Wednesday 27 February 2013

Soldiers are society


"Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it."

Paul Fussell, historian, author, and professor (1924-2012)

Tuesday 26 February 2013

Envy



He was such a nice boy! I never thought such an horrible thing would happen.
It's all just so sad. And dark.
The world's mad, mad I tell you.
Every day I watched her buy a sandwich from the shops across the street
– always smiling she was – and then head to the park.
She was always smartly dressed she was. And open.
Them boys who hang around the pound store she always made 'em turn them head rounds.
The lady from Oxfam said she always dropped in on her way to the park to put a penny in – mind ye, penny's a way o' saying she dropped a coin more like she was.
I always thought she was like I was when I was young like her, only she was prettier. And neat.
Shame people say. It's all so horrible what happened.
Her so young and all. Terrible! Terrible.
She was all I could think of,
She was all them girls dream of.
She was that and more. We was so shocked when we heard.
How could no one see what was happening right under our noses? Are we so blind?
Poor boy. Poor boy. And us all thinking him a pity.
I don't know how he must've felt but it mustn't've been pretty.
Betty I think her name was.
One can't play some games.
One can't be some things.
Or life's not worth living.

Monday 25 February 2013

Jealousy



I am consumed with jealousy. I cannot think. I cannot think clearly.
She could be on her own; she could be with friends. She could be somewhere new; she could be at work; she could be feeding the squirrels with her sandwich during her lunch break. She eats so little. She should eat more.
She could be at a bar, snogging a drunken man, a sober man; she could be drunk herself.
She could be on the phone with her parents, telling them of her weekend in Brighton. She could be on the phone with her brother, telling him of the problems with her computer. She could be chatting over the sales with her friend Sarah.
She could plan to meet her ex.
She could have chosen that dress because she heard on the radio the day would be sunny. She could have chosen it because she fancies it. She could have chosen it because it was a present to her.
She could be wearing it because men look more intently at her. Some crane their neck.
She could be jogging; she could be doing her grocery shopping; she could be taking a shower.
She could be jealous too, and not willing to speak with me.
She could think me an idiot. She could think I'm pathetic. She could think I'm hopelessly in love with her.
She could just be out for dinner with her friends. She could be looking at them only. She could shut herself to the world outside. She could rebuke every suitor, every gazer, every playboy in town, in the world. She could open her arms to them, make them happy and make me sad.
She could have dirty thoughts, sweaty reveries of her having sex in the toilets of a bar, or in a car, with strangers, with colleagues, with her ex, with her friend Sarah, with me.
She could dream of worse things. She could stay with me because she's happy, because she feels secure, because she has no one else on her list.
She could be anywhere else I'd find fault with this.
She could be on her own, minding her own business, I'd find fault with this.
Everything she does sounds suspicious. Everything she says, wears, smells, buys, eats, seems suspicious. Everywhere she goes. Everyone she meets, calls, chats with. My life, because of her, is a hell on earth.
She could be with me, forever. She could think of me only. I could be the only thing on her mind, all day long. She could be with me, but ultimately I'd find fault with this too.
I am consumed with jealousy, and every day I watch her kiss her boyfriend goodbye on the doorstep to her house.

Mayhap



"When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.""
Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)


Friday 22 February 2013

No other choice


"We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us."

Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), rhetorician (c. 35-100)

Snow din



The snow is falling
falling falling
and I wish I had the guts to stop it
stop it and lashing, lashing
at'em with a French double bass bow
from the bottom of my pit.
Record-low
in the tank
in the bank
yet there is snow
falling
in peace peace peace
yet I hate the
coming from their mouth
for it means nothing
nothing nothing
comefroms the stage where actors
aren't actors playing actors but actors
playing playing pretending
being snowflakes on the swaying grass
embracing a bonnie lass
yet it's too late
too late
to dance.

What if we fell like snow?

Snowliness is the worst state of the mind –
shantih shantih shantih where art thee –
“I never meant to hurt them snowflakes, Officer, I swear!”
yet I lashed at'em relentlessly
the bow showed no dent, no wear and tear,
and the drysmeared blood on it most unkind
as it is of the irremovable sort
and the wind, the wind!
comes howling
reaches me there
at the bottom of my cistern
where we take turn
every century or so.
Mines comes now.
Mines comes now.
Mines comes now.
I have forgiven what it was I had to say
to the next reservoir-bound fey.
Perhaps the snowflakes will say.

Look up at the hollow shaft
watch the hollow specks
listen to the hollow voice
yet some would argue nothing's hollow.
How wrong they are. How wrong!
No throng, no raft, no decks, no choice,
but what dreams conceive
but what dreams allow.

For years I mistook die for dream
in we live as we die, alone
seemed to me a better line,
a better scream,
befitting the moans,
the whining,
the tears
we shed.
I was misled
waylaid
by the lure of the snow
damn the snow!
May it burn and drown
in the see o' darkness!

Pack the world in a nice urn
watch it burn, burn, burn
and the flare of the sun
has that effect upon the snow
chars the tea in my glazed flagon
blackens the base bow
ashens my brow
darkens my sweat
“I swear, I swear!”

Be hanged with'em!
Be hanged with'em!
The snowflakes gather
and chant, and dance.
and the world seems more hollow then it ever used to be.
More hollow, more hollow.
Aye, we can fall like snow.



From the floor of my underground tower
I can see but few hours
yet I feel them all, them all,
and sour is the frail
hurt in the small
of his offal.
Fingernails broke yesteryear
trying to dislodge the fray
I failed, I failed
dim is the snow, lightless is the day
they all fell like snow
down a hollow.

The hour is now.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Contentuous


"Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings."

Alice Miller, psychologist and author (1923-2010)

Tuesday 19 February 2013

One in a million


"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

Linus Pauling, chemist, peace activist, author, educator; Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize (1901-1994)

Monday 18 February 2013

Movements of translation


"Translating is writing"

Marguerite Yourcenar, writer (1903-1987)

Big up to my friend Seb who posted this on Facebook to mark what could be a big step in my life as a writer, and not only as a translator.

Translating a novel is an arduous job, and like writing it requires a healthy lifestyle, diligence and, more often than not, having to force oneself to settle to the desk and down to the task. About one fifth of the book is done so far, but the amount of work has been tenfold as I had to research a part of history and of the world I had only dim knowledge about: Persia in the eleventh century. I read roughly a hundred articles on different topics, people, regions, battles, events. It connected with what I already knew and this is perhaps what I like best in my job: connecting things. Because everything is connected. Even picking up a German-made map of Persia in the fourteenth century (in order to find the old names of the cities, burgs and rivers, which change through the centuries, of course) can make you connect what you know with what you learn. Knowledge is like a multi-layered spider's web, only way more intricately woven, and not plane, but three-dimensional, for the webs criss-cross. So is history, and the world.

Thursday 14 February 2013

Wednesday 13 February 2013

In order of appearance


"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."

William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, act 1, scene 1

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Dead tired



I feel nothing. I feel nothing.
Hovering in mid-air without a sound.
I feel nothing.
No earthly grasp. No bearing.
No beacon to light nor to follow.
The hem of my coat unseamed.
Unravelling. Raving. Reeling.
I feel hollow. I feel hollow.
Like a coreless trunk, a bleached coral.
A kite is what I most resemble now.
A kite in squalls paused in a painting.
One inch from toppling down yet not toppling down.
On the brink to. On the brink to.
And I am dead tired of it.
I wish I fell. I wish I fell.
Yes, I wish that.
Up to my fingertips stretched out,
My legs stiff and still, my back, rigid.
The shadow under me should draw a cross.
It should.
I am dead tired of this too.
Wasteland. All this is a wasteland; I am a wasteland.
I am like a puppet whose strings used to be attached.
Those strings were cut.
Yet this body of mine floats for he remembers.
No, he can never forget the strings.
What they did to him.
Those strings were cut, yet I hover.
I have never felt more human than now.
Time has no end, no beginning. Time does not exist.
Time cannot exist. We live on impressions.
We live in depressions. We like not the summits,
Where the sun shines the brightest.
If I could write my life
I would be a hate letter away
From vanishing.
I am that bone-tired.
My skeleton made of eggshell glass
Brittler than a tamarind flake.
Were my body broken perhaps
I would feel something.
Humans are like that, so people say.
None is beyond oblivion. Nothing is.
None is shatterproof. Nothing is.
Expecting our notion of time to yield
Is expecting a chicken to lay an asteroid:
There is a billion to one chance.
Pain and distrust percolate
The churches, the mosques, the synagogues,
The banks, the schools, the governments.
I am between the anvil and the hammer,
And this is tiring, straining, enraging me to death
Whilst I hover, paused as on photographs of old,
Sepiaed by survival,
Worn thin by unrealised expectation,
In the still furore of existence,
Unshod, haggard, halfway to everything,
As incapable of action as of inaction.
I am hollow, hollow, hollow.

Tuesday 5 February 2013

About (The) T/time(s)

 
"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."

Ben Hecht, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, director, and producer (1894-1964)
 

Saturday 2 February 2013

To hell


“Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else.”

Stephen Fry, Making History

Friday 1 February 2013

Caméra embarquée sur la ligne de front d'Alep




Caméra embarquée sur la ligne de front à Alep par lemondefr


Le reportage de Jérôme Sessini pour le Monde.fr dans l'avenue Dar Al-Ajazi, terrain de chasse des snipers, a obtenu ce vendredi le troisième prix du World press photo, dans la catégorie courtes vidéos Web.

Frying the Self


“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.” 




“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.” 



“You are who you are when nobody's watching.” 



“Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.”



“There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-minded failure to get a fucking grip.”



“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t.” 

Lichen

The blind woman next to me fidgeting in her seat visibly uneasy brushed my arm as if in need of help with her train ticket but she tricked ...