Handel: Suite No. 1 in B-Flat Major, HWV 434: IV. Minuet

October Forest

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

At the Fishhouses, by Elizabeth Bishop.

January First, by Octavio Paz

The year's doors open
like those of language,
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me:
                                 tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for the time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
––Nor possibly by being invented, either.
You were in another day.

You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.

#Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bishop with the author

HAENDEL Richter Gavrilov Tours historic recordings

A. Pärt: Vater unser, by Heldur Harry Põlda (vocal) and Arvo Pärt (piano)

Arvo Part - Salve Regina

a dialogue

The joke is that all the prostitutes go on vacation when the philosophers come to town. The reason is that the other conventioneers do it, while philosophers just talk about it.

Although this sounds like a parody to Marx's notorious thesis on Feuerbach No.11, the truth here might be the old-fashion, naive ideology cliché: While philosophers keep doing it over and over for whatever reason, they tend to invent ever obscure theories to cover it up.

However, as you probably know, the new version of ideology goes like this: philosophers would lose the ability of doing it if they don't have some theories to talk about.

Or, maybe they are just trying to escape from the overwhelming desire or fear of doing it by keep talking?

Maybe. But there is still an alternative which is far more straightforward: they do gain more pleasures, or, as economists said, utilities, from talking than doing it.

Unfortunately, the alternative is unverifiable as well.

Fortunately, we have MRI now. All we need to do is to get some philosophers, put them on the machine and check their brains to see where in the brain the activity imposes and whether the talk makes it stronger...

The very first step toward happiness

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be, by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,      
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
  That I shall never look upon thee more,    
Never have relish in the fairy power
  Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
  Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

L又聽見了那首曲子，事隔多年之後。

那曲子以及伴隨那曲子而經歷的一切，曾經頻繁地浮現於L的腦海，提醒L關於那些不可克服的無盡痛苦與暴烈欲望。

如今，究竟是哪裡出了問題呢？L心想。某種改變馴服了一切，或者顛倒了一切。原本是擾亂的來源，如今卻成為將擾亂切除的手段。過去是：因為做愛，所以產生了無窮的煩惱而頭痛；如今卻是：這情況真令人頭痛，那麼讓我們做愛吧。

一模一樣的曲子，聽來如此冷酷，一刀刀地切割著L的記憶。

多愁善感是無濟於事的，W略帶鄙夷地說道，真正該擔心的不是做愛的功能，而是做愛的無功能。

也就是說，W鄭重地伸出食指指出，當做愛既非令人困擾，也不能解決困擾，而成為徹頭徹尾無所謂的，可有可無的東西時，那才是麻煩大了。

L被W煞有介事的神態逗得笑了起來，然後像是想起甚麼似的，突然陷入沮喪。