From Dailycandy
WHAT a lovely video from Nouvelle Vague. It’s one of those days when you just put the music on, listen to music, write a few letters, and drink a pot of darjeeling. Happy holidays, everyone.
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To watch: Persepolis, The Lives Of Others
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OMG. Nativity scenes with smores, geese and more. Also featuring a Bible belt.
End of the Questionnaire
by Dan Pagis, trans. Stephen Mitchell
Housing conditions: number of galaxy and star,
number of grave.
Are you alone or not.
What grass grows on top of you,
and from where (e.g. from your stomach, eyes, mouth, etc.)You have the right to appeal.
In the blank space below indicate
how long you have been awake and why are you surprised.
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In the terrible night, natural substance of all nights
by Fernando Pessoa, trans. Jonathan Griffin
In the terrible night, natural substance of all nights,
In the night of insomnia, natural substance of all my nights,
I remember, awake in tossing drowsiness,
I remember what I’ve done and what I might have done in life.
I remember, and an anguish
Spreads all through me like a physical chill or a fear,
The irreparable of my past — this is the real corpse.
All the other corpses may very well be illusion.
All the dead may be alive somewhere else,
All my own past moments may be existing somewhere
In the illusion of space and time,
In the falsity of elapsing.But what I was not, what I did not do, what I did not even dream;
What only now I see I ought to have done,
What only now I clearly see I ought to have been —
This is what is dead beyond all the Gods,
This — and it was, after all, the best of me — is what not even the Gods bring to life…If at a certain point
I had turned to the left instead of to the right;
If at a certain moment
I had said yes instead of no, or no instead of yes;
If in a certain conversation
I had hit on the phrases which only now, in this half-sleep, I elaborate —
If all this had been so,
I would be different today, and perhaps the whole universe
Would be insensibly brought to be different as well.But I did not turn in the direction which is irreparably lost,
Not turn or even think of turning, and only now I perceive it;
But I did not say no or say yes, and only now see what I didn’t say;
But the phrases I failed to say surge up in me at present, all of them,
Clear, inevitable, natural,
The conversation gathered in conclusively,
The whole matter resolved…
But only now what never was, nor indeed shall be, hurts.What I have missed definitely holds no sort of hope
In any sort of metaphysical system.
Maybe I could bring what I have dreamed to some other world,
But could I bring to another world the things I forgot to dream?
These, yes, the dreams going begging, are the real corpse.
I bury it in my heart for ever, for all time, for all universes,In this night when I can’t sleep and peace encircles me
Like a truth which I’ve no share in,
And the moonlight outside, like a hope I do not have, is invisible to me.
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Time and Again
by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. J. B. Leishman
Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.
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Wake up. Day calls you
by Pedro Salinas, trans. Willis Barnstone
Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your body’s metal.
Cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live.
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.
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Way
by Tristan Tzara, trans. Lee Harwood
what is this road that separates us
across which I hold out the hand of my thoughts
a flower is written at the end of each finger
and the end of the road is a flower which walks with you
(From here)
Alan Davies: [Bill answers a question about butterflies correctly] Press him on how the hell he knows that.
Stephen Fry: In Alan’s world, knowing something is a kind of freakish weird thing.
Bill Bailey: Welcome to my wonderful world of knowing. My wonderful world of looking up things in books.
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Q. Name a famous royal
A. Mail
Q. Name a number you have to memorise
A. 7
Q. Name something in the garden that’s green
A. Shed
Q. Name something that flies that doesn’t have an engine
A. A bicycle with wings
(From here)
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题目: 课本
小朋友写: 上课本来就很无聊。
老师评语:上课要专心
题目: 天才
小朋友写: 我３天才洗一次澡。
老师评语: 要每天洗才干净~~
(From here)
FUGU is overhyped. Wanted to see if my tongue would tingle from a bit of the poison, but it didn’t. Am quite glad it didn’t.
What’re really floating my boat these days are these dark and luscious plump cherries from Australia that reach their peak at around Christmas. Mmm.
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I’m hooked on Georges Simenon’s Maigret series, thanks to a recommendation. Dark crimes, Paris, spare prose, makes me think of black and white films with a grainy quality, subtle shadings, clever touches, Greene-like sensibilities, lives that take the wrong turnings at the crossroads, and so on.
Much as I admire how writers such as Winterson, say, can turn a phrase, I like how the tale is paramount in Simenon, and the manner of telling it economical and necessary. “Simenon limited himself to a vocabulary of 2,000 words, acting on the advice of Colette, who warned him against writing ‘beautiful sentences’. He is avowedly not a ‘poetic’ novelist, with all that term implies of self-conscious stylishness,” writes Paul Bailey in the intro to Inspector Cadaver.
There’re 76 novels in all, and I look forward to an orgy.
Also to read: Andrei Makine. Rick Riordan.
You know Sabrina? I identify most with the father.
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Weren’t people taught in the nursery to cover their mouths while they cough instead of spraying germs all around in tiny airborne droplets of mucus and saliva?
DOWN with a cold, and am drowsily huddled up reading Philip Reeve books (another recommendation from Minzhi) from the library, listening to Faye Wong CDs, and watching some disc on Lasik the Eye Centre sent to me.
And oh! You meet those people so full of life that they seem to spill over. Genuine, too, and full of the happiness that is real. Open-minded people with positive outlooks, people who’ve worked hard to get where they are — and the choices they made, when it would have been easier, and they chose harder. Lovely, lovely folk.
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Thanks for the birthday wishes and treats and presents, m’dears.
LOTS of feasting lately, weddings and parties and eating out and celebrations. Buying and wrapping prezzies too, and have sent out this year’s batch of cards. Life’s full — and I’m pretty much close to bursting.
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Wondering if I should take a friend up on his pufferfish offer.
It can be assumed that the fish would be much less popular if it were not so poisonous.
The Japanese poet Yosa Buson (1716–1783) expressed some of this feeling in a famous senryu:
I cannot see her tonight.
I have to give her up
So I will eat fugu.