Ode to Wonder @odetowonder-blog - Tumblr Blog

On socialism and capitalism: "Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left." - Eric Hobsbawm, in an article appearing in The Guardian, April 2009

#my favourite things #intellectual heroes

#my personal heroes

Can you see me? Can you see me?

Had one of those magical date nights with B last Saturday. Had dinner in a non-descript Chinese take-away joint, south of the river. Watched Noel Coward's 'Still Life' in this grotty-beautiful fringe theatre in Southwark. He ate ice cream and I drank my capuccino in the theatre cafe, while we were waiting for the doors to open. Bob Dylan was crooning 'Jolene' in the background. After the play and under a bit of rain, we shared a hot savoury mushroom and ham crepe from our favourite stand at Hampstead. Felt like we were eighteen again.

(Original photo of the Union Theatre Cafe from pennyblacksblackbook.com)

#my Beren Erchamion #weekend walks #my London

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

- Douglas Adams

#surviving a PhD

Punk does Bacharach, with a Manzarek vibe.

What I'm listening to when I should really be writing.

#surviving a PhD

Free Pussy Riot!

#my kind of punk #politics #religion

Poesía es la Roja.

"two defenders, eight mythic players, the striker is space"

(Photo by Getty Images)

#the summer i loved football #la roja #uefa 2012

Maria Callas sings the soundtrack to my writing day

"Temper, o Goddess, The brave zeal Of the ardent spirits, Scatter on the earth the peace."

- Casta Diva, from "Norma" by Vincenzo Bellini

#surviving a PhD

Walk on, Aung San Suu Kyi, stay safe tonight

I didn't expect it would be among the most moving experiences of my life -- listening to her speak. But it was. The lecture hall was not big enough for her strength and grace.

And it was her 67th birthday too, so the crowd sang her the birthday song. Asked by a student, 'From where do you draw your strength?' -- 'the support of people from around the world ... and that stubborn streak in me,' she replied.

(Photo from cruciality.wordpress.com)

#my personal heroes #LSE life

Some things change, some stay the same

On my way to work and reading what is said to be Dickens' personal favourite of his books. Passing by what is now the Royal College Street in Camden Town, it just struck me how Dicken's description of this bit of London endures. Describing the neighborhood of David Copperfield's childhood cohort, the character Traddles, Dickens writes:

"...and he lived in a little street near the Veterinary College at Camden Town, which was principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who lived in that direction informed me, by gentlemen students, who bought live donkeys, and made experiments on those quadrupeds in their private apartments. ... I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I could have wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared to have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were not in want of, into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for the number I wanted." - from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

(Photo of Royal College Street from greatwarlondon.wordpress.com)

#currently reading #my London

East London howlin'

(Street art in and around Brick Lane. Photos by Ode to Wonder, Summer 2012)

#my London #weekend walks

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man.” - from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

#sci-fi #remembering dandelion wine

Jubilee weekend preparations are in full swing in this city. "Andaming stop light, andaming mga pulis." The Wuds did not write this as a rant against the tedium of pompous pageantry, but today, in my imagination, it's as if they did -- and just as effectively as the Sex Pistols once did, too.

#pinoy punk #my music

Young David Copperfield, Master of Doom

I only now realised that the young David Copperfield was the Victorian Turin Turambar. Or maybe the historically accurate thing to say is that Turin Turambar is Dickensian. Either way, it's fun discovering patterns like this. Every character has already been written -- the test of good writing is to find the reiteration compelling still.

(Uncaptioned tail-piece 1870s, Illustration by Fred Barnard in the Household Edition of David Copperfield [p 437, London: Chapman and Hall, 1871-1879]. Scanned by Phillip V. Allingham, www.victorianweb.org)

#dickens #currently reading

Photo by Francesca Woodman

*The link is dead, the exhibit is over. A review could be found here.

#black and white #my favourite things

Geek Swatch #1: Summer

#my favourite things

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Ode to Wonder