20 August 2010

Disney Keepsake

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on August 20th, 2010 @ 09:02:22 am, using 27 words, 9 views

Categories: Miscellaneous, Photography, Books, LUMIX, FZ-35, Photoshop

Who, me? Nah… :)

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18 June 2010

José Saramago (1922-2010)

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on June 18th, 2010 @ 07:47:13 pm, using 373 words, 88 views

Categories: People, Favorite Quotes / Passages, Books, R.I.P., In Portuguese

As palavras são assim, disfarçam muito, vão-se juntando umas com as outras, parece que não sabem aonde querem ir, e de repente saem, simples em si mesmas, um pronome pessoal, um advérbio, um verbo, um adjectivo, e aí temos a comoção a subir irresistível à superfície da pele e dos olhos, a estalar a compostura dos sentimentos, às vezes são os nervos que não podem aguentar mais, suportaram muito, suportaram tudo, era como se levassem uma armadura, diz-se A mulher do médico tem nervos de aço, e afinal a mulher do médico está desfeita em lágrimas por obra de um pronome pessoal, de um advérbio, de um verbo, de um adjectivo, meras categorias gramaticais, meros designativos, como o são igualmente as duas melhores mais, as outras, pronomes indefinidos, também eles chorosos, que se abraçam à da oração completa, três graças nuas sob a chuva que cai. São momentos que não podem durar eternamente.

(Ensaio sobre a cegueira - José Saramago)

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22 May 2010

Belonging (White Teeth)

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on May 22nd, 2010 @ 06:35:49 pm, using 338 words, 77 views

Categories: Favorite Quotes / Passages, Books

“There are no words. The one I send home comes out a pukka Englishman, white-suited, silly wig lawyer. The one I keep here is fully paid-up green-bow-tie-wearing fundamentalist terrorist. I sometimes wonder why I bother,” said Samad bitterly, betraying the English inflections of twenty years in the country, “I really do. These days, it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally housebroken. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact… it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere.”

“Oh, that’s not true, surely.”

“And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie… and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?”

As Samad described this dystopia with a look of horror, Irie was ashamed to find that the land of accidents sounded like paradise to her. Sounded like freedom.

“Do you understand, child? I know you understand.”

And what he really meant was: do we speak the same language? Are we from the same place? Are we the same? Irie squeezed his hand and nodded vigorously, trying to ward off his tears. What else could she tell him but what he wanted to hear?

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

(White Teeth - Zadie Smith)

This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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12 April 2010

Clinton & Barney (Paris to the Moon)

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on April 12th, 2010 @ 11:10:40 am, using 615 words, 50 views

Categories: Favorite Quotes / Passages, Books

Back in 2000, I read a book of essays entitled Paris to the Moon by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik about his experience living in France. Something about Americans experiencing France always seems to lead straight to either uproarious laughter (David Sedaris comes to mind, always first in line in that regard) or the stirring recognition that some tidbit, observation or insight makes TOTAL sense (Gopnik cued in here.)

For D.

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05 February 2010

Commit to Reading

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on February 5th, 2010 @ 07:07:42 pm, using 694 words, 102 views

Categories: The Written Word, Favorite Quotes / Passages, Books

Travels in the Scriptorium
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Lady Chatterley’s
Radio Free Albemuth
Farenheit 451
Moral Disorder
Indignation
The Black Swan
When you are engulfed in flames
1984
Unaccustomed Earth

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07 August 2009

I think I can...

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on August 7th, 2009 @ 04:48:53 pm, using 29 words, 124 views

Categories: Inspired by, The Written Word, Miscellaneous, Books

[Click on the thumbnail for a larger view]

This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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16 July 2009

This guy is COOL!

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on July 16th, 2009 @ 03:24:48 pm, using 57 words, 92 views

Categories: Inspired by, The Written Word, Books

I’ve got his words scattered throughout this blog, just as he’s got pieces of me scattered throughout his books.

Habit (The Romantic Movement)
Committing to Reading
Quotes for R.
Commitment to Reading

Alain de Botton’s website

This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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25 June 2009

Lighthouse (The English Patient)

Written by Iris Watts Hirideyo ( )
Published on June 25th, 2009 @ 08:33:54 am, using 253 words, 72 views

Categories: Favorite Quotes / Passages, Books

She enters the painted bedroom with a new book and announces the title.
‘No books now, Hana.’
She looks at him. He has, even now, she thinks, beautiful eyes. Everything occurs there, in that grey stare out of his darkness. There is a sense of numerous gazes that flicker onto her for a moment, then shift away like a lighthouse.
‘No more books. Just give me the Herodotus.’
She puts the thick, soiled book into his hands.
‘I have seen editions of The Histories with a sculpted portrait on the cover. Some statue found in a French museum. But I never imagine Herodotus this way. I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange of seeds, consuming everything without suspicion, piecing together a mirage. ‘This history of mine,’ Herodotus says, ‘has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument.’ What you find in him are cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history - how people betray each other for the sake of nations, how people fall in love… How old did you say you were?’
‘Twenty.’
‘I was much older when I fell in love.’
Hana pauses. ‘Who was she?’
But his eyes are away from her now.

(The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje)

This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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