Tuesday, April 30, 2019
THOMAS BERNHARD from The Loser
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
Monday, April 29, 2019
DENISE LEVERTOV - "Aware"
When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I'll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.
When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I'll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Saturday, April 27, 2019
MARK DOTY from Dog Years
When we talk about this unconditional acceptance, we are really describing a fixity of devotion, a deep reliability. The source of this is, in part, the dog’s lack of agency; they really cannot do otherwise than to love us, can they? The contract that we enter into is one that dogs take with ultimate seriousness.
People may choose - often, sadly, do - to abandon them, to relinquish our side of the bargain, but dogs do not regard this as a choice; they intend, one might say, to honor this pact with all their hearts, or perhaps the less anthrocentric way to phrase that would be to say that in part a dog simply is an intention to be with you, to be conjoined.
Thus they are the pattern of fidelity - Fido! - the very template of enduring loyalty, of love without any prospect of abandonment.
When we talk about this unconditional acceptance, we are really describing a fixity of devotion, a deep reliability. The source of this is, in part, the dog’s lack of agency; they really cannot do otherwise than to love us, can they? The contract that we enter into is one that dogs take with ultimate seriousness.
People may choose - often, sadly, do - to abandon them, to relinquish our side of the bargain, but dogs do not regard this as a choice; they intend, one might say, to honor this pact with all their hearts, or perhaps the less anthrocentric way to phrase that would be to say that in part a dog simply is an intention to be with you, to be conjoined.
Thus they are the pattern of fidelity - Fido! - the very template of enduring loyalty, of love without any prospect of abandonment.
Friday, April 26, 2019
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS from A Report From The Bunker
Nobody’s busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don’t worry about what they’re doing in South Korea and places like that.
It’s like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living at the expense of people all over the world who’ve got a lower standard of living? Most Americans would say yes.
Now we must ask the question, are you content to enjoy your political freedom at the expense of people who are less free? I think they would also say yes.
Nobody’s busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don’t worry about what they’re doing in South Korea and places like that.
It’s like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living at the expense of people all over the world who’ve got a lower standard of living? Most Americans would say yes.
Now we must ask the question, are you content to enjoy your political freedom at the expense of people who are less free? I think they would also say yes.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
RYŌKAN
Slopes
of Mount Kugami –
in the mountain’s shade
a hut beneath the trees –
how many years
it’s been my home?
The time comes
to take leave of it –
my thoughts wilt
like summer grasses,
I wander back and forth
like the evening star –
till that hut of mine
is hidden from sight,
till that grove of trees
can no longer be seen,
at each bend
of the long road,
at every turning,
I turn to look back
in the direction of that mountain
Slopes
of Mount Kugami –
in the mountain’s shade
a hut beneath the trees –
how many years
it’s been my home?
The time comes
to take leave of it –
my thoughts wilt
like summer grasses,
I wander back and forth
like the evening star –
till that hut of mine
is hidden from sight,
till that grove of trees
can no longer be seen,
at each bend
of the long road,
at every turning,
I turn to look back
in the direction of that mountain
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Monday, April 22, 2019
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Saturday, April 20, 2019
WILLIAM STAFFORD - "Listening"
My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.
More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.
My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.
More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.
My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
Friday, April 19, 2019
LI BAI - “Cold Clear Spring at Nanyang”
A pity it is evening, yet
I do love the water of this spring
seeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making it
one with those who travel
the roads; I turn and face
the moon; sing it a song, then
listen to the sound of the wind
amongst the pines.
A pity it is evening, yet
I do love the water of this spring
seeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making it
one with those who travel
the roads; I turn and face
the moon; sing it a song, then
listen to the sound of the wind
amongst the pines.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
GWENDOLYN BROOKS - "A Sunset of the City"
Kathleen Eileen
Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.
It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.
It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.
It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.
I am cold in this cold house this house
Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.
Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.
Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.
Kathleen Eileen
Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.
It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.
It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.
It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.
I am cold in this cold house this house
Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.
Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.
Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
ERICH FROMM
Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.
Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Monday, April 15, 2019
“The Blue House”
It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.
It has stood for more than eighty summers. Its timber has been impregnated, four times with joy and three times with sorrow. When someone who has lived in the house dies it is repainted. The dead person paints it himself, without a brush, from the inside.
On the other side is open terrain. Formerly a garden, now wilderness. A still surf of weed, pagodas of weed, an unfurling body of text, Upanishades of weed, a Viking fleet of weed, dragon heads, lances, an empire of weed.
Above the overgrown garden flutters the shadow of a boomerang, thrown again and again. It is related to someone who lived in the house long before my time. Almost a child. An impulse issues from him, a thought, a thought of will: “create…draw. ..” In order to escape his destiny in time.
The house resembles a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness which grew forth because someone prematurely renounced the charge of being a child. Open the doors, enter! Inside unrest dwells in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed there hangs an amateur painting representing a ship with seventeen sails, rough sea and a wind which the gilded frame cannot subdue.
It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.
A motor far out on the water extends the horizon of the summer night. Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We do not actually know it, but we sense it: our life has a sister vessel which plies an entirely different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.
It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.
It has stood for more than eighty summers. Its timber has been impregnated, four times with joy and three times with sorrow. When someone who has lived in the house dies it is repainted. The dead person paints it himself, without a brush, from the inside.
On the other side is open terrain. Formerly a garden, now wilderness. A still surf of weed, pagodas of weed, an unfurling body of text, Upanishades of weed, a Viking fleet of weed, dragon heads, lances, an empire of weed.
Above the overgrown garden flutters the shadow of a boomerang, thrown again and again. It is related to someone who lived in the house long before my time. Almost a child. An impulse issues from him, a thought, a thought of will: “create…draw. ..” In order to escape his destiny in time.
The house resembles a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness which grew forth because someone prematurely renounced the charge of being a child. Open the doors, enter! Inside unrest dwells in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed there hangs an amateur painting representing a ship with seventeen sails, rough sea and a wind which the gilded frame cannot subdue.
It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.
A motor far out on the water extends the horizon of the summer night. Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We do not actually know it, but we sense it: our life has a sister vessel which plies an entirely different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Saturday, April 13, 2019
MICHAEL LONGLEY - “Swans Mating”
Even now I wish that you had been there
Sitting beside me on the riverbank:
The cob and his pen sailing in rhythm
Until their small heads met and the final
Heraldic moment dissolved in ripples.
This was a marriage and a baptism,
A holding of breath, nearly a drowning,
Wings spread wide for balance where he trod,
Her feathers full of water and her neck
Under the water like a bar of light.
Even now I wish that you had been there
Sitting beside me on the riverbank:
The cob and his pen sailing in rhythm
Until their small heads met and the final
Heraldic moment dissolved in ripples.
This was a marriage and a baptism,
A holding of breath, nearly a drowning,
Wings spread wide for balance where he trod,
Her feathers full of water and her neck
Under the water like a bar of light.
Friday, April 12, 2019
Thursday, April 11, 2019
W. S. MERWYN - “The Silence of the Mine Canaries”
The bats have not flowered
for years now in the crevice
of the tower wall when the long twilight
of spring has seeped across it
as the west light brought back
the colors of parting
the furred buds have not hung there
waking among their dark petals
before sailing out blind along their own echoes
whose high infallible cadenzas only
they could hear completely and could ride
to take over at that hour
from the swallows gliding
ever since daybreak over the garden
from their nests under the eaves
skimming above the house and the hillside pastures
their voices glittering in their exalted tongue
who knows how long now since they have been seen
and the robins have gone from the barn
where the cows spent the summer days
though they stayed long after the cows were gone
the flocks of five kinds of tits have not come again
the blue tits that nested each year
in the wall where their young
could be heard deep in the stones by the window
calling Here Here have not returned
the marks of their feet are still there on the stone
of their doorsill that does not know
what it is missing
the cuckoo has not been heard
again this May
nor for many a year the nightjar
nor the mistle thrush song thrush whitethroat
the blackcap that instructed Mendelssohn
I have seen them
I have stood and listened
I was young
they were singing of youth
not knowing that they were singing for us
The bats have not flowered
for years now in the crevice
of the tower wall when the long twilight
of spring has seeped across it
as the west light brought back
the colors of parting
the furred buds have not hung there
waking among their dark petals
before sailing out blind along their own echoes
whose high infallible cadenzas only
they could hear completely and could ride
to take over at that hour
from the swallows gliding
ever since daybreak over the garden
from their nests under the eaves
skimming above the house and the hillside pastures
their voices glittering in their exalted tongue
who knows how long now since they have been seen
and the robins have gone from the barn
where the cows spent the summer days
though they stayed long after the cows were gone
the flocks of five kinds of tits have not come again
the blue tits that nested each year
in the wall where their young
could be heard deep in the stones by the window
calling Here Here have not returned
the marks of their feet are still there on the stone
of their doorsill that does not know
what it is missing
the cuckoo has not been heard
again this May
nor for many a year the nightjar
nor the mistle thrush song thrush whitethroat
the blackcap that instructed Mendelssohn
I have seen them
I have stood and listened
I was young
they were singing of youth
not knowing that they were singing for us
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Monday, April 8, 2019
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
____________________
I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hate in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of that. And I think it should be - religion - treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.
So when I say that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.
It says we can’t be moral without “Big Brother,” without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another without this. It means we must be afraid.
We must also be forced to love someone whom we fear - the essence of sado-masochism, the essence of abjection, the essence of the Master/Slave relationship. And that it knows death is coming, and can’t wait to bring it on.
I say that is Evil.
And though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and this ultimate stupidity.
I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hate in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of that. And I think it should be - religion - treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.
So when I say that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.
It says we can’t be moral without “Big Brother,” without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another without this. It means we must be afraid.
We must also be forced to love someone whom we fear - the essence of sado-masochism, the essence of abjection, the essence of the Master/Slave relationship. And that it knows death is coming, and can’t wait to bring it on.
I say that is Evil.
And though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and this ultimate stupidity.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
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Saturday, April 6, 2019
KO UN - “New Year’s Full Moon”
Bitter cold day, the new year’s first full moon,
a special day.
One housewife, busy from early morning,
knowing that beggars will be coming by,
puts out a pot of five-grain rice in anticipation
on the stone mortar
that stands beside her brush-wood gate,
with a single side-dish of plantain-shoots.
Soon, an ancient beggar comes breezing up,
makes ready to spin a yarn but finally
just pockets the rice and goes on his way.
If only we had 360 more days like today in a year!
His bag is soon bulging.
As he is leaving the village, his turn made,
he runs into another beggar:
glad encounter!
You’ve no call to go there, I’ve done em all!
Let’s us celebrate a Fool Moon too!
Snapping dried twigs, they make a fire
to thaw themselves by, then
producing hunks of rice from this house and that,
the two beggars set to,
choking, laughing with mouths full.
Soon bands of magpies hear the news
and flock flapping around.
Bitter cold day, the new year’s first full moon,
a special day.
One housewife, busy from early morning,
knowing that beggars will be coming by,
puts out a pot of five-grain rice in anticipation
on the stone mortar
that stands beside her brush-wood gate,
with a single side-dish of plantain-shoots.
Soon, an ancient beggar comes breezing up,
makes ready to spin a yarn but finally
just pockets the rice and goes on his way.
If only we had 360 more days like today in a year!
His bag is soon bulging.
As he is leaving the village, his turn made,
he runs into another beggar:
glad encounter!
You’ve no call to go there, I’ve done em all!
Let’s us celebrate a Fool Moon too!
Snapping dried twigs, they make a fire
to thaw themselves by, then
producing hunks of rice from this house and that,
the two beggars set to,
choking, laughing with mouths full.
Soon bands of magpies hear the news
and flock flapping around.
Friday, April 5, 2019
Thursday, April 4, 2019
THOMAS MERTON from Disputed Questions
But to love another as a person we must begin by granting him his own autonomy and identity as a person. We have to love him for what he is in himself, and not for what he is to us. We have to love him for his own good, not for the good we get out of him. And this is impossible unless we are capable of a love which ‘transforms’ us, so to speak, into the other person, making us able to see things a he sees them, love what he loves, experience the deeper realities of his own life as if they were our own. Without sacrifice, such a transformation is utterly impossible. But unless we are capable of this kind of transformation ‘into the other’ while remaining ourselves, we are not yet capable of a fully human existence.
But to love another as a person we must begin by granting him his own autonomy and identity as a person. We have to love him for what he is in himself, and not for what he is to us. We have to love him for his own good, not for the good we get out of him. And this is impossible unless we are capable of a love which ‘transforms’ us, so to speak, into the other person, making us able to see things a he sees them, love what he loves, experience the deeper realities of his own life as if they were our own. Without sacrifice, such a transformation is utterly impossible. But unless we are capable of this kind of transformation ‘into the other’ while remaining ourselves, we are not yet capable of a fully human existence.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
DakhaBrakha from Free Ukraine
Live in the KEXP Studio - Seattle, WA - April 23, 2017
- Vesna
- Carpathian Rap
- Monakh
- Baby
NINA GARENETSKA
Vokals, cello, bass drum
MARKO HALANEVYCH
Vokals, darbuka, tabla, didjeridoo, accordion, trombone
IRYNA KOVALENKO
Vokals, djembe, bass drums, accordion, percussion, bugay, zgaleyka, piano
OLENA TSYBULSKA
Vokals, bass drums, percussion, garmoshka
Host: Darek Mazzone
Concert "Hop Project" live in Ivano-Frankivsk Philharmonic on November 12, 2012
DakhaBrakha (UA)
Nina GARENETSKA - vocals, cello, bass drum
Iryna KOVALENKO - vocals, jambe, percussion, bass drum, strings, bagpipes, flute, bull, accordion
Olena TSYBULSKA - vocals, percussion, bass drum, accordion
Marko GALANEVICH - vocals, darbuka, tabla, didgeridoo, trombone, accordion
PortMone (BE)
Oleksiy VIANCHUK - bass guitar
Serhiy KRAVCHENKO - percussion, drama machine
Oleksiy VORSOBA - accordion
DenFilm Media Studio
Denis OVCHAR - cameras, installation
-----
Концерт "Хмелева Project" наживо в Івано-Франківській філармонії 12.11.2012
ДахаБраха (UA)
Ніна ГАРЕНЕЦЬКА - вокал, віолончель, басовий барабан
Ірина КОВАЛЕНКО - вокал, джамбе, перкусія, басовий барабан, жалійка, волинка, флейта, бугай, акордеон
Олена ЦИБУЛЬСЬКА - вокал, перкусія, басовий барабан, гармошка
Марко ГАЛАНЕВИЧ - вокал, дарбука, табла, діджеріду, тромбон, акордеон
PortMone (BE)
Олексій ВЯНЧУК - бас-гітара
Сергій КРАВЧЕНКО - перкусія, драм-машина
Олексій ВОРСОБА - акордеон
DenFilm media-studio
Денис ОВЧАР - камери, монтаж
ZBIGNIEW HERBERT - “Dream Language”
when I sleep
like everyone
before dawn rises
I wind the clock
I sink on a white
ship
waves wash me
from the white ship
I look for keys
I kill a dragon
which laughs
I light a lamp
but above all
I chatter
I suspect that
we all dream in images
but I spin
all these crazy yarns
as if sleeping
in a mound
of narrative
but that is what
dream language
should be like
a fine language
with a long arm
airy
it flouts grammar
phonetic principles
a language of mockery
a language I don’t know
when I sleep
in the cat’s place
the bronze body
is pierced by a shudder
we moan like a melody
when I sleep
in the cat’s place
sometimes my body
is pierced by a shudder
a melody like a moan
audible to the ear
at such times
dream language
closes itself off
independent
of weariness
pure
a language of sweet dread
when I sleep
like everyone
before dawn rises
I wind the clock
I sink on a white
ship
waves wash me
from the white ship
I look for keys
I kill a dragon
which laughs
I light a lamp
but above all
I chatter
I suspect that
we all dream in images
but I spin
all these crazy yarns
as if sleeping
in a mound
of narrative
but that is what
dream language
should be like
a fine language
with a long arm
airy
it flouts grammar
phonetic principles
a language of mockery
a language I don’t know
when I sleep
in the cat’s place
the bronze body
is pierced by a shudder
we moan like a melody
when I sleep
in the cat’s place
sometimes my body
is pierced by a shudder
a melody like a moan
audible to the ear
at such times
dream language
closes itself off
independent
of weariness
pure
a language of sweet dread
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