Troubled Water

Tengo una voz que me dice: Tú sigue adelante, no puedes parar dale más, dale gas que eres fuerte tú puedes que tú puedes más que tú eres lo más, que tú quieres más nunca te conformes tú te lo mereces tu eres invencible -y esa vocecita casi me convence pero luego se viene otra voz Tengo otra voz, tengo otra voz que me dice: Shhhhh calma Tu tranquilo Más tranquilo hay que vivir la vida con mucha calma y serenidad Y de pronto entre tanta calma una voz amarga empieza a gritar: Hay que matarles a todos! Hay que matarles a todos! Apartad las criaturas que estoy loco, estoy muy loco!!! Odio, odio odio a todo el mundo!!! Pero luego se viene otra voz que me dice que Noooo! Paz, paz, paz, paz y amor! La vida me sonríe siempre estoy de buen humor Paz, paz, paz, paz y amor! Y si no fuera por esa voz que siempre me dice que no Que estoy acabo, totalmente hundido Todo el mundo en contra mío, tengo en contra todo el mundo Y esto no puedo perdonarlo y esto no puedo perdonarlo Bueno va tal vez no sea p...

흰 수건이 검은 머리를 두르고 흰 고무신이 거친 발에 걸리다 흰 저고리 치마가 슬픈 몸집을 가리고 흰 띠가 가는 허리를 질끈 동이다 슬픈 족속 Up where the seasons pass, the sky is filled with autumn. In this untroubled quietude I could almost count these autumn-couched stars. But why I cannot now enumerate those one or two stars in my breast is because the dawn is breaking soon, and I have tomorrow night in store, and because my youth is not yet done. Memory for one star, love for another star, sorrow for another star, longing for another star, poetry for another star, and oh! mother for another star. Mother! I try to call each star by some such evocative word,  names of school children with whom I shared desks,  names of alien girls like Pai, Kyunh, Ok,  names of maidens who have already become mothers,  names of neighbors who lived in poverty,  names of birds and beasts like pigeon, puppy, rabbit, donkey, deer,  and names of poets like Francis, Jammes and Reiner Maria Rilke. They are as far away and intangible as th...

« We stay up so late that the sun is already fat and high above the trees by the time we wake up, and Stig is hissing furiously for more mouse. Dad makes me a cup of hot milk in my favourite mug. I sip the milk, which is a little bit too hot. I’ve just finished a book that talked about hot chocolate with clouds of pillowy whipped cream on top and sticky marshmallows in pink and white. I haven't ever had hot chocolate or whipped cream or marshmallows but today I can almost taste their sugary sweetness. I get dressed to go outside because we always plant a tree on my birthday. Dad planted an oak when l was first born and now it's taller than I am but still teeny tiny next to all the oaks that are hundreds and hundreds of years old. This year I want to plant a silver birch, because they shine like moonlight. You're not supposed to plant them until November but we're nearly there and I said please please please. We take Stig out into the sparkling morning and she hops aroun...

The stench and clank of metal spread, The music of the streets has taken refuge in the suburbs, The little girl has scraped her knee, off with you now and don’t cry, Wide-eyed he emerges from the crowd, Entering the race, The unseen arena, toreador and bull, Olé olé olé, The weight of the tank leaves tracks in the asphalt, Olé olé olé, He rushes forth And grasps it By the head, Covering it With a red cloth, The machine, now blinded by the eagle, Is dazed And disoriented, What black beauty, Empty flowerpots Cascade down from balconies, Rakatak, rakatak, Rakatak, rakatak, Flowerpots hurtling through the air Know nothing of the curfew, Rakatak, rakatak, You in the midst Plant artificial flowers, The policeman screams and takes down your address While guarding the shattered flowerpots And tank tracks in the asphalt. Viti 1981 (The year 1981)  p. 22 Jusuf, Jusuf the yellow stork, Jusuf Gërvalla... is missing. Teuta, Ilir, Agron, Yll And Fadil, Fadil Talla... is missing, And Ylfete, Ylfe...

Sidi Saiyyed Mosque - The Tree of Life Jali (marble screen from inside) L'arbre que l'hiver creuse et qu'il délabre De terre à ciel est un chemin battu, Avril aux tendres mains, quand viendras-tu Quand, rallumer tout le grand candélabre ? Flamme debout qui ne brule et ne bouge, Ruisseau qui coule en remontant : Le feu sans doute a quitté son masque rouge, L'eau sa robe couleur de temps, Et s'embrassant dessous la terre dure Ils se sont fécondés en se battant Pour qu'un surgeon de la lumière obscure Jaillisse ainsi dans le ciel de printemps. Corps nuageux vertébré comme un mont, Flancs que perce un oiseau, qu'ouvre la brise ; L'été respire à son vaste poumon. Le grand soleil en mille nuits se brise Folles de lunes vertes, d'astres troubles Dans ses bas-fonds, et sa face dédouble Le bleu du ciel en un sommeil de lac, Une source s'y joue et son murmure En ces grottes de vie au sourd ressacs D'un rêve d'eau ranime la ramure. Lui, couronné de ...

«This is a familiar phenomenon in politics: someone has a particular set of underlying political commitments – they are a Marxist, a typical liberal, a traditional conservative – and they find a way of making all the evidence they have assembled fit with those political commitments, even when it might look to an outsider like it doesn’t fit at all (Joshi 2020) . There are, broadly speaking, two possible explanations for this happy convergence. The first is that they are simply weighing up the evidence in such a way that it really does support their favored position. The second is that they are assembling evidence that will fit with their favored position – and finding ways of explaining away any evidence that does not fit. That is, the evidence we can cite for our political attitudes are post-hoc rationalizations for those attitudes. We have the attitudes in the first place because they align with our political identities and cultural values. We then gather the evidence we need to supp...

[...] Experts drift over a highly-visible boundary line and into a domain where they lack either the relevant evidence or the skills to interpret the evidence well. But they keep talking nonetheless. Experts on public stage are cast in the role of the ‘public intellectual’ or ‘celebrity academic’. They may find trespassing all but impossible to resist. Microphones are switched on, TV cameras zoom in, and ‘sound bites’ come forth, coaxed out of the commentators by journalists. So what do you have to say about philosophy, Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what about arguments for the existence of God, Professor Dawkins? I don’t think trespassing is exclusively a problem for scholars in the limelight, however, and one of my goals here is to explain why ordinary researchers often risk trespassing, too. Its deeper causes aside, trespassing brings many kinds of epistemic costs, both personal and social. Trespassers pay some costs themselves when they hold beliefs or make assertions that do not satisf...

Os antigos mortos, invisivelmente, Vêm ainda ao seu terraço antigo… Já sopra da nona lua o vento lamentoso. De os três rios devem estar a chegar os gansos de arribação. Cobrem nuvens a vastidão dos dois Kuangs Declina, pálido, o sol, sobre Pang-Lai Desterrado da pátria e sem notícias dela, Para essas bandas volvo de contínuo os olhos. “Sobre o terraço”  De onde vem este perfume de flores, embalsamando a noite puríssima? Entre bouças e fragas, uma cabana de ola, perto da qual um arroio murmura… Como de costume, o eremita parte ao surgir a Lua. Em um covão do monte, um pássaro, poisado, ininterruptamente gorjeia. Não lhe importa que as ervas, impregnadas do orvalho lhe encharquem as alpercatas de junça. As suas vestes de ligeiro cânhamo soergue-as, enviezando a brisa primaveril… À borda da torrente, intento fazer versos ao viço das orquídeas. Embargam-no as saudades, violentas empolgando-me, do Kiang-Pei e do Kiang-Nan. “À noite, no Pego-Dragão” Este altíssimo torreão abandonado foi ...

[...] To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being; to secure as much of the advantages of centralised power and intelligence, as can be had without turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general activity, is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power consis...

“But it should not be forgotten that although the unexamined life is not worth living, the unlived life is not worth examining, and philosophy for the ancients was not divorced from the pradtical to and fro of everyday social life. Rather, philosophy as a reflective practice of examining what passes for truth is something that took place in what the ancient Greeks called the polis , the public realm of political life. Philosophy was an eminently practical activity, which is markedly different from the overwhelmingly theoretical enquiry it has become since the 17th century.  In the ancient picture, the wisdom that philosophy teaches us to love is identical with the pursuit of the good life, a life of reflection and contemplation that would, by definition, be a happy life. Now, strangely perhaps, it is this model that most people outside philosophy - think that most people inside philosophy are in the grip of. This is why they quite naturally assume that philosophy's central quest...

“Technology is a queer thing. It brings you gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.” “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest peop...

« And I left her. Ha! a match for this dishonest cake-vendor was not to be found. The whole time, whilst I walked to and fro in the marketplace and ate my cakes, I talked loudly about this creature and her shamelessness, repeated to myself what we both had said to one another, and it seemed to me that I had come out of this affair with flying colours, leaving her nowhere. I ate my cakes in face of everybody, and talked this over to myself. The cakes disappeared one by one; they seemed to go no way; no matter how I ate I was still greedily hungry. Lord, to think they were of no help! I was so ravenous that I was even about to devour the last little cake that I had decided to spare, right from the beginning, to put it aside, in fact, for the little chap down in Vognmandsgade⁠—the little lad who played with the paper streamers. I thought of him continually⁠—couldn’t forget his face as he jumped and swore. He had turned round towards the window when the man spat down on him, and he had jus...