A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
Walt Whitman
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A beautiful quote
With many thanks to Sue and her son: "In Wildness is the preservation of the world."
Friday, June 18, 2010
Translation of a piece from Walden
Bahman loves my translations of Walden. As a man who has spent his whole life with Persian poetry I would love to say that the follwoing piece from Thoreau is one of the most magnificently beautiful pieces I have ever read in life. I dedicate it to Bahman and my other friends on this site. I hope it captures something from the beauty of the original text. In a way, this piece shows why I feel so close to Sue with so many miles that exist between us.
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."
"من سلامت را در آن مي¬دانم كه بيش¬تر وقتم را تنها باشم. در جمع بودن، حتي با بهترين¬ها به زودي پر از ملال و تشويش مي¬شود. من عاشق تنهاييم. هرگز هيچ جمعي را خوش¬كنارتر از خلوت نيافته¬ام. وقتي از خانه بيرون و به ميان ديگر انسان¬ها مي¬رويم بيش¬تر از زماني كه در اطاق خوديم تنهاييم. انساني كه مي¬انديشد و كار مي¬كند هميشه تنهاست پس بگذار هر كجا كه مي¬خواهد باشد. خلوت را از روي فاصله¬اي كه انسان¬ها به فرسنگ¬ها از هم¬نوعان خويش دارند نمي¬سنجند."
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."
"من سلامت را در آن مي¬دانم كه بيش¬تر وقتم را تنها باشم. در جمع بودن، حتي با بهترين¬ها به زودي پر از ملال و تشويش مي¬شود. من عاشق تنهاييم. هرگز هيچ جمعي را خوش¬كنارتر از خلوت نيافته¬ام. وقتي از خانه بيرون و به ميان ديگر انسان¬ها مي¬رويم بيش¬تر از زماني كه در اطاق خوديم تنهاييم. انساني كه مي¬انديشد و كار مي¬كند هميشه تنهاست پس بگذار هر كجا كه مي¬خواهد باشد. خلوت را از روي فاصله¬اي كه انسان¬ها به فرسنگ¬ها از هم¬نوعان خويش دارند نمي¬سنجند."
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Spain blames reporter for World Cup loss
The blame in Spain goes mainly on the dame. That's sideline reporter Sara Carbonero to the far right of this photo here; think of her as Spain's version of Erin Andrews (only not tainted by reality TV). And that's Carbonero's boyfriend on the far left, Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas. Yep, this photo was taken just prior to Spain's loss to Switzerland in the World Cup, and yes, Carbonero was stationed near her boyfriend for most of the match. Perhaps not surprisingly, many Spanish fans are blaming this awkward setup for the loss.
And to make this even better, Carbonero was tasked with interviewing Casillas following the match.
The glamorous sports presenter -- voted the sexiest journalist in the world -- demanded to know exactly what had gone wrong in the shock defeat by Switzerland.
"How did you muck that up?', she asked, leaving Casilllas squirming in embarrassment.
More from the London Daily Mail:
Irate fans claimed her presence on the sidelines -- directly behind Casillas -- had distracted him. Websites were inundated with comments claiming his mind may have been on 'other things'
Casillas and Carbonero started dating at the Confederations Cup in South Africa last year.
Her presence at this year's World Cup prompted controversy as Spanish WAGs -- known as 'esposas y novias' -- typically do not travel with the national side.
Carbonero responded: "Can I destabilize the team? I think it is nonsense."
Well dear, you destabilized my chances of winning the World Cup pool, in which I chose Spain.
And to make this even better, Carbonero was tasked with interviewing Casillas following the match.
The glamorous sports presenter -- voted the sexiest journalist in the world -- demanded to know exactly what had gone wrong in the shock defeat by Switzerland.
"How did you muck that up?', she asked, leaving Casilllas squirming in embarrassment.
More from the London Daily Mail:
Irate fans claimed her presence on the sidelines -- directly behind Casillas -- had distracted him. Websites were inundated with comments claiming his mind may have been on 'other things'
Casillas and Carbonero started dating at the Confederations Cup in South Africa last year.
Her presence at this year's World Cup prompted controversy as Spanish WAGs -- known as 'esposas y novias' -- typically do not travel with the national side.
Carbonero responded: "Can I destabilize the team? I think it is nonsense."
Well dear, you destabilized my chances of winning the World Cup pool, in which I chose Spain.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
A beautiful piece from Thoreau
One of the most intriguing sentences I have ever heard in life is a quotation I read in our Persian language text book in elementary school.
Here is the sentence: "Someone approached a sage who was sitting alone and said, 'Why are you sitting alone?' The sage pondered and replied, 'I became alone now that you came.'"
How can someone become alone when someone else comes near? Who was with the sage when he was not alone? Why does he say he was not alone?
The following piece from the American writer helped me to get deeper in the beautiful above sentence. See for yourself how close Thoreau is to the very fountainheads of our culture and literature. Isn't this amazing?
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."
This is why I love Thoreau so much. This is a clear reason why I feel so close to him. Sue, have you had the same feeling. You always explain things in a way that I understand and never forget.
Ali
Here is the sentence: "Someone approached a sage who was sitting alone and said, 'Why are you sitting alone?' The sage pondered and replied, 'I became alone now that you came.'"
How can someone become alone when someone else comes near? Who was with the sage when he was not alone? Why does he say he was not alone?
The following piece from the American writer helped me to get deeper in the beautiful above sentence. See for yourself how close Thoreau is to the very fountainheads of our culture and literature. Isn't this amazing?
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."
This is why I love Thoreau so much. This is a clear reason why I feel so close to him. Sue, have you had the same feeling. You always explain things in a way that I understand and never forget.
Ali
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Dear Sue,
Dear Sue,
Nice to hear from you again.Thank you for correcting my letter. Thank you for congratulating to me and thank you for speaking about punctuation. I speak Farsi. I like speak in Arabic, but I have no time for reading Arabic. I think Persian is better than Farsi. If you search in internet you will see in old maps, Persian land. Persia was a nation that they came to Iran 2500 years ago. Now, we have a state in Iran with this name: “Fars”. It is because that the nation lived there. I like some Americans films. For example I like transporter, face off and actions Americans films. I have a bad exam in this day and I had many mistakes in my exam. Today was a bad day. I make mistakes, because I am panicky in exams.
I am sorry for my mistakes.
Take care,
Bahman
Nice to hear from you again.Thank you for correcting my letter. Thank you for congratulating to me and thank you for speaking about punctuation. I speak Farsi. I like speak in Arabic, but I have no time for reading Arabic. I think Persian is better than Farsi. If you search in internet you will see in old maps, Persian land. Persia was a nation that they came to Iran 2500 years ago. Now, we have a state in Iran with this name: “Fars”. It is because that the nation lived there. I like some Americans films. For example I like transporter, face off and actions Americans films. I have a bad exam in this day and I had many mistakes in my exam. Today was a bad day. I make mistakes, because I am panicky in exams.
I am sorry for my mistakes.
Take care,
Bahman
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Home Once Again
Oh my! I'm gone 4 days and Mr. Taghdarreh has transformed our blog once again! We had a grand time in the mountains and the weather was fine until today when it rained all the way home. After 19 years I finally got a new Subaru Auto and it behaved beautifully on the mountain curves. Estes Park is a beautiful little town but in these summer months it is totally taken over by tourists and the prices are outrageous. It is tourist season and the prices always go up in order to get as much money as they can to hold them over the winter months. Some of the mountain towns have skiing in the winter, but Estes doesn't. It depends on its summer trade and some winter travel into the Rocky Mountain National Park. Have you ever seen the movie "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson? It's a very spooky story that was filmed in an old hotel in Estes.
Leslie and I stopped at a Lebanese restaurant on the way home. I thought you might find this interesting: The young son of the owner waited on us and I asked him if the writing on the wall mural was Arabic or Farsi and he answered "Arabic", but when I asked him what it said, he answered, "I don't have any idea. Somethin' 'bout the Koran." I'm sure this answer would not have pleased his parents, but such is the danger when one comes to a new country. The children want to become like their friends, and often they lose a lot of their culture. Interestingly, however, the foods survive. We had a great chicken dish and some mint tea. Very good.
Sue
Leslie and I stopped at a Lebanese restaurant on the way home. I thought you might find this interesting: The young son of the owner waited on us and I asked him if the writing on the wall mural was Arabic or Farsi and he answered "Arabic", but when I asked him what it said, he answered, "I don't have any idea. Somethin' 'bout the Koran." I'm sure this answer would not have pleased his parents, but such is the danger when one comes to a new country. The children want to become like their friends, and often they lose a lot of their culture. Interestingly, however, the foods survive. We had a great chicken dish and some mint tea. Very good.
Sue
Thursday, June 10, 2010
One of Frost's . . .
By Sue Petrovsky
One of Frost's poetic techniques is to present alternatives to readers: In "Road Not Taken" he emphasizes choice, but then indicates that both roads were about equal, in "Stopping By the Woods" he tells his readers that he has much to do before he leaves, but indicates that there is a choice to leave without completing one's work, and in "Mending Wall" he gives us the choice of tearing down the walls that separate us or not. Do fences make good neighbors?
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
One of Frost's poetic techniques is to present alternatives to readers: In "Road Not Taken" he emphasizes choice, but then indicates that both roads were about equal, in "Stopping By the Woods" he tells his readers that he has much to do before he leaves, but indicates that there is a choice to leave without completing one's work, and in "Mending Wall" he gives us the choice of tearing down the walls that separate us or not. Do fences make good neighbors?
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost (1874-1963)
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
Robert Frost’s life was full of trouble of all kinds, and yet this man wrote some of the best loved poetry in America. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times and was the recipient of numerous other awards. I have always been drawn to Frost’s poems for their natural, earthy flavor. There is little pretense in Frost. I love Frost's work for how it speaks to me which is part of his charm: I wonder about the roads I never took in my life, and looking back I see that that has made all the difference.
His poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” voices my feeling that “I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”
Google Frost’s poems and enjoy
Sue
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
Robert Frost’s life was full of trouble of all kinds, and yet this man wrote some of the best loved poetry in America. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times and was the recipient of numerous other awards. I have always been drawn to Frost’s poems for their natural, earthy flavor. There is little pretense in Frost. I love Frost's work for how it speaks to me which is part of his charm: I wonder about the roads I never took in my life, and looking back I see that that has made all the difference.
His poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” voices my feeling that “I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”
Google Frost’s poems and enjoy
Sue
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
A Few Days of Vacation!
Hello Everyone,
I am waiting for my daughter to join me for a few days away from home in the mountains. Estes Park, Colorado is a vacation spot in the Rocky Mountain National Park and a beautiful, beautiful place. Every year they have a Wool Festival where ranchers bring their alpacas, llamas, sheep and rabbits for a competition. Leslie and I are taking a spinning class, learning to use a traditional spinning wheel to spin fleece into wool. Are knitting and spinning part of the lives of Iranian women? My daughter and I and many friends are caught up in the design of sweaters, hats, mittens, socks etc. to knit and give as gifts. It makes a good hobby for us and we have developed many friendships through this common interest.
On Saturday they have a big bazaar and all sorts of yarn related products can be purchased. I'm going to try to be careful and not buy too much. Talk to you Saturday!
I am waiting for my daughter to join me for a few days away from home in the mountains. Estes Park, Colorado is a vacation spot in the Rocky Mountain National Park and a beautiful, beautiful place. Every year they have a Wool Festival where ranchers bring their alpacas, llamas, sheep and rabbits for a competition. Leslie and I are taking a spinning class, learning to use a traditional spinning wheel to spin fleece into wool. Are knitting and spinning part of the lives of Iranian women? My daughter and I and many friends are caught up in the design of sweaters, hats, mittens, socks etc. to knit and give as gifts. It makes a good hobby for us and we have developed many friendships through this common interest.
On Saturday they have a big bazaar and all sorts of yarn related products can be purchased. I'm going to try to be careful and not buy too much. Talk to you Saturday!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)