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
Sunday, 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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