my current muse

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness.  For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anais Nin  

As my Facebook friends have noticed, my current muse is the French-Cuban author, Anais Nin. As required reading, I read portions of her diaries in high school, but lost touch with her until recently, when I ordered three of her books from Amazon.

I'm currently devouring Under a Glass Bell, 1944, a collection of eight short stories which she literally published herself, hand-printed on a rickety foot-pedaled press. Her dreamy, lyrical, intelligent style has completely entranced me.

Known for her published journals, which she began writing at age 11 and spanned more than 60 years, Nin is now most recognized for her sophisticated, highly elegant erotic literature and short stories, which were published posthumously, after her death in 1977.

She was brought to New York in 1914 by her mother, a classically trained singer, after the abandonment of her composer father, and was educated there, but later returned to Europe, where she married Hugo Guiler, an international banker, in 1923.

Nin launched her professional career with the publication of D. H. Lawrence:  An Unprofessional Study, 1932. The book led to a lifelong relationship with the American author Henry Miller, with whom she exchanged hundreds of letters. A Literary Passion: Letters of Anais Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953, includes much of their correspondence, an interesting documentary on their struggle as recognition as writers, as well as their romantic relationship.

She returned to New York, just before the outbreak of WWII.  From being a cult figure in the early feminist movement, she later rose to international prominence with her writing. In 1973, she received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art, and she was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974.

The function of art is to renew our perception.  

What we are familiar with, we cease to see.  

The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it. 

Anais Nin

Recommended Reading or How To Handle A Head Cold

Last week I thought that I was going to spend this weekend doing the domestic thing, like finishing my closet de-clutter project and cooking FF's lemon, chicken, potato dish that she kindly wrote the recipe for, thank you FF.
Well, I was right about being domestic, but wrong about getting anything actually done this weekend as I got  whacked with a nasty head cold with fever and have barely been able to extricate myself from my bed.
Thankfully I don't get sick often which I credit to clean living having limited interaction with other people, therefore cutting down my risk of being exposed to something contagious. Apparently my non interaction strategy hasn't been fool proof.

So what can I do besides spend the weekend in bed with these things.
I don't know about the Chai Spice Tea, the Evian or the Emergen-C
But I can vouch for the fact that the books do make me feel better.

Drink Play etc...by Andrew Gottlieb is a cute parody of 'Eat Pray Love' from the male point of view.
Here's the description from Publishers Weekly
As an impudent retort to Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling Eat Pray Love, the book that swept book clubs and bestseller charts throughout 2006, this comic travelogue is nothing if not a conversation starter. Fortunately, it's also a dizzyingly fun parody that apes Gilbert in its premise (Ireland, Las Vegas and Thailand replace Gilbert's post-divorce destinations, Italy, India and Indonesia) and its particulars, mirroring plot developments and platitudes line by line (where Eat Pray Love opens with its protagonist contemplating a kiss with an Italian named Giovanni, Gottlieb starts moments from a liplock between his narrator, divorcee Bob Sullivan, and Giovanna. That kind of parody can wear over pages, but Gottlieb's protagonist is a likable and entertaining enough rascal to carry the story and, with the help of a happy-go-lucky personal trainer named Rick, do some good-humored philosophizing on the gender-trumping predicament of heart-break. Still, anyone who has suspected that boys have a bit more fun than girls will find their theories confirmed, as Gottlieb packs in just as much adventure as Gilbert, with a quarter of the self-seriousness.
Not serious reading but a cute book
and

Heresy by S.J. Parrish, is a 'Name of the Rose' type murder mystery thriller set in Elizabethan Oxford with an Italian ex priest/philosopher/astrologer/scholar, Giordano Bruno, tasked by Elizabeth to search for Catholic conspiracy amid the newly formed Protestants at Oxford.  The book isn't as linguistically or semiotically as exciting as a book by Eco...and who can write like Eco but Eco?  But is is a very clever story and I look forward to reading her next Giordano Bruno historical mystery Prophesy.

Next week when I feel better it will back to blogging.
Until then I leave you with
Colonel Qaddafi - A Life In Fashion
and
Qaddafi Kid Style
While these articles make fun of Qaddafi and his brood, Libya is no laughing matter.
I'm guessing that there's going to be a lot more bloodshed before all of this is over
and it's probably going to end up with that megalomaniac Qaddafi
and his utterly insane Little Green Book still in power.