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RonPrice 79, Male, Canada - 60 entries

Oct 2012
4:43 AM AEDT

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Part 1:

Salmon Rushdie(1947- ) is back in the news. Death threats were made against him including a fatwÄ requiring his execution which was proclaimed on Radio Tehran. The fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. I was just settling in to the first year of my final decade as a FT lecturer in a technical college in Western Australia; 1989 was also my first year as the secretary of a local Baha’i community in a suburb of Perth, Belmont, beside the Swan River.

I was immersed in the task of dealing with 100 students a week, and serving as a secretary of a Baha’i group of some 30 or more in a wider Perth Baha’i community at the time of some 1500 Baha’is.� I was up-to-my-ears in a 60 to 80 hour week of wall-to-wall people.� The news of Mr Rushdie in 1989 was just an on-air bit of information to add to the many other happenings reported that day by the electronic and print media such as: (i) heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson’s divorce in the Dominican Republic, (ii) Union Carbide’s agreement to pay $470 million damages for Bhopol disaster, and (iii) the placing of the world's 1st satellite, the first of 24 satellites, of a Global Positioning System into orbit.

1989 was a very big year on the global agenda. �In the midst of everything else happening that year, from Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall, I didn't dream that the forces underlying this remote anti-Rushdie event far-out on the periphery of my psyche and of western civilization would eventually come to define our era in so many ways. At the time, the Rushdie affair just seemed to me like some weird historical sideshow as I ploughed through the all-consuming tasks that made-up my week.� I had a few hours left-over to give to: my wife and kids, a few friends, my daily-walk and other activity to keep body-and-soul together so that I might enjoy my 64 hours a week of rest and sleep---in order to get back to the 100 hours involved in getting through my weekly tasks.

Part 2:

The following decade was an all-consuming one for Rushdie who was in the belly of some beast that I watched, heard or read about, but only on the rare occasion, safely from my observation tower half a world away occupied, as I say above, with my own life’s all-consuming agenda. Rushdie has just published a new book which takes us inside that whale-of-a-beast for that decade of the 1990s.� The new book is his memoir, Joseph Anton, and it’s about his living-in-hiding for more than a decade. Filled with cameos by everyone from Bill Clinton to Christopher Hitchens to Warren Beatty, this literary page-turner, as one reviewer describes it, tells us in fascinating detail, says the same reviewer, what it means to have every aspect of your life overturned. Not all the reviews and reviewers thusfar have been fascinated and captivated. Check them out to get that balanced view the media is so concerned about---at least in some cases.

The ayatollah's death sentence meant that Rushdie had to choose a new, non-Asian identity. He did. He called himself Joseph Anton, a name which came from combining the first names of two famous writers: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. He also had to adjust to live-in bodyguards and having to ask permission to do the simplest things, like meeting his son. More than Rushdie’s literary output, the death sentence against him turned the author into an international celebrity. In recent years, Rushdie himself has become a fixture on the New York social scene, with a reputation for keeping the company of glamorous women half his age.

Part 3:

Some readers, drawing parallels with the recent tabloidization of Rushdie’s own life, may cringe at how much his memoir peddles in publishing-world gossip, but like the author himself, Joseph Anton is an amalgam of high and low, salaciousness and profundity. As he has before, Rushdie proves himself a master at straddling the boundary between supermarket romance and philosophical treatise. The long rite of affairs and betrayals and divorces can’t obscure the fact that this is, ultimately, a wise book about some of the most important issues affecting the world today.

Foremost among those issues are the causes of free speech and free expression. Rushdie is an absolutist on these issues, arguing that free speech amounts to “life itself.” He suggests that the attempt by radical Islam to stifle The Satanic Verses was really the opening salvo in an ongoing conflict that has continued through the rise of al-Qaeda and the Sept.�11 terrorist attacks. The seeds of intolerance sown in 1989, when Khomeini’s fatwa was passed, have sprouted into a far more general—and violent—conflict between militant Islam and Western culture. Rushdie quotes the German poet Heinrich Heine: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people too.”¹

He insists on complexity and nuance where polemic and clich� so often reign. This is what writers do. And this, ultimately, is Rushdie’s triumph. In an age of rising intolerance and diminished literary confidence, Joseph Anton—like Rushdie’s own life—strikes a blow for the continued relevance of literature.–Ron Price with thanks to Akash Kapur, Book Review: 'Joseph Anton' by Salman Rushdie, in The Stackon October 04, 2012

We each have our own memoirs;
why I’ve got mine on 1000s of
pages and all over the internet, &
most people have them up in their
heads; others, still, are placing some
of their story on Facebook & twitter.
�
To each their own as we each tell our
story to others and to ourselves before
our final story goes before those pearly
gates, & we go into a hole for those who
tell no more story…….at least not here!
�
I won’t be reading your story, Salmon,
in its 600+ pages…..There are just too
many stories: cyberspace-&-real space.
�
There are stories in the humanities & social
sciences, the physical, biological, & applied
sciences and the result is an image-&-print
glut that keeps everyone busy working out
their own agenda. You’ve certainly had more
than your share, more than your 15 minutes of
fame, as old Andy once put it long ago back in
the 60s for all those hippies who were starting
to make their mark on civilization and who are
now heading into old-age. I wish you well, dear
Salmon, as you too head into old-age writing, as
you have been doing for decades: another hippy
who has made his mark on global civilization!!!

Ron Price

10/10/’12

�� REALLY REAL��
��
I wrote these two short paragraphs in my first month after retiring from FT paid-employment with 50 years in classrooms under my belt, 1949-1999, and after listening to an interview this morning with Salmon Rushdie.¹ �The interview and Rushdie’s words made me think about the pioneer in so many walks of life.� He or she should strive, as far as possible, to create home where it did not exist before wherever they go.� But this is not always easy work. In a city like Perth with over a thousand Baha’is I found there were pockets, groups, of Baha’is I was never at home with.��

Virtually all pioneers wherever they are found, it seems to me, are not able to ‘remove strangeness.’¹� There is always some sense of not belonging. The pioneer is in the position, Salmon Rushdie describes having two dreams: rootedness and journeying. He refers to people having two needs: community and group identity, as well as individuality and transcendence.² –Ron Price with thanks to:^{� 1}Salmon Rushdie, “Arts Today: Interview”, ABC Radio National, 3 May 1999, 9-10:00 a.m.; and ²Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Four on an Island, Oxford, 1983, p. 62.
�

RUSHDIE and ME

A week after I retired from full-time work as a teacher and lecturer, after 32 years in the classroom and another 18 as a student, the website CNN Entertainment published an article entitled: “Rushdie’s new book out from under shadow of fatwa.”¹ �The book referred to was The Ground Beneath her Feet and it was about a completely different world than that of his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. The new world of Rushdie’s 1999 book was: rock ‘n roll music, New York and the crossover cultures between the east and the west Rushdie, an Indian-born novelist, in 1999 was still getting used to a more visible life.

A decade before, in 1989, Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a death edict against him for allegedly blaspheming Islam in that book The Satanic Verses. Khomeini died soon afterward, but Rushdie had to go into hiding for nearly a decade. It wasn’t until September 1998 that Tehran disassociated itself from Khomeini’s edict, as part of a deal aimed at restoring full diplomatic relations with Britain.-Ron Price with thanks to ¹the website CNN Entertainment, 15 April 1999.

Your book is a variation on the Orpheus/Eurydice
myth with rock music replacing the Orpheus lyre.
The myth works as a red thread from which you
sometimes stray, but to which you attach endless
references.� You gave us a sort of report on life at
the end of the 20^th century….I was far too busy to
read it getting-out from under 50 years of those
classrooms, Baha’i responsibilities in the big-city
and ready to take a sea-change from many jobs.
�
Your book provided a background and an alternate
history to those ‘50s to ‘90s period of rock music’s
growth….You give us, the reviewers said, humour
in a predictable unpredictability, a rat-tat-tat pace.
For clear shots of insight into the human condition
and the universe as it might be, you always moved
the ground beneath our feet.² …So perhaps during
these years of my sea-change, at 55+++, I may just
finally get ‘into’ you---but only time will tell since I
have had to recreate my life-style….my entire MO.³

¹On 10 May 1999, six hundred people attended a reading and book signing of author Salman Rushdie’s new bookThe Ground Beneath Her Feet.–Zarminae Ansari, “Salmon Rushdie’s “rock and roll” novel,” The Tech: Online Edition, 4 June 1999.� By June 1999 I had finished marking the last pieces, scripts, papers, I was given after my classroom teaching had come to an end.

^2� Linda L. Richards, “The Earth Moves,” January Magazine, April 1999.
³ modus operandiis a Latin expression used in who-dun-its. It means method of operating or way of going about things.

Ron Price

14 November 2011
�

SWIRLING
�
When I was working in a tin mine on the west coast of Tasmania in 1981/2 at one of the dirtiest, but emotionally challenging, jobs I’ve ever had, Salmon Rushdie was catapulted to literary fame.� I think I may have come across his name on the morning news before going to work on the bus in this little town on the west coast of Tasmania where it just about always rained.

I got on the bus early in the morning in the dark and the rain for, as I say, it nearly always rained on the west coast of this beautiful island state of Australia.� News of Rushdie and his Midnight’s Children(1981)was the beginning of his story in the narrative that is my own life and, over twenty-five years later, I still follow the writing and life of this acclaimed and controversial writer.

Yesterday I listened to an interview on ABC radio¹ with this Indian-British novelist and essayist, this Muslim-born and self-proclaimed atheist around whom have been swirling literary and political issues, especially since the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses(1988).�

I had left the tin mine by 1988 and was living in what is arguably the most isolated city on the planet, Perth, Western Australia.� The comparisons and contrasts between Rushdie’s writing and mine I found helped to place my own work in a useful personal perspective.� This prose-poem is just one of a series of pieces which examines these comparisons and contrasts.-Ron Price with thanks to “The Book Show,” ABC Radio National,� 21 April 2008, 10:05-11:00 a.m.
I tell stories, too, Salmon
but I don’t draw on the
deficit model of history¹
in the same way as you.
�
I, too, subvert linear history
with spacial, sacred, circular
and fragmented models, far
more transnational, not the
discreet national-local story
here, more the flickering film
of a phenomenal world where
a sense of unity is demanding
fulfilment on a tide of desire
for an outward and political
form mounting to a flood, to
a climax in these tempestuous
times of troubles and woes.

Writing for me was a second
choice, too, Salmon, after I
realized I could not make a
career of baseball and life
wore me out with forty years
of endless talking and listening
among other slings and arrows
of life’s outrageous fortune.

¹Camilla Nelson, “ Faking It: History and Creative Writing,” TEXT: Vol. 11, No.2, 2007.

Ron Price

22 April 2008

�

�

Tags: death, famous, personal, punish, writer

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Shineess1 36, Female, Ohio, USA - 2 entries

Oct 2011
9:30 PM CST

Endless Days...

It is days such as these days I wished I could just curl up inside of bed snuggled close to my blankets and just go to sleep.

While I do not know why I seem to enjoy sleeping in very much. I do. Must be something about the coldness that makes me feel more compelled not to do anything and since I am not home yet, I still am not able to control the heat thermostat.

But “boy-oh-boy,” if I could. I would have not ever slept in curled up to my blankets. I would have been so HOT I would have rushed down my sister’s stairs an hour later shutting off the thermostat. Why? I cannot stand the heat.

One of the things I have been keeping inside of me the last past few days of finding out of my Uncle’s death. Now since this is going to be made a public journal, I cannot share some of the names presented. I guess for legality purposes. However, now he is gone, I feel a sense of postpone sadness for him and myself because he died all alone without anyone and us only knowing of his passing was relayed to my sister from the corners office in Houston, Texas. I miss him.

He was the best uncle I could ever have. Since my sister and I were his favorite nieces, he would always make calls to us on a daily or bi-weekly basis informing us how he was doing. I missed him living in Ohio as much as I missed the summer rain putting me to sleep at night.

I remember many things he said to me. The thoughts of peer success he thought I was able to obtain and all of those many hours when I was young he would babysit my older sister and I and teach us math. He was the reason why I was able to grasp various things inside of math clearly then others inside of my class could.

He did not ever judge me for my skin color, facial features, or my flaws. He judged eveyone based on his or hers character, manners, and knowledge. He was the best uncle out of my mom’s side of the family my sister and I have ever had.

There is a pure sense of loneliness and void etched into my heart for the way he had to pass. I do not know why I sit and think about how he passed constantly. Maybe because if he would of gone to the hospital in Texas sooner, he would have still been alive, in yet, he passed inside of his apartment in his bed alone no kids or wife no one else there to help him survive. Just him.

He stayed there dead in his apartment know one knowing where or why he was not returning our calls for a little over a month. The Texas police found my uncle yesterday on October 1^st dead.

My sister when she heard the news first. Cried. I could not cry because it was so postponed for me. I try to stay strong for everyone. At times I do not even know why I am doing it. I guess…. This is just a way for me to relieve my own pain. Through being strong for others. I feel as if I have to not because I am forced too.

Maybe this is because when I was younger I always felt I had to be strong for myself and everyone else around me. Because I always thought no one is going to always be around forever to take care of me. All I had was myself to take care. Now I look at my words and wonder… Am I right?

I do not want to be alone forever. I thought about this before I ever got married. So with feeling this way, I asked God to send me someone I could successfully share my life with. He came but not without a cost. I know sometimes we have to loose one thing to gain another. Why?

I do not know. I guess with death there comes so many unanswered questions. I just know I just want to go to sleep today beside my husband and fall asleep in his arms. Right after I finish this and my slushy.

Tags: death, gloom

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vampiricakatt 28, Female, Minnesota, USA - 102 entries

Jan 2010
6:49 AM EDT

I Want to DIE

I want to die

Everything is going wrong for me.

My mom drinks

my dad drinks

My brother hates me

My little brother left

I hate to be alone

thats why I say this

I just want to die

Because I see no point In living.

Tags: Death

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4 comment(s) - 10:01 AM - 03/02/2010

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jmckeone 63, Male, Virginia, USA - 546 entries

Oct 2009
2:08 PM EDT

horrible tradgedy

just before going to bed last night I received a FB message from Michelle telling me that her son Phillip had killed himself. Shock and tears followed.

Called her today and spoke with her briefly. Seems he had gotten into trouble and was punished� by his parents. Within a couple hours he was found dead by his mom on the bathroom floor with a bullet wound to the head. He left no note.

The horrible pain in her voice was devastating. I proceeded to get hold of my kids and tell them that I love them. Still haven't been able to reach naomi as her cell phone is out of commission.

Tags: death, suicide, tradgedy

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loveKL92 32, Female, Ohio, USA - 18 entries

Sep 2009
8:29 AM EDT

FOR TABBY

She looked into his eyes,

time after time,

to now believe that she would never,

again,

See those eyes,

that always made her smile.

"So remember,

it's never Good-Bye;

Just see you in a while,"

he said as he spoke,

about the dead.

"Remember,

it's the smiles,

that mean so much more,

than tears.

Let God unsurpress all of your fears."

She smiled and bowed her head,

as her eyes turned red,

because of tears she's tasted,

knowing this time,

they weren't wasted.

Tags: death, kl, loss, pain, poem, suicide

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brokentearsRcryd92 36, Female, Ohio, USA - 21 entries

May 2009
6:11 AM EST

The Next Day By.KL � copyright 2009

She woke up,

and turned off the alarm.

No blood,

is to flow from this arm.

She looked out the window,

cold and shallow,

She held her hands.

"When will you come back again?"

She asked as the stinging tears,

swelled behind her eyes.

she couldn't believe it.

You're gone for good this time.

Tags: Death, KL, loss, pain, poem

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1 comment(s) - 02:16 PM - 05/12/2009

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z3bastian 46, Male, Philippines - 7 entries

Apr 2009
10:06 AM PST

death, harder for the living

death is harder for the living who've been left behind than on the dead who has been rid of all pain

Tags: death, left behind, living, pain

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1 comment(s) - 09:09 PM - 04/17/2009

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z3bastian 46, Male, Philippines - 7 entries

Apr 2009
3:17 PM PST

death isn't scary

�death is not scary, after all it is where everyone is heading, �it's the "how" and the "when" that I am afraid of

Tags: death, fear, how, when

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SEXKITTEN2469 40, Female, Arizona, USA - 5 entries

Apr 2008
9:15 AM EDT

Life

Good Morning,

Life lately has been a bit difficult.

Chase (ex) broke up with me a little over 2 weeks ago and I seem to be taking it badly. I though that we had a future together and we had all these plans and then poof! he was done. He can be a good person, but he has not been that great to me. You would think that I would move on already from a guy who treated me badly. Im getting there.

My mom died almost 5 months ago and it didnt truely didnt hit me until recently.� Now that I need her to talk to her about everything that is going on......I cant! I miss her so much and wish that the last few years could have been different. I usually dont regret anything, but when it comes to my mom I do.

I wish I was around more before she died.

I wish that I didnt fight with her about stupid stuff.

I wish that I could have gotten married and had a child before she died.

Getting married will never be the same anymore. I wont have my mom to give me advise. Be there to cry with me as I walk down the isle.�Or tell me how beautiful I look.

Having children used to be something that I looked forward to. Now I dont know if I could have any. Knowing that my mom wont be in the delivery room or be there for their first time they talk, walk, or school events. I need a mom!

Time to vent is over. Time to carry on the day. Time to be positive.

Tags: death, moms

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3 comment(s) - 04:04 PM - 05/27/2008

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6LOSTinTHEwind 39, Male, Canada - First entry!

Feb 2008
4:40 PM EDT

a poem

Yes ppl it's that time of year again, that's right Valentine's day is fast approaching and anyone who knows me knows that this time of year depresses the crap out of me so i have written another poem about it

AGAIN A YEAR?

You owe me nothing

Not even a tear

It's Valentine's Day

Yes it's been a year

I'm dead and hollow

sitting here

Limp and numb

As seasons pass

Yet still you blink,

not one lash.

Summers gone

And winter's passed

So in my wrist

I carve a gash

At first it trickles

Till at last,

My vein's run cold

And life has passed

In death there's warmth

And summers last

Again we're friends

Just like our past

And again my friend

I learn to laugh

But that was then

and this is now

So I stop to wonder about how

How it came to this

Is this the end?

But still I have one question then

My Question is;

HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?????

Tags: death, depression, love, poem

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1 comment(s) - 07:10 PM - 02/16/2008

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