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Buddha is the Bookstore Cat of the Month.

Account
by Czeslaw Milosz
translated by Czeslaw Milosz

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness, Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.
Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.
I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride, The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.
But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.
The history of my stupidity will not be written. For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

Update: The winner of the Worst Parents in Westeros contest is abcabc.

# 18 abcabc Says:
July 7th, 2016 at 18:20 e
Craster is the worst parent for me. Imagine being his daughter or granddaughter. The daughters were raped and forced to bear his offspring. It might be confusing for the daughter because yes, she must have loathed the baby, but then there’s love too. And then if it turns out it’s a boy, it will get killed. If it’s a woman, well, she’s in for a lifetime of slavery. Craster is the worst because unlike the children of other GOT characters, his did not have the luxury of a friend’s company. They cannot leave. They were forced to be in that situation without recourse. Imagine all the things that hurt you never going away and knowing you will never escape.

Congratulations! You can claim your limited edition Game of Thrones Moleskine at the Customer Service counter of National Bookstore at Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, Makati, any day starting Wednesday. Just give the name you used to register on this site (Your initials and surname). Enjoy your Moleskine.

* * * * *

Jon Snow may be a bastard and an orphan, but given the state of parenting in Westeros, he may be one of the lucky ones. He was raised by the honorable Eddard Stark and Catelyn Stark, who was mean to him but admitted she was mean to him. Good parents are rarer than Valyrian steel in the Seven Kingdoms. There’s Tywin Lannister, who hated his youngest child Tyrion and withheld his affection from the twins. Cersei’s one redeeming quality apart from her cheekbones was her love for her children, but now she’s dead inside.

There’s bonkers Lysa Arryn, who breastfed Robin till he was ten and was moved to instigate the game by her enduring lust for Petyr Baelish. Stannis Baratheon loved his daughter Shireen and would not give up the search for a cure for greyscale (hope for Jorah Mormont), but had her burned at the stake. Walder Frey and Balon Greyjoy are just horrible. Randyll Tarly maltreated Samwell and wished him dead. We almost forgot the loathsome Craster, Gilly’s father.

Who are the worst parents on Game of Thrones? (Let’s limit the field to the TV show because if we bring in the books and the histories this discussion would go on for months.) Post your answer in Comments, along with a brief explanation of your choice. The winner will receive this limited edition Game of Thrones Moleskine pocket notebook.

Valar Morghulis.

* * * * *

Our Worst Parents in Westeros raises an interesting set of questions.

What is a bad parent?
Is it possible to be a terrible human being but a good parent?
Is it possible to be a decent human being but a horrible parent?
How much responsibility do parents have over how their offspring turn out? There are nice people who have awful spawn, and there are monsters who somehow produce decent people.
What about redeeming qualities?
Nature or Nurture?
Are some people just bad?

Your nominees are:

Roose Bolton, for fathering Ramsay. Granted, Roose is a murderous traitor, and it’s hard to find redeeming qualities for a House that flays its enemies alive. But is Roose completely responsible for his monster son?

Craster, for raping and enslaving his daughters and granddaughters, and then giving all the male children to the White Walkers.

Randyll Tarly, for hating his fat, nerdy son Samwell (Samwell Tarly = Samwise Gamgee). Who nevertheless turns out to be a mensch.

Daenerys Targaryen, for sacrificing her unborn child to save her husband Khal Drogo. In her defence, the witch was not clear about the terms of the deal. Also I don’t think we can fault her for raising dragons rather than children. She can’t have children, plus you can’t conquer Westeros without an air force. (What about Aerys II Targaryen who wanted to burn everyone?)

Walder Frey, lecherous traitor who hosted the Red Wedding. Father to many, many unhappy children. But should responsibility for the Red Wedding not be shared by Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister?

Mace Tyrell, for total cluelessness. On the other hand, his children had fabulous wardrobes and made their own choices. (Did Lady Olenna emasculate her son?)

Cersei and Jaime Lannister, incestuous twins, parents of the horror that was Joffrey. Myrcella and Tommen turned out okay, but were just pawns for Cersei. Shouldn’t Jaime be held accountable as well? Shouldn’t Robert Baratheon, who was officially Joffrey’s father? Then again, Cersei had Robert killed.

Melisandre, mother of the smoke baby that killed Renly Baratheon. Though she didn’t really raise it, just kind of farted it out. She is a murderous religious fundamentalist. Does she get points for bringing back Jon Snow? (One could argue that Jon would’ve come back anyway.)

Clegane, father of Gregor “The Mountain” and Sandor “The Hound”. Even as a child Gregor was a monster abetted by his father. But Sandor is an interesting character–there’s good in him, though it may be too late for redemption.

Eddard Stark, for leaving Winterfell and valuing his honor more than the lives of his children. In his defense, he confessed to treason in exchange for the safety of Sansa and Arya. The deal was for him to take the black, but Joffrey had his head cut off. (What about Catelyn, who left little Bran–whom their enemies had tried to kill twice//and Rickon to rule Winterfell?)

Lysa Arryn overindulged her son and turned him into a spoiled wimp who will be a pawn forever. Baelish used her to set the Game of Thrones in motion, endangering parents and children throughout the Seven Kingdoms.

Stannis Baratheon, killed his brother and his daughter in his futile quest to be king. And had no sense of humor.

Mommy Direwolf can’t really be blamed for dying. (May as well fault Lyanna Stark for dying in childbirth.) If the Starks hadn’t adopted the pups they’d be dead, too.

Keep sending your answers.

Number of people who have told me they are worried for Lyanna Mormont: 10.

Westerosi Parents of the Year shortlist:

Oberyn and Ellaria Martell seemed like cool parents, but their daughters turned out to be surly killers.
Davos Seaworth
Selwyn Tarth, whom we have never seen, allowed his daughter Brienne to be a warrior.

It takes an event of seismic importance to make my sister leave work “early”—in quotes because she prepared for it by putting in 13 hours at the office the previous day. The event is Alexander Skarsgaard in The Legend of Tarzan, the upteenth retelling of Tarzan.

I have been watching Tarzan in one form or another all my life, beginning with the ancient Tarzan reruns starring Johnny Weismuller which aired Sundays on Channel 13, then the version staring Christopher Lambert whose forehead proclaimed him Greystoke, Lord of the Neanderthals, all the way to the Starzan parodies in which the late Rene Requiestas played Cheeta-eh (ganda lalake). As far as I am concerned there is no reason to film Tarzan ever again, unless it is to show us a spectacularly ripped handsome man swinging from vines in a loincloth. Skarsgaard fulfills most of the criteria: he has IMAX-sized shoulders and pectorals, is a Nordic god and swings from vines. . .but wait! He’s wearing khaki pants. Stretch khaki pants which never rip despite his exertions, including wrestling a great ape.

In this movie the villains are King Leopold and the Belgians, who run up a tremendous debt while ruling the Congo and try to pay for it by selling the Congolese into slavery and raping their diamond mines. Tarzan is now John Clayton III, Earl of Greystoke, married to the feisty American Jane (Margot Robbie). Their love story, along with Tarzan’s origins, unfolds in flashbacks. Leopold’s stooge Rom (Christoph Waltz) promises to deliver Tarzan to the angry tribal chieftain Djimon Honsou, who hates Tarzan for some reason, but not because he’s a white man who presumes to lord over the African jungle. No matter how you frame the story it’s still going to be about a white man who comes to save the Africans and the damsel in distress. The movie knows this, which is why Samuel L. Jackson turns up as Tarzan’s new ally Dr. George Washington Williams. Samuel L. Jackson isn’t fooling us: ever since Pulp Fiction, he’s been playing Jules. Here he gets to make funny comments along the lines of “There are snakes in the motherfucking trees.”

The movie is entertaining, but perhaps not in the way the filmmakers envisioned it to be. The vine-swinging scenes are exciting but there’s not enough of them, and the acting skills of the apes are not up to Andy Serkis level. Then the movie rushes to the end and the two big action set pieces feel like an afterthought. Director David Yates is going for the sense of wonder at nature’s magnificence etc, but all I could think of was, “Will I miss anything if I run to the snack bar for some chips?”

I’m not going to stop you from watching this Tarzan, but there’s very little you can get from it that you can’t get from a video of Alex running shirtless.

Uro’s Gandalf pipe, now a talisman

My late friend Uro once wrote a novel in one month. He did it by locking himself in his room and having his meals brought to him so he wouldn’t have to go out. I tried the lockdown method last month, and it is effective. The cats have no food preparation skills, and even if they did they would not deign to bring me my meals, so I stocked up on yogurt, digestive biscuits and liver spread and occasionally ordered out from Pancake House (which delivers salads, but has terrible packaging—sometimes the sauce has leaked out of the box. Also it’s expensive, Php440 minimum order). I got a lot of pages written and they have survived (I write longhand, and then type them up, editing in the process). Twice a week I allowed myself out of the house for appointments, chores, and to see my friends.

Then I realized that I can’t just sit at my desk and start producing pages. I have to work my way into writing, which typically involves hours of doing something else (reading, watching movies or TV, aimless walking or since I am indoors, pacing) while thinking of writing. Whenever I keep to a schedule—say, write from 1 to 6 pm—the pages read like they were written by someone on a schedule. Which means I have to rewrite them, so that’s double the work. (Usually after I’ve written something I never want to see it again or I will get stuck rewriting it for days.) I work on the Federer method: the best results for the least amount of effort. It would be laziness if it did not involve decades of training. Once I figure out how the page sounds (hear the words in my head), I can write fast. So the actual writing actually takes less time than working up to it.

And then, having worked myself up to writing the novel, I had to stop every other day to meet deadlines for columns and other jobs. This destroys my momentum. Plus my mind is on my novel, so the paid work is not as solid as it should be. And when I get back to the novel, I have to work myself up to it all over again. Aaargh, so much time lost.

So I’ve taken a month off from work to allow myself to focus. (Blogging is not work because it’s one of the things I do to work myself up to writing a novel.) Also I’ve taken to using the pocket Moleskines (in photo) rather than the large notebooks because they fill up faster, giving me the illusion that I’ve been good.

P.S. The cats wish to clarify their role in the household. Their job is mystical guardianship. They keep out unwanted spirits.

Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) in session with Dr. Seward (Patti Lupone). In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dr. Seward was a man.

This is my last column for BusinessWorld, and now I am on leave.

For three seasons the fans of Showtime’s Victorian drama Penny Dreadful have reveled in its sumptuous Gothic atmosphere, its bloodsoaked storylines and its never-ending struggle against demons without and within. We’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe; we do not terrify easily. But when the words “The End” appeared at the close of season 3, episode 9, we greeted it with shrieks of terror. It’s over? Without warning?

The series created by John Logan careened to an end, leaving many plotlines dangling, abandoning its new characters before they’d done anything, and assigning a particularly cruel fate, capped by a corny last line, to its most fearless character. Logan, whose screen credits include Gladiator and the last two Bond movies, said that this was how he’d always envisioned the series. With a supposedly triumphant resolution that not only feels like a big buzzkill, but nullifies the rationale of the entire show? I suspect not.

The third season began with two of the major characters leaving gloomy, claustrophobic London for the wide open spaces of the old American West. I don’t care for sunshine myself, but I’m all for the series expanding its scope. And then everyone decides to hurry back to London as if the studio had announced it was turning off the lights, and before they can unpack their luggage it’s the final battle. Remember the outrage over the third Alien movie where, after everything Ripley had endured and overcome in the two previous movies, she dives into the furnace? I mention Alien 3 because Logan is the writer of the forthcoming Alien Covenant. Also, that ending was poetic justice compared to Penny Dreadful’s.

What do we do when we are not satisfied with the outcome of a TV series? We could circulate a petition for its resurrection: a show that has Dr. Frankenstein and various dark powers in its cast has as many means of bringing back the dead as Game of Thrones. We could write fanfiction with an alternate ending. Or we could binge-watch the entire series (Third season optional) and relive the many pleasures of our favorite Victorian Gothic entertainment.

Keep reading

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