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kiddotarot · 17 days

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Why you are your future spouse made for each other

Explanation = We only brings our personality ( Ascendant) and 7H according to our past life karma and this is why you and your partner made for each other to balanced the complete you . Check your Ascendant and sign sitting to your 7h . Thank you jay for jay ( astroid) regarding too much help and teaching and learning from his vedios .

Aries = Libra

Aries = person are more related to themselves. " me" is a perfect word to describe them cause this associate with ego , level of growing, what can you do to yourself. If you ask this person to do charities and donations they may be not intrested in this but if you ask them to help in surgeries and body related help they surely going to help for example = Salman khan do a lot of donations for operation and also donate is born marrow for a child. So this thay have opposite sign libra in there chart because you alway think about yourself and focus on only you with your future spouse you going to learn how to work in a partnership and work for others and manage things and resources in a relationship you can fi d ot difficult but it is the basic rule which god decided to teach you .

Libra = you are a person who always focused on relationship and how to satisfy everyone need . You can always find yourself stuck in a web of relationship from your family and friends and society because you think you need to make good relations with everyone . And with libra ascendant you have gain house leo (11H) so you want popularity from there but you need to understand that you are slowly loosing yourself in this that's why you have Aries as a partner which can show you how and what you can do to yourself always doing for others not always give you acceptance. They can show you to take desion for yourself too first look at yourself then others.

Taurus = scorpio

Taurus = you are more focused on external things family, society and recourse and outher validation . You always work for them or always think about them and of by chance your ascendant in afflicted then sure you going yo have problem from speaking for yourself your own people can insult you but you are not able to answer back. You always pit more focus on those things like you want your name mention in a donations if you do charity . That's why you have scorpio in you 7h because sure you future spouse going to teach you to go silent and why you need to be alone and cut out from others. Because god want you to learn internal expension. And these people spouse stand up for them and speak no matter if your family stand against you . If they have strong moon and venus as scorpio ascendant they going to be a obsessive lover. I am sure your sleep cycle is disturbed now for sure but after marriage it going to be improve.

Scorpio = you are a reserved person and sure rigid also . You have a bigger world in your innerself than outer world . Very private person you always cut off from society and peoples it make you feel you are enough alone but that's not it we are humans the social animals we need to do coperative with each other so your 7H Taurus person going to show you how to put efforts in a family after marriage because familys runs from both side and efforts they will sure bring you out of your zone and make you a coperative person . Because your partner know how to deal with enemies and diseases and coperative situation these three things going to add in your life for sure.

Gemini = sagittarius

Gemini = you are immature by subconscious mind like a kid so this is a little baby Mercury house which is not mature enough do your nature is like that . You either take desion very fast or always stay confused in your life even in your career. And your 2H rule by moon regarless its position in chart you always dpeak by your emotions and you less you mind in speaking caure you are pure heart like a child can be emotional speaker. Always take random action. Thats why you have sagittarius in your 7H according to me it is best placement cause your future spouse is really mature and knowledgeable going to tach you a lot of thing and act like a guide throughout the life they are the best person to take advice in life. Your luck can be rise after marriage cause they are supportive towards your desion are correct them . If you have bad 7h still check your partner jupiter it can still give good effect in some cases.

Sagittarius = you are always lucky and ethical and most of the time right in tyiur life but its make you a person who never be so experimental and may be find it difficult to accept chsnges. Its a jupiter ruled sign and no other planets is exalted here so we can say you never listen to others. You can have habit of procrastination in trying new things and experience. That's why you have Gemini in your 7h your partner is going to shake your world . They going to teach you how to be more changable and accept it. They going to teach you who be easy going on life and chill and be curious sure you going to have a hard time for that but they will be bright and open up your world.

Cancer = capricorn

Cancer = you are very emotional person and carying people often take advantage of it. And you may be get ashamed up for showing your emotions and you learn how to keep thing to you only not share them. That's why your house have capricorn 7h your spouse belives in more taking action and karma. They really don't have any filter when it comes to speak of fight for what's right in there eyes. And if Saturn placed goid your spouse can take stand for you always no matter what throughout your life.

Capricorn = you are always rigid and can have not do good experience in your life. Which can make or developed your mind set in a way thst you believe thst if i want something i need to do work hard and neglected your own emotions. You never forgive a person and aldo not forget what they do you believe in punishment that's why you have cancer in your 7H your person going to show you do not be hard on yourself and others . And you can believe in uour emotional side and not to shut it . They make you believe that innocence and purity still exists. You can work for others without selfishness.

Leo = Aquarius

Leo = you are wtical and may be main attraction in your own group . You carries a king qualities and believe in doing justice but on the negative side it can give you too much overconfidence and rudeness you are not ready to surrender in front of someone thsts why you have 7H Aquarius your future spouse going to make you humble and grounded cause Aquarius is mixture of rahu + saturan so its make a eclipse situation to a leo person but don't worry you are blessed by god only ehy this person can control you by his duality and expension. You sometimes you can't understand or can't handle there duality because they are always two step ahead from you.

Aquarius = you are a person who is deciplined but also have a great social contact you are like mass personality which is just expanding. And if your saturan placed bad i am sure you are not ethical. You can have a low immunity system and that's why you always fall sick fast and have some mysterious decease. That's why you have 7H leo your person going to show you how to be more ethical and justice. Because god give solution not punishment so your spouse is solution they ga e great immunity or they can creat a environment that can help you to stay healthy. Like tsking care of you routine and food a lot of good stuuf included a great person.

Virgo = pisces

Virgo = you are always more technical in your life because you always deal with enemies and problems so your mindset is developed yo use a strategy often and may be you get succeed most of the time and jave a thought that i am god or i am enough that's why you have pisces in 7H because your partner is a perso who never think. They will teach you how to get free from your active defence system and urge to controll everything they hsve a very flowing energy which make you to leave yourself in life flow. And everything is not logical something are out of our mind and in god hands.

Pisces = you are a person who believe in spirituality and often judt dream about things . You mostly not use your mind and think its all god wish but god is busy so thats why you have virgo in 7H your partner going to teach you a lot about how to work logical mostly in matters of enemies and life. They going to teach you its ok to make plans and give your hundred percent because as a human atleast we can do what's in our hands.

©️ kiddotarot

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youremyheaven · 12 days

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Momagers, Stage Mom's & Mama's Boys: The Dysfunctional Moon Child

Moon influenced people often come from households where they had a very dysfunctional relationship with their parents. Both parents are usually toxic but the Moon person forms a close, overly sympathetic and anxiously attached bond with one parent who they perceive as the victim or martyr in some way. (Dad's abusive or neglectful and mom's the one trying her best, for example).

WHY does this happen?

Moon is said to be the most Yin of the planets. It's passive, feminine and emotional.

Most of the time, these bonds are toxic because its overly protective, overly nurturing, controlling, overly caring as opposed to say Sun influence which will create bonds that are too independent and unattached (aka female friendships vs male friendships lol). Moon influenced parent-child bonds become toxic because there's TOO MUCH love, care and attachment and neither party can have a separate independent existence.

Moon influence is prominent in the charts of momagers/stage moms AND the kids who are under their control.

Priyanka Chopra, Rohini Moon

Pri and her mom are attached at the hip and they're literally ALWAYS together. She has managed Pri's career since she was a teenager. And since she's not a nepo kid, it's known that she's had affairs with several married men in the industry, especially when she was starting out, to secure work :((

And I think its fucked up to have a parent basically pimp you out to make money. Be it PC getting a nose job or her army doctor mother quitting her job to open a cosmetic surgery clinic or her family running a pub?? PC is the golden goose and her family has just been living off of her money and encouraging her to basically do anything to make it. I think its a bit fcked to be smoking with your mom and its not bc I'm Indian lol

Alia Bhatt, Shravana Rising

Now Alia's dad is a pretty well known asshole who is infamous for being abusive. And Alia had a pretty rough upbringing, so its no wonder that Alia is as attached to her mom as she is. Alia's own marriage is pretty fucked up and toxic.

Alia started her career when she was 17 and to this day, her mom manages her finances. She was recently in the news for being scammed out of 1 crore rupees (119,000 dollars) so like I guess her mom's not exactly brilliant at what she does lol

Katrina Kaif, Hasta Moon

Katrina Kaif who is British, came to India when she was 17 and met and started dating the violent, toxic abusive Salman Khan, who was 20 years older than her. He helped her establish herself as a huge star but she went through a lot including physical abuse.

Kat endured all that because she had 7 siblings to support and her mom was a single mom. She's extremely close to her mom but I still think its fcked up that a literal teenager had to become the breadwinner of a family of 8 and endure all kinds of abuse in a toxic industry and in a country where she knew nobody just to break even.

Bella Hadid, Hasta Moon

Yolanda is a toxic mom in general but she has a particularly toxic bond with Bella for sure

Britney Spears, Shravana Moon

She's probably the most notorious example of being controlled by her toxic , abusive family :(((

Brooke Shields, Rohini Sun/Jupiter/Rahu

Her mom made her pose naked for playboy when she was 10. That should say enough about how fcked up her momager was. She has spoken about how her mom was an alcoholic and she felt like she had to do everything she could do to keep her mom alive :((

Ranbir Kapoor, Shravana Moon

He grew up in a toxic home where his dad cheated on his mom and was an alcoholic. He's KNOWN to be a mama's boy and his mother lowkey influenced all his previous relationships until he finally tied the knot with someone his mom approved of ://

Today his wife dresses and emulates his mom lmao

Leonardo DiCaprio, Hasta Moon

He's another infamous mama's boy

It's interesting to me how in most of these cases, the fathers were either absent or neglectful. These people grew up under the sole care of their mothers and it created an overly possessive, toxic, codependent bond. All of these people have spoken about how hard their mom's lives were and how they're grateful for everything their mothers did for them. This tendency of the Moon to make its natives be entirely sheltered from Yang or male influence or in some ways find Yang influence repulsive is very telling.

Similar to how Sun influenced people find it difficult to relate to or connect with Yin themes (like being clingy, attached, being nurturing in a traditional way, being openly loving etc) Moon influenced people struggle the most with detachment, letting go, independence etc. The extremes of both these can be unhealthy. It's important to learn how to be balanced and not give in to the tendencies that can harm both us and the people in our lives.

That's all for this post<3

#moon dominance #yin influence #lunar #vedicwisdom #vedic astrology #astro notes #astrology notes #nakshatras #astrology observations #sidereal astrology #astrology #vedic astro notes #astroblr #astro observations

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justforbooks · 5 months

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César Aira

He has published more than 100 novels, gives his work away, and his surrealist books have a massive cult following. Now Argentina’s favourite rule-breaker is tipped for the Nobel prize

Afew years ago when Patti Smith played at a cultural festival in Denmark, she told the crowd that she was happy to be playing in the presence of one of her favourite authors. It was said she had only agreed to play the festival because the author, César Aira, would be in the audience. Aira, although celebrated in his home country, Argentina, was little known outside Latin America until he was discovered in 2002 by the Berlin-based literary agent Michael Gaeb, who was enchanted by his unconventional, surrealist books, which shift atmosphere, and even genre, from one page to another.

At first it proved difficult to sell Aira’s novels to a wider audience. “The fundamental problem when promoting César’s work is that the editor always asks: ‘What is the novel about?’” Gaeb told me. “And in the case of César, it’s not easy to answer that question.”

Gaeb has since sold Aira’s books in 37 languages. At the start of October last year, the English betting site Nicer Odds named Aira as a favourite for the Nobel prize in literature, slightly ahead of candidates such as Haruki Murakami and Salman Rushdie, who have appeared more regularly on such lists.

“I already know that every October, until my death, I’m going to have to put up with that.” Said by any other writer, this would come across as a humble brag. But Aira doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who appreciates disrupting events. “Sometimes the candidacy is useful to me,” he said, laughing. “For instance, now we live in a more luxurious apartment, one a little beyond my circumstances. And they rent to me because they see that I am a candidate for the Nobel.”

His apartment is located just five blocks from his office, which in its turn was the house where he lived for more than 40 years with his two children and his wife, Liliana Ponce, a poet and a scholar of Japanese literature. The recent move took place because Ponce has an illness that affects her mobility, and the new building has an elevator.

Aira, who does not speak to the local press and whose interviews with foreign media are usually short and conducted via email, rarely leaves Flores, a lower-middle-class neighbourhood that’s best known today as a textile hub for the clothing stores in wealthier areas of the city. Early in his career, Aira developed a method called the fuga hacia adelante (something like “forward flight”), which consists of writing a few hours a day and never looking back to edit until he reaches the end of a tale. “I revise much more than I did before,” casually demystifying what is perhaps the fact most repeated about his work. “I think that I’ve become more demanding. Or else I’m writing worse than before.”

The novels were – and sometimes still are – written in neighbourhood bars, cafes and even fast-food joints, such as McDonald’s or Pumper Nic, a now-extinct Buenos Aires chain. “It began when my children were small,” he said. “If I had a bit of time, I escaped, and I went to write. But after the pandemic, the bars and cafes started to fill up a lot. And there’s the issue of the telephones. If at a neighbouring table two people are conversing, it’s possible to ignore them. But if there’s just one person talking on the phone, it’s as if they’re speaking with you. It’s horrible!”

Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, in a small town in the south of the province, 300 miles from the capital. “I was thinking just now of my first memories of childhood because they are of the revolution of 1955,” he said – the year Juan Perón was removed from power by a coup for the first time. There was only one cinema, and television had not yet caught on. But the town had two well-stocked public libraries. “When I was still a teenager, I was already reading Joyce, Proust and Kafka,” Aira said. His precocity was also stimulated by an amateur public education in which classes were taught not by specialised professors but by volunteers with gigantic private collections of books. There were doctors who taught philosophy classes (“in those days, doctors were humanists”) and lawyers who taught history. “I didn’t have that kind of bureaucratic education where the teacher knows more,” he said. “It was something a lot freer.”

When he was about 14 years old, Aira met Arturo Carrera, a friend who, like him, would become a nationally recognised writer. Aira dedicated himself to prose; Carrera, poetry. The friends tried to stay up to date with the literary world by getting hold of magazines that were based in the capital. One of those publications, Testigo (Witness), held a contest. Carrera sent a few poems, and Aira sent a story. They both came out winners.

At the time, the majority of promising secondary school students in Coronel Pringles continued their university studies in Bahía Blanca, a city 75 miles away. “Law was the only graduate course they didn’t have,” Aira said. He told his parents he was interested in a law degree and moved to the capital. “I wanted to come for the art galleries, the cinemas,” he said. For two years, he studied law at the University of Buenos Aires, and then he transferred to the department of literature.

Testigo folded before it could publish Aira’s winning story. But one of the judges of the award, the novelist Abelardo Arias, wrote to congratulate him. Aira and Arias began a correspondence, and soon Aira showed Arias a manuscript. Arias loved it and passed it on to the publisher Galerna, which agreed to print it.

“It was a big thing, even more so for a young person of that age,” Aira said.

One day, walking aimlessly through the streets of the city with a friend, he came across a building he knew. “Here, in this building, an editor wants to publish a novel of mine,” he told her. “Let’s go up.” When he arrived, he asked to speak with the person responsible for his book. Then he asked for the manuscript back: “I don’t want to publish it any more.” The editor was astonished.

I asked Aira why he’d acted like that. “Just because,” he said. He shrugged and laughed. “I wanted to impress her.”

To write all day long without revising until you reach the end of a story produces an obscene quantity of books. Nobody I met in Buenos Aires ventured to pin down exactly how many volumes Aira has published. César Aira, un catálogo (César Aira: A Catalogue), organised by the writer and lawyer Ricardo Strafacce, is the most notable effort to itemise his work. Launched in 2018 with the aim of helping the uninitiated, the catalogue reprints one page from each of Aira’s books. The catalogue was commissioned by his publisher in part to commemorate his 100th book (Aira likes round numbers), but in the time the catalogue took to reach the printer, Aira had already written two more.

When I sat with Strafacce in the Varela-Varelita bar in Buenos Aires at the end of a November afternoon, he was still indignant with the catalogue’s publisher, who he said had made changes without telling him. For instance, the publisher had edited the date of publication for the Aira story El hornero (The Ovenbird). “I’m furious,” he said. “You can talk to [the editor]. I don’t give a shit.” He complained about another small modification: in the biographical information for one of the titles, to his mention of Madrid, the editor had added “Spain”. In Strafacce’s eyes, the detail made him seem like an idiot, a “boludo”.

“Don’t writers get worked up about the most incredible minutiae?” said Francisco Garamona, the editor in question. With a cigarette in one hand and a glass of soda in the other, he explained that he’d merely used the version of El hornero that Aira himself had authorised, rather than the one in circulation, which was pirated. He was sitting on a sofa in La Internacional Argentina, his bookshop, where he also operates his publishing house, Mansalva. Today, Mansalva probably publishes the most titles by Aira. “There he is, and here are more, here’s another, and here,” Garamona said as he counted the shelves in the bookshop. “One, two, three … seven. Seven niches of just Aira.”

In a way, the decor reflected Garamona’s multifaceted career; in addition to being an editor and a bookshop owner, he is a musician, a film-maker, a poet and the former owner of an art gallery. Today he is also one of two editors whom Aira defined for me as “official”. The other is Damián Ríos, from the publisher Blatt & Ríos.

The honour of “official” editors must inspire some pride in Ríos and Garamona, because Aira has worked with more than a few. His extensive body of work is decentralised in dozens of editorial houses, the vast majority of them tiny, which makes him an author at once ubiquitous and elusive. In this context, it’s not difficult to understand how a controversy like the one with El hornero came about. Aira must be one of the few writers in the world, maybe the only one, to sell 25,000 copies of one title and at the same time launch other titles in much smaller print runs. He has never charged royalties or advances for the small publishing houses in Argentina. “That was the agreement I made with Michael [Gaeb],” Aira said. “I don’t meddle with the world. And he doesn’t meddle with Argentina. In Argentina, everything is free.”

Aira’s strong cultural presence today conceals the stuttering start of his career. “For many years, this was the only proof I was a writer,” he said, showing a handful of yellowing pages, the nucleus of a book without a cover. His voice shook, this time, emotion had truly moved him. In his hands was a copy of Moreira, considered by some to be his first published novel. In the background, an atmospheric combination of dissonant chords and piano notes faded away. “I only listen to Morton Feldman these days,” Aira said. He added that he’d recently made an exception to listen to Now and Then, a “new” song by the Beatles completed thanks to help from artificial intelligence.

After going up to the office of the publishing house Galerna in 1969, in that half-impulsive gesture to ask for his manuscript back, some years went by before Aira had a chance to publish again. Moreira was supposed to come out in 1975, but was delayed. The editor of the book was Aira’s friend Horacio Achával, owner of the publishing house Achával Solo. In 1976, there was another military coup in Argentina. “Horacio was a political militant and had to go away,” Aira said. “He took off. He went to Uruguay.” The copies of Moreira, still without a cover, were left stranded in a warehouse. Years later, Achával returned to the country and finalised the cover. The book was officially launched in December 1981, just weeks after Ema, la cautiva (Ema, the Captive), which came out from another publishing house in November 1981 and today disputes with Moreira the title of Aira’s official debut.

Strafacce told a different story. “Moreira was printed in June 1975,” he said. “The money ran out, and there wasn’t enough to print the cover because in the same month, there was a financial crisis and a bank run here in Argentina.”

Aira published a few books in the 80s, but according to Sandra Contreras, who founded a small publishing house that published him throughout the 90s and 2000s, it was not until 1990’s Los fantasmas (Ghosts) that he accelerated his production. At the time, she said, he also spoke more explicitly of a new phase, “the beginning of the regular publication of his novelas and novelitas”. Aira was the first author to be published not only by Contreras’s publishing house but also by Mansalva and Blatt & Ríos in the early 00s.

In the 90s, small publishers like these were rare. Garamona said that this began to change in 2001, when after almost a decade of one-to-one parity between the Argentine peso and the US dollar, the local economy went through one of the worst recessions in Latin American history. Importing books became expensive. And so, after spending years favouring authors from Spain, local bookshop owners finally had eyes for Argentine literature.

When Gaeb first encountered Aira’s work in Guadalajara, in 2002, Aira had already begun to occupy his paradoxical central position at the margins of the culture. “He is a writer who exists in different fields, at different levels,” the fiction writer and critic Alan Pauls says, from his Berlin study, in a conversation over Zoom. “On the one hand, he has quite a lot of popularity. And on the other, he remains a niche writer, a cult writer. We still think of him as a writer of the avant garde, a manufacturer of very sophisticated objects. He’s someone who occupies the centre to his regret, not because he looked for it.”

To get hold of Moreira today isn’t easy – on the site Mercado Libre Argentina, in mid-December, there was a copy going for about $1,200 (£950). On the cover that for years remained unfinished, there is a monstrous, saturnine figure riding a yellow horse. Beneath the image, the first sentence of the novel prominently appears: Un día, de madrugada, por las lomas inmóviles del Pensamiento bajaba montado en potro amarillo un horrible gaucho (“One day at dawn, through the unmoving hills of Thought, mounted upon a yellow colt, there descended a horrible gaucho”).

In Spanish, El Pensamiento can refer to both the abstract noun, and the village close to where Aira was born and spent his childhood. The phrase gives a taste of the kind of mixture harboured within the novel. Evoking Juan Moreira, a folkloric knife-fighting hero of the Argentine Pampas, the book narrates a gaucho-esque pantomime, shot through with philosophical allusions and images from dreams. In Moreira, one can already recognise the multifaceted and frenetically imaginative style for which Aira would later be known. But the Airean machine still seems to just be getting started: there is a heavy self-consciousness that is absent from the books that follow. In these later works, his prose is limpid and inviting. Here is the start of El mago (The Magician), published almost exactly 20 years after Moreira:

In March this year, the Argentine magician Hans Chans (his real name was Pedro María Gregorini) participated in a convention of illusionists in Panamá; the event, just as the invitation and promotional leaflet described, was a regional meeting of prestigious professionals, a preparation for the great world congress the following year, which was celebrated every 10 years and this time would take place in Hong Kong. The previous one had been in Chicago, and he had not gone. Now he planned not only to participate, but also to establish himself as Best Magician in the World. The idea was not crazy or megalomaniacal. It had a foundation as reasonable as it was curious: Hans Chans was a genuine magician.

Aira takes this magical premise seriously, drawing from the dilemma a tale both comic and – in its exploration of the complex relations between being and seeming – densely philosophical. Hans Chans has the gift to be an illusionist, but not the vocation. He is too self-indulgent to dedicate himself to the profession. The narrator writes: “Maybe, paradoxically, the advantage he had played against him and condemned him to mediocrity.” Without patience for the theatre of magic, Chans limits himself to drawing handkerchiefs from wine glasses, and things of that sort.

It would not be unfair to read El mago as an allegory for the career of Aira himself: of someone who has the gift of writing but for whom the most deeply rooted conventions of the profession seem meaningless. Just like Hans Chans, the author is aware of his gift. Aira is affable and courteous, but he is far from being modest. (Modesty, faked or not, is another convention of the profession.) About the manuscript he asked to take back from Galerna in 1969, he said: “It was better than anything else that was published at the time.”

He has never been afraid to throw darts at other writers. When we spoke, he was disdainful of Roberto Bolaño, saying he had read only one novel by the Chilean author, which he found “terrible”. Aira also said that the great Argentine novelist Juan José Saer had once warmed to him, when he was young and starting out, but then became envious when Aira started getting more attention. In 1981, shortly before Moreira was finally published, Aira wrote an essay titled Novela argentina: nada más que una idea (The Argentine Novel: Nothing But an Idea), which mounts a general attack on literature of the period. The essay begins:

The current Argentine novel, beyond a doubt, is a stunted, ill-fated species. In general terms, what defines a poor novelistic product is the poor use, crude and opportunistic, of the available mythical-social material. In other words, the meanings that dictate how a society lives at a given historical moment. But the literary transposition of a reality demands the existence of a very exact passion: that of literature. And a rapid, provisional survey, not at all exhaustive, of Argentine novelists reveals that they have not read deeply, and show a complete absence of that passion along with its epiphenomenon, talent.

Aira, who had not even published a novel at that time, sticks his scalpel swiftly and mercilessly into a series of authors, most of whom have been more or less forgotten. The essay, though, is remembered these days for Aira’s attack on Ricardo Piglia, who, until his death in 2017, was a kind of public rival to Aira, at least in terms of the very different literary forms they espoused.

Pauls linked Aira’s attacks at the start of his career to his ambition to reconfigure the Argentine novel. “When he emerges in the literary environment, he knows perfectly well the writers he has to tussle with,” he said. For Pauls, Aira disturbed the paradigm of a certain progressive Argentinian literature, a literature of the left, very masculine and politically committed. “Something that literary school could not stand, for example, was a certain kind of work with frivolity, with the banal, with the superficial,” Pauls said.

Aira’s style crystallised very early on. Even if Moreira is not at the level of his next books, there is no clear sense of progression in Aira’s trajectory. Maybe for that reason, none of the readers could point to a favourite work.

Aira said he will have two new novelitas ready soon. He said he plans to give one to Ríos and the other to Garamona. “And now I’ve been thinking, because one of them came out better than the other, more imaginative – who will I give that one to?” he said, laughing.

Aira rejects great theorising about his decision to give away books free or publish the majority with small publishing houses. “His form of publishing is part of his poetics, his resistance to editorial capitalism, his punk attitude,” Gaeb said.

Contreras classified the hyperproduction of little books for small publishers as an aesthetic decision. “Something like: it’s enough for a tale to be imagined to make it necessary to publish,” she said. “There is also a fascination for the book as a unique object.”

Pauls said he interprets this decision as an avant garde way of thinking: “If the kind of literature I make is never going to have hundreds of thousands of readers, what happens if I inundate the market with books?”

When Aira was asked if he was edited nowadays, first he said that “nobody revises anything”. Then he conceded that Ríos sometimes makes one comment or another. Ríos corroborated this, but found it hard to define the exact nature of his comments, and he made it clear that they weren’t about anything structural. Contreras said that in her day, she at most corrected the odd typo.

Garamona laughed at the notion of editing or revising a text by Aira. “He has written since he was a teenager without stopping, and has such a mastery of form and content that in the end there isn’t much left to do,” he said. “You just have to pick it up, make a good cover with a pretty design, correct two or three errata.”

Los hombrecitos con sobretodo (The Little Men in Overcoats) is the title of the novel Aira defined as the most imaginative of the two he recently finished. “What happens is that here in the neighbourhood, two blocks away, where the fire station is located, men pop out at night,” he said. “At midnight they come popping out of the ceiling. Little men suddenly appear like that, really tiny men, they all wear overcoats. And at night, I go and watch them.”

He spoke as if he were beginning a fairytale. The low, tremulous voice transiting between fine irony and rapture; the sense of humour; the erudition; the sedentary life in a dark house in the neighbourhood where he’d lived for decades, from which he generates cosmopolitan, compact stories full of metafictional layers – all of it reminds us a bit of Jorge Luis Borges.

For an Argentinian, to say a great local writer seems like or is influenced by Borges must sound absurdly lazy. But both authors start their brief, densely packed books with literary anecdotes or memories written in crisp prose. In the works of both, there are frequent essayistic digressions. Both persistently turn to the literary technique of ekphrasis. There are metafictional and metaliterary games, references to other works.

The main difference is perhaps in the intensity and direction of the narrative swerves, and Aira’s greater comfort with pop culture and genre literature. Whereas a story by Borges might take up a lost 19th-century Persian manuscript, a novel by Aira might locate it behind the balcony of a McDonald’s in Flores, pored over by an adolescent with an acne problem.

Borges was almost infantile in his complete dedication as a reader, distant from the mundane hustle and bustle of the world. Nobody had anything substantial to say about Aira’s private life either. “He likes to drink coffee and talk about literature,” Ríos said. Gaeb said that Aira sometimes seems to get along better with children. (In fact, the person about whom Aira spoke with the greatest passion, albeit briefly, was Arturito, his only grandson.)

Strafacce, his friend for more than 20 years, said he found it easier to explain what Aira doesn’t talk about. “We’re used to not speaking about politics because I’m Trotskyist,” he said. “And César is not.”

It was the week of the second round of the presidential election. A few days later, the Peronist Sergio Massa, a member of the centre-left governing coalition at the time, would be defeated by the far-right Javier Milei. “Milei is worse than Bolsonaro,” said Aira, in his only comment about politics.

That day, before going to the cafe, Aira passed through the Museo Barrio de Flores. Earlier, he had been irritated at a package from one of his foreign publishers: a box containing copies of one of his novels in Dutch translation. “They keep sending me those here,” he complained, as if sending books to the author himself were a kind of gaffe. Aira handles books with the avidity of a collector. He was mesmerised for a good while that afternoon by an edition of the French author Raymond Roussel, one of his surrealist idols, and he showed us a little purple box the size of a pack of cigarettes: a tiny special edition the Biblioteca Nacional had made of El ilustre mago (The Famous Magician), another novel of his. But for some reason, he wanted to rid himself of the box with the Dutch edition.

The Museo Barrio de Flores does exactly what its name suggests, displaying all kinds of memorabilia – old calculators and radios, paintings, newspaper clippings, political propaganda – related in some way to famous inhabitants of the neighbourhood. The definition of “famous” is broad, ranging from Perón – who lived there with his first wife – to the two preteen nieces of the museum’s director, who created a children’s library during the pandemic and appeared on the front page of the newspaper Clarín. Aira seemed at ease there. His name occupies one of the steps on the staircase by the front door. On the step above is the name of the great writer Roberto Arlt; on the one below, an advertisement for a real-estate broker.

Aira left the box of books with an employee and continued through the museum. At one point he dwelt on a framed letter written by Pope Francis, another former inhabitant of the neighbourhood. “Did you see how pretty the pope’s handwriting is? They don’t teach that in school any more, no.” He went to another room, where there was a showcase with some of Aira’s books.

When he opened the door, there was a group of ladies sitting around a big table. A class was in session. They all smiled pleasantly, focusing their attention on the author. Only the instructor of the course seemed to be younger than 65.

“What is the name of the little plane that flies near the ground?” one of the ladies asked.

“The what?” said Aira.

“The little plane,” the lady repeated, with a certain impatience, lowering her open palm toward the floor. “The one that flies near the ground.”

For a while, everyone stared at Aira, waiting for an answer. “An unexpected question,” joked the instructor awkwardly.

Aira shrugged, and we went to the corner to look at his showcase.

✔ This is an edited version of César Aira’s Magic, published in the Dial. The article originally appeared in the Brazilian magazine Piauí

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #César Aira #Portrait

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Rosemary Neill

Published: Dec 2, 2022

In his bestseller The God Delusion, published in 2006, author Richard Dawkins famously wrote that the god of the Old Testament is “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser” and “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal … capriciously malevolent bully’’.

Not for nothing has Dawkins been described as “a poster boy for militant atheism”.

The former Oxford University professor and evolutionary biologist is also regarded as a brilliant and passionate science communicator: His 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, reframed our understanding of evolution and has been named by the Royal Society as the most inspiring science book of all time, while his latest volume, Flights of Fancy – a surprisingly lyrical work aimed at the over 12s – looks at how animals and humans have “learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies’’.

In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in a Prospect magazine poll. Yet in recent years, his controversial tweets and remarks about everything from aborting Down’s syndrome foetuses to Islamic fundamentalism have provoked sharp criticism and threats of cancellation.

Now aged 81, the career controversialist will conduct a national speaking tour in Australia in February, addressing topics including the wonders of science, the importance of reason and his scepticism about religion. Ahead of his tour, which starts in Melbourne, the British author gave a typically forthright, sometimes combative interview to Review.

During this encounter, conducted over Zoom from his Oxford home, Dawkins oscillates between donnish erudition and a kind of pugnacious rationalism, as he argues that parents should not have the right to “indoctrinate” their children with their chosen religion; that human foetuses are “no more a person” than animal foetuses; that anti-vaxxers are selfish; and that transgenderism has become “a mimetic epidemic” among schoolchildren. He also warns that human beings could one day be obliterated by the same kind of meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.

You have been called a militant atheist, and you’ve argued that religion causes wars and entrenches bigotry. Yet you use the borrowed phrase “tooth fairy agnostic” to describe yourself. Tooth fairy agnostic – that’s right. We are all actually agnostic about anything you can’t actually disprove. You can’t disprove the tooth fairy; it’s trivial to bother about it, so that’s the way I am about gods.

Why do you oppose faith schools? I am not against education in religion. I think that’s important and that children should be taught about religion because it’s such an important part of history, politics, art and music. I’m against educating in a particular religion – I’m against a child being told, “You are a member of this church and therefore this is what you believe”. I like the child to be told, “There are people who call themselves Catholics and they believe this, and there are people who call themselves Muslims and they believe that” and so on. That’s important, but children should not be told what to believe.

Would banning faith schools amount to erosion of parental choice and authority? I think children have rights, and the right of a child not to be indoctrinated is important.

You get hate mail from evangelical Christians and you are also a trenchant critic of Islamic fundamentalism. As an outspoken public intellectual, what did you think of the recent attack on The Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie? It’s horrible. It’s irrational. It’s vicious. It was allegedly perpetrated by a very foolish person who doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has been indoctrinated by his Islamic upbringing and that’s one kind of reason why I find indoctrination so bad. (The suspect, Hadi Matar, has said that Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa against Rushdie, is, “a great person”. Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges brought against him in the US.)

Many Christian fundamentalists in the US oppose abortion. What is your view of the US Supreme Court ruling that overturned the historic Roe v Wade decision? I deplore that.

You maintain that pro-choice activists in America are using the wrong tactics. Why? I think the pro-abortion lobby is tactically unsound when they say something like, “A woman’s body is her own to do what she likes with”. I happen to think that’s right, but that’s not going to cut any ice with somebody who thinks that an embryo is a baby, and they think therefore that abortion is murder. They’ll say, “Ah, but she contains another body which is not her own.” I think we should tackle that assumption. We should say, “A foetus is no more a person than, and no more has personal feelings … than the foetus of a cow or a pig, let alone an adult cow or pig.”

You dedicate your latest book, Flights of Fancy, to the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Why does he impress you? He certainly is a high flyer and he certainly is a hero of our times. I do admire him and I think that he’s an appropriate dedicatee for a book about flight. He’s a man with immense imagination and he is a genius as an engineer, a genius as an entrepreneur.

In Flights of Fancy, you note how, just decades after the Wright brothers’ historic flight, we were in the era of supersonic and space flight. Does this constitute an extraordinary burst of progress within a short time? It is rather remarkable, isn’t it? I think it’s a very good century to have lived in for that reason. In a way it’s rather sad that things (to do with space flight) are only just taking off now after the 1960s, when men first stepped on the moon, and nothing much has happened since then, until quite recently. I’m glad things are getting going again.

In 2021, the American Humanist Society withdrew an award they had given you because of an old tweet. In that tweet, you called for a discussion about the vilification of those who deny transgender people “literally are what they identify as”. How did you feel about the award being cancelled? To be honest, I had actually forgotten that I ever had that award, but it is upsetting when your own side turn against you, of course. I’d never worried about religious fundamentalists disliking me, but when it’s your own team, it’s upsetting. It’s a remarkably foolish thing for them to do, because all I did was to raise a subject for discussion.

Has academe changed for the worse in terms of restrictions on freedom of speech since you first worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University in the 1960s and ’70s? It’s not possible to imagine that we’re going to go on with this nonsense where you can’t even discuss something.

Why is the transgender debate so heated, and such a no-go area for many commentators? You’d have to ask a psychologist or a sociologist about that. It (the debate) seems to me to be utter nonsense. Of course, there are people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and one has to be sympathetic to them. But there clearly is a mimetic epidemic, especially among schoolchildren who get persuaded that somehow the cool thing to do is to be trans, and this is a very disturbing by-product of a very genuine phenomenon, which is gender dysphoria. That is quite a rare thing, but it’s being blown up into a kind of false, common thing.

With the recent closure of the Tavistock child gender clinic, it appears the UK is adopting a more cautious approach to hormonal and surgical treatments for trans-identifying children. How do you view this development? I think we’re seeing the beginnings of a very appropriate reversal of this trend.

You have 2.9 million followers on Twitter. Do your more contentious tweets scare your publishers? Possibly, but I’m not here to talk about Twitter.

Even so, why are you drawn to Twitter, given the nasty pile-ons that are a feature of the platform? I suppose, misguidedly, I thought it was rather a good way of raising discussion. That’s why I put “discuss” at the end of so many tweets, (as) a follow-on of the Oxford tutorials. I am afraid I rather over-estimated the intelligence of the Twitter audience.

You’ve said it would be fun to fly like a bird or go hang-gliding. Does your fear of heights hold you back? I certainly wouldn’t want to jump off a cliff.

No bungy-jumping for Richard Dawkins then? I might run down a hill, maybe.

Why do you believe there is merit in people establishing a colony on another planet? This, I think, is one of the motives of Elon Musk wanting to go to Mars. It’s interesting, by the way, that NASA has just succeeded in diverting or changing the orbit of a small asteroid. They need to do it for a much bigger asteroid in order to save us from the sort of catastrophe that hit the dinosaurs. But (the recent NASA diversion) is a very important first step. It’s a magnificent feat of engineering and science and mathematics.

During the Covid lockdowns, you wrote two nonfiction books and failed to complete a novel about bringing back Homo erectus, our ancient ancestor. Have you given up on writing fiction? I abandoned that, at least temporarily. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought.

Why do you argue the Covid pandemic has been good for science? As soon as the genetic code sequence of the virus was decoded, which nowadays can be done very swiftly, several different teams of scientists got to work on making a vaccine, and they did it in double quick time; astonishingly quickly. I think that’s a great tribute to the genius of our species.

What about the rise of the anti-vaxxers? Has that surprised you? Tragically, really stupid opposition to vaccination has been whipped up, mostly in America, but it spread to other countries as well. A lot of people don’t understand that vaccination is not just about protecting yourself, it’s about protecting society as a whole, to get herd immunity so the epidemic doesn’t spread.

Is there a selfishness inherent in the anti-vaccination movement? Yes, they just think it’s a matter of individual liberty. They don’t realise that refraining from vaccination for no very good reason is rather like driving on the wrong side of the road …. We do owe a certain curtailment of individual liberty in the interests of society.

You invented the word “meme” (an idea or behaviour that spreads from person to person within a society.) We’ve seen Donald Trump turn memes into a political art form. Were you dismayed by that? He just lies and lies all the time, and unfortunately, I think it was Goebbels who said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Huge numbers of Americans actually believe Trump’s lies and it’s a tragedy.

You live in Oxford and drive a Tesla. Are we all going to be driving electric cars in future? It looks like it, doesn’t it? I think that’s a very good thing.

Some detractors say your reputation as a fierce supporter of atheism is in danger of eclipsing your insights as a visionary evolutionary biologist. I hope not. I’ve only written two books about atheism and about 17 about science, so really science is by far the more important part of my life.

The God Delusion has sold millions of copies, but what do you regard as your most significant book? Probably The Extended Phenotype, which is one book that I wrote for my professional colleagues, although I like to think it’s readable by nonscientists as well. It’s the main book in which I propose something which I suppose is original; something that is all my own.

Scientists don’t know how the universe started. Isn’t that an argument in itself that a god or creator must have kicked things off? That’s a terrible idea! The idea that just because you don’t know what the answer to a question is, therefore god did it. I mean, that’s a ridiculous argument. By all means say we don’t know – that’s true, we don’t know – therefore it’s better to try to find out. We don’t just lie down and say, “Oh, god must have done it”.

Across the globe millions of people, including those without a financial safety net, find comfort in religion. Can you see how rubbishing their spiritual beliefs can be perceived as arrogance? Not arrogance. I mean, if they don’t want to read my books, they don’t have to. My books are about what I believe to be true and what evidence is. I’m not going to refrain from writing books for fear that it might upset people. I write books about what is supported by scientific evidence. That is what I try to do, and if the evidence changes, of course I change my mind. That’s about it, really. I’m a scientist who writes books about science.

[ Via: https://archive.vn/Se49o ]

#Richard Dawkins #interview #religion #religion is a mental illness

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drivingsideways · 2 years

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On watching Pathaan

I don't want to talk about the film itself, which was a shock to my system- it's been several decades since I watched a Bollywood "masala" film, so I'd evidently missed the part where they've apparently forgotten almost entirely how to make those. The Bollywood masala films I grew up with weren't clever or technically fabulous or intellectually satisfying (though a few were all of those); that wasn't what you went to the theatre for. You went to feel twenty different emotions in the space of two hours and forty five minutes, and come out (literally) sweaty and fulfilled, with a earworm that wouldn't leave you for a month. Pathaan ostensibly belongs to that category of films except that it's not: it's a film that seems afraid of emotions, big or small; of dialogues with multi syllable words; of silences, of empty spaces; in the end it's a film that resists both thought and feeling, and provides only simulacrums of both.

And yet?

This entirely made-by-subcommittee exercise in soullessness is rescued by one fact: that it has Shahrukh Khan. You cannot, physically, make a movie without feeling once it has Shahrukh in it. You can try (and boy, does Sidharth Anand try ) but if you want to see how one man's personality entirely WARPS a narrative, just consider this: "Pathaan" never gets a "real" name onscreen. He's not Raj, Rahul or Kabir. He's just Pathaan: a man adopted by an entire village in Afghanistan; and adopted here, in his "homeland" as well; at this point in his career, everyone knows that Shahrukh is of Pathaan ancestry himself, so the movie is literally just calling him what someone probably once called his grandfather or great grandfather.

See: if this had been an Akshay or Ajay or even Salman movie, it would have been nothing but crass misogyny and militant nationalistic jingoism start to finish and it doesn't entirely escape either of those things even now; but the moment you have Shahrukh and those eyes of his which feel everything, and show everything, you just can't make that film. You'd be laughed out of the room. The movie had to literally acknowledge this when it has a character say of "Pathaan": the others are calculated, methodical, but Pathaan? He thinks with his heart.

Yeah, baby. That's blorbocore, ok?

You can't think your way to Shahrukh, you can't reason your way to him; you have to feel him. It's a binary state: you either do, or you don't. It has been that way since he burst into national consciousness with Fauji (1989) , big nosed and pimply-skinned; and it's that way now, when he's fifty seven and got six pack abs and smooth skin in post.

You have to look into his eyes and see the truth there: (love conquers everything)

Every tiny bit of truth gleaming gold in the muddy riverbed that is Pathaan comes not from the elements of the film itself, but from who Shahrukh Khan is, to us, in this moment of our history; who he has been to us in the last three decades; the man who made grannies and children laugh and cry; who set the standards that women of my generation would judge men against; our sona, our kintsugi, in a country that always seems to be on the verge of an irreparable fracture, and somehow, so far, hasn't given up. We shouldn't exist, yet here we are. We don't know where we'll be tomorrow, but that's for tomorrow.

I know there are many reasons for Pathaan's success, but one of them, surely ,is this: that we wanted him to win. Nobody in public life in the last three decades has embodied our ridiculous, laughable dreams and our spectacular failures as he has; he was-and is- our guy, hamara, the one who said watch me , I'm going to do the impossible, and it's going to be fun. And we did. I know people are watching Pathaan for all sorts of reasons, but one of them is surely this: that we loved him in the way we love ourselves, that we missed him in the way we miss ourselves; that when the chips were down, we came out to see this ageing superstar reinvent himself, do the impossible once more; that when we walked into that theatre, we were saying, go on, shona, do your thing, we're watching you, we're still here.

#shahrukh khan #i am filled to the brim with love and melancholy #when this man goes the way of all flesh #if i am still around #a part of me will be with him in the earth #and i will be inconsolable for the rest of time #you think i exaggerate but i do not #pathaan (2023)

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uispeccoll · 2 years

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#VoicesFromTheStacks

Photo from ursulakleguin.com

Ursula K. Le Guin was an American science fiction and speculative fiction author. She was born Ursula Krober in Berkeley, California on October 21st, 1929. She died on January 22nd, 2018, at the age of 88.

Her father was an anthropologist and her mother had a graduate degree in psychology. Le Guin and her three brothers had access to a large library. She read early science fiction and fantasy books and magazines as a child, including Astounding Science Fiction and Thrilling Wonder Stories, issues of which can be found in the Special Collections and Archives Rusty Hevelin collection.

She would publish her first work, a poem titled “Folksong from the Montayna Province”, in 1959. Her published work included poetry, short fiction, novels and nonfiction essays. Her book The Left Hand of Darkness would garner her critical and popular success, making her one of the first well-known female science fiction and fantasy authors, and one of the most famous science fiction authors, period.

During her career, Le Guin was primarily known for her speculative fiction work, notably her Hanish Cycle and Earthsea series. The Hanish Cycle posits a universe where humans have formed an interplanetary alliance. Her most famous Hanish book was The Left Hand Of Darkness, considered one of the first works of feminist science fiction, and deals largely with gender, sexuality, and politics. Her Earthsea books are considered classics within the children's fantasy genre.

Le Guin's influence as a fantasy and science fiction author is still felt today, she was a noted influence on writers like Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie, and is considered to have been the first writer to create a "wizard school" with her Earthsea series.

Special Collections has copies of many of Le Guin's writings, including signed copies.

-- Sarah D., Special Collections, Olson Graduate Assistant

#special collections #uiowa #voicesfromthestacks #uiowaspecialcollections #libraries #ursula k. le guin #science fiction #speculative fiction #fantasy

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mariacallous · 11 months

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When Carrie Fisher passed away in 2016 at the age of 60, she was remembered as far more than her iconic turn as the girl in the gold bikini. In addition to a prolific acting career, Fisher authored seven books, served as a script doctor for other writers, and always made a point to speak openly on her struggles with addiction and mental illness.

"Books were my first drug. They took me away from everything and I would just consume them."

Often likened to Hollywood’s Dorothy Parker, Fisher harbored a deep love for language. In a 2008 piece for The Week, she provided a list of the books that most influenced her life and work, including classics by George Eliot, Joan Didion and Salman Rushdie. Read on for her favorites.

Middlemarch by George Eliot (also rec’d by Zadie Smith)

“One of the greatest books ever written by a woman, especially in those early days. Although Mary Anne Evans gave herself a male pen name, she showed incredible ambition and scope in her writing—the world she created, the characters she imagined. I love that line in the book that reads: “The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you Hebrew, if you wished it.” It was hard to be a woman in those days, but her storytelling was exceptional.” -CF

Naked by David Sedaris

“This collection of personal essays made me laugh as hard as any book I’ve ever read. I also discovered that I needed glasses when reading this, but still it’s one of the funniest books ever.” -CF

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (also rec’d by St. Vincent)

“I love her use of spare narrative throughout this story about an unfulfilled actress looking for purpose in her life. I admired the style then and have tried to pattern some of my own writing in that fashion.” -CF

My Old Sweetheart by Susanna Moore

“She’s an extremely talented writer. Her first novel, set in the 1950s, is about a woman who grew up with a very eccentric mother, which, of course, is why I related to it.” -CF

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

“I love Salman. He’s a friend of mine, but I loved this book—which allegorically weaves a family’s story with the history of modern India—even before I knew him. I’m just showing off that I know him.” -CF

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

“I’m also showing off that I’ve actually gotten through Swann’s Way, the first volume in Proust’s monumental work In Search of Lost Time. Just getting through those first 100 pages, where he could not fall asleep until his mother kissed him good night, was an achievement alone.” -CF

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upseotop · 4 months

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Sonakshi Sinha, the Indian actress, was born on June 2, 1987. So, if you're referring to her birthday, it's today!

Sonakshi Sinha, daughter of veteran actor Shatrughan Sinha and Poonam Sinha, was born on June 2, 1987, in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. She pursued her education in fashion designing and even walked the ramp at Lakme Fashion Week before entering the film industry.

Her debut in Bollywood came in 2010 with the film "Dabangg" opposite Salman Khan, which was a massive commercial success, and Sonakshi received critical acclaim for her performance. She portrayed the role of Rajjo, which became iconic, and the film's success catapulted her into stardom.

Following her debut, Sonakshi appeared in a series of successful films, including "Rowdy Rathore," "Son of Sardaar," "Dabangg 2," "Lootera," and "Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty," among others. She established herself as a leading actress known for her versatility and acting prowess.

Apart from her acting career, Sonakshi has been actively involved in various social causes. She has supported initiatives related to women's empowerment, animal welfare, and environmental conservation.

#sonakshi sinha

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 7 months

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Why Navalny was hated in the Kremlin and in some Western circles

The late Russian opposition politician had a unifying spirit that threatened the beneficiaries of conflict.

[Leonid Ragozin :: Leonid Ragozin is a freelance journalist based in Riga.]

It doesn’t matter what caused the death of Russian politician Alexey Navalny; he was killed by Vladimir Putin’s regime.

It was a slow execution that started with his poisoning with the Novichok chemical agent in 2020 and proceeded with sadistic torture in prison after his insanely daring move to return to Russia in January 2021.

The official version about a blood clot suddenly killing the 47-year-old politician on Friday may or may not be true, but the blame for his death still remains squarely with the Russian president.

Navalny was outstanding in every sense. Head and shoulders above all Russian and likely all contemporary European politicians in terms of charisma and bravery, he was a figure of hope that exuded immense optimism and displayed an irresistible sense of humour until his very last days in prison in the Arctic.

He was a character akin to the Hummingbird in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, a charismatic politician trying to prevent the spilt of the newly independent India. Navalny was a highly inspiring and unifying personality that was capable of bringing together what was breaking apart in this current epoch of conflict and polarisation.

With his anticorruption crusade that exposed the illicit riches of top regime figures in a series of brilliantly produced YouTube videos, he built a vast support base and Russia’s biggest regional opposition network. He brought together liberals, nationalists and left-wingers – everyone who was tired of the corrupt securitocracy that has ruled Russia for a quarter-century.

Navalny took opposition politics out of Moscow and St Petersburg into distant regions and small towns. Internet-savvy and very well versed in contemporary culture, he brought about a generational shift in the ranks of Russian opposition. His following to a large extent comprised 20-somethings or even teens who have never experienced any other political regime than Putin’s.

He embodied the hope that changes could be brought about by non-violent resistance in the style of the velvet revolutions that brought down the communists in 1989-91. Born to a Ukrainian father and having spent some of his happiest childhood days in Ukraine, Navalny could have also potentially helped mend the rift between the two neighbours currently locked in a bloody war.

Although his death is squarely on Russia’s political leadership, the hope he represented was shattered by the renewed geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the US-led West. He was a thorn in the eye of the beneficiaries of this conflict – first and foremost among them being Putin himself.

But Navalny and his movement were also an object of incessant bashing by anti-Russian troll farms and hawkish pro-Ukrainian figures linked to the military-industrial complex and securitocratic blobs in the capitals of NATO countries.

Accusations thrown at Navalny boiled down to him being a Russian nationalist who would have done the same thing as Putin – but perhaps even more efficiently because he would have clamped down on corruption.

In the beginning of his political career, Navalny indeed flirted with far-right politics, but he drifted away from it to straightforward pro-Western liberalism a long time ago.

There is no straightforward answer to the question of how Navalny would have acted had he indeed become the Russian president instead of Putin. It is indeed difficult to say to what extent all that happened between Russia, Ukraine and the West was about personalities. It is important to remember Putin himself underwent an evolution from a West-backed nominee of the Russian liberal elite to a murderous authoritarian – a process in which the West’s frivolous and arrogant attitude to Russia’s core security interests played no small role.

A few weeks into Russia’s full-out invasion of Ukraine two years ago, one of the main spokespeople for the Ukrainian government at the time, Oleksiy Arestovych, said that a Russian liberal-democrat president would have also invaded Ukraine in the same manner – such was the logic of geopolitical confrontation.

That kind of thinking presumes that the US-led West was intent on humiliating Russia in the way no Russian leader would have ever accepted – delivering a strategic defeat upon it. That’s indeed something that many hawkish commentators in the West are calling for today.

Navalny was first and foremost a Russian politician, which is why he made what felt like a suicidal choice to return to Russia after surviving the poisoning.

That was the only way to remain politically relevant in Russia. He didn’t want to be anyone’s stooge. In the West, he would have been at best like General Charles de Gaulle in London during World War II – mistrusted and isolated. How would have he managed the insane xenophobic attacks on social platforms his exiled allies are being subjected to on a daily basis now? How would have he reacted to visa and travel restrictions that harm anti-Putin Russian exiles to a much greater extent than the supporters of the regime?

Unlike de Gaulle, he would have had few chances of returning and playing a role as the geopolitical conflict was strengthening Putin’s regime and threatening to usher another half a century of cold war and iron curtains in Europe.

In Russia, he thought he could at least gamble on the growing war fatigue and become an East European version of Nelson Mandela, waiting for the hour of freedom.

Had he miraculously succeeded in coming to power, he would have still faced a very hostile West inclined towards defeating and humiliating Russia rather than finding a common language and an uneasy compromise.

Yet, he was a very different man than Putin in that he was simply not the kind of politician who thrived on conflict. He was not a man from the current epoch of confrontation and polarisation. He perhaps belonged to the better future that Eastern Europe may still attain after years of misery.

Would he have succeeded in finding compromise-leaning interlocutors in the West and sidelining trigger-happy hawks? He would have had a fair chance. This is why he was such an unloved figure in those circles.

Navalny is a tragic figure and in that sense perhaps only comparable to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy – initially a highly unifying pro-peace figure who is now forced to wage an increasingly hopeless battle against the grand master of conflict, Vladimir Putin.

But Navalny has nurtured a generation that may have dozens or hundreds like him in its ranks who can work to achieve the “beautiful Russia of the future” as he famously called it in his main political manifesto.

#Alexei Navalny #Leonid Ragozin #articles #Russia #Putin #remembrance

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gyancafe · 4 months

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Journey of a CA Student from Foundation to Finals😂😂😁

#career #education #students #exams #student #castudents #ca classes #cainter #cafoundation #ca final #funny videos #funny memes #best memes #salman khan #ca

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muzaktomyears · 1 year

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Cake with Elton, coke with Marianne — my life as a rock biographer

As his latest book about George Harrison is published, Philip Norman reminisces on his run-ins with Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones

George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle is my tenth and probably last biography of a big rock name. In the gaps between its predecessors I’ve written novels, short stories, feature films, plays, much journalism and three musicals, two of which were produced. Yet there’s been no escape from the typecasting that followed my Shout! The True Story of the Beatles in 1981.

Admittedly, if I’d pursued a career in fiction as I originally intended (after being among Granta’s first 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1983), I could never have found a comparable readership. Shout! is estimated to have sold about a million copies; the other titles have appeared in America, most of the EU countries, Russia, China, India, Australasia, Japan, South Korea, Macedonia, Mexico and Brazil. Fantasising about this hugely diverse audience, I picture Himalayan yak-herders debating Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts’s rival merits as drummers, and remote Amazonian tribes gripped by the subtext of marital infidelity to John Lennon’s Norwegian Wood.

At parties I’ve come to dread being outed as the Beatles’ biographer. Such is the band’s eternal fascination that I’ll have people waiting in line to rehash the Hamburg strip club days or recall exactly what they were doing when they heard of Lennon’s assassination. I could never totally dislike our former chancellor, George Osborne, having once spent an hour discussing the Revolver album with him in that high Tory sanctum the Carlton Club, where even the portraits of Churchill and Macmillan seemed to be raptly eavesdropping.

Nonetheless, I’m aware of being thought not quite respectable by the literary establishment. When biographers congregate, it’s far more impressive to be able to say “I’m doing Augustus John” than “I’m doing Elton John”. I can hardly complain since no one could think less than I do of “rock writing”. Frank Zappa defined music journalists as “people who can’t write preparing articles about people who can’t think for people who can’t read”; indeed, the subject brings out a latent prattishness even in authors of the calibre of Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis.

Albert Goldman’s infamous biographies of Lennon and Elvis Presley, for me, remain exemplars of how not to do it, with their vestigial research and ludicrous fabrications but, above all, their snobbish contempt for their subjects. To write an 800-page book about somebody one despises is a sublimely pointless exercise. Yes, rock stars can be monsters on a par with the nastier Roman emperors. But, while taking all that into account (and blessing heaven for the high comedy it provides), you have to love your monster.

I’ve bent this rule somewhat with Harrison who, although capable of great generosity and even nobility (witness his historic charity concert for Bangladesh), was often far from loveable and had always seemed to me a miserable character who showed little gratitude for his stupendous good fortune. In 1965, when I interviewed the other three Beatles during their last British tour, Harrison’s gaunt, unhappy face floated in the background as he watched The Avengers on television. In 1969, when I went on the road with his best friend, Eric Clapton, that same gaunt, unhappy face joined Clapton on stage, decorated now by a hippy beard and a black Stetson.

Retracing his tragically foreshortened life showed me how much he had to look miserable about, the guitarist eclipsed by the creative dynamo of Lennon and McCartney for years before proving himself their songwriting equal with Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Sweet Lord and Something, acknowledged to be one of the 20th century’s greatest love songs. His final chapters of illness and financial catastrophe — cruelly topped off by almost becoming the second Beatle to be murdered — moved me as much as anything I’ve written.

Few of my biographies have received any meaningful help from the various icons’ PR people. Until I found my brilliant research associate, Peter Trollope, I had to trace every potential source by myself. Having Shout! behind me was a useful calling card; when I did the Rolling Stones, it opened the door to Mick Jagger’s ex-partner, Marianne Faithfull, with whom politeness dictated that I took my first (and only) snort of cocaine.

My most bizarre pursuit was of Elton John’s former fiancée, Linda Woodrow, reputed heiress to the Epicure pickled onion fortune. Already suspecting he was gay, Elton had been so terrified of matrimony that he’d attempted suicide. As recounted in his song Someone Saved My Life Tonight, his lyricist Bernie Taupin came to his rescue, albeit was not entirely convinced the attempt had been for real.

I finally tracked Woodrow’s father, Al, to Davenports magic shop in the arcade under Charing Cross station, where he worked part-time. He wasn’t expecting me and, before introducing myself, I had to wait while he sold a magic trick. What I didn’t realise was that selling a magic trick can take for ever, first the salesperson demonstrating it, then the customer repeatedly trying it out. Which explains why I know so well how to make a ping-pong ball seem to vanish from under an inverted cup.

My longest pursuit was of Buddy Holly’s “widowed bride”, Maria Elena Holly, that poignant presence in Don McLean’s song American Pie, which was inspired by Holly’s death in a plane crash aged only 22. It took me a year just to get her on the phone in Dallas, and then her opening line was “all writers are scumbags”. Eventually she was persuaded that I might not be a scumbag and agreed to see me on condition that it was at her lawyer’s office and I paid for the lawyer’s time. American Pie had suggested a delicate Dresden figurine but she was dressed all in black with a floppy beret like a French fascist policeman in the Second World War. However, rather than an interview in front of her lawyer as the dollars racked up, she suggested the two of us just went off to lunch.

Of all my biographies only one came close to being authorised in the conventional way, when subject tells all to writer and vets the material before publication. But others have been endorsed retroactively or approved by the back door.

Five months after Lennon’s death, while I was in New York publicising Shout!, Yoko Ono saw me on breakfast television and phoned me at the ABC studios. “What you just said about John was very nice,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to come over and see where we were living.” That afternoon, I was inside the Dakota Building, looking around their vast white seventh-floor apartment which was just as Lennon had left it, his guitar still hanging on the wall above his bedhead. One small, twilit room contained every piece of clothing he’d ever worn back to his Beatle days, all on revolving racks like some ghostly boutique.

When I was researching my Elton John book, its subject was undergoing multiple detoxifications, so was inaccessible to any interviewer. But just after its publication, my telephone rang and a familiar voice said, “This is Elton.” I only wish I’d had the balls to ask, “Elton who?” He said the biography was “pretty accurate”, invited me to tea the next day and, over Earl Grey and chocolate cake, virtually dictated a postscript chapter about his rehab.

The most surprising case was that of Paul McCartney, whom I admit to having grossly misjudged in Shout! and who’d since referred to it as “shite”. When I let him know as a courtesy that I was embarking on a biography of Lennon, I expected no response. But one day my telephone rang and a voice said, “Ullo, it’s Paul here.” I wish I’d had the balls to ask, “Paul who?” We talked for about 40 minutes, I not like a writer — because I expected nothing from him — but simply as one bloke to another. The upshot was that he let me interview him for the Lennon book by email. Six years later when I proposed a companion volume about him, he came back personally with his “tacit approval” within two weeks.

On the Lennon biography I found myself de-authorised by rock’s other famous widow. For three years, I’d had Ono’s total co-operation: not only 14 hours of interviews with her — when she even told me what she and Lennon used to do in bed — but conversations with their son, Sean, and her daughter from a previous marriage, Kyoko. The sole proviso was that she’d read my manuscript and, if she liked it, would contribute a foreword (to which my publishers weren’t exactly looking forward).

The final bit of access I hoped for was to read Lennon’s diary, kept locked away in the vaults of the Dakota Building, which seemed guaranteed by Ono’s friendly invitation to drop by for “a cup of tea”. As I walked across Central Park to the Dakota, a thought suddenly popped into my head: “Suppose she’s waiting for me with a lawyer?” In fact, she was waiting with two lawyers. After reading my manuscript, she’d decided the book was “mean to John” and was withdrawing her quotes, as well as those of Sean and Kyoko. For two highly unpleasant hours, she and the lawyers tried to persuade me to hand over the interview tapes. Also present was an unidentified women whose role was unclear until Ono shouted, “How could you say that John masturbated?” (which she herself told me with a smile during our interviews). At this, the mystery woman went “Ugh!” and gave a theatrical shudder, and I realised she was Ono’s personal shudderer.

Our one-page agreement gave Ono no prerogative to withdraw her quotes and the tapes belonged to me, not her. Even so, during the long run-up to publication, I checked my email every day, braced for a legal onslaught from her. But it never came.

My books have received some good reviews, some justifiably critical ones and some verging on the psychotic. I’ve noticed that the lighter and sweeter the music, the more grimly obsessive are its hardcore fans. While promoting the Buddy Holly biography, I realised I was being stalked by a member of Holly’s British “appreciation society”, who’d somehow procured a list of my radio interviews and was appearing on each show ahead of me, warning its listeners not to believe a word I said.

Retribution of a less sinister nature came on the first occasion I used that earlier quip about Elton John being a less portentous biographical subject than Augustus John. It was when I spoke at the Porlock Literary Festival, one of whose supporters, the novelist Margaret Drabble, sat in the front row with her husband, Michael Holroyd.

That’s right, the biographer of Augustus John. Now what were the odds?

(source)

#philip norman is shit etc BUT that bit about yoko is hilarious #'how could you say that john masturbated?!'#john lennon: one of the great masturbators of the 20th century tbh #anyway i'm still undecided about the george biog based on this..... we'll see but i am generally suspicious #philip norman #'i met george harrison 58 years ago and he ignored me' boo hoo

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wrestlingisfake · 6 months

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Windy City Riot preview

Tetsuya Naito vs. Jon Moxley - This match was announced back in January, but it was only six days ago that Naito's IWGP world heavyweight championship was put on the line.

The IWGP world title is essentially a 2021 reboot of the prestigious IWGP heavyweight championship, which was introduced in 1987. Few non-Japanese wrestlers have held either version of the title; if Moxley wins here, he would join Vader, Salman Hashimikov, Riki Chosu, Scott Norton, Bob Sapp, Brock Lesnar, AJ Styles, Kenny Omega, Jay White, and Will Ospreay. Mox would also be the only man to have held the top men's title in WWE, AEW, and NJPW. New Japan has already coined the term "global grand slam" for this potential achievement.

A Moxley world title win would be pretty wild for New Japan. Typically the top belt is heavily protected, and mainly passed around a small group of tippy-toppy guys who are full-time on the Japanese tours. Mox is a part-time special attraction for New Japan, who mainly works one-off appearances in between his dates for AEW. Putting the title on him--outside of Japan, no less--would probably be more of a publicity stunt than a long-term direction, and I suspect they'd get it off of him ASAP. But I can see them pulling such a stunt right now, since Naito doesn't need a long title reign, and you can always switch the title at Dontaku (May 4) or Dominion (June 9) or Forbidden Door (June 30).

The match itself should be pretty damn good. Naito hasn't wowed me against SANADA or Yota Tsuji, but I figure Moxley (and a US audience starved for hot New Japan matches) can make the difference. Every near-fall should mean something. Could Moxley really win the big one? Could Naito really beat the top western wrestler outside of WWE? Could we really see an IWGP championship change hands in Chicago? Could Naito really close the show by speaking English? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty pumped for this.

My brain says Naito will keep the belt until January. My gut says I should listen to my brain. But my heart says fuck that shit, go Mox.

Nic Nemeth vs. Tomohiro Ishii - Nemeth is not defending his IWGP global title here. The original plan was for him to make his first defense against Hiroshi Tanahashi on April 6, but that got delayed by Tana's ankle injury. So I guess the idea is that Nemeth won't defend the title until Tana is ready for the shot he was promised. Of course, if Ishii wins here, he'll obviously earn himself a title match later on.

As Dolph Ziggler, Nemeth spent much of his WWE career in roughly the same level Ishii has found in New Japan, as the guy who can deliver a big match and threaten to beat the top guys without ever really making it to the top. The challenge for Nemeth now is to prove he can go beyond that role, both here with this new championship and in TNA where he's chasing their world title. We'll see how well Nemeth fares in New Japan, but for right now he's not booked against Ishii to lose.

Matt Riddle vs. Zack Sabre Jr. - This is for Riddle's NJPW World television title, so this match will have a 15-minute time limit. Riddle won the belt from Hiroshi Tanahashi in February, who won it from Sabre back in January. So this is Sabre's big chance to get the belt back, and he does want it, but he's really looking past that to get in the hunt for the IWGP world title. This should be a good mix of styles, but they'll have a hard time convincing me Sabre is going to win. Champ retains.

Eddie Kingston & ? & ? & ? vs. Gabe Kidd & ? & ? & ? - This is billed as a "riot rules" match, so there will be no tagging in or at and no disqualification, so the two teams can just brawl all over the place. Six of the eight participants will not be revealed until they make their entrances. This match came about after Kingston and Kidd went to a double count-out in January.

The structure of the match is weird because you'd think Kidd would just team with the rest of the Bullet Club War Dogs, except then it'd be 5-on-5 and David Finlay would be the focus instead of Kidd. Assuming Finlay isn't involved, it'd make sense for Kidd's partners to be Alex Coughlin, Clark Connors, and Drilla Moloney. But that's so obvious that there'd be no reason to keep it a secret if that was the actual plan. And now it seems like they couldn't do that even if they wanted to, since Coughlin abruptly announced his (legit?) retirement. I hope at least one guy on Kidd's team is a genuine surprise and a new War Dog. But I'm not confident we'll get three important surprises on his side.

I won't even hazard a guess who'll be on Eddie's team. It could be obvious choices like Homicide, Mark Briscoe, or Angel Ortiz. Or it could be guys that you'd never see coming but make sense if you know the lore. Or it could be the usual guys who work midcard matches on STRONG shows, and it'll just be like "yeah, okay, I guess."

I assume the destination is Eddie vs. Kidd for the STRONG men's title, which is the only belt Eddie has left since their last encounter, and the only one Kidd was interested in. If so, I think Kidd needs to pin the champion to end this match.

Mustafa Ali vs. Hiromu Takahashi - Ali is the TNA X division champion, but the title is not at stake in this match. This is his New Japan in-ring debut, although he appeared in a January video package to set up this match, shortly after exiting WWE. Ali is a local guy from Bolingbrook, so he should get a hero's welcome nonetheless. Hiromu has apparently brought at least one of his stuffed cats, which is a big deal to me because he doesn't use them enough these days.

This a treat for me since it'll be the first time I get to see Hiromu wrestle in person since he broke his neck in 2018. Hopefully things go better this time! Even so, I think Ali really ought to win in his first match with the company.

Jack Perry vs. Shota Umino - Perry showed up in New Japan back in January to sneak-attack Umino for no obvious reason. That led to a match on March 6, where Perry won and officially joined the House of Torture. Shota has been looking to avenge that defeat with a pinfall over Perry ever since; this may be his last chance to get it.

Perry is still under AEW contract, but he hasn't wrestled for the group since August 31, when he was suspended over a backstage altercation with CM Punk. (You might have heard about it.) That incident led to Punk being fired the day before an AEW pay-per-view in Chicago. Since then it's been an open question how Perry would be received in Chicago, and how he would be presented to handle that. I have to say, "put him in House of Torture" never would have occurred to me.

I expect Perry to pull every trick in the book to get heel heat and milk it for all it's worth. But it probably won't be a typical House of Torture match, if only because I doubt they're flying in EVIL, Dick Togo, SHO, Yujiro Takahashi, and Yoshinobu Kanemaru just to do run-ins. I suppose Perry could get the last laugh in this feud, but something tells me he'll put over Shota on his way out of New Japan, to set up his return to AEW.

El Phantasmo & Hikuleo vs. Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls vs. Tom Lawlor & Fred Rosser vs. Royce Isaacs & Jorel Nelson - ELP and Hiku issued an open challenge to defend their STRONG tag team title against any three teams. This is a standard four-way tag match, so each team gets a corner, and only two men can legally be in the ring at any time. The legal men can tag in anyone from any team. The first man to score a fall on any opponent will win the match and the title for his team.

The three challenger teams have all been mainstays of the STRONG brand, back when New Japan had a dedicated roster for taped weekly television in the US. Nowadays, though, the brand is just used for the occaisonal US-based pay-per-view, loaded up with key guys from the Japanese roster. That transition worked out well for Haste and Nicholls, who became a fixture in Japan. Not so much for former STRONG headliners Lawlor and Rosser; the story of their gradual reconciliation and alliance is barely a blip on the radar. Nelson and Isaacs are even deeper in obscurity; if this match was a three-way I don't even think they'd be on the card.

I don't see any point in changing the tag title here. The best reason to do it is if Phantasmo and Hiku are splitting up to work as singles. The next best reason would be if New Japan wants to put a new coat of paint on the STRONG brand and its titles, and they've shown no interest in doing that. I think the champs retain, and take the belts back to Japan until the next US show.

Stephanie Vaquer vs. AZM - Vaquer's STRONG women's title is up for grabs, but her CMLL women's world title is not. I'm still getting acquainted with both of these women; maybe seeing them live will really make them stick with me. I expect at some point Vaquer will drop the STRONG belt to someone on the STARDOM roster, but I don't think it'll be tonight.

Minoru Suzuki vs. Ren Narita - In January 2023, Suzuki and El Desperado unexpectedly made the save for Narita against the House of Torture. The unlikely trio fell apart in December when Narita betrayed Shota Umino to join the House of Torture. Since then we've seen Despy and Shota square off with Narita, but this is the first time he's had to face Suzuki.

Suzuki is the kind of guy who makes House of Torture bullshit more interesting, because he's arguably more evil and sadistic than the heels without needing any of their nonsense. Even so, I have to think Suzuki's role is to put over the rising young guy. But I'll be curious to see how Narita can pull this one off without a lot of run-ins.

Mina Shirakawa & Viva Van vs. Trish Adora & Alex Windsor - A week ago I couldn't even spell "Mina Shirakawa," and I didn't know anything about her. Now I know she's the woman who keeps running out to kiss Mariah May and drink champagne. So there you go.

I'm guessing the point of this match is to have a woman ready to challenge the winner of the STRONG women's title match. Adora already had her shot, and I don't expect her to get another so soon. So I'm thinking Shirakawa wins the match for her team.

Matt Vandagriff vs. Zane Jay - This is billed as a "strong survivor" match; it's a battle between two LA Dojo trainees, with the winner earning the right to be on the next US-based show. Apparently Vandagriff is 3-0 in this format. Let's just assume he improves to 4-0.

#njpw #windy city riot #tetsuya naito #jon moxley

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