Laughing Lhursday*

Lady in Snow

 
* [For first time visitors]: Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Beers & Books XLVII – today without beer

If This Is a Man (1958, r)
The Drowned and the Saved (1986, l)

Primo Levi (31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Auschwitz

Greyday

. . .

 

Beers & Books XLVI – Dževad Karahasan

The Solace of the Night Sky

Dževad Karahasan * 25 January 1953

Kitchen View

Sunday? ... Greyday.

 

Saturday Night Music

Paco de Lucia (21 December 1947 –25 February 2014)

1911: The March of the Women

Shout, shout, up with your song!
Cry with the wind, for the dawn is breaking;
March, march, swing you along,
Wide blows our banner, and hope is waking.
Song with its story, dreams with their glory
Lo! they call, and glad is their word!
Loud and louder it swells,
Thunder of freedom, the voice of the Lord!

Long, long—we in the past
Cowered in dread from the light of heaven,
Strong, strong—stand we at last,
Fearless in faith and with sight new given.
Strength with its beauty, Life with its duty,
(Hear the voice, oh hear and obey!)
These, these—beckon us on!
Open your eyes to the blaze of day.

Comrades—ye who have dared
First in the battle to strive and sorrow!
Scorned, spurned—naught have ye cared,
Raising your eyes to a wider morrow,
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary,
Toil and pain by faith ye have borne;
Hail, hail—victors ye stand,
Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!

Life, strife—those two are one,
Naught can ye win but by faith and daring.
On, on—that ye have done
But for the work of today preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance,
(Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)
March, march—many as one,
Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.

The March of the Women

Ethel Smith (22 April 1858 – 8 May 1944)

Cicely Hamilton (15 June 1872 – 6 December 1952)

Women's Suffrage in the United Kingdom

Entry of the Gladiators

Julius Fučík (18 July 1872 – 25 September 1916)

Beers & Books XLV – Julian Barnes

The Noise of Time

Julian Barnes *19 January 1949

In memoriam Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961)

All the Hemispheres

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.
Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Hafez (1316 – 1390)

Saturday Night Music

 

 Barcelona Gypsy Balkan Orchestra

[Capita Turciensis] Laughing Lhursday*

Recently [2008] - I was just reading the last chapter of The Bastard of Istanbul - I heard Tetrapilotomos chuckle, which induced following dialogue:

- Yes?

- Blimey, no wonder there's a steady increase of population in Turkey.

- What are you busy with, Tetrapilotomos?

- Merowinger time.

- I see. And what does this have to do with the population growth in Turkey?

- Do you know what aureum caput regni means?

- Golden head of the imperium, or so?

- Not bad. And caput orbis?

- Head of the world.

- Not bad. And what's a colloquial German word for broken?

- Kaputt. Spelled with one t less in English it means a) utterly finished, defeated, or destroyed and b) unable to function.

- Not bad. And do you know what a condom is being called in Turkish.

- No idea.

- Kaput.

* [For first time visitors]: Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.