Friday, February 24, 2012

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Maya Angelou's "Note to Self"

Maya Angelou




This is a letter to myself when I was about 15. Today I'm 83 years old.


Dear me, myself then... first I know that you know how to listen. When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.


Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.


Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Killens, or if you fall in love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by a human being just like you, no more human, no less.


The person may have keener eyesight, a better ear, the person might have a more live body and can dance, but the person cannot be more human than you.


That is very important because that ensures you that you are a human being and nothing human can be alien to you.


You will be able to go around the world, learning languages, speaking to everybody, because no one can be more human than you or be less human.


They can be meaner or crueler, or sweeter or prettier, younger, richer, but they can't be more human than you. Remember that.

More at:
http://mayaangelou.com/

Monday, February 20, 2012

The Hedgehog (Le Herisson) - Directed by Mona Achache


Written and directed by Mona Achache
From the novel Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Starring:
Garance Le Guillermic 
Josiane Balasko
Togo Igawa

Inspired by the beloved New York Times bestseller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, The Hedgehog is the timely story of Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) a young girl bent on ending it all on her upcoming twelfth birthday. Using her father's old camcorder to chronicle the hypocrisy she sees in adults, Paloma begins to learn about life from the grumpy building concierge, Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko). When Paloma's camera reveals the extensive secret library in Renée's back room, and that the often gruff matron reads Tolstoy to her cat, Paloma begins to understand that there are allies to be found beneath the prickliest of exteriors. As the unlikely friendship deepens, Paloma's own coming of age becomes a much less pessimistic prospect. -- (C) NeoClassics Films


Trailer
Stills:




From the soundtrack: Mademoiselle Paloma

Author of the book:
Muriel Barbery
More at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/19/entertainment/la-et-capsules-hedgehog-20110819
http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/movies/the-hedgehog-from-france-review.html
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110907/REVIEWS/110909993
http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2010/07/08/film-review-the-hedgehog-2009/
http://murielbarbery.com/

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Guillaume Apollinaire - Selected Poems

Guillaume Apollinaire

Le Pont Mirabeau

Le Pont Mirabeau
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Audio of Apollinaire reading Le Pont Mirabeau:

The Mirabeau Bridge
Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
And our loves
Must I remember them
Joy always followed pain

The night falls and the hours ring
The days go away I remain

Hand in hand let us stay face to face
While underneath the bridge
Of our arms passes
The water tired of the eternal looks

The night falls and the hours ring
The days go away I remain

Love goes away like this flowing water
Love goes away
Life is so slow
And hope is so violent

The night falls and the hours ring
The days go away I remain

Days pass by and weeks pass by
Neither past time
Nor past loves will return
Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

The night falls and the hours ring
The days go away I remain



From Calligrammes:

Il Pleut



It’s Raining (a digital rendition)


It’s Raining 
It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little
drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below


Mon Coeur (My Heart)





La Jolie Rousse
Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens
Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu'un vivant peut
connaître
Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l'amour
Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées
Connaissant plusieurs langages
Ayant pas mal voyagé
Ayant vu la guerre dans l'Artillerie et l'Infanterie
Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme
Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l'effroyable lutte
Je sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul
pourrait des deux savoir
Et sans m'inquiéter aujourd'hui de cette querre
Entre nous et pour nous mes amis
Je juge cette longue querelle de la tradition et de l'invention
De l'Ordre et de l'Aventure

Vous dont la bouche est faite à l'image de celle de Dieu
Bouche qui est l'ordre même
Soyez indulgents quand vous nous comparez
A ceux qui furent la perfection de l'ordre
Nous qui quêtons partout l'aventure

Nous ne sommes pas vos ennemis
Nous voulons vous donner de vastes et étranges domaines
Où le mystère en fleurs s'offre à qui veut le cueillir
Il y a là des feux nouveaux des couleurs jamais vues
Mille phantasmes impondérables
Auxquels il faut donner de la réalité
Nous voulons explorer la bonté contrée énorme où tout se tait
Il y a aussi le temps qu'on peut chasser ou faire revenir
Pitié pour nous qui combattons toujours aux frontières
De l'illimité et de l'avenir
Pitié pour nos erreurs pitié pour nos péchés

Voici que vient l'été la saison violente
Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps
O Soleil c'est le temps de la Raison ardente
Et j'attends
Pour la suivre toujours la forme noble et douce
Qu'elle prend afin que je l'aime seulement
Elle vient et m'attire ainsi qu'un fer l'aimant
Elle a l'aspect charmant
D'une adorable rousse

Ses cheveux sont d'or on dirait
Un bel éclair qui durerait
Ou ces flammes qui se pavanent
Dans les rose-thé qui se fanent

Mais riez riez de moi
Hommes de partout surtout gens d'ici
Car il y a tant de choses que je n'ose vous dire
Tant de choses que vous ne me laisseriez pas dire
Ayez pitié de moi.


The Pretty Redhead
Here I am before you all a sensible man
Who knows life and what a living man can know of death
Having experienced love's sorrows and joys
Having sometimes known how to impose my ideas
Adept at several languages
Having traveled quite a bit
Having seen war in the Artillery and the Infantry
Wounded in the head trepanned under chloroform
Having lost my best friends in the frightful conflict
I know of old and new as much as one man can know of the two
And without worrying today about that war
Between us and for us my friends
I am here to judge the long debate between tradition and invention
Between Order and Adventure

You whose mouth is made in the image of God's
Mouth that is order itself
Be indulgent when you compare us
To those who were the perfection of order
We who look for adventure everywhere

We're not your enemies
We want to give you vast and strange domains
Where mystery in flower spreads out for those who would pluck it
There you may find new fires colors you have never seen before
A thousand imponderable phantasms
Still awaiting reality
We want to explore kindness enormous country where all is still
There is also time which can be banished or recalled
Pity us who fight always at the boundaries
Of infinity and the future
Pity our errors pity our sins

Now it's summer the violent season
And my youth is dead like the springtime
Oh Sun it's the time of ardent Reason
And I am waiting
So I may follow always the noble and gentle shape
That she assumes so I will love her only
She draws near and lures me as a magnet does iron
She has the charming appearance
Of a darling redhead

Her hair is golden you'd say
A lovely flash of lightning that lingers on
Or the flame that glows
In fading tea roses

But laugh at me
Men from everywhere especially men from here
For there are so many things I dare not tell you
So many things you would never let me say
Have pity on me

Douces figures poignardées chères lèvres fleuries
The Stabbed [bleeding] Dove (top image) -- with spread wings
and the Fountain [jet of water] (bottom image), with the water coming out of a vase (and which echos the wings of the dove).

Rearranged in a conventional fashion:

Douces figures poignardées chères lèvres fleuries
Mya Mareye
Yette et Lorie
Annie et toi Marie
Où êtes-vous ô jeunes filles
Mais près d'un jet d'eau qui pleure et qui prie
Cette colombe s'extasie

Tous les souvenirs de naguère
O mes amis partis en guerre
Jaillissent vers le firmament
Et vos regards en l'eau dormant
Meurent mélancoliquement
Où sont-ils Braque et Max Jacob
Derain aux yeux gris comme l'aube
Où sont Raynal Billy Dalize
Dont les noms se mélancolisent
Comme des pas dans une église
Où est Cremnitz qui s'engagea
Peut-être sont-ils morts déjà
De souvenirs mon âme est pleine
Le jet d'eau pleure sur ma peine.
Ceux qui sont partis à la guerre
au Nord se battent maintenant
Le soir tombe Ô sanglante mer
Jardins où saignent abondamment
le laurier rose fleur guerrière.


gentle faces stabbed dear flowered lips
(names)
Where are you O young girls
But near a fountain that cries and that prays
This dove is in ecstasy

All the memories of longing / of my friends gone to war

Those who left for the war in the North are fighting now
Night falls O! blood-dreched sea
Gardens where bled in abandon
the laurel rose flower of war



Dont la forme évoque la tour Eiffel



Salut monde dont je suis la langue éloquente que sa bouche Ô Paris tire et tirera toujours aux allemands

Hi world I am the eloquent tongue that shoots his mouth Oh Paris and will always take the German


Reconnais-toi

Reconnais-toi
Cette adorable personne c'est toi
Sous le grand chapeau canotier
Oeil
Nez
La bouche
Voici l'ovale de ta figure
Ton cou exquis
Voici enfin l'imparfaite image de ton buste adoré
                                       vu comme à travers un nuage
Un peu plus bas c'est ton coeur qui bat


Recognize yourself
This adorable nobody it is you
Under the big hat boater
Eye
Nose
The mouth
Here is the oval of your face
Your exquisite neck
Here is finally imperfect picture of your loved torso
                                       seen as across a cloud
A little more low it is your heart which beats


More at:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/737
http://www.wiu.edu/Apollinaire/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Apollinaire
http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Guillaume_Apollinaire
http://wordsandeggs.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/apollinaires-calligrammes/
http://www.guillaume-apollinaire.fr/calligrammes.htm

Friday, February 17, 2012

Susan B. Anthony - Quotes and Speech on Women's Right to Vote

Susan B. Anthony

 * I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.


* I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.


* I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.


* I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.


* I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.


* If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.


* Independence is happiness.


* Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.


* Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.


* Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.


* No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.


* Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.


* Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.


* Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.


Susan B. Anthony
On Women's Right to Vote

Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.

For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity.

To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.

Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.

Susan B. Anthony - 1873


Sunday, February 12, 2012

Thoughts on Love for Valentine's Day

Birth of Venus - Redon


Fortune and love favor the brave.
Ovid


Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu


Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
Euripides


Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire


Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Khalil Gibran


Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke


Love is my religion.
John Keats


Love is the poetry of the senses.
Honore de Balzac


Love is metaphysical gravity.
R. Buckminster Fuller


Love is love's reward.
John Dryden

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

An Interview with Richard Louv


Richard Louv

“The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”


More at:
http://richardlouv.com/

Milton Nascimento

Milton Nascimento



San Vincete


Don Quixote


Calix Bento


Clube de Esquina No. 2 (Corner's Club)

Bridges (Tresvessia)

Qualquer Coisa a Ver com O Paraiso  (Things to do with paradise)


More at:

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Selected Bob Dylan Covers



Gotta Serve Somebody - Natalie Cole

Love Minus Zero/No Limit - Leon Russell

Just Like a Woman - Richie Havens

My Back Pages - The Byrds

All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

The Times They Are A Changing - Tracy Chapman

I Shall Be Released - The Band

Also see:
http://www.dylancovers.com/song/love-minus-zero-no-limit

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Six Poems by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

Conrad Aiken

Variations: I
The moon distills a soft blue light,
The moon distills silence.
Black clouds huddle across the stars;
I walk in deserted gardens
Breaking the dry leaves under my feet ...
Leaves have littered the marble seat
Where the lovers sat in silence ...
Leaves have littered the empty seat ...

Down there the black pool, quiveringly,
Ripples the floating moon ...
Down there the tall trees, restlessly,
Shake beneath the moon ...
Beloved, I walk alone ...
What ghost is this that walks with me,
Always in darkness walks with me?


Variations: II
Green light, from the moon,
Pours over the dark blue trees,
Green light from the autumn moon
Pours on the grass ...
Green light falls on the goblin fountain
Where hesitant lovers meet and pass.

They laugh in the moonlight, touching hands,
They move like leaves on the wind ...
I remember an autumn night like this,
And not so long ago,
When other lovers were blown like leaves,
Before the coming of snow.


Variations: III
Wind in the sunlit trees, and the red leaves fall:
Shadows of leaves on the sunlit wall.
Wind in the turning tops of the trees ...
I am reminded, seeing these,
Of an afternoon, and you
Making the trees more scarlet, the sky more blue.


Miracles
Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far,
And distant things seem near.
Now in the green west hangs a yellow star.
And now across old waters you may hear
The profound gloom of bells among still trees,
Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas.

Silent as though in evening contemplation
Weaves the bat under the gathering stars.
Silent as dew, we seek new incarnation,
Meditate new avatars.
In a clear dusk like this
Mary climbed up the hill to seek her son,
To lower him down from the cross, and kiss
The mauve wounds, every one.

Men with wings
In the dusk walked softly after her.
She did not see them, but may have felt
The winnowed air around her stir;
She did not see them, but may have known
Why her son's body was light as a little stone.
She may have guessed that other hands were there
Moving the watchful air.

Now, unless persuaded by searching music
Which suddenly opens the portals of the mind,
We guess no angels,
And are contented to be blind.
Let us blow silver horns in the twilight,
And lift our hearts to the yellow star in the green,
To find perhaps, if, while the dew is rising,
Clear things may not be seen.


Chance Meetings
In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you,

Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you,
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire,
They say an 'I love you, what star do you live on?'
They smile and then darken,

And silent, I answer 'You too--I have known you,--I love you!--'
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.

The Dreamer of Dreams
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

"I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . ."
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .

Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.

Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

More at:
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-454
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/caiken.htm

Poems by Li Po (Li Bai)

Li Po chanting a poem (by Liang K'ai)

Alone Looking at the Mountain
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.

A Farewell to Meng Haoran on His Way to Yangzhou
You have left me behind, old friend, at the Yellow Crane Terrace,
On your way to visit Yangzhou in the misty month of flowers;
Your sail, a single shadow, becomes one with the blue sky.
Till now I see only the river, on its way to heaven.

Mount Heaven’s Gate Viewed from Afar
Breaking through Heaven’s Gate, the Great River goes by,
Green water eastward flows and then turns to the north.
On both sides of the River blue cliffs tower high,
Leaving the sun behind, a lonely sail comes forth.

Viewing the Waterfall at Mount Lu
Sunlight streaming on Incense Stone kindles a violet smoke;
Far off I watch the waterfall plunge to the long river,
Flying waters descending straight three thousand feet,
Till I think the Milky Way has tumbled from the ninth height of Heaven.

Autumn River Song
The moon shimmers in green water.
White herons fly through the moonlight.
The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:
into the night, singing, they paddle home together.

A Mountain Revelry
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet.

More at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai