Bhanu: A Failed Novelist's definitions

Piglet

The sordid and, obviously, pink creature of wierdly non-porcine origins, in A.A.Milne's "Winnie the Pooh." A baby kangaroo, Piglet often gets himself into confusing situations, like being stranded in trees when it's raining, if I am remembering my English childhood correctly.

My uncle, a civil engineer from New Delhi, was a contract worker for the Iraqi government in the mid 1980s. He once visited us in the UK, and insisted on taking me and my sister to Harrods. My sister immediately chose a high-quality Piglet, complete with green corduroy onesie. Actually, writing this example makes me realize that Piglet was not a baby kangaroo at all. He was an actual piglet. Sorry about that. Back to Harrods. I believe I selected a white mohair jumper that I wore on special occasions, such as Dorcas Day, throughout my adolescent years. It is difficult to explain what Dorcas Day is.

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist January 9, 2009

Miss Libby

A very, very amazing dog who was born in Waco, Texas, and who died in Loveland, Colorado. Fuzzy. Barked when people came to the door. Liked going to the cafe. Not sure why. Adored by neighbors and passers-by alike. Sometimes threw up, resulting in our discovery that beneath the scraggly beige carpet there were oak floors from the 1950s. What else? I am Indian, and thus genetically and culturally inured to the charms of domestic animals. Yet, I fell in love with this pooch.

Conversation with a neighbor:
Me: I don't know why, but I've been missing that Libster more than ever.
Annie: Wow, Cordell was just saying that he's been missing Miss Libby too.
Me: Miss Libby....
Annie: Best dog ever.
Me: Yeah.

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist January 21, 2008

Soft Day

A day with no edges.

Any day that has an airport, from which you text-message a person you once loved, and they write back, after 40 minutes: "Wow. Safe travels." And, feeling stupid, you stare out at the Manhattan skyline, observing how the Empire State Building is both absorbed into the silver gelatin sky and periodically released by it, when the gold light floods the sky just after dawn. Clouds. Newark. The feeling that you are about to get on a plane and travel in the opposite direction to what the heart wants. That kind of bittersweet melancholy and imperfect nutrition -- you've just ordered a fruit salad that seems to be fermenting in it's plastic tub -- constitutes the soft day with no misgivings, but a profound inability to think things through.

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist January 17, 2008

humanimal

The humanimal is a hybrid of human and animal features, biological characteristics and/or behaviours.

The Wolf Children of Midnapure: feral children found living with wolves in Bengal, India, in 1920. Their eyes, for example, shone blue at night: an humanimal adaptation.

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist August 20, 2006

Architecture 1

A grid system in four parts: site, threshold, damage, and a shaky content that's subject to change. Or: a way of holding things in one place long enough to understand what's happening. Narrative. Then it rains. It rains for three days straight, and the city disappears. Then you disappear. I am thinking of the night you opened the door of your house and threw the book into the garden. Dark garden. An intermediary text, architecture is not for babies. Architecture is not for the house, but what surrounds it. If the grid gets wet, then you just slide off it, into the rain. This is an act of repetition made possible by the structure, but only when the structure fails.

"Hey mister! If I'd of wanted architecture, I'd of asked for architecture." "It's architecture 1, dummy." "Who you calling dummy?" "You, dummy." "Don't call me dummy. Architecture 1, my ass." "I love it when you talk dirty." "Oh shut up, do you want me to come over there and..." "Oh shut your pie-hole. This ain't a donut shop, in case you hadn't noticed." "No, I hadn't, actually."

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist January 29, 2008

BK

Obviously: the deluxe cheeseburger franchise. Apparently: Brooklyn. But actually: the initials of an obscure experimental prose writer of Punjabi/British origin. Author of: "Monsters I have Known": an essay on inter-racial romances that ends with the soulful but unkempt and aforementioned BK drowning her sorrows in short, skim milk lattes, even though it is a well-documented fact that too much coffee makes her impervious to omens and others signs that things are or are not going well. Which is no way to live. It's precarious, and does not necessarily lead to a marital outcome. But there you have it.

With a big sigh, BK flipped through the glossy pages of Cottage Living, even though it was was clear that the so-called cottages were really five bedroom annexes to an already established empire of primrose-yellow wallpapered mansions in places like Vermont and Southern California.

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist January 23, 2008

Humanimal

A composite form that permits a larger discourse on the hybrid form. It's also a body that allows you to desire different things than you would do, normally. An invented construction, the humanimal is half you, half something else. Even an angel can be feral. I want a dark angel, and that is why I write books. That is why I expel the fur from the skin, so that the skinned body has a textured aura. If you touch it, it is yours. This is also a definition of capture. The humanimal is a fundamentally undomesticated or untrained figure.

Vladimir Nabakov, Brian Evenson, Rilke, Marguerite Duras, and so on. Their books all have humanimals in them. You can tell because faces aren't quite clear, which implies incaution -- in terms of the contact between characters. I am not interested in the narrator. I am not interested in the writer. I am interested in the figure that is made, deep in writing. In this sense, writing is the forest I walk out of, drenched in the smell of animals. I'm serious. Once, in Dharamsala, a monk ran past us on the steep stone stairs going down to McCleod Ganj. He yelled: "Lion!" And so we turned, and ran, too.

by Bhanu: A Failed Novelist December 30, 2007