piece of information
JANUARY 1 is birthday of Richard Roxburgh.
Happy happy happy birthday and happy New Year from a world traveler stuck in a big town in winter! May you live another wonderful __ years!
with kind regards,
Lara x
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/richard_roxburgh/

JANUARY 8 is a Death day of Zbigniew Cybulski (November 3, 1927 - January 8, 1967); better known as Zbyszek Cybulski he was a Polish actor, one of the best-known and most popular personalities of the Polish cinema after World War II. For his unique style of play, he is often called the Polish James Dean. His roles paralleled somewhat those of Dean, playing nonconformist rebels, and notably he also died relatively young in a needlessly tragic way--he died in an accident at a Wroclaw train station at the age of 39. He was running to catch a train leaving the station to Warsaw. As he jumped to the already speeding train (as he often did before) he slipped on a stairway and fell beneath the train, run over by its wheels. In bitter irony he had been on his way home from a film shoot.
“Cybulski remains a legend of the Polish cinema. Undoubtedly this is partly due to his premature and tragic passing. The place of his tragic death is now marked with a small monument to him and is visited every year by hundreds of his fans. In 1996 the readers of Film magazine awarded Cybulski with the title of Best Polish Actor of All Time.”
In 1958 he appeared as one of the main characters in Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds (the movie I saw many times when was a child). Cybulski died in real life while trying to catch a train--coincidentally, his character in Ashes and Diamonds, is gunned down while trying to catch a train.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0194193/
Personally I watched the wonderful movie Ashes and Diamonds on TV many times when I was a child, since I was allowed to watch adult movies which was absolutely wrong, as I think now, because it could do harm to a child’s mentality, making a child too impressible.

JANUARY 24. The Birth of the Emperor Hadrian. Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born on this day either in Italica, Spain or in Rome, in the year 76.
Divus Hadrianus. Antinoos Theos.

JANUARY 29. On this day a new star appeared in the constellation Aquila, the Eagle. The court astrologers declared that it was Antinous taking his place in the heavens. Hadrian ordered them to draw a new constellation embraced by the Eagle, and called it ANTINOUS. “The stars around Aquila, to which the name ‘Antinous’ is given.” (Ptolemy, Claudius Ptolemaeus)
The mystery of the star is real, a celestial even of great magnitude occurred shortly after the death of Antinous within the constellation of the Eagle for the New God. The three sacred stars of the constellation Aquila, named Tarzad, Altair and Alshain, rise above the horizon just after dark on this night and are an allegory of the assumption of Ganymede into heaven. This date is suggested by Chinese Novae observations which have been dated as occurring on the 29th of January 132 AD, and are compared to the Star or Comet of Antinous.
With the blessings of Antinous Navigator. Antinous the Navigator, who has moved from his underworld sojourn as the warrior/Liberator and is now moving through the upper world as the boatman/Navigator, to have his celestial beacon now visible after that shift in emphasis.
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I hope the Saturnalian delights are sitting well with you and find you safe, happy, and peaceful.
Have a safe and enjoyable holiday, my dear friend. May the god Janus show you only his good face this year.
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in beige
“…But what's the point, you gorgeous Georgian maiden,
of shaking divine ashes from the sky?
One fluffy snowflake with its beauty fading,
melted upon the lashes of your eye”.

Today my favourite colour is beige. I’m a drama queen, very odd at times. I don’t bite unless I’m asked. :) A sweet, caring, naughty, KOOL, intelligent, loving, loyal, reliable, dependable, independent, beautiful woman from East Europe, I’m not a politico to cry out: “Vote for me! I'm the best damn thing that your eyes have ever seen!” But… it’s true! :) My most favourite pursuits are two: writing and cooking. Do you love the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Jane Bronte? Great novel. In an article on the author I read: “Emily worked by snatches. In the kitchen, where she peeled potatoes and helped the decrepit servant to cook, there was always the notebook, in which the girl put down new stanzas or lines of her novel…” Charming. I act in this way too, just I have no a servant. Although I’m a vegetarian no longer, but my main food is salads. My favourite vegetable is the eggplant, and I have nothing against pork with sauerkraut or choucroute garnie. I take cold milk with my hot roast beef… Earthly Viands:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/19/earthly_viands~2118311
The sublime and the mundane. Art_for_Art’s_Sake. Verlaine’s la Lune Blanche effuses Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and UN POETE MAUDIT is like a lonely laurel that bares its barren beauty to the moon. In short, take a rest visiting my blog that seems to be a quietest place on the Net.
New story you can read here:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/14/fancy_pansy~2093231

from Pale Fire by V. Nabokov
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake
Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,
A dull dark white against the day's pale white
And abstract larches in the neutral light.
And then the gradual and dual blue
As night unites the viewer and the view.

off topic
Recently on the Net I was asked: whether it’s better to live now or before the democracy in my native country? I answered: “Yes, now it’s better”, because what else I could answer? Indeed, now I can’t be jugged for reading or keeping Nabokov’s books in the country where I live--it’s good. If I were a homosexual I can’t be jugged for my homosexuality now--it’s good. The enormous lines at the shops that depressed me so much formerly, have disappeared now--it’s good. Formerly the people, who wanted to provide their children with good food, had to spend up to 80% of their monthly income. But we could go to the seaside every year. I live independently now, and can buy anything else but food, but I can’t afford going to the seaside every year as I did formerly. Here are all the changes; otherwise the same. “The wind of changes”, as someone once said. They in the post-Soviet countries build something like capitalism now--rather a wild capitalism, like that in U.S.A. in 19th century--it’s obvious for everyone who studied history at secondary school. The nouveaux riches with their alluvial, meretricious riches are either the old communists’ children or criminals (brrr! what an alternative!) which is virtually the same in my view. Try as they would, but personally I never found my own place at their meretricious construction. Although I never participated in it, but I’ve been sick and tired of it.

*episode*
A waiting room of a large modern office. The secretary is sitting at the desk. Now the door opens and a man’s form wearing a dark loose overall from top to toe and with a scythe in hand enters the waiting-room.
“I’ve come to your boss”. The man gestures to the door with the coopered plate ‘Boss’. “Private business”.
Secretary: “Would you be waiting for a little while?” She gestures to the armchair.
The man nods, turns to the armchair and subsides in it, with his scythe in his hands. Silence. Now the door of the waiting-room opens again, and two tough guys wearing black jackets and black glasses come in.
“Is your boss in?” asks one of them.
Secretary: “Have you an appointment?”
The young man puts a box of chocolate sweets on the desk.
Secretary: “He is in”.
The guys open the door, and one by one they enter the study. Presently, two reports are heard one by one. The door opens, and two guys come out; one of them takes the box of chocolate sweets from the desk (for it can be of use again in the near future), and they leave the waiting-room.
Secretary turns to the man in the dark loose overall: “It’s your time”.
“No”, the man lifts his forefinger and looks at his watch, “It’s not time yet”. With his index finger he beats time of seconds that fall into oblivion; then he pauses and announces: “It’s time”. He stands up, and with his scythe in hand he goes to the door of the boss, opens it and enters the study.
The End

poem by Alexander Blok (1880-1921)
Dusk, a street, a light, a drugstore,
A world without sense, and dull.
A quarter-century yet to live for--
So it shall be. Without result.

You'll die--resume from the beginning,
And, as before, it all repeats:
Dusk, the canal's icy ripples,
The drugstore, light, and city street.

*la blanche (literature)*
Recently I’ve read one more book about drug addiction, the novel entitled The Cocaine Romance by M. Ageyev. Years back I read some more fiction on the topic: Morphine by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ether by Nikolay Gumilyov, The Hashish Club by Theophile Gautier, Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey's, Junkie (a.k.a. Junky) by William S. Burroughs. This fiction is a candid narration of the authors’ own experience. Reading the books you can know much. For my part, no desire to taste a narcotic I felt reading the books; only curiosity or aversion. I’m not familiar with the teaching of Aleister Crowley and don’t feel like learning of it; I just love one of his works, the short story The Needs of the Navy, and I read the book Diary of a Drug Fiend, the impressive narration that let you know of the real danger that lurks to those who begin to take a narcotic. Now--the forgotten novel The Cocaine Romance or Confessions of a Russian opium-eater. It was published in 1934 in Paris; its author used a pseudonym, and there was some brief speculation in literary circles as to whether the book might actually be the work of Nabokov, perhaps one of his mystifications. As I think, the author is not Nabokov. The book is “a Dostoevskyan psychological novel of ideas, which explores the interaction between psychology, philosophy, and ideology in its frank portrayal of an adolescent's cocaine addiction”. Very candid narration, horrific here and there; the still horror of the Russian drab existence and the life of a drug fiend. After reading this book I’ve lost even curiosity to the subject. If young people read the books like that and those I’ve mentioned above, they never wanted to begin to take narcotics.

en hiver...
When on the squares in silence
we slowly lose our minds
cruel winter offers to us
the cold and clean Rhine wine
It gives in silver bucket
the Valhalla's white wine
and of a northern man
with glimmer it reminds.
But northern skalds are rougher
they know no joy of game
and northern wilds are fonder
of amber, feast and flame.
They dream of Southern air
and magic foreign sky
and still the stubborn boyfriend
won't even give a try.

Personally I would offer a cup of coffee to my reader.
pic7
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this excerpt from Silver Age writings I dedicate to my beloved celebrity:
A blizzard stood over Petersburg. Stood--like a whirling top--or a whirling child--or a conflagration. A white force that swept me away.
It swept away all memory of a street and a house and brought me--deposited and left me--directly in the middle of a room: trainstation-, ballroom-, gallery-, dream-sized.
Like that, in out of a snowstorm, out of the white void of the blizzard into the yellow void of a big hall, without any transitions of entranceways and servants' polite remarks.
And there, from one end of the huge room, remote--as through the wrong end of binoculars, enormous--as through the right end--through wide-eyed imaginary binoculars--were two eyes.
A blizzard stood over Petersburg, and in that blizzard, steady as two planets--two eyes standing there.
Standing? No, moving. Bewitched, I hadn't noticed that ilicir attendant body had set out, and I only realize it by the wild pain in my eyes, as if the binoculars were being driven whole right into my eyesockets, rim to rim.
From the other end of the room, steady as two planets, two eyes were moving toward me.
The eyes were--here.
Before me stood--Mr **.
Eyes--and nothing more. Eyes--and everything else. Everything else was very little: practically nothing at all.
But his voice was not here. His voice wasn't keeping pace with his eyes, it was still on its way from the other end of the room--and of life; or maybe I, swallowed up by his eyes, was not keeping pace? My first sensation from that voice was: a man is speaking to me--across a river, and this is a dream, but I can hear him nevertheless, as in a dream--because I have to--I can hear him…
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crème de la crème, in other words, some quotations:

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past us but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and vibrating every cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing!”--John Muir

Don't be afraid to try and fail--failure is nothing like the feeling of regret.

Pay no attention to those who talk behind your back, it simply means that you are two steps ahead.

“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and origin of marvels”.--Francisco de Goya

“How can I define the thing I call beauty? How can I answer how I recognize it if the question is a human face, the sky, clouds, a colour, word, song? The carnal shudder that overwhelms soul, the joy without a hope, the endless contemplation that cannot be made up with embraces…”--Francois Mauriac

“…for affection, Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood Of what it likes or loathes”.--Shakespeare

“I believe in style, not fashion”.--Ralph Lauren

“If you do not write for publication, there is little point writing at all”.--George Bernard Shaw

“You may bet that any public idea, any accepted agreement is a nonsense, since it suits the majority”.--Sebastian Chamfort

“Refinement is what we lost forever on the 19th of July 1914, or more truly, on the 25th of October 1917.”--Mikhail Kuzmin

The past is seen like a golden age, like better than the present.

“It is easy to descend to the nether world”.--Virgil

“The dead travel fast”.--Dracula

“Narcissus in his arrogance loving himself like another killed himself.”--from The Tebtynis Papyrus

“Adjust your mask, and you can better see where you are going.”--Anthony Blanche

Life is short--so break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile.

Life is streaky.

All can be justified and forgiven. One cannot justify and forgive only the person who doesn’t realize that all can be justified and forgiven.

The most ideal kind of love is unshared love. The love is disinterested and truly dreamy, for it has no satisfaction.

“’Never more’ is neither our motto nor a refrain of our song. Let’s kiss and make up!”--Anthony Blanche

Sex excesses are a refined arrangement for Symphony Sensuality.

A woman without a past love affair is like a fish without salt.

“Manon Lescaut--buried with a sword, not a spade.”--Mikhail Kuzmin

"You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance."--Wallis Simpson

“A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe and leaves before she is left.”--Marilyn Monroe

There is someone in my life that gives me butterflies. I can’t go to sleep till I talk to him.

“Did he? How silly. Aloysius wouldn’t approve of that at all, would you, you pompous old bear?”--Evelyn Waugh

2007 was said to be the year of the boar. Nothing of the kind. It was the year of James Bond, Agent 007.

2008 is said to be the Year of the Rat. Nothing of the kind. 2008 is the year of Mickey Mouse.
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:) :yes: :wave:
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