191122~ Tấm gương của Paul Delvaux - Le miroir (1936)
~ Bước chân về phương Đông của Thúy Nga Paris - Cẩm Hà, (BBC, 22/11/19), https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/forum-50516746?ocid=socialflow_twitter. Cẩm Hà viết:" ...Thúy Nga chiếm được cảm tình của nhiều giới, nhiều lứa tuổi, lấy lòng người hâm mộ từ Bắc chí Nam, từ đồng bào hải ngoại tới người trong nước chính là nhờ duy trì rất xuất sắc sự đa dạng ấy...Thúy Nga không tự trói mình trong một khuôn khổ âm nhạc và không ngả về một tầng lớp nào cụ thể. Thúy Nga chọn trung thành với sự đa dạng.
~ D. T. Suzuki, Thiền Và Văn Hoá Nhật Bản, https://rosetta.vn/nguyenxuanxanh/gioi-thieu-thien-va-van-hoa-nhat-ban/. Nguyên tác: Suzuki T. Daisetsu, dịch giả: Nguyễn Nam Trân
~ Những người chúng ta sợ, lại giống như chúng ta. The People We Fear Are Just Like Us - Viet Thanh Nguyen, (NYT, 19/11/19), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/19/opinion/opdocs-immigration.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&. Five films about immigration and belonging, https://twitter.com/viet_t_nguyen/status/1197245537897963520
191121 ~ Oliver Sacks viết về sự huyền ảo của thiên nhiên dẫn dắt chúng ta vào một thời gian sâu thẳm và nhìn xuyên qua sự kết nối của vũ trụ. Oliver Sacks on Nature’s Beauty as a Gateway into Deep Time and a Lens on the Interconnectedness of the Universe
“The sense of deep time brings a deep peace with it, a detachment from the timescale, the urgencies, of daily life… a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth.”
Nearly a century later Oliver Sacks (July 9, 1933–August 30, 2015), Sacks recounts to Micronesia on a journey “not part of any program or agenda, not intended to prove or disprove any thesis, but simply to observe.” Wandering the rain forest of Rota in a state of reverence, Sacks echoes Thoreau’s ideas about nature as a form of prayer and writes:
I find myself walking softly on the rich undergrowth beneath the trees, not wanting to crack a twig, to crush or disturb anything in the least — for there is such a sense of stillness and peace that the wrong sort of movement, even one’s very presence, might be felt as an intrusion… The beauty of the forest is extraordinary — but “beauty” is too simple a word, for being here is not just an esthetic experience, but one steeped with mystery, and awe.
Sacks traces this sense of awe in nature to his most formative memories. He felt it first as a child, lying beneath the ferns — a lifelong love of his; he felt it again upon entering the iconic Kew Gardens as a young man — a place he found to be not only of botanical fascination but endowed with “an element of the mystical, the religious too.” More than a century after the great nature writer Richard Jefferies — a compatriot of Sacks’s and a peer in the small group of writers who enchant the reader with the science of the natural world — considered how nature’s beauty dissolves the boundary between us and the rest of the natural world, Sacks considers the smallness of the word beauty in holding this expansive sense of awe in nature:
The primeval, the sublime, are much better words here — for they indicate realms remote from the moral or the human, realms which force us to gaze into immense vistas of space and time, where the beginnings and originations of all things lie hidden. Now, as I wandered in the cycad forest on Rota, it seemed as if my senses were actually enlarging, as if a new sense, a time sense, was opening within me, something which might allow me to appreciate millennia or eons as directly as I had experienced seconds or minutes.
He finds a parallel of this awe-induced fathoming of deep time in the mating rituals of horseshoe crabs near his home on City Island, New York — something he would later revisit in his sublime memoir. Every June for the past 400 million years, the horseshoe crabs emerge from the water, mate, deposit their eggs onto the sandy shores, then quietly return to the sea in which life began on the primordial Earth. In sharing a beach and a moment in time with these “rugged models, great survivors which have endured,” Sacks finds the same sublime consolation found in an ancient forest — a sense of deep time and an awareness of the interconnectedness of life consonant with the pioneering naturalist John Muir’s insistence that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Standing amid the rainforest — a place governed by the beauty of interrelation — Sacks reflects:
The sense of deep time brings a deep peace with it, a detachment from the timescale, the urgencies, of daily life. Seeing these volcanic islands and coral atolls, and wandering, above all, through this cycad forest on Rota, has given me an intimate feeling of the antiquity of the earth, and the slow, continuous processes by which different forms of life evolve and come into being. Standing here in the jungle, I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth.
Complement this particular fragment of the thoroughly fantastic Island of the Colorblind (public library) — which also gave us Sacks’s wisdom on evolving our notions of normalcy and treating the chronically ill with dignity — with Walt Whitman, a poet beloved by Sacks, on the wisdom of trees, then revisit Sacks on narrative as the pillar of identity, the three essential elements of creativity, the paradoxical power of music, and his stirring meditation on what makes for a life fully lived.
~ Nhớ Sài Gòn: Công viên nhỏ, những ‘góc để thở’ của người Sài Gòn, https://www.nguoi-viet.com/viet-nam/cong-vien-nho-nhung-goc-de-tho-cua-nguoi-sai-gon/ ;+ Cải lương 'thật và đẹp' xuống phố, gặp lại êkip Song Lang, https://tuoitre.vn/cai-luong-that-va-dep-xuong-pho-gap-lai-ekip-song-lang-2019111809370783.htm. Chương trình gồm bốn phần: 1/ nguồn gốc của nghệ thuật cải lương, mở màn với trích đoạn Kim Vân Kiều; 2/ Tôn vinh những soạn giả, bầu gánh xuất sắc; 3/ Hình ảnh giới thiệu, tôn vinh các thế hệ nghệ sĩ kỳ cựu, từ NSND Phùng Há cho đến các nghệ sĩ tài danh của cải lương từ thời sơ khai đến hoàng kim như NSƯT Thanh Nga, Tấn Tài, NSND Lệ Thủy, NSND Minh Vương, Minh Phụng... 4/ Tôn vinh những con người thầm lặng như người nhắc tuồng, hậu đài, phục trang...
~ A motel room of one’s own. Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, a rich exhibition now at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, highlights the contrast between Hopper’s early, lesser-known years as a commercial illustrator and his later eminence as laconic American icon, the serious solitary who painted crumbling Victorian boarding houses, faded hotel lobbies and highway motels.
~ Công giáo thời trung cổ giải thích sự khác biệt giữa các nền văn hóa cho đến ngày nay. Medieval Catholicism explains the differences between cultures to this day, researchers say,
~ Beethoven - Symphony No.9 - Freude schöner Götterfunken, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6s6YKlTpfw. Đại hợp xướng 10.000 người Nhật với giàn giao hưởng lớn nhất trình diễn đoạn kết Bản giao hưởng số 9 của Ludwig van Beethoven. Ode to joy - Freude schöner Götterfunken (Schlusschor).
1313191118~ The aim of education is to guide young persons in the process through which they shape themselves as human persons-armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues-while at the same time conveying to them the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization in which they are involved.— Jacques Maritain
~ Abe Shinzō Becomes Japan’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister, (Nippon, 20/11/19), https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00296/abe-shinzo-becomes-japan%E2%80%99s-longest-serving-prime-minister.html. 1/ Abe Shinzō matched Katsura Tarō on November 19, 2019, as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. If Prime Minister Abe holds the post of president of the Liberal Democratic Party until his term expires on September 30, 2021, he will have served as prime minister for a total of more than 3,500 days. 2/ The top four longest-serving prime ministers—Abe Shinzō, Katsura Tarō, Satō Eisaku, and Itō Hirobumi—are all natives of Yamaguchi Prefecture. 3/ The rules of the LDP state that the post of president can be held for three consecutive terms, totaling nine years
~ Đề xướng quá hấp dẫn!!! Love to do it when opportunities arise! Will Lyons @Will_Lyons ·1h Burgundy. Always travel by train and make time for a quick steak tartare at the Le Train Bleu in Gare de Lyon. A glass of white wine is not obligatory, but recommended. https://thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2019-11-17/the-sunday-times-magazine/wine-review-best-steaks-gm8z976hn.” A sommelier in Hong Kong once told me he believed too much was made of food and wine pairing. His theory was that as there are so few perfect matches, and even fewer clashes, it isn’t worth getting too worried about. Part of me agrees, and I have to admit to liking the odd counterintuitive pairing. Take steak tartare, a fabulous lunchtime dish — especially when prepared in front of you, as they do at the Le Train Bleu in Paris, with shallots, capers and spices. One might think a juicy red wine would be the obvious match — maybe a pinot noir or a beaujolais. But I have always found that a chilled, dry, savoury white is a perfect foil to the creamy texture of the…”
~ Một câu hỏi vang lên khắp tỉnh Alberta. Làm đếkt nào mà Jason Kenny nghĩ rằng ông ấy có thể thoát khỏi điều này?
191116 ~ Naomi Klein trung thành ủng hộ Bernie lần 2 trong cuộc vân động trở thành ứng cử viên đảng Dân chủ. Năm 2016, Naomi Klein bị chỉ trích không chịu ủng hộ Hillary Clinton, sau khi Bernie bị đánh bại và chống đối kinh tế gia Paul Krugman. Author Naomi Klein endorses Bernie Sanders for Democratic Party presidential nomination, https://www.straight.com/news/1325901/author-naomi-klein-endorses-bernie-sanders-democratic-party-presidential-nomination.
~ Michael’s essay: “We deprive people of their liberty & send them to jail AS punishment, not FOR punishment. Like every closed community — whether a seminary, an army unit or a police force — the idea of incarceration is to break down one's individuality.” cbc.ca/1.5352797
~
~ Alejandro Garcia @Ale124060 ·12h: "The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night." - HARUKI MURAKAMI, Dance Dance Dance.
~ Trịnh Công Sơn - Khánh Ly: Đời Cho Ta Thế, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5WuILsjFEg. Ở tuổi 72 (2016), bà vẫn cất tiếng hát rung động lòng người nghe, đối thoại duyên dáng, và bà trở nên đẹp lão, sang trọng với mái tóc bới cao sau ót.
191115~ In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.)— Alvin Plantinga
~ “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show” - Andrew Wyeth
Những ghi chép ở tầng thứ 14 là tiểu thuyết gồm 15 chương của Thận Nhiên, với nhân vật là những người trẻ sinh ra/ lớn lên/ sống ở Hoa Kỳ nhưng đang có cuộc nghiệm sinh trên đất Việt Nam. Những gì tiếp nhận trong mỗi ngày sống của mình khiến những ký ức được truyền lại từ người thân đã rời bỏ Việt Nam được gọi dậy trong họ. Không có mặt và can dự vào quá khứ nhưng những người-Việt-một-phần này vẫn không thể ra khỏi những gì thuộc quá khứ bởi những gì đang xảy ra trong hiện tại…
~ The Law of Art - The Catholic Thing, The artist is simply one who perceives the order embedded in and constituting reality and makes it visible in some striking, new, analogous way. The artist is a receptive medium for truth to speak again to us, in the world and of the world, in all its depth, form, and wisdom.
Tranh Nguyễn Đình Toàn của Đinh Cường.
tuyên ngôn xé bỏ
quăng vào đống phế tích
dõng dạc như anh hùng vung kiếm gỗ
trong khi biển chập chùng
thuyền nát vụn
thân người trôi mênh mang..
đất dâng cho người
rẻ rúng
đồng hương chết trên biển
trong thùng xe
những tấm thân vô định
chạy tìm đất hứa và đất sống…
tiếng ca bai bải trong hư vô
người và ngợm
giữa tượng đài và cờ xí
trống rỗng như không khí
tiếng kêu trầm buồn
vang lên thăm thẳm trong tim
của dân tộc lặng yên
khóc ròng
~►►► Tác giả 71 tuổi thắc mắc tại sao chúng ta không thể nói thật về tuổi già và khi sống lâu là phần thưởng nhưng nó có đáng không? Why We Can’t Tell the Truth About Aging By Arthur Krystal, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/04/why-we-cant-tell-the-truth-about-aging A long life is a gift. But will we really be grateful for it? “...It’s not just energy or sexual prowess but the thrill of anticipation. Even if you’re single, can you ever feel again the rush of excitement that comes with the first brush of the lips, the first moment when clothes drop to the floor? Who the hell wants to tear his or her clothes off at seventy-five? Now we dim the lights and fold our slacks and hope we don’t look too soft, too wrinkled, too old. Yes, mature love allows for physical imperfections, but wouldn’t we rather be desired for our beauty than forgiven for our flaws? These may seem like shallow regrets, and yet the loss of pleasure in one’s own body, the loss of pleasure in knowing that one’s body pleases others, is a real one... |... We should all make peace with aging. And so my hat is off to Dr. Oliver Sacks, who chose to regard old age as “a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.” At eighty-two, he rediscovered the joy of gefilte fish, which, as he noted, would usher him out of life as it had ushered him into it."
~ Love Lessons from a Tree, https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/11/13/robert-macfarlane-underland-tree-love/? “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most beautiful letter. “As a man is, so he sees.” Walt Whitman saw trees as the wisest of teachers; Hermann Hesse as our mightiest consolation for mortality. Wangari Maathai rooted in them a colossal act of resistance that earned her the Nobel Peace Prize. Poets have elegized their wisdom, artists have drawn from their form resonance with our human emotions, scientists are only just beginning to uncover their own secret language. Macfarlane writes: "... Lying there among the trees, despite a learned wariness towards anthropomorphism, I find it hard not to imagine these arboreal relations in terms of tenderness, generosity and even love: the respectful distance of their shy crowns, the kissing branches that have pleached with one another, the unseen connections forged by root and hyphae between seemingly distant trees. I remember something Louis de Bernières has written about a relationship that endured into old age: “we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.” As someone lucky to live in a long love, I recognize that gradual growing-towards and subterranean intertwining; the things that do not need to be said between us, the unspoken communication which can sometimes tilt troublingly towards silence, and the sharing of both happiness and pain. I think of good love as something that roots, not rots, over time, and of the hyphae that are weaving through the ground below me, reaching out through the soil in search of mergings. Theirs, too, seems to me then a version of love’s work.
~ Tượng điêu khắc gấu của điêu khắc gia người Haida Bill Reid. Haida artist Bill Reid's bear sculpture, from our #archives by Anthony Carter, 1970's http://ow.ly/TtIF50xa9fs
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