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| Today was one of the best days of my life. My classes were canceled. I spent the day roaming around campus, throwing snowballs at my friends. My back is covered in welts from snowballs thrown too hard. My fingers are numb, my clothes are wet. I am happy. All around me are some of the most beautiful human beings in the world, whose character and kindness has taught me a great deal more than my classes, stand smiling, laughing and pelting me with balls of slush and ice. I am filled with love, surrounded by friends and deeply hopeful. hezār bār khodā rā shokr! | | |
| Hafez:
'alA yA ayohas'sAqi ~
zolf bar bAd ~
namAze shAme qaribAn ~
homAye owje sa'Adat ~
keshtiye mA dar shat'te sharAb andAz ~
sababi sAz ke yAram be salAmat ~
Khayyam:
kuzegar ~
khosh bAsh ~
az di ke gozasht ~
Masnavi:
beshno az ney ~ che tadbeer ey mosalmAnAn ~
bi hamegAn be sar shavad ~
kojAyid ey shahidan ~
mA ze bAlAyim ~
yAr marA ~
musA va sha-bAn ~
bAzargAn va tuti ~
sheikh bA cherAgh ~
Etessami:
ashke yatim ~
Nasser Khosro
ruzi ze sare sang oqAbi be havA khAst ~
Akhavan Sales:
bAz eyd Amad ~
shahAb-hA va shab-hA ~
zemestAn ~
Nima Yushij: ~
Ay AdamhA ~
ri-rA ~
torA man cheshm dar rAham ~
Ahmad Shamlou:
ofoqe rowshan ~
Other/Unknown:
bAz bAran ~
ey kArevAn ~
ey sAreban ~
kami bA man modArA kon ~
imAn ~
pA-iz Amad ~
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| I've been eating a lot of canned vegetables these days. I'm beginning to realize that in life, it is unreasonable to expect everything to be clean and neat and organized. Somewhere along the line the you must be able to accommodate the chaos, the entropy around you. I can't account for my every minute, but that's really not a problem. I would end up wasting more time trying to audit every last part of my 24 hour days.
I have this constant feeling in the background of my thoughts that I am waiting for something, preparing for something. Organizing my shelves, my clothes, counting my dollars. Like a standby waiting for orders, like those Japanese soldiers roaming around the jungles decades after the war has ended. I realize now that the regimentation I am looking for is never going to come from the outside. If I want to make the most of life, I have reach inside, find out what I want to do, to accomplish, and find the nerve to pull through our human tendency to acclimate to dull routine. All I have to do is get used to a higher level of productivity. Easy.
The Persian word for Cow is Gav. The Afghans pronounce their v's like w's, which is how they were pronounced in Persian originally. Cow sounds a lot like Gaw, which I suspect is not a coincidence. More interesting still is the Persian word behtar, meaning better. "Better" in Mazandarani, which is an older dialect of Persian spoken south of the Caspian, is also pronounced "better". The Persian "behtar" is ostensibly made of two elements, the prefix beh, meaning good, and the suffix tar, which is used as a superlative. Does the English suffix ter (if it even is a suffix) and the Persian "tar" have an ancestor that predates English and Persian? Greater, smarter, faster are tempting examples, but meaner, cleaner, closer, are counterexamples and farther is a curiosity in its own right. The question remains, if the English word "better" is really made up of two elements, as its meaning suggests, then what are these two elements? And is the first related to the Persian "beh", and the second to the Persian "tar"?
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| Never stay in a quiet room for too long. And if you must, discard your computer, so as not to think you are going places for hours on end to discover you've been sitting for longer than you'd rather admit. Never open tabs on your browser, five or ten at time, and think it's an expression of your intellectual prowess, to multi task, to do ten different things at once. You're really doing nothing at all. Never read the news, thinking you are reading about reality. You are reading the poorly written fables of hired pens. There is only one reality, the reality that comes from conversations with living people. Never eat while you watch television, or watch television to get away from thinking. My grandfather once corrected me in a conversation in what has stuck with me for a long while. It is not that I am because I think, as Descartes would have it, but that I am only when shouting my thoughts to the world. I am because others can hear me. This doesn't mean asserting your existence every five minutes with doggerel. For you do not exist merely through the act of speaking but in its content as well. You are what you say. Say nothing, and you don't exist. Of course, saying and talking are not the same. By say, I mean communicating, I mean making yourself known to another person, sending a message, an idea, a feeling.
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| ترا من چشم در راهمنیما یوشیجترا من چشم در راهم شباهنگام
که می گیرند در شاخ " تلاجن" سایه ها رنگ سیاهی
وزان دلخستگانت راست اندوهی فراهم
ترا من چشم در راهم.
شباهنگام.در آندم که بر جا دره ها چون مرده ماران خفتگانند
در آن نوبت که بندد دست نیلوفر به پای سرو کوهی دام
گرم یاد آوری یا نه
من از یادت نمی کاهم
ترا من چشم در راهم زمستان 1336 This is one of those poems that that lives with you on your morning commute. A small package of introspective wandering in the night. It reminds me a lot of Frost's "I have been one acquainted with the night". In life, we should be quiet and thoughtful at night. We should spend our nights processing all that's happened by day, and we should come to real conclusions about who we are and where we're headed. Else the little unconnected packets of information we accumulate over the course of the day will scatter in our minds, clutter the temple of our conscious experience, and weigh us down. I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night. ~ Robert Frost | | |
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