I stand in shadows, staring at her stone:
Undead, my lover . . . O, undead my love?
I dreamt you while I slept today and love
meant more to me than life — meant more than blood.
The sunlight sought me, deep beneath my stone,
more dead than any corpse but still a-dream
until I woke as vapor into night
and sunset forced me out into the world.
For many centuries I’ve walked the world
dispensing something that resembled love —
a stolen kiss, then back into the night
contented by the life and by the blood.
And come the morning I was just a dream,
cold body chilling underneath a stone.
I said I would not hurt you. Am I stone
to leave you prey to time and to the world?
I offered you a truth beyond your dreams
while all you had to offer was your love.
I told you not to worry and that blood
tastes sweeter on the wing and late at night.
Sometimes my lovers rise to walk the night . . .
Sometimes they lie, cold corpse beneath a stone,
and never know the joys of bed and blood,
of walking through the shadows of the world;
instead they rot to maggots. O my love
they whispered you had risen, in my dream.
I’ve waited by your stone for half the night
but you won’t leave your dream to hunt for blood.
Good night, my love. I offered you the world.
Umm, yeah, lest I forget….this one is dedicated to YOU. :-)
The neat Lj meet last night left me in very high spirits. The office work over, called up home after a long time, and had a nice long chat with mom and dad, and then another long call…came back home to find Rishi had prepared dinner, three packets of Maggi noodles with eggs and onions ( minus his favourite – tomatoes)….finished The Phantom Menace novel over dinner and listened to some more Phish – a brilliant band, IMHO. As is usual, went to sleep at around 12, to the strains of Carole King’s “Brother Brother”.
3:00 am: Rude awakening: the power had gone off and it was raining pretty heavily outside. It was a dark and stormy night (:-P ) and there were squadrons of mosquitoes doing the Danse Macabre around my ears. ( all the mosquito repellents we have run on electricity. Aaah! The preils of technology! ) Tried to summon zen techniques of falling asleep, but could endure it no longer. Rishi was up too. So was Abhi. And it turned out there wasn’t a single candle in the bloomin’ house! Cursed each other for a while, then cursed the mosquitoes, finally settled on cursing the landlord.
4:30 am, the rain had stopped, and it was semi-dark outside. Decided to go out for a walk with Rishi, came back after sometime – it was too hazy ,and both of were mumbling sleepily. Better mosquitoes than an ignominous fall in the mud!
5:00 am: what the heck!!! I smother myself in my blanket ( and Hyderabad is supposed to be hot, man! ) and concentrate on ignoring the buzzing and humming. It works!!! Somewhere down the line, the power comes back again, and I throw the blanket off.
8:30 am: Wake up. Look at the watch. Late for the office!!!!! Aww, man, this sucks…..
9:40 AM: am in the office now. Sleepy. A li’l hungry. More coffee required.
