Monday, August 31, 2020

Kindness

 Kindness

- 1952-

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Read more

 

The Building Blocks of Personhood:

 The Building Blocks of Personhood:

“Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives — we are each of us unique.”

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Memories in Diaspora # 317

روزنگاری های دیاسپورا شماره 317 - جمعه ششم ماه جولای سال ۱۹۹۰- ساعت سه صبح – لس آنجلس

از ماشین که پیاده شدم ساعت شش و نیم بعد از ظهر بود. از دانشگاه یو سی ال ای تا خیابان وست وود پیاده راه رفتم. یکجوری می خواستم با زمان و با خودم تنها باشم. به ویترین مغازه ها نگاه کردم. به کتابفروشی ها. کتابی از مارگریت دوراس مرا به داخل کتابفروشی کشاند. کتاب Practicalities. مجموعه ای از گفت و گوهای دوراس با دوستش جروم بوژورJerome Beaujour، درباره دیدگاهها، افکار و حس های محرمانه ش درباره نویسنده بودن، فیلمساز بودن، مادر بودن و معشوق یک مرد بسیار جوان و همجنسگرا بودن.

 روزنگاری های دیاسپورا

A 16-Million-Year-Old Tree

 The sequoia tree slab is an invitation to begin thinking about a vast timescale that includes everything from fossils of armored amoebas to the great Tyrannosaurus rex.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Ray Bradbury on Writing, Emotion vs. Intelligence, and the Core of Creativity

 Ray Bradbury on Writing, Emotion vs. Intelligence, and the Core of Creativity

"On the formative influence of fairy tales and Greek myths

My aunt and my mother read to me when I was three from all the old Grimm fairy tales, Andersen fairy tales, and then all the Oz books as I was growing up… So by the time when I was ten or eleven, I was just full to the brim with these, and the Greek myths, and the Roman myths. And then, of course, I went to Sunday school, and then you take in the Christian myths, which are all fascinating in their own way… I guess I always tended to be a visual person, and myths are very visual, and I began to draw, and then I felt the urge to carry on these myths.

If I’m anything at all, I’m not really a science-fiction writer — I’m a writer of fairy tales and modern myths about technology."

 

Sunday, August 23, 2020

The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

In the late 1970s, Leonard Cohen sat down to write a song about god, sex, love, and other mysteries of human existence that bring us to our knees for one reason or another. The legendary singer-songwriter, who was in his early forties at the time, knew how to write a hit: He had penned "Suzanne," "Bird on the Wire," "Lover, Lover, Lover," and dozens of other songs for both himself and other popular artists of the time. But from the very beginning, there was something different about what would become "Hallelujah"—a song that took five years and an estimated 80 drafts for Cohen to complete.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

When Words Fail

 When Words Fail

In Samuel Beckett’s novel, The Unnamable, the anonymous narrator laments, “I’m all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their setting, no sky for their dispersing.”

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Memories in Diaspora # 316

 روزنگاری های دیاسپورا Memories in Diaspora # 316
“این خانه یک شعر است”
زن وارد خانه که شد، گفت: “خانه تمیز است. دیوارهایش سفید و لخت و عورند. بدون خرت و پرت هایی که به منظور خودنمایی بر چند میخ مخرب و ویرانگر آویزان شده باشند. لختی این دیوار از عریانی مجسمه بوسه رودن زیباتر است. مثل اینکه این خانه باید اسمی داشته باشد شاید هم عنوانی مثل: “این خانه یک شعر است”… چون مثل یک شعر خالص است.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

 I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!

Emily Dickinson

I watched this touching short video from the perspective of a teenage girl.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

In my secret life

In my secret life

By: Leonard Cohen

In my secret life
In my secret life
In my secret life
In my secret life

I saw you this morning
You were moving so fast

Can’t seem to loosen my grip
Well on the past

And I miss you so much
There’s no one in sight

And we’re still making love

In my secret life

In my secret life

I smile when I’m angry
I cheat and I lie
I do what I have to do
To get by
But I know what is wrong
And I know what is right
And I’d die for the truth
In my secret life
In my secret life

More...

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

“When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.

Read more....

The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life

 “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Read more....

Memories in Diaspora # 315

روزنگاری های دیاسپورا

 Memories in Diaspora # 315

-۴ ماه جولای سال ۱۹۹۰- لس آنجلس
"خلبان توضیح داد که ساعت هفت و بیست و سه دقیقه است به وقت لس آنجلس. شهر از بالا مثل یک تابلوی هنری دلربا بود که گویی ذرات درخشانی از جنس شیشه های رنگی و نقره ای رنگ به دقت روی سطحی از دانه های شن کنار هم چیده شده بودند. یک کار هنری وسیع و چشمگیربود با اشکالی هندسی، نه هلالی و پر انحناء… هندسی از این زاویه که بازتاب تفکر چارچوب گونه و منطقی غربیان است…."
..............................
"درلس آنجلس زندگی شکلی کاملن متفاوت با آیواسیتی دارد. انگار در ایران قبل از انقلاب زندگی می کنم. یا ایران بعد از انقلابی که شکل قبل از انقلاب را دارد. در خانه های دوستان ایرانی، رادیو ها همه به زبان فارسی است. تلویزیون ها ایرانی است و همه فارسی صحبت می کنند، در خانه ها و خیابان ها! این شکل زندگی مرا به سوی دنیایی کاملن متفاوت با آیواسیتی پرتاب کرده است!"

 

Friday, August 7, 2020

Segal Talks on Bogart, Jenness and Foreman

 The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents SEGAL TALKS: Anne Bogart livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Wednesday 27 May 2020 at 9 a.m.

SEGAL TALKS Morgan Jenness on Tuesday 28 July 2020

SEGAL TALKS Richard Foreman on Wednesday 20 May 2020

 

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Behrouz Boochani Just Wants to Be Free

Behrouz Boochani Just Wants to Be Free
"It was a brilliant January day in Christchurch, New Zealand. Screeching gulls wheeled in off the Pacific; swollen roses bobbed in the breeze. In the hydrangea-fringed garden of a spare, tidy house, Boochani sat smoking. He couldn’t smoke inside because the house wasn’t exactly his; it was on loan from the University of Canterbury. Boochani’s neighborhood looked as if Beatrix Potter had painted it in watercolors: prim, ivy-laced cottages and tidy beds of hollyhocks and lavender. It was nice, Boochani conceded. Too nice, sometimes. “It’s too much, you know?” he said. “It’s too much peace and too much beauty. It’s hard to deal with this. It’s like you go from a very cold place to a very hot place.”"

Monday, August 3, 2020

Memories in Diaspora # 314

روزنگاری های دیاسپورا Memories in Diaspora # 314
دوشنبه ۲۵ ماه جون ۱۹۹۰-
“پیراهن خاکستری”
“اتاق خاکستری است. خانه خاکستری است. دیوارها خاکستری. و هوا خاکستری. پدر نشسته است روی تختخواب خاکستری اش و یک سبد گل رنگارنگ را توی بغلش گرفته است. گل هایی به رنگ زرد، بنفش و سفید از تیره مینا.