Literacy

By the Book

In the beginning was the word and in the word is our beginning. But not the beginning of all. Words are limited, especially words in modern languages. We have condensed words of the same category but different meanings into one common term to be used for all occasions. And for that, humanity is poorer. The meaning of words changes with the passage of time, sometimes gaining a new meaning often losing its meaning completely; twisted, distorted or ignored. We use words to express ourselves and our understanding. But how does one use words to explain that which is beyond our understanding? To definitively describe something infinite through the use of words is to belittle infinity.

九份

有那么简单吗？

天

我望着天
想要答案
想知道明天太阳还会不会出来

Trust

Over a cup of tea.

In Iran, nothing is done until the first cup of tea is drunk and through this cup, I am told that the trustworthiness of your guest is revealed. It is often easy to say that we do not trust a person but much harder to say the opposite. The feeling of mistrust is so strong and yet the feeling of being able to trust someone is always elusive. But if we know the feeling of mistrust, is not the feeling of trustworthiness simply the opposite of that feeling? Perhaps it is not so simple and rightfully so. After all, to trust someone is to lower your guard. And who knows who we invite in for tea.

Illuminati

Look. Faces lit up.

We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. A consequence of this act is that what we see is brought within our reach, though not necessarily within arm's reach. To touch something is to situate onself in relation to it. We never look at just one thing, we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.

俗

Distance

从左到右 从西到东 最初的感动
所有的会意成空 还没完成的梦
就连叹息都被没收

吸一口气 喝一杯酒 再吹吹风
让感觉停留几分钟 让我试着承受
不能承受那分沉重

Brush

Brush with the past

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.
~ Philip Larkin, This Is The First Thing

Tomar

The bench beckoned...

but I just walked on. And now I wonder why I did not pause to take a seat. I wonder how it would have been like, to feel the filtered sunlight on my face, to feel the weathered wood against my body, to listen to the sprinklers, to watch people pass me by. Now, I crave the solitude of a park bench and the wisdom that one derives from simply pausing for a moment. Now, is always too late for a moment.

Pray

Sed libera nos a malo...

especially those of the self. I often see the world only from my perspective, making too much of the little setbacks I encounter. When there is so much suffering in this world, I am ashamed to think my burdens too heavy to bear and yet disgusted that I am consoled by the suffering of others.

Cornered

Art for Art's sake

Art is meant to evoke and provoke. I don't profess to understand all forms of art, especially modern art yet I am slow to dismiss it as unworthy of the term 'art'. I think the fact that a piece of work, be it a pile of bricks or a haphazard splashing of paint, can illicit a questioning of whether it qualifies as art is reason enough for it to be labeled a piece of art. You may say that I've reasoned myself into a corner but its a corner I appreciate.

Window

Lean back, enjoy the ride.

I miss the roads again. I remember this photo, we were crossing the Zagros mountain range in the pouring rain. As we crossed the range, the rain stopped and there were blue skies. Go with the flow.

Saudade

With a streetlamp for company

The day was long, but nothing went wrong.
Still it feels like, something's not quite right.

Icons

What does one make of this?

Snippets, glimpses, images, colours, places stitched together at the edges to form an icon that floats around in the head. But what is this icon, a dream or memory? Finding it hard to distinguish between the two at times, it is disturbing to learn that our first memory is a key that unlocks the adult persona.

'My earliest memory is of a dream. I must have been very young, four or so; I imagined going down to the shores of Lake Zurich and learning against the railings in a park near the city's central square. Suddenly, the railings gave way and I feel into the freezing water towards some sort of horrific fate vaguely involving being swallowed by a whale. The details are sketchy, because at this point, I woke up in the most terrified state.

The horror I felt centered on the idea that railings, which I trusted to be solid and dependable should give way without warning. The water and the whale stood for the terror always waiting in the wings the railings were the safety-nets of the adult realm, which didn't work as well as they should.

The memory captures my life-long anxiety about how things are going to turn out, and my difficulty in trusting that they will be OK. I permanently fear that the apparently secure railing is going to give way. I have become a writer in a semi conscious attempt to increase the number of psychological railings around me. Books are my safety-nets.'
~ Alain De Botton

Green

Go Green.

Mom and her Mother's Day gift. A reminder that nurturing does not always require nagging. Happy Mother's Day!

Poetic

Words are all I have...

But I sometimes forget that seeing comes before words, like how a little child looks and recognizes before he or she can speak. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world. We explain that world with words but words can never usurp the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled because the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.

Feel

The morning after.

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
~ Rumi