#I am going to read this poem if I break my mind translating French god damn it

[blvvdk3ep]

Don't mind me I'm just gonna stand in this corner and lose my mind over Joseph of Exeter's poem "De Bello Troiano" where Patroclus' severed head whispers, "Ultor ubi Aecides?" (Where is Achilles, my avenger?") after Hector slays him

[vagabondedlife]

Kei Fujiwara’s name is hardly recognizable to most fans of Japanese cinema despite her crucial role in director Shinya Tsukamoto’s early cult classics. As Tsukamoto’s “right hand” woman in the 1980s, Fujiwara became closely involved in his underground theater troupe, Kaijyu Theater, and contributed to the productions of the experimental and DIY films The Phantom of Regular Size (1986), The Adventures of Denchu Kozo (1987), and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Her credits include actress, cinematographer, prop artist, makeup artist, and set-designer (her apartment was used as a primary set). She also engineered Tetsuo’s iconic phallic drill.

Born in Kumamoto in 1957, Fujiwara moved to Tokyo in her early twenties and discovered theater troupe director Jūrō Kara, who became her mentor. After a decade, she created her own troupe called Organ Vital, which underwent a series of evolutions but remains her life work. Her new project this year is Ibunkitan, a form of micro-nomadic theater, whose kanji characters mean “strange-listen-machine-story.” A private person now living in the reclusive mountains of Nagano, Fujiwara rarely gives interviews, but seemed excited to talk about her rarely discussed directorial debut, Organ (1996).

An avant-garde exploration of violence, pain and pleasure with an operatic amount of coagulated blood and extrasomatic body horror, Organ follows two detectives after they break into an organ harvester’s warehouse and collide with yakuza gangsters, a drugged doctor, and his eye-patch wearing sister Yoko, played by Fujiwara herself, who also produced and wrote the film. A cherished work among hardcore fans of Japanese cult cinema, Organ is still ripe for rediscovery. The film’s offerings of a full-bodied sensorial experience and an abusive questioning of cruelty prove tirelessly relevant.

Fujiwara’s work was recently revived at FFFest in New York City with a double feature of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Organ. Fujiwara prepared a special statement that was shared as an introduction. Following the screening, we had the opportunity to speak to the artist about her life, practice, and ideals in more depth. The conversation was held over the phone in Japanese.

NOTEBOOK: Is Ibunkitan a new Organ Vital?

KEI FUJIWARA: Yes, it’s a new Organ Vital. When I was young, I lived in the rural area. I always just read theater but never had the opportunity to see state-of-the-art theater. When I was in high school, I was always reading, and I picked up an Antonin Artaud book that featured this French term. It meant the vessels of life. When translated to English, I’m told it just becomes, “vitals of organ,” or something, but in Japanese it is called gozōroppu and to me signifies the corporal. That’s the name of my theater company, and it has always been that for me. Born into this three-dimensional world with bodies, we sense and express. That’s what’s interesting in life. Ibunkitan can be done in a very small space. We’ve done it in temples, in the corner of a shop, in salons. Our first performance was in March, and we’re planning to do another in November. We've been invited to perform my new Jomon-inspired piece in a live-house in the mountains in Nagano, so we’re preparing some woodwork for that now.

NOTEBOOK: You were working in Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kaijyu Theater production between working with Jūrō Kara?

FUJIWARA: Jūrō Kara, my mentor—when I was in Jōkyō Gekijo [Situation Theatre], he took a liking to me and wrote roles for me. A lot happened, and Kara said he would make a new troupe with me, but I had other plans, so I left once, and he said, “As my mentee, you can leave but wait for me to come get you.” That’s when I went to work with Shinya Tsukamoto on his plays and films. It was after Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1989] that Kara started the new troupe “Kara-gumi” and I returned to work with him.

NOTEBOOK: How was it that you began working with Tsukamoto?

FUJIWARA: I had just left Kara and after a while a friend said that Tsukamoto was looking for someone to act in his plays. He was Tsukamoto’s classmate and an actor, and he made the introduction. I found Tsukamoto interesting and talented. So, I began working diligently as his right hand after that.

NOTEBOOK: I wanted to ask you about Tsukamoto’s 1987 film, The Adventures of Denchu Kozo.

FUJIWARA: Denchu Kozo and Tetsuo were actually both shot in my apartment where I was living at the time. You know all those cats? I couldn’t rent a normal apartment, so I had to live in a cheap nagaya tenement house on the verge of getting demolished. I just needed a place to live that permitted pets. Denchu Kozo and Tetsuo’s interior shots are all at my place.

NOTEBOOK: Are the scenes projected in the TV monitor in Tetsuo from Denchu Kozo?

FUJIWARA: Yes. They’re from Denchu Kozo.

Above: Organ

NOTEBOOK: What turned you onto making Organ, if you were always only interested in theater?

FUJIWARA: That was because of my experience filmmaking with Tsukamoto. It prepared me for how arduous it would be. Theater is an impermanent art, and that’s why it’s such a luxurious art form. But film is like capturing a world in a crystal ball. The joy of creating film is like making your own universe. My staff members at the time— six men other than myself—were all talented, and I thought, “Everyone’s here, why don’t I just make it?” So, all the staff also became the actors, and that’s how we started filming. But it was so difficult at first. We used the atelier space we had and reformed it over and over and shot it like that. It was time-consuming. It became the warehouse set, the school set. It kept on transforming. We did it all in the same space.

NOTEBOOK: That seems like a very theatrical way of using space.

FUJIWARA: Yes.

NOTEBOOK: But first, you started writing it?

FUJIWARA: Yes, I first started writing it. I’m actually not very good at planning. I just think that if I put my mind to it, I can make it happen. So I wrote the script, and had the staff pool in their savings. Between the seven of us we had 200,000 yen, so I thought, “Great, if we have 200,000 yen and one reel of film is 5,000 yen, and even if we bought lights, we can make 30 minutes of footage.” As for the equipment, there are countless aspiring-filmmaker boys who have camera equipment lying around collecting dust, so we borrowed from them. As for the set, we were all used to making it for our theater. We were good at foraging free stuff to make things. That warehouse set in the beginning of Organ was made with an extremely cheap budget. Then we started filming. All those organs in that scene were worked from what was supposed to be our dinner for the day [laughs]. We used real food. We took some gelatin- and konjac-noodles and thought, “This can look like veins!”

NOTEBOOK: And then you had it for dinner?

FUJIWARA: Well, we ended up not being able to, because it was covered in fake blood! It was all about how little money we could spend and still make something, which was a valuable lesson for me.

NOTEBOOK: You’ve mentioned the Kenji Miyazawa poem, Ame ni mo makezu1.

FUJIWARA: Yes, I just really like Kenji Miyazawa. I like the way he thinks, and his philosophy. He’s a Buddhist, and as I haven’t studied Buddhism properly, I cannot say for sure, but I think his seimeikan, or view of life, is on par with that of Osamu Tezuka. Osamu Tezuka and Kenji Miyazawa are two gods with the same perspective regarding seimeikan. No matter how great their art is, Yoshihide Otomo and Hayao Miyazaki can never reach Osamu’s level. Osamu’s core is love. There’s only love. The way they think about life is totally different. I was reading manga before I was literate [laughs]. I like Osamu Tezuka, but also Sanpei Shirato. And in my teens, I liked Daijiro Morohoshi. He’s an extremely interesting person.

NOTEBOOK: Do you think that your films need to be discovered?

FUJIWARA: They need to lock in perfectly with someone’s desire to watch it, or else watching it has no meaning. It just appears as a confusing, grotesque film.

NOTEBOOK: Please tell us about your make up and special effects.

FUJIWARA: Since Tetsuo, my method is always the same. I don’t have any background knowledge of special effect makeup. I just have a gut feeling of what can and can’t be used. Tsukamoto had these drawing storyboards for Tetsuo, like the steel body and the drill penis. For the latter, Tsukamoto just wanted to make something simple and said it would be enough if we could just pretend like it was moving, but I thought it would only be interesting if it actually moved. I didn’t have any hi-tech skills, so I thought, “That’s it!” I took the nearest working electric fan, dissembled it down to its core, used all the rubber and tape I had at home, sprayed it up and got it to go, vroom [laughs]! It was the same for Organ. I used household products, mostly kitchenware.

Above: Organ

NOTEBOOK: What about your cinematography?

FUJIWARA: I had no background knowledge. The first time I started shooting was on Tsukamoto’s set. A lot of people who graduated film school and wanted to help were there, but Tsukamoto didn’t trust any of them. Just because you have technique doesn’t mean you can shoot well. He thought that the person wielding the camera needs a certain amount of power, of energy. So I, who had never touched a camera in my life, was given the camera and told where to press to get it rolling, and shot all of the scenes Tsukamoto was in.

NOTEBOOK: Do you still shoot with a camera lately?

FUJIWARA: Rarely.

NOTEBOOK: As the occasion for this screening was FFFest, Female Filmmakers Festival, could you comment about your experience as a female filmmaker?

FUJIWARA: Something men don’t have—there are two types: female filmmakers who focus their perspective on their immediate surroundings and daily lives, and those who focus on creating a worldview from the even more intimate bodily perspective. That’s what’s a little different from male filmmakers. Even in theater, most female directors write familial narratives, although I don’t [laughs].

NOTEBOOK: The podcast Ladies Horror Night, on the occasion of this screening, recorded an episode that raised the question of why you, a female filmmaker, didn’t include more female characters. I’m not sure about this pressure for female filmmakers to represent female subjects, as I think there’s power in the female filmmaker re-writing the male-centric story. Can you speak on this and how you came to write the police story in Organ?

FUJIWARA: When I think about seimeikan—our view of life—it appears to me that the moral judgment of good versus bad is not something universal, but just a rule that protects our lifestyle in society. It’s a regulation. We make regulations to protect ourselves. That takes the form of “good” and “evil.” But that’s not the good and evil that holds ground in nature. Animals kill other animals for their own predation, right? Humans, too, in the context of war, can kill other humans and become heroes. The concept of zen-aku, or the notion of good and evil, is just a societal regulation. The police represent upholders of this regulation. And then there are those who defy this regulation, who lie in a realm completely different from this conventional morality. Organ is a clash between these two groups. That’s how I formed the police narrative. As for why there are few female characters, well… In the case of females, expressing them requires—for many, not all—a focus on the micro world, the micro perspective, that is, if you pay attention to their priorities. In other words, if you have a goal and you want to finish something, but she says she needs to take a bath at this certain time and cannot participate, there’s nothing you can do. In my theater, only men can keep up with me. Because of this standpoint, if a woman were to express a woman, she would need to create a micro world. But when describing a police story, a macro worldview, the direction would lose focus.

NOTEBOOK: It would become more internal?

FUJIWARA: Right. That’s why there aren’t as many female characters. But the wife of Numata represents the reality for women. And also the female teacher who approaches the criminal but gets killed. Woman participated in this way. But it’s hard for them to take leading parts for the narrative. It’s hard to let them be there and have their perspective be represented, because their perspective is in a different dimension.

NOTEBOOK: What about the character you play, Yoko?

FUJIWARA: Yoko is outside of that realm. She’s an outlier. She doesn’t represent family or the household or the joy of daily life, because she didn’t enjoy any of those things. That’s why she can exist there.

NOTEBOOK: How did you direct your actors in Organ, was it different from how you usually direct them in theater?

FUJIWARA: It’s the same. The only direction I gave them in Organ was that they only get one shot. I don’t give actors multiple takes. If there’s a camera or equipment problem that requires another take or two, I’ll do it. But I won’t do it for the actor. The actor has one chance, the take. But, on the offhand that the actor makes a mistake and requires a take two, I tell them they need to buy their own film roll. That was the rule. So, no one ever made a single mistake. They were all dead serious, completely focused. They’re all broke and have no money to buy film.

NOTEBOOK: In that sense it’s theatrical.

FUJIWARA: Right, and I had one actress tell me that that it was brilliant. She said, “I do lots of work for TV and film, but everyone is so lukewarm and they do take after take, and think about it so leniently. But there’s none of that here. The one take is the real thing.”

NOTEBOOK: So, that urgency was good for the actors?

FUJIWARA: Right. They said they couldn’t afford to buy their own film.

NOTEBOOK: If you give theater actors the same direction for film, how does that work? The performances in Organ don’t come off as exaggerated; I doubt a viewer without knowing would assume they are all theater actors.

FUJIWARA: There’s no difference. In theater, my scripts are like music scores. The lines come out and dance, modulate, sing, calling on the innate sensation playing the instrument that is yourself on stage. The actor, with this music-score-as-script, has a multitude of possibilities of how to play it. In film, the scripted character is a part of the environment. They are simply material for the scene. I didn’t need to explain this to them, they naturally just became materials for the scene.

Above: Organ

NOTEBOOK: That’s a good transition into my next question: can you talk about your music and sound design direction?

FUJIWARA: Music is difficult. What I say doesn’t get across, because I was working with new people. They hadn’t even seen any of my theater. I like German bands, something strong and hard. But even if they mimic the Germans, the Japanese can’t avoid making music that doesn’t sound soft and weak. One day I said, “Make it more powerful, something that alludes to the power of nature, more animalistic and sturdily-built,” and they said, “Okay.” The demo they brought to me literally had animal sounds, like elephants wailing and dogs barking, and I was like, “…That’s not what I meant” [laughs]. It didn’t get across. But there were some interesting sound bites that I could use. But Japanese band musicians can’t get over their own softness. I think what they have is different.

NOTEBOOK: So you’re not happy with the results?

FUJIWARA: Well, I’m the type of person that thinks, que sera, sera. So I wasn’t satisfied, but…

NOTEBOOK: You’ve mentioned that you a very easily scared person. But in Tetsuo and Organ, your characters say, “I won’t be afraid.” How do you interpret this difference?

FUJIWARA: When I came to Tokyo in my twenties, the first theater directors I met said they’d never met anyone as weak and sensitive as myself. They didn’t think I could live on a few years longer, much less do theater, and that I might find myself drugged up in a brothel in the near future. Kara was the only person that ever said to me that I was the strongest person he’d met. In other words, the fear and strength that I have appears to others as a weakness that can barely withstand life, but it’s just my highly sensitive nature they see. In actuality, I’m very strong. I feel very easily, so that seems weak, but my capacity for empathy is just very large. I feel others’ pain and sadness so strongly that I throw up thinking about them. That’s why I don’t watch TV or read the newspaper. Or else I would be crying all day [laughs].

NOTEBOOK: Watching Organ feels like you’re making the audience feel this extreme pain you describe.

FUJIWARA: Yes, that’s the result of the film. My second film, ID [2005], is even more so.

NOTEBOOK: In addition to fear and pain, pleasure is another large theme. After the screening, someone told me your film was grotesque but something about it was so pleasurable. How do you maintain that balance?

FUJIWARA: I think humans, in order to live, can’t cut those away from existence. If you deny desire, you’re not human. The existence of such things causes our misery, too. Thus, desire and slaughter are inescapable. My fear and sorrow regarding this, and my questioning what are they anyway. That’s what I wanted to portray.

NOTEBOOK: What’s interesting about your portrayal of violence is that Yoko uses the gun as a weapon but doesn’t shoot from it. The one time she tries to shoot at her father, it wasn’t loaded. She mostly hits with it.

FUJIWARA: When I act a role, it needs to be real for me to imagine it. I can’t shoot a gun just like that. I need to feel it. Whenever I do something I feel a corporal build-up that can’t just be released by shooting away.

NOTEBOOK: Shooting it would be too easy?

FUJIWARA: An action needs to be taken. The body and the heart are connected. It’s not that easy.

NOTEBOOK: What was the biggest challenge in shooting Organ?

FUJIWARA: The most difficult challenge was the first scene, in the warehouse. When the doctor and yakuza fend off the police while trying to dissect the man. That shoot was in the middle of summer, but we had to close off the warehouse because it was a night scene. It was hot, smelly, only men, and everyone’s body odor was suffocating the room. That was really difficult. At the time there were seven of us, and now there are three of us, just Takahashi, Mori and I. In Organ, all the actors take on multiple roles. Whenever they weren’t onscreen they were doing lights or shooting. We shot it scene by scene in order. I remember towards the end of the film, during the scene in the tunnel, when my role Yoko comes in on a bike and there’s a fighting scene, we couldn’t get a permit to shoot. We were able to shoot outside the tunnel on the road but not inside. But I badly wanted to shoot inside so we went at midnight, and the characters got all bloody and we were shooting, and the police came. They thought it was a real yakuza fight and took off the safety on their pistols and were about to shoot at us. We thought we were done for. The character Yasuda, who later falls into the ditch and gets stabbed with a Japanese sword, was responsible for getting the permits and he had all the documents on him. So, he came out from the ditch all bloody and with a sword in him, screaming, “We’re shooting a film!” terrifying the police even more. While he was negotiating with them we finished shooting the scene. The police just told us to be safe and left, but it was all thanks to him for putting his life on the line. We really thought we were going to get shot. Usually film shoots have large crews and it’s obvious, but in our case, all the crew were also the actors, so it was hard to tell, and the lights were hidden.

NOTEBOOK: What about the camera?

FUJIWARA: Yes, but it was a small 16mm Scoopic, and the police were so focused on the bloody actors they didn’t notice it. The police were terrified, but it was a great location and I just needed to shoot there no matter what.

[thefudge]

Do you have any Romanian (language or just content-wise) media recs? Particularly novels and poetry but really any must-sees/must-reads are welcome!

uuuu! 

my brain is too fried right now to do any kind of exhaustive list so i’m gonna rec a few things that i know you could get your hands on/available in translation:

for two thousand years, by mihail sebastian - really heartbreaking yet also lucid, adventurous and darkly humorous memoir of a Jewish writer in his youth at the height of nazism in romania (there’s even a Penguin classic of it)

diary of a short-sighted adolescent by mircea eliade - a funny and bittersweet bildungsroman about a bookish teenager who wants to read everything now and be the cleverest person alive while also struggling with being super lazy and unmotivated because he’s young and restless, it’s very #relatable. but it’s also fascinating to read this in opposition with “for two thousand years” because eliade entertained legionnaire nazi sympathies at one point. (also, you should check out his novellas too, especially the fantastic ones)

anything you can find in translation by gabriela adamesteanu - just lovely, delicate prose about growing up, being an adult, inhabiting your body and your feelings in an oppressive world 

the hatchet by mihail sadoveanu (apparently, there is a translation) - a lot of people give this novel flak, mostly because we had to read it in high school, but it’s a great and deceptively simple little novel that says a lot more about people than it cares to admit. the action takes you through several villages in the East-Carpathians, where a peasant woman goes in search of her missing husband. it’s a fascinating mixture of crime and folklore and mythology. 

any novella by costache negruzzi, but especially “alexandru lapusneanu”, another classic we had to read in school and which gets a lot of flak. it’s so bonkers and #quality-trash. let’s just say there’s a scene where the power-hungry voievod/prince lapusneanu enacts a red-wedding situation and builds a pyramid of freshly severed heads to impress his lady wife *swoon* 

the forest of the hanged by liviu rebreanu - i know people argue this isn’t his best novel, but it’s got the most heart. it’s the story of a soldier/philosopher in WW1 who falls in love with people again. that’s it. he falls in love with people, and the war and everything in between doesn’t matter anymore. or it matters only as it pertains to people, and people alone. 

gallants of the old court by mateiu caragiale - a bizarre gem of early 20th century Romanian nightlife, a wonderful, orgiastic fugue, feverish and infuriating. it’s mostly about rich men and social-climbers getting into existential trouble, but also into real trouble. normally, because the action takes place right before WW1, this would signify the end of an era. but we don’t really have a beginning or end. we are part-balkan, part-french imitators, part-whatever-sticks. nothing moves us, and everything does. and that’s why it’s a sort of love/hate letter to romanians 

in terms of poetry, some personal faves:  nichita stanescu, ana blandiana, monica pillat, marin sorescu,  a.e. baconsky, lucian blaga, emil brumaru, nora iuga, marta petreu, nina cassian. and yes, mihai eminescu, our national poet, though i’m often in two minds about him.  

poetry in translation is really hit and miss because of the “untranslatable”, so here’s two lines from a poem by nina cassian, because i want to show you what i mean:

            De când m-ai părăsit mă fac tot mai frumoasă             ca hoitul luminând în întuneric. 

this roughly and poetically translates to:

          Since you left me I’ve grown more beautiful

           like the corpse lighting the dark 

and this is sort of lovely on its own, but you’d need to know and hear and taste the word “hoit” in romanian to really feel the abjectness, because “hoit” is a smelly, ugly yet also alluring, already decomposing version of “cadavru” aka cadaver/corpse. also “ mă fac tot mai frumoasă” cannot be accurately summed up in “i’ve grown more beautiful”. a literal translation would be “I make myself more beautiful”. in romanian, this is obviously idiomatic and not literal. and yet, these strange self-reflexive valences make these lines strong and eerie, as if the speaker were authoring her beauty, shaping it out of clay and darkness and “hoit”,  like a butterfly cracking the corpse’s shell to get out, but also retaining some of its mesmerizing stench. why did i pause to do a close-reading of romanian poetry??? anyway, you catch my drift

in terms of movies, a recent one i really loved was sierranevada by cristi puiu, which is a neurotic family drama that drains you but also lifts you up 

and yeah, the hype is real, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days by cristi mungiu really is that good (about two young women trying to get an illegal abortion in communist romania. it won the palme d’or for very legit reasons. it breaks you in small ways. the very last shot of the film you’ll carry with you forever). i also liked graduation by cristi mungiu, where a young overachieving girl is about to graduate high school and go on to study abroad, until a terrible event unmoors both her and her family. the movie turns almost hallucinatory at one point, filled with ambiguity and a kind of sleep-walking quality 

tales from the golden age by cristi mungiu (him again!) is also fantastic for anyone who wants to get a taste of communist romania and the sad-funny absurdities of everyday life. this movie is split in 2 parts and the format is that of an anthology, almost like watching several short films at once. and there is one film in the anthology that always turns me inside out, and it’s really silly, it’s this bonnie and clyde type story about this girl and boy who meet at a party and devise an ingenious get-rich scam and just run around a few neighborhoods trying to put it into practice and it’s...the sweetest, most incomplete thing. there is such a strange, lovely connection there that never gets realized, and there is a MOMENT between them where he helps her step down from this ledge and he holds her briefly to him and i remember being in the cinema and thinking THIS, this is THE MOMENT where i felt these people were real. it was such an honest, lovely moment. like the equivalent of this song. ANYWAY, why am i rambling so much??? this ask was supposed to be SHORT. 

aferim! by radu jude is also a really neat movie and provides a look into the historical romanian/rroma relationship and why it’s so messed up, yet also so organic

the death of mr. lazarescu by cristi puiu is also a great little film about a man who gets sick and goes to the hospital. and...dies, as you can tell from the title. on the surface, he dies because of institutional ineptness and a broken healthcare system. at a deeper level, he dies because we no longer know how to help people. various hospital staff in the film do try to help him and fail for various stupid or quietly heartbreaking reasons. it’s a movie about being physically unable to care. there’s indifference, sure, but also this great exhaustion of the human spirit. but the movie is also darkly funny. might not be a great pandemic watch, but then again it might be exactly what you need 

there are soooo many other classics in terms of books (morometii by marin preda, for instance, about a patriarch in a small village in the South who slowly realizes the world he used to live in doesn’t have room for him anymore, and maybe it never had) but i’m gonna end on a quote from ion creanga, one of the most cryptic classics of romanian lit:

“Şi eu eram vesel ca vremea cea mai bună şi şturlubatic şi copilăros ca vântul în tulburea sa”

my translation: “and I was cheerful like the best weather and frolicsome and childish like the wind in its cloudiness” 

and again, the words in romanian and their particular sound and bite (”şturlubatic”, “tulburea”) immediately take me elsewhere. creanga writes about childhood, but it’s never really childhood. he writes as an adult who, in my opinion, was never really a child, but a weird, small god of the land. i mean the word “tulburea” can mean both “turmoil” and “muddiness”. the wind can be anguished, but also just a little cloudy, just a little hazy, shrinking its agony, howling it in the child. it’s eerie and gorgeous. so, that’s what he does: creanga writes about children as if they were wind-like spirits. he writes stories about devils and the peasants who trick them and school books filled with spit and flies, and warm eggs stolen from nests and fairy-tales of a world that is buried somewhere inside us, but not too deep, things hidden under our clothes or nails or even in our hair. and it’s all so physical and convoluted, just like his prose. and i don’t think anyone will ever make sense of him and that’s what makes him so discombobulatingly great.

anyway, this was supposed to be...like, really short! and not gassy! i’m sorry. i love waxing about all this gay stuff. i’m so gay about it. 

realistically tho, the nearest thing you’ll find in your local bookshop is probably books by famous ‘theater of the absurd’ playwright, eugen ionesco, or novels in translation by contemporary author mircea cartarescu. both are pretty good, so go for it! (if you want to start small, i’d recommend REM by mircea cartarescu, because it’s so trippy and meta and captures that summer holiday eeriness so well. it goes well with this romanian song sung in english)

okay byeeeee 

[ughgclden]

bee, love, i am so happy you had a good first day, you deserve calm and loving days, and you deserve people, deserve friends. i’m so happy for you.

as for apologising, i’m a terrible hypocrite every time i tell you not to worry about it, as i also apologise for anything, most notably existing, but i want you to know you don’t have to apologise to me, i understand the impulse but there’s no obligation or anything.

i’m glad you’re feeling better, and that it was just a little ick, well not glad that you were ick but glad it wasn’t too bad.

when it comes to being in welton, i fantasise a lot about these things, i think something especially about boarding schools is appealing to me. being away. that’s why my plans are new york or wales or if my friend is to be believed, quebec. sometimes though, those realities all feel more and more like tissue paper soaked in water, just waiting for a reason to fall apart

i read really quickly, it’s probably an issue, i read red white and royal blue in about an hour and fifteen minutes. neil and i. kindred spirits. today at lunch i watched the last thirty minutes of dead poets society, going back to rewatch “i was good, i was really good.” like ten times.

imposter syndrome is slowly getting the better of me.

i actually dressed up as leia for the midnight premiere of the force awakens. i’m that person. if i’d been with you in the cinema i would have cried too, you’re not alone there, i cried watching it on the floor.

i don’t deserve the nice words you give me, but i’m happy i make you feel comfy and cosy, and ironically enough, writing with a quill or fountain pen never ends in pristine and unsmudged ink, you can thank my being left handed for that. i think there’s something nice about writing with fancy pens, maybe that makes me seem pretentious as well. oh well.

as for dps tattoos, if i can ever get any tattoos, i want the neil crown, “i was good, i was really good.” somewhere, probably my wrist who knows, and some art that alludes to the first unmanned flying desk set. among others. the “and still we sleep” thought, and the outline of meeks and pitts both sound so lovely. so so lovely. i really hope you can get every tattoo you wish. although your bank account may hate me for saying so /j i want more piercings, mainly on my ears, i have something of an earring addiction, my favourite pair at the moment is probably my howl drop earrings that look like howls from howls moving castle.

honestly the outfit/hair colour distraction rule is dumb. it’s dumb. i just don’t get it. abuse of power ig. and yeah. we were like hugging and sorta just leaning on each other while talking and the administrator got angry, for whatever reason. the straight couple making out behind us, she didn’t seem to mind, however. it’s dumb, and im glad i don’t go there anymore.

im clearly very articulate today (sarcasm) my mind is ehhhhhhhhhhh and feels like a squirrel laying on its stomach.

maybe i will call you ramona flowers, bee /j did you know the original name for pac man was puck man… /j hiding in the back of the music room to avoid a maths test sounds like something i would do. i say this, knowing full well that i’m such a neil kinnie that i end up feeling like a teachers pet because i want to do well, both for myself and simply to avoid trouble with my mum.

a new york times best seller, huh? well if i ever publish anything i’ll dedicate it to you, both for being the only person who thought i could be a storyteller, but also for being a lovely person in general.

sometimes one day after another feels impossible. tomorrow feels impossible. but oh well. i think younger me would be disappointed, to some degree. on the other hand, i think they’d think it’s cool how much i know. if nothing else, they’d love that i have a typewriter. also, i’m sure young you would be proud of you, i am. i’m so proud of you.

i mean bee, i could teach you to shoot a bow /hj YOU CAN WIELD A SWORD????? here i was thinking you could not possibly get cooler or hotter omg i’m in love /hj

thank you for being proud of me, really bee, thank you. and thank you for being the only one. i’m hardly changing the world, but i guess if i don’t burn out and lose this fight, changing a few points of views in the process of growing wouldn’t be terrible.

p.s. it’s certainly something, i feel bad because i always pull away from people when i get numb and it’s so new that me doing that could be detrimental to everything, but me forcing myself not to could have a bad effect on me. who knows what’ll happen. i’m just gonna try and keep them happy no matter what.

p. p. s. bee you brought this upon yourself /lh

all my love, bee, and that pun was the out of this world part of that sentence. you’re so cute omg.

that quote is beautiful, and since i, once again, had to translate french and smile about it, i’ll leave you with this

no importa que nos separe la distancia, siempre habrá un mismo cielo que nos una.

p.p.p.s. thank you for saying what you do, and i know that i don’t owe you anything, but writing to you is easy, and makes me happy, when i manage to get myself to sit down and think about it. i’m sending you back hugs, gentle forehead kisses and mugs of tea, a soft blanket and a narnia movie marathon, where we argue about how i am definitely not better than susan pevensie, but you almost certainly might be.

i’m so happy uni is going well thus far, love. and i hope you love your classes. learning.

thank you for everything bee.

yours, always,

star✨

star sweetheart, thank you so so much, honestly. i can't tell you how much that means - i know you said not to apologise, but an apology seems in order for the lateness of this message- im terrible i know /lh thank you sm though.

i'm writing this whilst listening to one of my favourite albums (hypersonic missiles by sam fender, if you were curious) and curled up in bed, so this really adds to the comforting vibes.

i'm with you on that, boarding schools do have a certain something about them, don't they? i hope you can get to one or all of these places in your life - i can speak from experience wales is especially beautiful, but i can really see you in new york, too. wherever you end up star, i truly hope you're happy there.

an hour and fifteen mins?!!? the fastest i've read something was a clockwork orange in two and a half hours or so- you are so strong star, i've watched that film 20+ times and only watched the last half an hour maybe 4 /lh

that is SO CUTE oh my god- i will admit, for it chapter two i did channel my inner bill denbrough and wore some flannel (i luv that limbo <3)

you deserve all of these words and more, i promise you. you deserve something a lot less clumsy, but i offer you my best. left handed.. you rly are neil huh? /j

all of those ideas; absolutely lovely. the i was good tattoo breaks my heart in the best way possible. im hoping you get all of these tattoos, love. you'd suit them more than anyone, i'm sure. those earrings sound like the coolest fucking things ever? i did have a pair that had a little vodka bottle on, but i lost one in a club and haven't gotten round to replacing them. i definitely want more piercings too,, my conch is looking pretty bare as of late...

that is just. so disgusting? im so- god that makes me so angry i can't even explain. i think i should punch all homophobes straight in the mouth, actually /hj

love, i bet younger you would be so so proud of all you've achieved. from only what you've told me, i am. they'd be over the moon at how intellectual, kind and strong you are, i know it.

I CAN!!! ITS ONE OF MY MOST ESTEEMED TALENTS!!! lets make a deal. you teach me to shoot a bow, i teach you to wield a sword.. we're giving very narnia power couple if i may say.. /hj

i will always be proud of you star, for even the smallest of things you achieve. you're actively making a difference and a change, take bringing this positivity into my life for example. you've got this, star. i know you have.

ps; im wishing you all the best my love, seriously. take every day as it comes, and listen to your mind and wellbeing. im sending you so much love

pps; that quote. is so fucking cute. god im breaking down,, its so pretty and so DHJHFJKNFKKN yeah.

this is me, making you a cup of coffee and your favourite comfort meal, with a kiss on the top of the head. we will have this argument - as much as i love susan, she's no match for you <33

all of my love and happiness, star. you truly are one of a kind.

if i may, i'd like to leave you with an excerpt from a poem i saw earlier that i fell in love with;

"and you laugh. / loudly- / head tipping back. / and while your eyes / are on the ceiling, / i am mouthing / something too heavy even / for this steady night to shoulder. / "this is not a joke." i mouth. / "love me. love me." - letters from medea, salma deera

[corkcitylibraries]

Cork in Verse | Ana Spehar interviews Theo Dorgan

Cork in Verse is a series of interviews by Ana Spehar with Cork Poets. This week Ana interviews Theo Dorgan.

Born in Cork, Theo Dorgan is a poet, and also a novelist, prose writer, translator, librettist, editor and documentary screenwriter. His most recent publications are Orpheus (Dedalus Press, 2018), Bailéid Giofógacha (translation into Irish of Lorca’s Romancero Gitano, Coiscéim 2019), and THE ABDUCTION, his translation from the French of Syrian poet Maram al-Masri’s Le Rapt, Southword editions, 2020). He is a member of Aosdána.

  When did you start writing poetry?

The first poem I was given came to me on a winter’s night when I was, what, 19 or so? I’d arranged to meet a young woman at a céilí in Muiríoch,and on the long night walk there from Baile an Fheirtéaraigh I found myself writing her a poem. I’d had it in mind always that I would spend my life as a writer but had assumed it would be prose. That first visitation changed everything.

 Could you tell us more about your creative process? How often do you write?

I try to write when the poem strikes. I believe, I know from a lifetime’s experience, that it’s truer to say that we don’t write the poem, the poem writes us. Of course, when that first flash has been captured, to the extent that it has been, there then comes the long working to secure it on the page. That’s where the craft comes in, the famous 10,000 hours.

I might go months without writing anything at all, and then there might come a rush, or just a stray poem. There’s no accounting for this, it can’t be pre-ordained. I am occasionally commissioned to write something, but if I accept, I always make it clear that I will withdraw from the commission unless a poem strikes. Too, I won’t accept a commission unless I have some sense that it chimes with something that’s been hovering somewhere in the back of my mind. That’s no guarantee, of course, that the preoccupation will crystallise in a poem, but it has happened.

 Who is your favourite author/authors?

Impossible to answer, there are so many writers and poets with whom I have an ongoing affinity. That said, I come back time and again to Robert Graves, and to Cavafy, Gary Snyder, Heaney, Boland and — always new to me — Paula Meehan.

 What are you reading at the moment?

Robert Kanigel’s Hearing Homer’s Song, his life of the scholar Milman Parry who revolutionised Homer studies, and Martin Gayford’s new book about David Hockney, Spring Cannot Be Cancelled. Of course, at the same time, day in and day out, I am dipping into all kinds of books constantly, revisiting old friends, chasing references or stray correspondences.

 What advice would you give to someone just starting their creative journey in writing?

Read, read and read. It’s an inherited craft, you have to immerse yourself in the tradition. Search out writers with whom you feel an affinity and ask yourself why that is. Search out writers who repel you and ask yourself why they have that effect on you. Learn to be friends with and nurture your own sensibility but give it a hard time. When you come across a poem that moves you, that lights you up inside, stand back and ask yourself, how does she do that? A poem, or story, or novel or play will find you if it’s for you — you need to be prepared in the craft if you’re to get it down. On the other side of the business, never refuse anything that suggests itself to you, write it down; it will work out or it won’t, but never attempt to short-circuit the process. Stay out of your own road, and treat all advice, including this advice, with good-humoured scepticism. Be on good terms with your waste basket, real or virtual, but before you bin a poem, check that there isn’t a line or two that can be salvaged — that might be the living line from which something entirely unexpected may announce itself.

  The Angel of History

by Theo Dorgan

 In the Parliament house on Kildare Street the lamps were burning.

It was a winter night, the usual slant rain falling.

 I had paused to light up a cigarette, to watch the lone Guard

stamp her feet, blow uselessly into her cupped, gloved hands.

 In the colonnade of the National Library a man was standing,

a man neither old nor young, his head bare, half turned towards

 the lights in the Parliament house, the high blank windows.

I saw him reach inside his long loose coat, take out a notebook.

 I crossed the road, gathering my own long coat around me,

stood in behind him, looked over his shoulder. He paid no heed.

 One after another I saw him strike them out from a long list of names:

Senators, Deputies, Ministers . One after another the names

 dissolved on the page, a scant dozen remaining.  I watched him

ink in a question mark after each of these, neat and precise.

 He put the book away, sliding it down carefully into a deep pocket;

he turned and looked at me, nothing like pity in those hollow eyes.

 He sighed, then squared his shoulders, lifted his face to the rain

and was gone. Gone as if he had never been. But I saw him,

 I know who he was, I witnessed that cold, exact cancellation;

walked on, walked home, thoughtful, afraid for my country.

  A Nocturne For Blackpool

by Theo Dorgan

Dolphins are coursing in the blue air outside the window

and the sparking stars are oxygen, bubbling to the moon.

At the end of a terrace, unicorns scuff asphalt,

one with her neck stretched on the cool roof of a car.

 A key rasps in the latch, milk bottles click on a sill,

a truck heading for Mallow roars, changing gear on a hill.

The electric hum of the brewery whines, then drops in pitch –

ground bass for the nocturne of Blackpool.

 The ghost of Inspector Swanzy creeps down Hardwick Street,

MacCurtain turns down the counterpane of a bed he’ll never sleep in,

unquiet murmurs scold from the blue-slate rooftops

the Death-Squad no-one had thought to guard against.

 The young sunburned hurlers flex in their beds, dreaming of glory,

great deeds on the playing fields, half-days from school,

while their slightly older sisters dream of men and pain,

an equation to be puzzled out again and again.

 Walloo Dullea, homeward bound on the Commons Road, belts out airs       from Trovatore,

the recipe as before, nobody stirs from sleep

and ‘Puzzle the Judge’, contented, pokes at ashes –

“There’s many a lawyer here today could learn from this man”.

 North Chapel, The Assumption, Farranferris and Blackpool,

the mass of the church in stone rears like rock from the sea

but the interlaced lanes flick with submarine life

older than priests can, or want to, understand.

 This woman believed Jack Lynch stood next to God, who broke the

Republic.

This man beyond, his face turned to the wall, stares at his friend

whose face will not cease from burning in the icy sea – torpedoed off

Murmansk from a tanker. He shot him, now nightly he watches him sink.

 (Cont. with stanza break)

Here is a woman the wrong side of forty, sightless in her kitchen

as she struggles to make sense of the redundancy notice,

of her boorish son, just home, four years on the dole, foul-mouthed,

of her husband, who has aged ten years in as many days.

 The bells of Shandon jolt like electricity through lovers

in a cold-water flat beneath the attic of a house in Hatton’s Alley,

the ghost of Frank O’Connor smiles on Fever Hospital Steps

as Mon boys go by, arguing about first pints of stout and Che Guevara.

 The unicorns of legend are the donkeys of childhood, nobody

knows that better than we know it ourselves, but we know also that

dolphins are coursing through the blue air outside our windows

and the sparking stars are oxygen, bubbling to the moon.

 We are who we are and what we do.  We study indifference in a hard

school

and in a hard time, but we keep the skill to make legend of the ordinary.

We keep an eye on the slow clock of history in Blackpool –

Jesus himself, as they say around here, was born in a stable.

 for Mick Hannigan

[soviet-history-detective]

Legasov You Did Not Know

I am going to share an ingot of solid gold right now, the kind that will break your heart and ruin your day.

I have unearthed this some time ago from a book that’s been long out of print. It is the translation of a truly heart-wrenching eulogy written by his late widow, Margarita Mihailovna Legasova. There is a lot of new information about Legasov in this piece, the kind of things only the wife of 30 years would know. 

Defenceless Victor—Margarita Legasova’s title of her reminiscences 

This title in Trud was followed by a quotation by Valery Legasov:

There are two colour photos hanging in my office at work. One of them is of a Nuclear Atomic Plant, the other of storks. These photos hang near each other as a reminder of the close relationship between life, nature and technology, letting one know beforehand of the fragility of life, about the necessity to keep it. I recalled these photos when I worked in Chernobyl eliminating the consequences of the accident at the NPP. Really, could storks in the future, living on the earth, feel themselves to be safe with modern industry? Is such a peaceful coexistence possible? And if possible, then what should be done to achieve this?

It was not until 10 years after the accident and eight years after Valery Legasov’s death that his widow published a short memoir in Trud that unequivocally confirmed that her husband had committed suicide on 27 April 1988. They had first met when students in the same institute and together worked at a students’ building construction project in what were termed in the USSR as the virgin lands. Under the title Defenceless Victor she described her memories of Legasov’s troubled times at Chernobyl and the period afterwards when he was, to a certain extent, ostracized by the establishment. She also includes interesting comments on what life was like for a senior scientist and his family in the Soviet system: very different from the experiences of Western scientists.

***

Last year we at last completed erection of a gravestone on his grave. This was with thanks to my son and daughter and a few supporters and colleagues of the Academician who helped to cover the expenses. That day when the sculptor invited me to his workshop and showed me the completed work, Valery returned home in the form of his bronze sculpture. He often had to travel away on business trips, we tried to be patient and wait for his return, but on 27 April 1988 he was transported away, already lifeless, forever. 

On Saturday 26 April 1986, Valery left for an ordinary business meeting where he learned about the Chernobyl NPP accident and that evening he was already 2 km away from the destroyed reactor. Life seemingly continued but terrible forebodings did not allow us to relax and stop worrying about his health. After 27 April our acquaintances began to say that badly irradiated victims of the accident had begun to be transported to Moscow to Hospital No. 6. Nobody could tell me when he would return. 

On the morning of 5 May about 8am there was a ring at the door bell and Valery entered in a borrowed suit of clothes and carrying a polythene bag with belongings rather than his normal case. He was very thin, with a dark face, red eyes and the palms of his hands were tanned black. He only had time to wash, change, breakfast and ask about his two grandchildren before he had to leave at 10am for a meeting. There was no time to tell us what was the state of events at Chernobyl. Then at lunchtime one of his assistants telephoned and said that Boris Scherbina wanted him again at Chernobyl. 

It was only when he returned home later that he was able to tell us that he had personally entered the most dangerous areas in the fourth reactor and how shaken he was at the criminal carelessness displayed at the NPP before the explosion. 

He next returned home on 13 May and it seemed to us that the biggest difficulties were in the past: but we soon understood that we were mistaken. By summer Valery was already in poor health, suffering from frequent headaches, chronic insomnia, nausea and stomach illness. It was difficult to recognize the earlier Valery in this morally depressed man. He was taken many times for medical investigation to Hospital No. 6 of the atomic establishment. Heart insufficiency, serious leukocytosis, problems with his myelocytes and bone marrow were diagnosed, as well as neurosis. But no official diagnosis was made of radiation syndrome, although I had no doubt that it was so. 

He became an Academician at the early age of 45 but some of the leading figures of Soviet science called him ‘A boy from the chemical suburbs’. However, he was interesting to work with and liked jokes, being famous as an amusing raconteur, although everyone knew that science was the principal interest of his life. His private family life was unknown to his colleagues. 

For five years, 1964–69, we lived in a flat of 22 square metres at Nizhegorodskaya Street. Though we could use only communal transportation we often made trips together with our two little children to Kuskovo, Ostankino and Arkangelskoye. In Tsaritsino we enjoyed ski holidays. It now seems that these were the happiest times of our lives. 

Valery was a car enthusiast for the last 10 years of his life and loved driving at very high speeds. He had always wanted a private car and his first, which was also his last, was a GAZ-25 Volga which we bought in 1977 for 9500 roubles when he was a Candidate Member of the Academy of Sciences. The initial capital for the purchase was his quota from his State Prize received for his achievements in the field of chemistry. 

We usually celebrated New Year in the circle of our family, sometimes in a rest house. One of these days a pure bred chau chau puppy appeared in our family and it was assumed that it was my New Year’s gift. Ma Lu Thomas, as she was called, would recognize only Valery as his owner and loved being in our car. She was inseparable from him and died just after Valery’s death. He was also an adoring grandfather to Misha and Valerik and invented little poems for them and played charades. 

As a boy he received a musical education and for many years was interested in listening and understanding classical music: Grieg, Sibelius, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He was also fond of Schnitke. Over the years we bought tickets for many concerts in the Tschaikovsky Concert Hall of the Musical Conservatoire. Valery’s last concert was in Lithuania in the summer of 1987: for flute and organ. Little did I know that soon afterwards Valery would make a first attempt to commit suicide. He swallowed a handful of Triptizol tablets but that time the physicians managed to save him. 

In one Soviet TV programme is was said that Academician Legasov was a sincere believer. It is not so. From autumn 1987 he began to read the Bible and thought much about what he read. He was not baptised a Christian, but respected religion even though he was brought up an atheist. 

He considered that the East was weak and during his business trips he tried to see as much as possible of culture. He very much wanted to visit one of the sacred Islamic places, the mausoleum of Hoja Ahmed Iasavi, and the monument erected in honour of the ancient Turkish poet who lived in the twelfth century and was an advocate of Sufism. We visited the ancient city of Yami and worshipped at the grave of the philosopher, and Valery often recalled his verses:

Having met a man of another faith 

Don’t be evil to him

The God does not like people

With a cruel heart...

After their death punishment

Waits for them...

On his return from the Chernobyl NPP Valery told very sparingly, with tears in his eyes, about the unpreparedness for the accident. Those days nobody could precisely estimate the number of victims, but Legasov understood better than others, the lack of necessary means of health protection: pure water, food products, iodine prophylaxis. 

In August 1986 Valery Legasov presented a report to IAEA experts at a meeting in Vienna, about the causes and the consequences of the accident. His five-hour report was very well received and he returned home triumphal. But soon his mood changed. During the last two years after the accident he suffered great psychological trauma and his inner strength was broken. 

Twice he was nominated for a high award from the State, and twice the nomination was cancelled. He received a suggestion that he might take up a position with the IAEA in the field of nuclear technology: again, obstacles appeared. There was also the planned nomination for Director of a Research Centre on the Problems of Industrial and Nuclear Safety: this came to nothing. His election as a Member of the French Academy of Sciences was apparently assured and although we went to Paris on 4 February 1988, his last business trip, he did not receive Membership. Also, just after his Paris trip he was hospitalized with acute leukocytosis, pneumonia and severe neurosis. 

Chernobyl was not only a tragedy of international importance but it was also the personal tragedy of the gifted scientist Valery Legasov. 

Source: Chernobyl Record- The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe, R F Mould

Notes:

I had a feeling there was more to Legasov than what we see in the written material out there (I read Russian at upper intermediate level so I have access to quite a lot of info, and I have read the magnificent in-depth science-engineering reform articles of him which were absolutely jaw-dropping in their visionary quality. Yet some of the information in this article blew my mind.  Legasov’s intellectual side is far deeper than anyone’s guess, that is evident.

All the documentary films and other material mention Legasov took sleeping pills in his first suicide attempt in 1987, but it turns out it was Triptizol, which is the brand name of Amitriptyline -a powerful antidepressant prescribed for major depression and where SSRI’s don’t work. It has been used as sleeping medicine in the US, but I have no clue if it had such use in the USSR. It is known Legasov developed a serious insomnia problem, but he was also diagnosed with major clinical depression. 

Margarita Legasova was a professor of chemistry, they both graduated from the prestigious Mendeleev School of Chemistry, where they met (as mentioned in the beginning.)

The dog’s name sounds like it’s mistranscribed or something, in Russian language articles written by Legasov’s close friends she is mentioned as Tomka. Poor thing stopped eating after she realized he was gone forever and died shortly after. 

[thewordcollector2]

And Then There Was Rain: 35+ Uplifting Reminders for Those Rainy Days

Bismillaahir-Rahmaanir-Raheem بسم الله الرّحمن الرّحيم… In the name of Allah (God), the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Assalaamu 'alaikum السّلام عليكم… Peace be with you

Hi, Readers :). There are those times in life when we experience dismal days. These are the days when you feel like the world is coming to an end, and everything just seems to be going downhill. During these moments you feel gutted (down or depressed), and as if a dark cloud is following you everywhere. But fear not! Your days will not always be sunless and cheerless, as sadness never lasts forever. There is hope in the rain, and you just need to hold on, InshaaAllah إن شاء الله (God willing)! :)

Persian / Farsi Idiom: Havaa-toh daaram هواتو دارم / I have your back.

Literal Translation: I have your air / weather.

Today, I wish to bring back some hope, optimism and confidence in YOU. This post is mostly centered around rainy days* (figurative and literal). It is especially for the downhearted, but anyone is welcome to read. Please try some of my reinvigorating treatment. Don't worry, it's totally safe and poison-free. And, guess what? It won't cost you a dime. Happy swallowing! :)

*rainy day

(n.) A time of need or trouble. (The Free Dictionary)

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Important Notice:

Readers, I apologise for the unclickable URLs and hyperlinks in this post. My blog seems to have a glitch right now, so please be patient with me. Thank you for your understanding, and again I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

For the while, you guys can copy and paste URLs (web addresses) from the "Sources, Credits and Further Reading" section to the address bar (location bar or URL bar) of your web browser, and then hit / press "Enter" to visit them.

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25+ Inspirationally Refreshful Quotes for Rainy Days

"Don't confuse your path with your destination. Just because it's stormy now doesn't mean that you aren't headed for sunshine."

Only a select few are able to see the true beauty that lies behind what just might seem like a rainy day or a grey sky. ~Jessica M. Laar

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. ~Rumi

Fall seven times, stand up eight. ~Japanese proverb*

*Japanese Idiom - Wiktionary

七転び八起き (hiragana ななころびやおき, rōmaji nana korobi ya oki)

Meaning:

the ups and downs of life (lit. seven falls, eight get-ups)

Note:

"This proverb implies that you have a lot of ups and downs throughout your life, but you will be fine at the end. It encourages you to tackle your problems again and again until you overcome it, even when you cannot see the light. This is often used when you want to encourage somebody facing difficult problems." (Japanese Words of Wisdom)

Let a smile be your umbrella on a rainy day. ~Perry Como

If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. The world needs more of that. ~Anonymous

Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated. ~Lou Holtz

"Thank Allah* for what you have. Trust Allah for what you need."

*"Allah الله is the Arabic word for God in Abrahamic religions. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh, which means 'the god', and is related to El and Elah, the Hebrew and Aramaic words for God.

The word Allah has been used by Arabic people of different religions since pre-Islamic times. More specifically, it has been used as a term for God by Muslims [both Arab and non-Arab] and Arab Christians." (Wikipedia)

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other. ~Abraham Lincoln

Everyone wants happiness; no one wants pain. But you can't have a rainbow without a little rain. ~Zion Lee

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. ~Maya Angelou

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. ~Maya Angelou

HasbunAllaahu wa ni'mal Wakeel حَسْبُنَا اللَّهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِيلُ.

"Allāh is sufficient for us and He is the Best Guardian."

(Qur'ān, Sūrat Āl 'Imrān)

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it. ~Mohandas Gandhi

When you feel like giving up and quitting, remember why you started in the first place. ~Unknown

Without rain nothing grows, learn to embrace the storms of your life. ~Expanded Consciousness

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. ~Dolly Parton

Learn Something New: Island Talk

Caribbean Idiom: Guava Season

Guava

Meaning:

"The term 'guava season' is used to describe a period of difficulty, of economic woe and hardship, when there is nothing to eat but wild fruit like guava… when it used to be wild."

(Guava Superfruit | The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper)

When it rains look for rainbows, when it's dark look for stars. ~Oscar Wilde

Predicting rain doesn't count. Building arks does. ~Warren Buffett

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. ~Roger Miller

A true friend is like an umbrella that opens her heart to protect you on those rainy days. ~Debasish Mridha

"Good friends will come out, even on rainy days, if we need shelter."

"Sometimes life just calls for an umbrella."

No matter how much it rains, there is a place in you that never stops shining. ~Princess Sassy Pants & Co.

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. ~Zig Ziglar

"Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear."

"God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way."

Ya Allah يا الله (O God), please enlighten the darkness of my heart. Aameen آمين

A gentle word, like summer rain, may soothe some heart and banish pain. What joy or sadness often springs, from just the simple little things! ~Willa Hoey

"In our lives there is bound to come some pain, surely as there are storms and falling rain; just believe that the One who holds the storms will bring the sun."

"And O my people! Ask forgiveness of your Lord, and turn to Him (in repentance): He will send you the skies pouring abundant rain, and add strength to your strength: so turn ye not back in sin!"

The Qur'aan 11:52

When someone is mean, don't listen. When someone is rude, walk away. When someone tries to put you down, stand firm. Don't let someone's bad behaviour destroy your inner peace. ~Author Unknown

Don't let insignificant / trivial / little things break (destroy) your happiness.

Arabic Transliteration 1: Laa taj'al al-ashyaa'a at-taafihata tudammiru sa'aadataka لَا تَجْعَل الْأَشْيَاءَ التَّافِهَةَ تُدَمِّر سَعَادَتَكَ.

Arabic Transliteration 2: Laa tada' al-ashyaa' at-taafihah tudammir sa'aadatak لاتدع الأشياء التافهة تدمر سعادتك.

Have patience with all things but first with yourself. Never confuse your mistakes with your value as a human being. You are a perfectly valuable, creative, worthwhile person simply because you exist. And no amount of triumphs or tribulations can ever change that. Unconditional self-acceptance is the core of a peaceful mind. ~Francis de Sales*

*Saint Francis of Sales, also called Francis de Sales, French Saint François de Sales

"Let the rain wash away all the pain from yesterday."

Be strong because things will get better. It might be stormy now but it can't rain forever. ~Hailee

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass... It's about learning to run in the rain."

After a storm comes a calm. ~Matthew Henry

Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. ~Robert H. Schuller

If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm. ~Frank Lane

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them—every day begin the task anew. ~Francis de Sales

"For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease."

(Al Qur'aan, 94: 5-6)

An Inspiring Pick-Me-Up Poem for People Who Feel Like Giving Up

Don't Quit by John Greenleaf Whittier

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging (walking) seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is strange with its twists and turns

As every one of us sometimes learns

And many a failure comes about

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up though the pace seems slow—

You may succeed with another blow.

There is no success without hardship. - Sophocles

Success is failure turned inside out—

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell just how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit—

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

This poem is in the public domain.

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  ― Oscar Wilde

Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book. ~Bill Watterson

12 Lovely Little Words for Rain Addicts

rain

(n.) water falling in drops condensed from vapor in the atmosphere (Merriam-Webster)

rain cloud / raincloud

(n.) a cloud (as a nimbus) bringing rain (Merriam-Webster)

cloudburst

(n.) a sudden, very heavy rain (Webster’s New World College Dictionary)

pluvial

adj.

1. Of or relating to rain; rainy.

2. Marked or formed by abundant rainfall: pluvial periods; a pluvial lake.

n.

An extended period of abundant rainfall, especially such a period of the Pleistocene Epoch. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Pluviophile - Wiktionary

English

Etymology

From Latin pluvia +‎ -phile.

Noun

pluviophile (plural pluviophiles)

1. (biology) Any organism that thrives in conditions of heavy rainfall

2. One who loves rain, a rain-lover

Pluviophile: (n.) a lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.

ombrophile (ombrophil)

(n.) a plant which survives well or flourishes in rainy conditions (Collins English Dictionary)

ombrophilous (ombrophilic)

(adj.) of a plant: capable of withstanding or thriving in the presence of much rain (Merriam-Webster)

bibliophile

(n.) a person who loves or collects books (Cambridge English Dictionary)

mizzle

(n.) light rain; drizzle. (Oxford Dictionaries)

pitter-patter

(n.) the sound of a rapid succession of light beats or taps, as of rain, footsteps, etc. (Dictionary.com)

petrichor

[pe-trahy-kawr, ‐ker]

(n.) a distinctive scent, usually described as earthy, pleasant, or sweet, produced by rainfall on very dry ground. (Dictionary.com)

rainstorm

(n.) A storm with heavy rain. (Oxford Dictionaries)

Did you know?

The word “pitter-patter” is an example of an onomatopoeia. The following is the definition of “onomatopoeia”: “Onomatopoeia is when a word’s pronunciation imitates its sound. When you say an onomatopoeic word, the utterance itself is reminiscent of the sound to which the word refers.”

(101 Onomatopoeia Examples | Ereading Worksheets)

Fikar mat karo, sab theek ho jayega فکر مت کرو، سب ٹھیک ہو جائے گا = "Don't worry, everything will be okay / fine" in Urdu

"Rain" in 23 Languages

Afrikaans: reën

Arabic: maṭar مَطَر

Estonian: vihm

Finnish: sade

French: pluie

Greek: vrochí βροχή

Hausa: ruwa, ruwan sama

Hawaiian: ka ua (pronounced 'kah-oo-ah')

Hindi-Urdu: baarish बारिश  بارش

Italian: pioggia

Japanese: ame 雨  あめ

Latin: pluvia

Malay: hujan (the 'h' is silent)

Mandarin: yǔ 雨

Persian / Farsi: bârân باران‎‎

Portuguese: chuva

Spanish: lluvia

Swahili: mvua

Tagalog / Filipino: ulan

Thai: fǒn ฝน

Turkish: rahmet

Welsh: glaw

Yoruba: ojo

How to Say "Enjoy the rain" in Arabic, Indonesian, Malaysian and Spanish

Arabic: Istamti' bil-maTar اِسْتَمْتِعْ بِالْمَطَرِ

Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia): Selamat menikmati hujan

Malaysian (bahasa Malaysia): Selamat berhujan / Selamat berhujan-hujan / Selamat berhujan-hujanan*

*rough translations

Spanish: Disfruta de la lluvia

It's Raining Wisdom: 7 Fantabulous International Proverbs

Prepare the umbrella before it rains / Sediakan payung sebelum hujan. ~Malay Proverb

Meanings:

- "Prevention is better than cure." (steemKR)

- "Always be cautious when you can sense danger." (steemKR)

- "Thatch your roof before the rain begins." (Peribahasa Melayu dan Inggeris)

- "Dig the well before you are thirsty." ( Peribahasa Melayu dan Inggeris)

The sign (i.e. precursor) of rain is clouds / Dalili ya mvua ni mawingu. ~Swahili proverb

Meaning:

"Pay attention to indications for something which is going to happen." (www.kiswahili.net)

How beautiful it is to see the rain and not get wet / How nice to see the rain and not get wet / Qué bonito es ver la lluvia y no mojarse. ~Spanish Proverb

Meanings:

- "Don't criticize others for the way they do something unless you've done it yourself." (BuzzFeed)

- "Criticism is easy, art is difficult." (Culture Trip)

All clouds bring not rain. ~English Saying

Meaning:

"We can rephrase this: 'Not every cloud brings rain.' And that's true. Sometimes there are many clouds in the sky, but it doesn't rain. Don't judge things by appearances." (EnglishClub)

Kay koule twompe soley soley men li pa twompe lapil / Kay koule twompe soley men li pa twompe lapli / Kay koule tronpe soley men li pa tronpe lapli / A leaky house can fool the sun, but it can't fool the rain / A leaking roof may fool sunny weather, but cannot fool the rain. ~Haitian proverb

Meaning:

"When things are going well, it is easy for us to appear solid, intact, grounded, strong, etc., but it is during and after a crisis, loss, failure, or other misfortune that we discover the power of our resilience i.e. our courage, fortitude and stamina." (Quozio)

There is no bad weather, there are only bad clothes / There's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes / Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. ~Swedish proverb

Meaning:

"Any weather is tolerable as long as you have the right clothing." (Wikiquote)

Rain wets a leopard's skin, but it does not wash out the spots / Rain beats a leopard's skin but does not wash off the spots. ~Ashanti Proverb from Ghana

Meaning:

"In life each person will encounter hardship, which in this proverb is represented by rain. The supposition that rain cannot wash out a leopard's spots alludes to the fact that hardship is temporary and can only strengthen a person in the end. Eventually the rain will stop falling, and all things can be overcome." (DePauw University)

Miscellaneous Section: 3 Special Islamic Prayers

Du'aa* of Prophet Musa, aka Moses (AS)

رَبِّ إِنِّي لِمَا أَنْزَلْتَ إِلَيَّ مِنْ خَيْرٍ فَقِيرٌ

Rabbi innee limaa anzalta ilayya min khairin faqeer.

Translation:

"O my Lord, truly I am in need of whatever good You bestow on me."

(Surat al-Qasas, 28:24)

*prayer, supplication, etc. = du'aa دُعَاء (Arabic)

Du'aa (Supplication) for Distress, Sadness and Anxiety

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْهَمِّ وَالْحُزْنِ وَالْعَجْزِ وَالْكَسَلِ, وَالْبُخْلِ وَالْجُبْنِ وَضَلَعِ الدَّيْنِ, وَغَلَبَةِ الرِّجَالِ

Allaahumma innee a'oodhu bika minal-hammi wal-ḥuzni wal-'ajzi wal-kasali wal-bukhli wal-jubni wa ḍala'id-daini wa ghalabatir-rijaal.

"O Allah [God], I take refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, weakness and laziness, miserliness and cowardice, the burden of debts and from being overpowered by men."

or...

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْهَمِّ وَالْحَزَنِ، وَالْعَجْزِ وَالْكَسَلِ، وَالْجُبْنِ وَالْبُخْلِ، وَضَلَعِ الدَّيْنِ، وَغَلَبَةِ الرِّجَالِ

Allaahumma innee a'oodhu bika minal-hammi wal-ḥazani wal-'ajzi wal-kasali wal-jubni wal-bukhli wa ḍala'id-daini wa ghalabatir-rijaal.

"O Allah [God]! I seek refuge with You from worry and grief, from incapacity and laziness, from cowardice and miserliness, from being heavily in debt and from being overpowered by [other] men."

Du'aa (prayer) for when it rains

اللَّهُمَّ صَيِّبًا نَافِعًا

Allaahumma ṣayyiban naafi'an.

"O Allah [God], may it be a beneficial rain cloud."

Was this entry interesting? If so, you may also want to read "23 Courage Quotes to Spark Your Inner Spunk", InshaaAllah إن شاء الله. Here ya go:

http://thewordcollector2.tumblr.com/post/168641993628/23-courage-quotes-to-spark-your-inner-spunk

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The License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

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The License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

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The License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

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This post includes text from the Wiktionary entry, “rain - Wiktionary”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution license, CC By-SA 3.0.

The License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

About CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-say-Enjoy-the-rain-in-Arabic-Can-it-be-translated-as-Istamti-bil-maTar-%D8%A7%D9%90%D8%B3%D9%92%D8%AA%D9%8E%D9%85%D9%92%D8%AA%D9%90%D8%B9%D9%92

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The License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

About CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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The License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

About CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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https://books.google.tt/books?id=NeePAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=Rain+beats+a+leopard%27s+skin,+but+it+does+not+wash+off+the+spots.&source=bl&ots=gSVeWfi8zn&sig=2WU3Qdjm_G6BohCYRvAywavQ02A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDlbeW07fcAhUN2VMKHQGyAz8Q6AEIgQEwCg#v=onepage&q=Rain%20beats%20a%20leopard's%20skin%2C%20but%20it%20does%20not%20wash%20off%20the%20spots.&f=false

https://www.freearabicdictionary.com/dictionary/search/%D8%AF%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%A1

https://blog.islamiconlineuniversity.com/dua-musa-alayhisalam/

http://seekershub.org/ans-blog/2012/09/26/supplication-for-a-spouse/

https://muslimmatters.org/2010/02/10/the-supplication-series-distress-sadness-and-anxiety-2/

http://thebeautyofislam.tumblr.com/post/15660867741

https://sunnah.com/bukhari/80/66

http://duas.com/dua/312/dua-when-it-is-raining

https://slideplayer.es/slide/4621550/

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/the%20sun

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/the%20clouds

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/the%20flowers

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atardecer#Spanish

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paseo#Spanish

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/por%20el%20campo

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/porque

http://www.spanishdict.com/translation

https://translate.google.tt/?hl=en&tab=wT#es/en/Disfruta%20de%20la%20lluvia%2C%20del%20sol%2C%20de%20las%20nubes%2C%20de%20las%20flores%2C%20de%20los%20atardeceres%20y%20de%20los%20paseos%20por%20el%20campo%2C%20porque%20todo%20est%C3%A1%20ah%C3%AD%20para%20ti

https://www.quora.com/What-does-this-Spanish-sentence-mean-in-English-Disfruta-de-la-lluvia-del-sol-de-las-nubes-de-las-flores-de-los-atardeceres-y-de-los-paseos-por-el-campo-porque-todo-est%C3%A1-ah%C3%AD-para-ti-Also-is-it

Dios te bendiga hoy, mañana y siempre - God bless you today, tomorrow and forever (Spanish)

May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you and all your heart might desire. ~Irish Blessing

Okay readers, that's it for today. I hope that my remedy worked well. No need to worry, the treatment only has favourable side effects :). Do enjoy the rest of your summer days, InshaaAllah إن شاء الله. Keep well, Wassalaam 'alaikum والسّلام عليكم (and peace be with you)! :) :-h

Thank you for stopping by,

Sam سام.

"Enjoy the rain, the sun, the clouds, the flowers, the sunsets and the walks in the countryside, because it's all there for you / Disfruta de la lluvia, del sol, de las nubes, de las flores, de los atardeceres y de los paseos por el campo, porque todo está ahí para ti." (Spanish)