CÁNH CHIM TRỜI
A challenge was flung at my feet: "Do you dare to translate several poems written by Tuệ Sỹ?". My reply was something to the effect that it wasn't so much meeting the challenge as whether I found the poems worthy of the inspiration.
Just as poetry is much more than rhyme, translation is much more than rendition of thoughts in another language. Translation, especially poetry translation, must be first and foremost a labor of love, inspired and bowled over by the original's beauty. Thus, poetry translation, on love impulse, often is better and unforced than that done by requests or crass motivations of recognition and money. Having said that, Tuệ Sỹ's poetry, at least those poems sent to my attention, was "surrealistic" and sounding very "contemporary", meaning it was obscure and personal. Thus, I was not sure if I completely understood the poet's intention. I don't even know if the poet is still alive. I only know he was a friend and contemporary of Pham Công Thiện who died a few years ago. I apologize if I misunderstood what he meant by his words.
I translated the poem quickly. It took me less than half an hour.
Wissai
December 29, 2012
CÁNH CHIM TRỜI
Tuệ Sỹ
Một ước hẹn đã chôn vùi tang tóc
Cánh chim trời xa mãi giữa lòng sâu
Nghe một nỗi hao mòn trong thoáng chốc
Một mùa thu một vạn tiếng kêu gào
Khuya còn lạnh sương mù và gió lốc
Thở hơi dài cát bụi cuốn chiêm bao.
Bên cửa sổ bên kia đồi sao mọc
Một lần đi là vĩnh viễn con tàu
Đi để nhớ những chiều pha tóc trắng
Mắt lưng chừng trông giọt máu phiêu lưu.
BIRD'S WINGS IN FLIGHT IN THE SKY
A promise buried away a mourning
The bird kept flying in unending longing
In an instant echoed the corrosive soul
A thousand of cries rose up in a single season of fall
Fog and gusty winds persisted throughout the cold night
Driving away the dreams into the path of a dusty and sandy long sigh
Through the window stars were coming up on the other side of the hill
Once departed, the ship never kept still
To leave was to remember the silver hair blending in the afternoon
The eyes lingered on the drop of blood's venturesome swoon
"Translated" by Wissai/NKBa'
December 29, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable
The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable
Last night as I was lying in bed early and nursing a toothache( a rare event), an improbable thought arrived and strengthened my fighting spirits: I possess a sixth sense and my body and soul are unbreakable until I am in my late 90's.
I used to know a wacky, uneducated woman who claimed that she had a sixth sense and could visualize the visage of unmet humans. I didn't have the heart and the guts to tell her that she was full of horse shit. She tried to live a spiritual life, and generally quite moralistic, but she was highly superstitious and bossy and childish, and indeed had an unhappy life. The fault for her unhappiness lay within her: she thought too much of herself and thought her shit didn't stink, all because of an unresolved inferiority complex.
One must stop chasing one's shadow. One must not beg for anything, even for one's life.
"The gulf of experience between money and no money is so wide as to be almost unimaginable. Begging -- not just begging but being an anonymous pathetic on the sidewalks in one of the money capitals of the world -- damages your emotions, corrupts your view of the world, changes your view of yourself.
And, for all that, it says nothing about what is inside a person, who you actually are or who you could be."
The other day I happened to see a photo of the stupid coy bitch living in the boondocks of the Far West. Oh my goodness, the bitch was coarse and ugly and had no sense about fashion. Her hair looked like a crow's nest. No wonder she's had no success in finding a man. No man in his right mind would go out with a fake bitch like that. Enough of this bitch. Back to the Sixth Sense, like the disturbed child in the movie, I now see dead people as if I were dead myself already. This realization should scare me, but instead calms and soothes and strengthens me in my daily discourses and interactions with bitches and scumbags. Evil has stopped annoying me. It has become a source of delight for me to watch. To be human, for scumbags, is to wallow in the muck and filth of depravity and self-degradation. Actually the more scumbags I meet, the more I realize that I am indeed lucky and blessed of not being as depraved as they are.
Silence is the mark of wisdom and strength. The ignorant and the weak always try to cover their sense of inadequacy by making noises. "A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace. Confucius". I am no wise man, but I think of common things all my life, such as why Love is magical and even more important than sex, for a human individual but not for the species, and why it is important for scumbags to pretend who they are not. Most of what follows in quotation marks are taken from Pinker's "How The Mind Works".
"Conceptions of who we are:
Political Man in Classical times, Religious Man in the Christian Middle Ages, Economic Man in the Enlightenment, and Psychological Man in the 20th Century and after. Now, rather than understanding ourselves in terms of our place in the social order, our relationship with God, or our rational pursuit of self-interest, we are looking to Freud's theory of psychoanalysis and its conception of a complex psyche balancing its instinctual origins with the demands of civilization...
The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced I their foraging way of life, in particular, understanding and outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people. The mind is what the brain does. Specifically, the brain processes information, and thinking is a kind of computation. The mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world. The modulus's basic logic is specified by our genetic program. Their operation was shaped by natural selection to solve the problems of the hunting and gathering life led by our ancestors in most of our evolutionary history. The various problems for our ancestors were subtasks of one big problem for their genes, maximizing the number of copies that made it into the next generation.
Thus, on this view, psychology is engineering in reverse....EP (evolutionary psychology) brings together two scientific revolutions. One is the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, which explains the mechanics of thought and emotion in terms of information and computation. The other is the the revolution in EB (evolutionary biology) of the1960s and 1970s, which explains the complex designs of living things I terms of selection among replicators. CS helps us understand how a midis possible and what kind of mind we have. EB helps us understand why why we have the kind of mind we have...."
Just because I am thrifty, most, if not all women with whom I happened to have romantic liaisons, thought I was a gold digger or a "social climber" (words of the fucking Laura) while the truth was not so. They didn't know my purpose in life was two-fold: love and mind improvement. Since I have not had the "love" I wanted, I have been busy trying to improve my mind. The more I "know" about "things", the more I develop a contempt for ignoramuses and scumbags who make noises about what they have just "learned". Little did they know that most of what they just read about, I did so more than 35 years ago. Needless to say, I don't love or give a fuck about Laura or bitches like her anymore. That does not mean I am a psychopath. I am only a functional semi-psychotic. There's a big difference between a psychopath and a psychotic. Most people can't tell and don't know the difference. Now I have witnessed at hand the workings of evil, I am more aware of the depravity of most self-declared "good" people. They all have a need to justify themselves. Curiously, they rarely admit to themselves and others that they are "bad" whereas a guilt-wrecked semi-psychotic like myself ruminates and verbalizes publicly on past errors and misdeeds. An answer on a test on a foreign language or on any subject would tell the level of understanding and honesty. An ignorant but vain fool would fumble around and reply in generalities. A knowledgeable and honest person would give a direct answer and is not afraid to show his ignorance.
No, I didn't enjoy employing sarcasm as part of my language repertoire because sarcasm, as Oscar Wilde (commonly attributed) remarked, is a form of lowest, cheapest wit. And nobody wants to be regarded as low and cheap. But I am a firm believer in self-defense which involves inflicting pain on those who caused me pain. Perhaps more importantly, I don't suffer fools and loud-mouthed ignoramuses gladly. But enough of this unsavory, distasteful, nauseating, revolting experience over a repulsive-looking and yet (maybe because of being repulsive-looking) vain and loud-mouthed individual. Let me regale you, if I may, with a very abbreviated "story", called "Omar, Bob, and Roberto"
Omar was a young corpulent, unattractive Hispanic high school math teacher. He was also a devout Christian who firmly believed in God and the divinity of Christ. He met Roberto at a poker tournament. A friendship ensued despite Roberto being atheistic. Omar tried to make his new friend into a Christian because he cared about his friend, and wanted him to be saved. Roberto was too dumb and stubborn to fall for Omar's impassioned evangelical pleas and exhortations.
The friendship endured. Over time, Roberto came to admire Omar's compassion and kindness, not just to Roberto, but also to everybody. Omar had only one vice: he was a binge drinker. Roberto, on the other hand, had no more than two beers whenever he went out with Omar, because every time he took a swig of beer, he remembered his father who died of liver cancer.
Roberto recently struck a friendship with Bob, an introverted, gentle, ill Vietnam War vet. Bob was drinking and smoking himself to death. Over two weeks ago, Bob could no longer drive (and Roberto had to do the driving whenever Bob needed to get around) because his feet and legs started swelling. On top of that, he had a bad cold and wheezing problem, but refused to see a doctor, in spite of Roberto's pleas. Three days ago, Roberto, while out on an errand for Bob, took Bob straight to the emergency room of a VA hospital, over Bob's strenuous objections, where Bob was immediately admitted. The emergency room doctor said that Roberto had saved his friend's life because Bob's sodium and magnesium in the blood had fallen to dangerous levels. Bob is recovering despite having alcohol and nicotine abrupt withdrawal symptoms. His hands shake badly. Last night, during a visit, Roberto sat next to his friend's hospital bed and delivered an impassioned speech:
"Bob, you've got to save your own life. You must find a reason to live. You must think of other people who care about you. You're a good man. There are many bad people out there who want to live. You're a good man, then why do you want to die? I care about you. I want you to live. I want you to be around so you can continue playing with your new toy, iPad, which I helped you purchase. When you recover, we'll play chess together as you often wished we would. But you must promise me you shall stop the booze and the cigarettes for good, once you get out of here, otherwise all my efforts to help you amounted to nothing, to a colossal waste of time. You must not break my heart. Meanwhile, pray, Bob, pray to your God, to Jesus, asking them to give you strength. It can be done. It has been done before. Let me tell you about my wonderful Christian, Hispanic friend, Omar, who opened up my heart, who changed me, who was responsible for my deciding to reach out to you in your hour of need...."
I shared the above story, "Omar, Bob, and Roberto" with the bitch. She failed to understand the intents and purposes of my sharing. Her failure dried up any lingering desire of mine to let her have a peek into my mind. She's too fucking dumb to understand, too insensitive to feel, and too stubborn to learn from past experiences.
Most young men, insensible and raw in life's experiences, fancy that war would be an experience to broaden their minds or drive up their adrenaline levels. So they volunteer into the Army. Little do they know what awaits them. They will witness at first hand how sudden and arbitrary and final death can be. And if they are lucky, they will survive but they won't forget how the smell of death hangs in the air. That was what Bob told me after serving two tours in Vietnam. He was stressed out and only booze could numb him enough so he wouldn't go crazy. He couldn't forget the people's faces after getting shot and killed by him. He said he was stupid to walk up to his victims afterwards when the "enemies" retreated in a hurry and left their dead comrades behind.
You would no doubt wonder if I really deserve to think myself in lofty terms. The truth is that I look at my "peers" and see nothing but mostly false pride and pathetic ignorance. I cast one look further and I see cowardice, laziness, and defensiveness. So to amuse and strengthen myself, I declare that I possess a sixth sense and I am unbreakable, which isn't really that far from the "truth". I certainly talk too much, however. I must respect and observe silence more. But tell me, why do the fuck that assholes and ignoramuses have to try to prove to me that they are smart and knowledgeable to me? Could it be that they lack intellectual honesty and true self-respect?
(to be continued)
Last night as I was lying in bed early and nursing a toothache( a rare event), an improbable thought arrived and strengthened my fighting spirits: I possess a sixth sense and my body and soul are unbreakable until I am in my late 90's.
I used to know a wacky, uneducated woman who claimed that she had a sixth sense and could visualize the visage of unmet humans. I didn't have the heart and the guts to tell her that she was full of horse shit. She tried to live a spiritual life, and generally quite moralistic, but she was highly superstitious and bossy and childish, and indeed had an unhappy life. The fault for her unhappiness lay within her: she thought too much of herself and thought her shit didn't stink, all because of an unresolved inferiority complex.
One must stop chasing one's shadow. One must not beg for anything, even for one's life.
"The gulf of experience between money and no money is so wide as to be almost unimaginable. Begging -- not just begging but being an anonymous pathetic on the sidewalks in one of the money capitals of the world -- damages your emotions, corrupts your view of the world, changes your view of yourself.
And, for all that, it says nothing about what is inside a person, who you actually are or who you could be."
The other day I happened to see a photo of the stupid coy bitch living in the boondocks of the Far West. Oh my goodness, the bitch was coarse and ugly and had no sense about fashion. Her hair looked like a crow's nest. No wonder she's had no success in finding a man. No man in his right mind would go out with a fake bitch like that. Enough of this bitch. Back to the Sixth Sense, like the disturbed child in the movie, I now see dead people as if I were dead myself already. This realization should scare me, but instead calms and soothes and strengthens me in my daily discourses and interactions with bitches and scumbags. Evil has stopped annoying me. It has become a source of delight for me to watch. To be human, for scumbags, is to wallow in the muck and filth of depravity and self-degradation. Actually the more scumbags I meet, the more I realize that I am indeed lucky and blessed of not being as depraved as they are.
Silence is the mark of wisdom and strength. The ignorant and the weak always try to cover their sense of inadequacy by making noises. "A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace. Confucius". I am no wise man, but I think of common things all my life, such as why Love is magical and even more important than sex, for a human individual but not for the species, and why it is important for scumbags to pretend who they are not. Most of what follows in quotation marks are taken from Pinker's "How The Mind Works".
"Conceptions of who we are:
Political Man in Classical times, Religious Man in the Christian Middle Ages, Economic Man in the Enlightenment, and Psychological Man in the 20th Century and after. Now, rather than understanding ourselves in terms of our place in the social order, our relationship with God, or our rational pursuit of self-interest, we are looking to Freud's theory of psychoanalysis and its conception of a complex psyche balancing its instinctual origins with the demands of civilization...
The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced I their foraging way of life, in particular, understanding and outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people. The mind is what the brain does. Specifically, the brain processes information, and thinking is a kind of computation. The mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world. The modulus's basic logic is specified by our genetic program. Their operation was shaped by natural selection to solve the problems of the hunting and gathering life led by our ancestors in most of our evolutionary history. The various problems for our ancestors were subtasks of one big problem for their genes, maximizing the number of copies that made it into the next generation.
Thus, on this view, psychology is engineering in reverse....EP (evolutionary psychology) brings together two scientific revolutions. One is the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, which explains the mechanics of thought and emotion in terms of information and computation. The other is the the revolution in EB (evolutionary biology) of the1960s and 1970s, which explains the complex designs of living things I terms of selection among replicators. CS helps us understand how a midis possible and what kind of mind we have. EB helps us understand why why we have the kind of mind we have...."
Just because I am thrifty, most, if not all women with whom I happened to have romantic liaisons, thought I was a gold digger or a "social climber" (words of the fucking Laura) while the truth was not so. They didn't know my purpose in life was two-fold: love and mind improvement. Since I have not had the "love" I wanted, I have been busy trying to improve my mind. The more I "know" about "things", the more I develop a contempt for ignoramuses and scumbags who make noises about what they have just "learned". Little did they know that most of what they just read about, I did so more than 35 years ago. Needless to say, I don't love or give a fuck about Laura or bitches like her anymore. That does not mean I am a psychopath. I am only a functional semi-psychotic. There's a big difference between a psychopath and a psychotic. Most people can't tell and don't know the difference. Now I have witnessed at hand the workings of evil, I am more aware of the depravity of most self-declared "good" people. They all have a need to justify themselves. Curiously, they rarely admit to themselves and others that they are "bad" whereas a guilt-wrecked semi-psychotic like myself ruminates and verbalizes publicly on past errors and misdeeds. An answer on a test on a foreign language or on any subject would tell the level of understanding and honesty. An ignorant but vain fool would fumble around and reply in generalities. A knowledgeable and honest person would give a direct answer and is not afraid to show his ignorance.
No, I didn't enjoy employing sarcasm as part of my language repertoire because sarcasm, as Oscar Wilde (commonly attributed) remarked, is a form of lowest, cheapest wit. And nobody wants to be regarded as low and cheap. But I am a firm believer in self-defense which involves inflicting pain on those who caused me pain. Perhaps more importantly, I don't suffer fools and loud-mouthed ignoramuses gladly. But enough of this unsavory, distasteful, nauseating, revolting experience over a repulsive-looking and yet (maybe because of being repulsive-looking) vain and loud-mouthed individual. Let me regale you, if I may, with a very abbreviated "story", called "Omar, Bob, and Roberto"
Omar was a young corpulent, unattractive Hispanic high school math teacher. He was also a devout Christian who firmly believed in God and the divinity of Christ. He met Roberto at a poker tournament. A friendship ensued despite Roberto being atheistic. Omar tried to make his new friend into a Christian because he cared about his friend, and wanted him to be saved. Roberto was too dumb and stubborn to fall for Omar's impassioned evangelical pleas and exhortations.
The friendship endured. Over time, Roberto came to admire Omar's compassion and kindness, not just to Roberto, but also to everybody. Omar had only one vice: he was a binge drinker. Roberto, on the other hand, had no more than two beers whenever he went out with Omar, because every time he took a swig of beer, he remembered his father who died of liver cancer.
Roberto recently struck a friendship with Bob, an introverted, gentle, ill Vietnam War vet. Bob was drinking and smoking himself to death. Over two weeks ago, Bob could no longer drive (and Roberto had to do the driving whenever Bob needed to get around) because his feet and legs started swelling. On top of that, he had a bad cold and wheezing problem, but refused to see a doctor, in spite of Roberto's pleas. Three days ago, Roberto, while out on an errand for Bob, took Bob straight to the emergency room of a VA hospital, over Bob's strenuous objections, where Bob was immediately admitted. The emergency room doctor said that Roberto had saved his friend's life because Bob's sodium and magnesium in the blood had fallen to dangerous levels. Bob is recovering despite having alcohol and nicotine abrupt withdrawal symptoms. His hands shake badly. Last night, during a visit, Roberto sat next to his friend's hospital bed and delivered an impassioned speech:
"Bob, you've got to save your own life. You must find a reason to live. You must think of other people who care about you. You're a good man. There are many bad people out there who want to live. You're a good man, then why do you want to die? I care about you. I want you to live. I want you to be around so you can continue playing with your new toy, iPad, which I helped you purchase. When you recover, we'll play chess together as you often wished we would. But you must promise me you shall stop the booze and the cigarettes for good, once you get out of here, otherwise all my efforts to help you amounted to nothing, to a colossal waste of time. You must not break my heart. Meanwhile, pray, Bob, pray to your God, to Jesus, asking them to give you strength. It can be done. It has been done before. Let me tell you about my wonderful Christian, Hispanic friend, Omar, who opened up my heart, who changed me, who was responsible for my deciding to reach out to you in your hour of need...."
I shared the above story, "Omar, Bob, and Roberto" with the bitch. She failed to understand the intents and purposes of my sharing. Her failure dried up any lingering desire of mine to let her have a peek into my mind. She's too fucking dumb to understand, too insensitive to feel, and too stubborn to learn from past experiences.
Most young men, insensible and raw in life's experiences, fancy that war would be an experience to broaden their minds or drive up their adrenaline levels. So they volunteer into the Army. Little do they know what awaits them. They will witness at first hand how sudden and arbitrary and final death can be. And if they are lucky, they will survive but they won't forget how the smell of death hangs in the air. That was what Bob told me after serving two tours in Vietnam. He was stressed out and only booze could numb him enough so he wouldn't go crazy. He couldn't forget the people's faces after getting shot and killed by him. He said he was stupid to walk up to his victims afterwards when the "enemies" retreated in a hurry and left their dead comrades behind.
You would no doubt wonder if I really deserve to think myself in lofty terms. The truth is that I look at my "peers" and see nothing but mostly false pride and pathetic ignorance. I cast one look further and I see cowardice, laziness, and defensiveness. So to amuse and strengthen myself, I declare that I possess a sixth sense and I am unbreakable, which isn't really that far from the "truth". I certainly talk too much, however. I must respect and observe silence more. But tell me, why do the fuck that assholes and ignoramuses have to try to prove to me that they are smart and knowledgeable to me? Could it be that they lack intellectual honesty and true self-respect?
(to be continued)
A Piece of My Meditative Heart
Khúc Tâm Tư
Nếu anh hỏi: đời em mơ gì nhất?
- Nghe tiếng bổng trầm anh nói: "Em yêu,
Anh nhớ hoàng hôn vương sợi nắng chiều,
Bờ môi ấm dìu tình ta du ngoạn"
Nếu anh hỏi: ngày nào em mơ nhất?
- Ngày mỗi ngày, giây phút ánh trăng êm
Trời mờ sương anh bên cửa buông rèm
Quyện hình em suốt đêm dài vô tận
Nếu anh hỏi: đường nào em mơ nhất?
- Con đường tình bước âu yếm, thủy chung
Để hồn em không cay đắng nghìn trùng
Chia chăn gối với bóng hồng xa lạ
Nếu anh hỏi: nữ trang em mơ nhất?
- Em quí vô ngần châu hạt kim cương
Là giọt lệ lóng lánh Chúa thiên đường
Làm rơi xuống trần gian đầy sầu khổ
Nếu anh hỏi: đời sau mơ gì nhất?
- Là Nữ Hoàng! Thánh nữ của lòng anh
Chốn thiên cung ta tấu khúc "Xuất Hành"
Tôn thờ Chúa Ba Ngôi Vua Vũ Trụ.
Chúc Anh
Sàigòn 1974
A PIECE OF MY MEDITATIVE HEART
If you ask: what I dream the most?
-Your melodious voice that says: " My love,
I always remember the lingering light of the late afternoon
Shining on us as we travel on kisses."
If you ask: what day I dream the most of?
-It's not the day, but the night, and every night
As the moonlight gently shines through the the gathering fog,
You let the window curtain fall
And your body entertwine with mine
Throughout the endlless night
If you ask: which road I dream to walk on?
-The road of cherished, everlasting love
So my heart knows no enduring bitterness
If I have to share you with a rival unknown
If you ask: which piece of jewelry I most treasure?
-The sparkling diamond from heaven falling to earth,
The tear of loving Christ for the suffering world
And if you ask: what do I wish most in the hereafter?
-Your Queen! The Sacred Angel of your heart
Together in Heaven we sing "Forward On We March"
In the Endless Glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Translated by Wissai/NKBa'
May 5, 2012
P.S.:
I shared the translation because some lines in the translation were even better than those in the Vietnamese original. I challenge and defy anyone who could improve on my translation. As I toil in obscurity, my pride soars and my loneliness melts away.
Christmas means nothing to me as do most religious tenets and doctrines. They help the stupid and the ignorant, not me , because I think more deeply than most so-called religious leaders. The Catholic Pope is a piece of shit. I hate the Catholic Church. The rites and vestments are full of pageantry, borrowed from the Roman Imperial Court. Most religious believers are stupid spiritual slaves who don't know their "leaders" despise them for their stupidity.
I am looking into cognitive science. If you study this subject, you will realize that you are special and part of the elite thinkers. The mere that a human can stand in front of a group of his fellow humans and hold their attention for a long period of time through his speech or singing is a marvel by itself and should be investigated by contemplative humans. And I am such a human. I am fiercely interested into the nature and process of thinking and why so-called educated persons who finished college still subscribe to superstition and self-deception.
Translation is a way to help me witness my brain at work: access to storage of memory and the interface of thoughts and language. Let's backtrack to the last two lines of the first stanza of the translation. They were far, far better than those in the Vietnamese original. When I wrote those two lines, I touched something sublime and magical in the art of using words to express the ineffable.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Holier-than-thou Attitude
The busybody asshole probably has not heard of the much bandied around notion that some humans only have the exterior as humans while their interior is not quite evolved/developed to be truly qualified as members of the homo sapiens species. Those so-called humans are often berated and characterized (and rightfully so) as sub-humans. They routinely engage in acts of betrayal, treachery, willful ignorance, naked selfishness, self-aggrandizement, pathetic stubbornness to the point of being surly and splenetic, low-class language (ngôn ngữ ba que xỏ lá rẻ tiền mất dạy), and holier-than-thou attitude as if their own excrement doesn't stink. In their zeal to appear righteous, they roundly and loudly ridicule, denounce and condemn those humans whose behavior they find not to their liking. The notion of "live and let live" is utterly foreign to them. Finally, they never think there's something pathological and pathetic about their behavior; in other words, they lack self-awareness: psychologically, they never look at themselves in a mirror because if they do, they would realize that they are very ugly indeed.
Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
Sunday, December 16, 2012
D for day and N for night
D for day and N for night
That's how I think of you
Ever since you were out of sight
I wonder if you also think of me, too
And if you do, would you let me know
Don't be shy, seize the day
Don't let the magic go
Let your feelings flow in this month of May
Wissai
December 16, 2012
That's how I think of you
Ever since you were out of sight
I wonder if you also think of me, too
And if you do, would you let me know
Don't be shy, seize the day
Don't let the magic go
Let your feelings flow in this month of May
Wissai
December 16, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Baptism
Sandy McCord’s poem, Bath II:
I was baptized in books: not a tepid
Methodist sprinkling but a full
immersion, not in the static pool
of a marble font but in a roiling
stream of ink, of words, of thought;
and I was saved.
I was baptized in books: not a tepid
Methodist sprinkling but a full
immersion, not in the static pool
of a marble font but in a roiling
stream of ink, of words, of thought;
and I was saved.
Winter’s Philosophers
Winter’s Philosophers
Charles Simic
“Everyone who thinks is unhappy,” says Sergei Dovlatov in one of his stories. Some crows caw all day, some have nothing to say. I see one of them pace back and forth on my lawn the way I’ve seen Hamlet do on stage. Whatever is bothering him seems insoluble, too much for one crow to figure out on his own. Still, no harm trying, I suppose, even with the racket his relatives are making as they fly to and fro, as if the road they oversee is not covered only with fallen leaves and patches of ice, but also with fresh road kill.
*
My late father, who had something good to say about most things, used to console people who complained about bitter cold weather by reminding them of the joys of a hot bowl of soup and of a strong drink being made permissible early in the day by the extraordinary circumstances. In addition, he claimed that the cold concentrates the mind. The moment we step outdoors, we do what we have to do with uncommon intelligence and dispatch, unlike those folks who can afford to sit in the shade on some Mediterranean or Caribbean island. Once we lie down, time ceases to count and we can meditate on eternity, Cioran believed. History, he said, is the product of people who stand up and get busy. Can one be a dreamer or a dolt on the North Pole? My father had his doubts about that. How does Berlioz sound at forty below? How does Schumann? He never cared to find out.
*
If only Plato and Socrates had to scrape the ice off their windshields and deal with dead car batteries, I was going to add, when the horrifying realization struck me that, despite our interminable New Hampshire winters and our supposedly heightened state of intelligence, we’ve never of late up here produced one philosopher that anyone would care to remember. So, this uncanny feeling that I have, when I get up in the middle of the night and tiptoe on bare feet down to the cold kitchen to peek at the thermometer outside, that I’m on the verge of a supreme insight, something worthy of Blaise Pascal contemplating the silence of the infinite universe, turns out to be all hooey. Well, perhaps not entirely: the one whose mind is clear senses himself free, a master of his destiny. Who says philosophy is incompatible with hard labor of self-preservation? When I’m shoveling snow off the roof I sneak admiring glances at myself as if I were Nietzsche’s superman.
*
Still, I can’t help but feel that I’m surrounded by deep thinkers: the young cow standing puzzled in a field covered with first snow; the mutt I’ve been calling Schopenhauer, sighing at the end of his heavy chain, or the other one who reminds me of Karl Marx and who I saw bark at the police in their cruiser as they drove past his house. Even the lake about to freeze appears mute with indecision and lost in thought. As for cats, there must be at least a couple of Wittgensteins slinking around back porches in the vicinity and one large, long-haired black tabby who comes to rub himself against my leg now and then and whom I’ve named after Boethius, who wrote Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most popular books in Medieval Europe.
*
“No philosopher has ever influenced the attitudes of even the street he lived on,” Voltaire was reputed to have said. That’s not what I believe. With deep winter upon us and the weather growing colder, even the wood smoke out of the neighbors’ chimneys could be described as philosophizing. I can see it move its lips as it rises, telling the indifferent sky about our loneliness, the torment of our minds and passions which we keep secret from each other, and the wonder and pain of our mortality and of our eventual vanishing from this earth. It’s a kind of deep, cathedral-like quiet that precedes a snowfall. One looks with amazement at the bare trees, the gray daylight making its slow retreat across the bare fields, and inevitably recalls that Emily Dickinson poem in which she speaks of just such a winter afternoon—windless and cold, when an otherworldly light falls and shadows hold their breath—and of the hurt that it gives us for which we can find no scar, only a closer peek inside ourselves where the meanings and all the unanswered questions are.
January 4, 2011, 10 a.m.
Charles Simic
“Everyone who thinks is unhappy,” says Sergei Dovlatov in one of his stories. Some crows caw all day, some have nothing to say. I see one of them pace back and forth on my lawn the way I’ve seen Hamlet do on stage. Whatever is bothering him seems insoluble, too much for one crow to figure out on his own. Still, no harm trying, I suppose, even with the racket his relatives are making as they fly to and fro, as if the road they oversee is not covered only with fallen leaves and patches of ice, but also with fresh road kill.
*
My late father, who had something good to say about most things, used to console people who complained about bitter cold weather by reminding them of the joys of a hot bowl of soup and of a strong drink being made permissible early in the day by the extraordinary circumstances. In addition, he claimed that the cold concentrates the mind. The moment we step outdoors, we do what we have to do with uncommon intelligence and dispatch, unlike those folks who can afford to sit in the shade on some Mediterranean or Caribbean island. Once we lie down, time ceases to count and we can meditate on eternity, Cioran believed. History, he said, is the product of people who stand up and get busy. Can one be a dreamer or a dolt on the North Pole? My father had his doubts about that. How does Berlioz sound at forty below? How does Schumann? He never cared to find out.
*
If only Plato and Socrates had to scrape the ice off their windshields and deal with dead car batteries, I was going to add, when the horrifying realization struck me that, despite our interminable New Hampshire winters and our supposedly heightened state of intelligence, we’ve never of late up here produced one philosopher that anyone would care to remember. So, this uncanny feeling that I have, when I get up in the middle of the night and tiptoe on bare feet down to the cold kitchen to peek at the thermometer outside, that I’m on the verge of a supreme insight, something worthy of Blaise Pascal contemplating the silence of the infinite universe, turns out to be all hooey. Well, perhaps not entirely: the one whose mind is clear senses himself free, a master of his destiny. Who says philosophy is incompatible with hard labor of self-preservation? When I’m shoveling snow off the roof I sneak admiring glances at myself as if I were Nietzsche’s superman.
*
Still, I can’t help but feel that I’m surrounded by deep thinkers: the young cow standing puzzled in a field covered with first snow; the mutt I’ve been calling Schopenhauer, sighing at the end of his heavy chain, or the other one who reminds me of Karl Marx and who I saw bark at the police in their cruiser as they drove past his house. Even the lake about to freeze appears mute with indecision and lost in thought. As for cats, there must be at least a couple of Wittgensteins slinking around back porches in the vicinity and one large, long-haired black tabby who comes to rub himself against my leg now and then and whom I’ve named after Boethius, who wrote Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most popular books in Medieval Europe.
*
“No philosopher has ever influenced the attitudes of even the street he lived on,” Voltaire was reputed to have said. That’s not what I believe. With deep winter upon us and the weather growing colder, even the wood smoke out of the neighbors’ chimneys could be described as philosophizing. I can see it move its lips as it rises, telling the indifferent sky about our loneliness, the torment of our minds and passions which we keep secret from each other, and the wonder and pain of our mortality and of our eventual vanishing from this earth. It’s a kind of deep, cathedral-like quiet that precedes a snowfall. One looks with amazement at the bare trees, the gray daylight making its slow retreat across the bare fields, and inevitably recalls that Emily Dickinson poem in which she speaks of just such a winter afternoon—windless and cold, when an otherworldly light falls and shadows hold their breath—and of the hurt that it gives us for which we can find no scar, only a closer peek inside ourselves where the meanings and all the unanswered questions are.
January 4, 2011, 10 a.m.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Maturity and Cynicsm
When self-pity colludes with self-loathing and solipsism sojourns with stupidity, the only possible outcome is insufferable schmaltz (exaggerated sentimentalism).
Reading his efforts at self-expression is like watching a leprous lemur monkey try to describe a tiger, using only its long prehensile tail.
What he's saying isn't really terrible. It's so...average and boring. There are no sparks, no fires. Only smoke and a lot of noise.
If I have to speak, it has to be something very compelling and unavoidable.
So many stupid, power-hungry and pompous assholes In this world. And the way they express themselves is so abhorrent that I am glad I was not born like one of those fucking animals. Some humans are absolute scum and deserve to be exterminated like vermin. Granted, I have incurred quite a number (no more than 4 ) of moral injuries to innocent victims, of which I deeply regret, I won't lose sleep if I commit acts of extreme brutality to those scumbags who have hurt me and shown no signs of repentance or regret.
Reading his efforts at self-expression is like watching a leprous lemur monkey try to describe a tiger, using only its long prehensile tail.
What he's saying isn't really terrible. It's so...average and boring. There are no sparks, no fires. Only smoke and a lot of noise.
If I have to speak, it has to be something very compelling and unavoidable.
So many stupid, power-hungry and pompous assholes In this world. And the way they express themselves is so abhorrent that I am glad I was not born like one of those fucking animals. Some humans are absolute scum and deserve to be exterminated like vermin. Granted, I have incurred quite a number (no more than 4 ) of moral injuries to innocent victims, of which I deeply regret, I won't lose sleep if I commit acts of extreme brutality to those scumbags who have hurt me and shown no signs of repentance or regret.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Người đi kẻ ở
Người đi kẻ ở
Trần Vấn Lệ
Đưa người tới tận sân bay,
ôm chưa chặt nhỉ nên tay đã lìa!
Người ơi người ở đừng dìa…
nói, nghe như thể bên lề núi sông!
Nói, nghe như thể với lòng,
mình thôi, người ấy hết cùng đứng bên!
Người từng bước bước đi lên,
cái thang cuốn lại trời trên tầng trời…
Mình đi mỗi bước xa người,
mỗi khung cửa mở thấy hoài sẽ quên…
Đưa người, người đã ngồi yên,
chắc chi con mắt còn nghiêng ngó mình?
Bao nhiêu năm giá băng tình,
người hôm nay ấm, phần mình thì sao?
Quê nhà con rạch cái ao
mình nghe róc rách nước cào trái tim.
Bao nhiêu năm có đi tìm,
sân bay này thật sự chìm trong mơ!
Người về, mình lại bơ vơ,
một hiên quán lạnh ngồi chờ ngày trôi!
Bây giờ người đã xa xôi,
mai đi xuống phố và ngồi ở đâu?
Lá me bay phớt qua đầu
có đưa tay hứng giùm sầu cho ai…
Sài Gòn ơi…
Lá me bay…
Nhớ em tóc gió thổi ngày tôi đi…
Sân bay này chỗ ai về
mà tôi sao vẫn ngoài lề Quê Hương?
Em à, chín nhớ mười thương,
chín con trăng nữa mùa sương tuyết nào?
Tôi về hay chỉ chiêm bao
hôn em tóc mướt mưa ào ào mưa…
One is gone, the other stays behind
I said goodbye to you at the airport
My embrace wasn't tight enough to deter your departure
Please, please don't go, I was pleading
I listened to my pleading as if we were standing
By the river edge in the shadow of a mountain!
I talked to you as if I were talking to my soul
But I realized we would soon
No longer stand close to each other!
You stepped on the escalator
It took you away from me farther and farther
Every step I take of my own moves me away from you
Every open door I pass by, would they help me get used to your absence...
Once sitting down in the aeroplane
Did you once at my direction cast a glance?
After years of cold, icy lonely nights
You now feel cozy, what about me?
As I walk by the creek and the pond in our village
The water is making a sound as if it were scratching at my heart
After years of my searching
This airport is going to sink into my dreams!
You have left, and I feel lost
As I sit under the cold roof of a food stand
Waiting for time pass away and the day draw to a close!
Now you're so far away
What will I do in town and where will I sit?
The tamarind leaves are falling on me
Would someone catch some sorrow away from me?
Oh Saigon, the tamarind leaves are falling
They remind me of the day your hair was flying in the wind as I walked away...
Is this airport where you will come back
Where I stand by the edge of my Homeland?
Oh honey, I miss and love you to distraction
In nine months there will be misty snow
I will be back here or is it only a dream
In which I kiss your wet hair in an unending rain...
Rough and quick translation by
Wissai
November 4, 2012
Trần Vấn Lệ
Đưa người tới tận sân bay,
ôm chưa chặt nhỉ nên tay đã lìa!
Người ơi người ở đừng dìa…
nói, nghe như thể bên lề núi sông!
Nói, nghe như thể với lòng,
mình thôi, người ấy hết cùng đứng bên!
Người từng bước bước đi lên,
cái thang cuốn lại trời trên tầng trời…
Mình đi mỗi bước xa người,
mỗi khung cửa mở thấy hoài sẽ quên…
Đưa người, người đã ngồi yên,
chắc chi con mắt còn nghiêng ngó mình?
Bao nhiêu năm giá băng tình,
người hôm nay ấm, phần mình thì sao?
Quê nhà con rạch cái ao
mình nghe róc rách nước cào trái tim.
Bao nhiêu năm có đi tìm,
sân bay này thật sự chìm trong mơ!
Người về, mình lại bơ vơ,
một hiên quán lạnh ngồi chờ ngày trôi!
Bây giờ người đã xa xôi,
mai đi xuống phố và ngồi ở đâu?
Lá me bay phớt qua đầu
có đưa tay hứng giùm sầu cho ai…
Sài Gòn ơi…
Lá me bay…
Nhớ em tóc gió thổi ngày tôi đi…
Sân bay này chỗ ai về
mà tôi sao vẫn ngoài lề Quê Hương?
Em à, chín nhớ mười thương,
chín con trăng nữa mùa sương tuyết nào?
Tôi về hay chỉ chiêm bao
hôn em tóc mướt mưa ào ào mưa…
One is gone, the other stays behind
I said goodbye to you at the airport
My embrace wasn't tight enough to deter your departure
Please, please don't go, I was pleading
I listened to my pleading as if we were standing
By the river edge in the shadow of a mountain!
I talked to you as if I were talking to my soul
But I realized we would soon
No longer stand close to each other!
You stepped on the escalator
It took you away from me farther and farther
Every step I take of my own moves me away from you
Every open door I pass by, would they help me get used to your absence...
Once sitting down in the aeroplane
Did you once at my direction cast a glance?
After years of cold, icy lonely nights
You now feel cozy, what about me?
As I walk by the creek and the pond in our village
The water is making a sound as if it were scratching at my heart
After years of my searching
This airport is going to sink into my dreams!
You have left, and I feel lost
As I sit under the cold roof of a food stand
Waiting for time pass away and the day draw to a close!
Now you're so far away
What will I do in town and where will I sit?
The tamarind leaves are falling on me
Would someone catch some sorrow away from me?
Oh Saigon, the tamarind leaves are falling
They remind me of the day your hair was flying in the wind as I walked away...
Is this airport where you will come back
Where I stand by the edge of my Homeland?
Oh honey, I miss and love you to distraction
In nine months there will be misty snow
I will be back here or is it only a dream
In which I kiss your wet hair in an unending rain...
Rough and quick translation by
Wissai
November 4, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Death
So the doctor told me that it was all my fault. The fault wasn't unique. It is very common among men. They have a thing about macho and don't have regular physicals or go to see a physician if they don't feel good, unless they are really sick and close to death. By that time, it often is too late. Such was the case with me. I was diagnosed of having advanced liver cancer and given three months, at the most, to live.
The news came yesterday. What should I do with my perennial "ire" now? Should I go on a killing spree as I always fantasized or should I just be suddenly "enlightened" and work on my upcoming departure from this world? One thing I know for sure, however, is that my contempt for several assholes remains undiminished.
As I lie dying for a burst and balm of comfort and solace, a strange desire overtakes me: I want to be able to read German and Chinese and grasp a sound theory about human language before I heave my last breath. So you can see that I remain impractical to the very end. A man without pride would have a hard time to go through life to the end.
I also remain disdainful of the stupid escape in the notions of salvation and redemption after I die. Such ridiculous notions are for ignoramuses and cowards for whom I have shown a strong contempt all my life since they are not quite developed as real humans. They are slaves to spiritual peddlers and charlatans.
"Death is a sound sleep undisturbed by foolish dreams."
"Death is a chute to hell."
"Nothing of the kind. Hell dies with you."
Henrietta asked me why I didn't go after Tannin. My reply was that I had a sense of honor and dignity and that Love was forever elusive to me. Too many assholes and not enough noble souls in this world. The more women I know, the more disappointed I am of the fair sex. Most of them are bitches and my natural affection for human females has decreased sharply because of them.
Ms. Epistolary's antics just opened my eyes to new vistas of human depravity while Tannin is my untouchable lover and my tutor in unbearable fantasy and hope. Dreams are unresolved feelings. In these dying days of mine, I look forward to each morning when the amber rays of the sun reach the earth, telling me that I have at least one more day to extract the meaning out of my existence and to derive the pleasure of watching ignorant fools at work.
(to be continued)
The news came yesterday. What should I do with my perennial "ire" now? Should I go on a killing spree as I always fantasized or should I just be suddenly "enlightened" and work on my upcoming departure from this world? One thing I know for sure, however, is that my contempt for several assholes remains undiminished.
As I lie dying for a burst and balm of comfort and solace, a strange desire overtakes me: I want to be able to read German and Chinese and grasp a sound theory about human language before I heave my last breath. So you can see that I remain impractical to the very end. A man without pride would have a hard time to go through life to the end.
I also remain disdainful of the stupid escape in the notions of salvation and redemption after I die. Such ridiculous notions are for ignoramuses and cowards for whom I have shown a strong contempt all my life since they are not quite developed as real humans. They are slaves to spiritual peddlers and charlatans.
"Death is a sound sleep undisturbed by foolish dreams."
"Death is a chute to hell."
"Nothing of the kind. Hell dies with you."
Henrietta asked me why I didn't go after Tannin. My reply was that I had a sense of honor and dignity and that Love was forever elusive to me. Too many assholes and not enough noble souls in this world. The more women I know, the more disappointed I am of the fair sex. Most of them are bitches and my natural affection for human females has decreased sharply because of them.
Ms. Epistolary's antics just opened my eyes to new vistas of human depravity while Tannin is my untouchable lover and my tutor in unbearable fantasy and hope. Dreams are unresolved feelings. In these dying days of mine, I look forward to each morning when the amber rays of the sun reach the earth, telling me that I have at least one more day to extract the meaning out of my existence and to derive the pleasure of watching ignorant fools at work.
(to be continued)
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