Japanese Tree Lilac

Yesterday we were drunk with the scent of Japanese Tree Lilac at Cantigny Museum (Park) in Wheaton, Illinois!

A Perspective on Cannes Film Festival, 2012

John Powers speak about Cannes Film Festival in Fresh Air.

A journey inside the Internet's physical world

Listen to Andrew Blum talking about his book: "Tubes, A Journey to the Center of the Internet" in Fresh Air."In Tubes, journalist Andrew Blum goes on a journey inside the Internet's physical infrastructure to uncover the buildings and compounds where our data is stored and transmitted. Along the way, he documents the spaces where the Internet first started, and the people who've been working to make the Web what it is today."

Amour

Amour (Love) a new film by Michael Haneke about the meaning of love and death with Jean-Louis Trintignant , Emmanuelle Riva. It's great to see Riva after her masterpiece Hiroshima Mon Amour...This film has won Goldene Palme award at Cannes Film Festival 2012.

Mother to Son

Thank you Belle of Writes
Mother to Son
By  Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turning corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
Read more...


And...Read: Poetry is Rebellion... 

Perhaps the duties of the poet have been the same throughout history...poetry is rebellion...we poets hate hatred and make war on war.

Pablo Neruda

The Jewish Wife

The Jewish Wife a short play from Fear and Misery of the Third Reich by Bertolt Brecht part 1 and Part 2
A video on Brecht...
Another  video on Brecht...

An Interview

The Wrighter's blog featured Kaveh Adel, the artist and political cartoonist. Above is Adel's reinterpretation of "The Scream" by Edvard Munch

Kiss your loved ones!

Kiss your loved ones!
Dr. Kaveh N. Adel from Naperville Family Dental care talks about Soda Pop and Soft Drink facts..... how much is consumed and the effects on teeth and gums.

Merci, Monsieur Badiou

A Frantz Fanonian perspective:
 
Merci, Monsieur Badiou 
By  Hamid Dabashi

"The malady that Alain Badiou has diagnosed is not limited to the French, or even to Europeans. It is crucial to keep in mind that there are those among the expatriate Iranian, Arab or South Asian intellectuals in Europe who are identical in their Islamophobic racism against Muslims. A significant segment of these expat intellectuals, clumsily wearing white masks over their brown skin, are integral and definitive to secular fundamentalists' disdain for Islam and Muslims.

The current Islamophobia in Europe is a disease - a slightly updated gestation of old-fashioned European anti-Semitism. The disease is widely spread in North America too. In the US, the selfsame disease is now evident in the fact that US military officers have for years been indoctrinated by a viciously anti-Muslim pedagogy that teaches US military personnel that Muslims "hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit"."
Read More...

Writing at SNL

Introducing my work at Writing at SNL (School for New Learning- DePaul University)

Downtown Chicago

Yesterday,  Chicago, with a gorgeous weather, heightened security for weekend NATO summit, was ebullient and filled with humor.

Eclipse

L'Eclisse by Antonioni...
"Eclipse is about a young woman who breaks up with an older lover and then has an affair with a confident young stockbroker whose materialistic nature eventually undermines their relationship.^[2] The film is considered the last part of a trilogy which was preceded by L'Avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961)...."
Read More

The Genius Of The Crowd

TheGenius Of The Crowd

Charles Bukowski

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

Read more...

My Birth Place, Dezful

By Ezzat Goushegir

Dezful, is my birth place

Dezful,
you taught me how to love
How to hate
how to be angry
how to be tender

how to respect our earth, our environment,
trees, flowers, birds, animals, sun, air, water...

Dezful, you taught me how to smell, touch, breathe,
how to follow my instinct, my curiosity, my desires
in the dare-devil hot days...

You taught me how to build birds' nests,
feed the sparrows by a piece of bread left on the table,
view the universe from behind the brick windows...
find complexities, like the labyrinthine corridors of "Shawadoon"s,
observe communications between people sitting on "Sakoo"s or "Khajeh neshin"s
watching naked children playing with pebbles in the narrow allies

You taught me how to respect people's privacy
when walking through dark "Daalaan"s...

You taught me to be recklessly free when sleeping on the rooftop,
being close to the untouchable sky, the moon, the stars..

You taught me to be fragrant like your "Faash''es, like your "Zool"s...

You taught me to be brave and audacious like your summer sun
to be wild, like your spring thunderstorms
And be shy and timid like my long dress covering my pink bra
when the wind roars under its dancing waves...

Why Am I Opposed to War

Why Am I Opposed to War in Vietnma
 Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. against the "triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.".

Monday Night with Ponchielli, Puccini, Mozart and a Woman with a huge hat!

ON Monday night I was invited to see three scenes of three different operas at Civic Orchestra of Chicago, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, in memory of Florence Boone, a devoted Lyric Opera of Chicago supporter since 1960 who passed away on APRIL 2012, at the age of ninety three.

The first musical piece was “Dance of the Hours” from act 3 of Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (The joyful girl).

The second piece was Act 4 of LaBoheme by Puccini.  And the third piece was Act 2 from the Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Mozart.

My friend preferred to sit on the balcony, I preferred the center orchestra. The tickets were already purchased and I had to respect my host. A woman next to me asked: What perfume do you wear? I told her. She was drowned into the scent of my perfume and the radiance of orchestra Hall…then she said: Your pink scarf matches beautifully with your black dress! I felt delightful! 

A woman with a round black hat sitting on front seat with peculiar fake aristocratic gesture, blocking my view from seeing the singers, reminded me of Charlie Chaplin’s movies. Distressed by the hat, I busied myself with the book, following the librettos. I wanted so badly to see Mimi and Rodolfo’s face, the sweat on their foreheads, the sparkle in their eyes when they sing the words of love, but I swallowed my longing for those moments…

Mimi: I have many things I want to tell you,

Well only one, but it’s huge as the ocean,

As deep and infinite as the sea…

(She puts her arms around Rodolfo’s neck.)

You’re my entire life,

You’re my love!

Rodolfo: Ah Mimi, my beautiful Mimi!

Mimi: Do you still find me beautiful?

Rodolfo: As lovely as the dawn.

Mimi: You’re wrong in the comparison.

You should say: Lovely as the sunset

As Mimi, Tracy Cantin, soprano, had a "presence" on the stage.

Remembring Maurice Sendak

Fresh Air Remembers Author Maurice Sendak

Third Wing

Last night I saw the first play of  IVP series, Third Wing (TercerCuerpo) a dark comedy Written by Claudio Tocalchir, translated by Jean Graham-Jones and directed by Emilio Williams, in collaboration with Instituto Cervantes and the Consulate General of Argentina in Chicago.

The Argentinian award-winning play “Third Wing (the story of an absurd attempt)” is a poignant and often hilarious dramedy by one of the most successful international theater artists working today. Five very different characters are united by loneliness, incomprehension and the need to love and be loved. A ramshackle office, a couple’s apartment, a bar and a medical consulting room are the different stages where these human beings try to, one day at a time, survive and move forward with their incomplete lives.

Relevant to our absurd life in the absurd global world, this play in surface is about nothing, because nothing really happens on the stage, but it’s about everything we deal with in our daily life and beyond…our profound loneliness, our strangeness towards each other, our lack of empathy and sensitivity towards those who are in need. All characters --although ordinary but somehow extraordinary--wandering in their web of loneliness, try to solve their problems, especially Hector who dyes his hair jet black, dreaming of someone who falls in love with him!

Life

By Ezzat Goushegir

Half-deflated balloon,

Clung to the tallest corner of ceiling

Stared out the window,

Inhaled fresh scent of apple tree blossoms
From the broken glass
Cried

For the last gulp of air.

Disgrace

 Audiobook:  Disgrace  by J. M. Coetzee 
Read a review of the book.

Linden blooms

I'll soon be drunk by the scent of Linden blooms in Evanston...I call the tree "the tree of Love"...

The Right Amount of Bad

Actors Dan Zellner and Nathan Pease getting ready to perform a reading of William Jordan's 'The Right Amount of Bad.' (Photo courtesy of Sunday Salon)

Last month I watched a short scene of The Right Amount of Bad by William (Bill) Jordan, a young, candid and enthusiastic playwright at SundaySalon. He sent me a copy of his play later that week. As I read the play I found it poignant, absurd and inclusive. It kept me follow the dialogues with enormous interest. The Right Amount of Bad gave me an elaborate picture of the psychology of men and women in today’s American life where the characters are trapped in their lonely, incongruous existence; their need to love, and be loved; their desire for lust while the principles prevent them of their wild dreams. This play examines what humans think, feel and desire for unlimited, for unrestricted. It is a play about an internal struggle between “good” and “bad” and how women and men deal with them.

Free University

In New York City’s Madison Square Park, hundreds of people attended a Free University "Free University" hosted by Occupy Wall Street, where professors gave free classes to May Day protesters. Activists said the event marked an alternative means of sharing knowledge outside the capitalist system. "This movement is all about building community and sharing and coming up with alternatives to the economic system that’s so pervasive in our lives in everything that we do," said Amin Husain, a key facilitator for the Occupy movement, who attended the event.

May Day

Yesterday, my friend, Mahasti Shahrokhi, a writer and poet  from Paris called me and with a certain exciting tone of voice said: "Happy Workers Day!"
-"Thank you, Same to you", I said.
-"Today is our day. The workers day! Aren't we workers without pay? We work so hard as writers...
-"...And we're being severely exploited as writers!" I continued.
-"France celebrates May Day beautifully and it's a public holiday in Europe. All the shops, offices, banks are  closed right now!"
And I thought to myself, May Day historically originated in Chicago in 1886, but American public doesn't know much about it!

"Outside the U.S., May 1 is International Workers' Day, observed with speeches, rallies, and demonstrations. Ironically, this celebration of working-class solidarity originated in the U.S labor movement in the United States and soon spread around the world, but it never earned official recognition in this country."

 “It was mostly immigrants who led the first May Day movement for the 8 hour day. Now a new generation of immigrant workers have revitalized and brought May Day back to life,” observed María Elena Durazo, the feisty head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor who enthusiastically embraced the Occupy movement in her city.

Watch or read the interviews on Occupy Everywhere in May Day in Democracy Now!
Watch another interview with Tariq Ali and Ann Wright in Democracy Now.
Some of the voices of of organized labor at the May Day rally in New York.