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You are viewing the most recent 10 entries May 2nd, 201203:29 pm: I am the mountain
I am a rock,
I am a mountain,
I am a formidable foe
The waters that flow around me
Whisper the words I know
When I move -
The world trembles
It's silent when I'm asleep
Whenever an avalanche happens
People are thinking of me
Ed Letifov
Wellington, 2012
Current Mood:  optimistic , work in progress
March 1st, 201211:40 am: It's the shoes!
It's the shoes! It's always been the shoes. I just realized how many things in my life were influenced by that. The first reliable recollection of my Singularity: wild hair, John Lennon like glasses, the Slayer T-shirt, shorts and the shoes... White basketball ones inflatable with little orange basketball-shaped pumps embedded into the fronts. There were others too - some attracted my attention some repulsed, but it appears it's always been the shoes. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. Tags: memo, via ljapp
December 17th, 201106:13 pm: Butterfly Worlds
Ah… these little worlds I create.
Contrived universes,
Intricate fallacies —
Coming to life and going extinct
On a whim.
With a fate of a butterfly
Dropped into space
Ripped to shreds by the solar wind...
Ed Letifov
Wellington, 2011
Current Mood:  touched Current Music: Perfect Day - Lou Reed , poems
December 4th, 201107:01 pm: Goodbye my darling, love of mine
Море...
Обнимет, закопает в пески.
Закинут рыболовы лески,
Поймают в сети наши души -
Прости меня, моя любовь.
Поздно,
О чем-то думать слишком поздно,
Тебе я чую, нужен воздух.
Лежу в такой огромной луже.
Прости меня, моя любовь.
Джинсы...
Воды набрали и прилипли,
Мне кажется, мы крепко влипли,
Мне кажется, потухло Солнце.
Прости меня, моя любовь.
Тихо,
Не слышно ни часов, ни чаек,
Послушно сердце выключаем.
И ты в песке, как будто в бронзе.
Прости меня, моя любовь.
Zemfira, "Прости меня, моя любовь", 2000
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The sea,
Embracing us will bury in sands
The fishermen will cast their lines
To catch our souls in their deep nets
Goodbye my darling, love of mine
It's late,
Too late to think of anything now
I gather, you need air to flow
I am in this enormous puddle
Goodbye my darling, love of mine
My jeans,
Got soaked and now are clinging
It seems we're worse than we were thinking
It seems the Sun has just gone out
Goodbye my darling, love of mine
Silence,
Can't hear neither clocks nor seagulls
Obediently switching hearts out
You're clad in sand, as if in bronze
Goodbye my darling, love of mine
Translated: Ed Letifov, 2011
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Current Mood:  calm Current Music: PMML - Prosti Menya Moya Lubov , poems
November 25th, 201112:50 am: Tomorrow I am making history
... again. I am voting Green. Here is a blog that nicely summarizes why: http://greenvoices.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/why-i-vote-green/
1. Conduct – it matters…
It has always struck me as odd that politicians (particularly those in Parliament) are expected to behave like cretins. It occurs to me that a society devalues itself by expecting the behaviour of elected representatives to be shocking, and to dismiss it with a roll of their eyes or a shake of their head. I expect leaders to behave with dignity, to treat others with courtesy, and to have a strong understanding of where their decisions will drive us. The reality is that most people don’t expect this and I want that to change.
We had the dubious honour of attending question time in Parliament on Thursday. Having only seen it on TV before, the crescendo of cat-calls and hooting was quite a lot louder than I had expected. The shouting between our two major parties was a total cringe-fest. The relentless babble from Trevor Mallard and Annette King reminded me of two impatient monkeys, who would perhaps better spend their time rescuing their ailing party than blockading intelligent debate. Paula Bennett’s bolshy and unhelpful squawking makes me think she ought perhaps to hang from the roof in a cage. Most of the zoo-like behaviour was confined to Labour and the Nats, Roger Douglas was much too busy grappling with a crossword to engage too much. Messers Hide, Goff and Key were absent – but it is fair to say that I’d not expect them to impress me any further. Through the whole ‘shooting match’, the behaviour of our Green MPs was impeccable by contrast – and that’s why I vote Green.
2. Agents for change
Making decisions that protect our ecosystems, build societal resilience and galvanise our economy against the shocks that are just around the corner is not a pathway to popularity. The short term economic vision of most people and the commentators on the New Zealand economy mean that any attempt to take in the short term so that we may have in the long term is scoffed at. People continue to buy large, fuel-hungry vehicles because economists tell them a great surge in prosperity is moments away. People continue to buy houses in peri-urban and rural areas, steeling themselves for outrageous commutes that will be possible for only a few more years at most. People continue to buy low-quality housing with no insulation, no effective heating or cooling, no space for a garden and poor community connectivity, and saddle themselves with horrendous mortgage debt in the process.
The economic orchestrators of NZ Inc sit back on their heels and relax for another day every time someone does this too. It is plainly and absolutely not in their interests to warm kiwis off such lunacy…because the neo-liberal economic house of cards would fall much faster if NZ wised up. The Greens have comprehensive policies on all of this and more (we have long progressed from the ‘dope and light bulbs’ rhetoric our opponents trumpet) – and that’s why I vote for them. Because we have the blueprint for change and no other party has the least bit of interest in stealing it.
3. Fundamentals of fragility
New Zealand is beset by those that see no problem with destroying natural systems to derive short term profit. The costs to our country (the real ones) are significant from farming, forestry, mining and the like. Destructive short term industries with minimal regulation and a desire to strip what they want and leave the rest as intergenerational ecological and social debt. Am I of the view that such industries ought to be stopped in their tracks? Absolutely not. I have a lot of farming heritage in my family (like most of us) and I love the scenes of rolling hills, of skipping baby lambs in spring and am proud of the fact that New Zealand makes some of the finest quality dairy and meat exports on Earth. That’s fantastic. Our native timbers are incredibly for woodturning, and our climate for exotic timbers make forestry a tempting venture in New Zealand. Our landscape is full of pointy little homages to 25 year rotations, with many a retirement travel plan resting on a cloaked green hillside. New Zealand has rich seams of coal and minerals, including gold that have been drawing people to our shores since colonial time began.
However – this does not mean that I would support farming that chokes our rivers, accelerates anthropogenically-forced climate change, and strips the land of any scerrrick of indigenous presence. Neither does it mean that forestry nor the processing industry around it has any right to destroy our soils, turn our rivers black and so decimate our hillsides that they be rendered useless for generations to come. And finally, neither do I support irresponsible mining (and hell no on Schedule 4 lands thanks), the kind that turns waterways anoxic, removes whole mountains or leaves toxic tailings for future generations to look back at us and regard us with disdain for. I expect our farmers, our foresters, our miners and their customers (i.e. us) to understand that we can only move forward when we encapsulate the true cost of activities and base our cost-benefit analyses on those numbers. The Greens have (some individual members since time immemorial!) have fought for this and still do…and we still will. And that’s why I vote Green.
Current Mood:  enthralled September 22nd, 201107:25 am: Lost magic
I had a dream.
There was a poem that I wrote...
Three priestly guys,
A burned down rotting church,
A piece of amber hanging from a metal string.
A trace of music in the air,
A rhyme embedded in the stone,
A rhythm imprinted in the light.
Transforming everything around...
I can't remember what it was about. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. Current Mood:  awake June 28th, 201112:23 am: Three anime to describe my life
Three anime that somehow seem to embody how I want to describe my life... "Bakemonogatari" - considered by many the best anime of 2009. Both anime and the original light novels, in my view managed to show surreal, imaginary, sometimes scary, fairy tale world perfectly as something rather mundane and normal, that can exist just around the corner of ones reality. The opening sequence of the main story, perhaps best viewed in this fun-made AMV matches my impression of my own singularity moment, meeting my own Senjōgahara Hitagi... The quirky dialog throughout the series, and the rather moving denouement of Araragi/Senjōgahara arc in Tsubasa Cat remind me so much of our own story... "The Tatami Galaxy" - definitely the best anime of 2010. Here the opposite has been achieved - the mundane, rather normal life was shown as something surreal, imaginary... My take on this may differ a lot from the canon - I think the "now" of the story presented in the anime is located around 10th-11th episode, and rather than being true alternative realities, the main bulk of material is in fact recollections by the main hero of the events that has happened during the two years prior to this point in time, with his narration wandering into realms of "what if" conjectures were he to make different choices. Viewed from this perspective the narrations form distinct "story threads" of connected events a hero can trace by mentally pulling on some specific "end" in the present... These stories are in fact constrained by what really has happened over these 2 years, and some real events exist in multiple story lines. This is exactly how my own mind and my memory works... The singularity, the moment of epiphany for the hero was the Gozan festival and the whole picture presented to us mostly consists of things that lead to it. "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" - best anime of 2006 (2009 and 2011 if you consider the 2nd seasons and the film that followed). This work resonates with me on multiple levels... From the way Kyon narrates the story, to reality changing abilities of the main heroine. The fact that all sorts of crazy things are happening around, while nobody notices (granted, some have to work very hard for this not to happen), and that the main duo of characters are essentially normal humans (as far as each of them is convinced)... Perhaps this epitomizes the "spark" I think I used to have in my life, perhaps still do and most definitely am still looking for... The loop in "Endless Eight" and the struggle against reality is all to familiar, even if it only has happened in my imagination... The feeling of your whole world crashing when the "inner axis" around which your world revolves disappears, so well depicted "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" is my constant fear... Current Mood:  restless , memo
April 22nd, 201112:36 pm:
Aah. I see, now I get it.
During puberty even I experienced the common perplexity of why I was born in this world...... but now, at the age of seventeen, I finally found the answer to that question.
I was enlightened.
I lived for the sake of this day.
I existed for the sake of this moment.
The person called Araragi Koyomi was born in this world just in order to experience the day of today...... no, that's not it. It is not on a personal level anymore.
Surely this world has existed this long just in order to make me experience the day of today.
From this point on the rest of history will simply be a throwaway match!
Bakemonogatari/Koyomi_Vamp/016 Current Mood:  accomplished , books
April 6th, 201109:45 am: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Haruhi: You know, Kyon...have you ever realized just how insignificant your existence on this planet really is?
Kyon...: [thinking] Now what is she talking about?
Haruhi: It happened to me. And I'll never forget it. Back when I was in the sixth grade, my whole family went out to go watch a baseball game at the stadium. I didn't really care about baseball, but I was surprised by what I saw when we got there. Everywhere I looked, I saw people. On the other side of the stadium, the people looked so small, like little moving grains of rice. It was so crowded. I thought that everyone in Japan had to be packed in there. So I turned to my dad and asked him, "Do you know how many people are here right now"? He said since the stadium was full, probably fifty thousand. After the game, the street was filled with people and I was really shocked to see that, too. To me, it seemed like there was a ton of people there. But then, I realized it could only be a tiny fraction of all the people in Japan. When I got home, I pulled out my calculator. In social studies, I'd learned that the population of Japan was a hundred some odd million. So I divided that by fifty thousand. The answer was one two-thousandth. That shocked me even more. I was only one little person in that big crowded stadium filled with people, and believe me, there were so many people there, but it was just a handful of the entire population. Up till then, I always thought that I was, I don't know, kind of a special person. It was fun to be with my family. I had fun with my classmates. And the school that I was going to, it had just about the most interesting people anywhere. But that night, I realized it wasn't true. All the stuff we did during class that I thought was so fun and cool, was probably happening just like that in classes in other schools all over Japan. There was nothing special about my school at all. When I realized that, it suddenly felt like the whole world around me started to fade into a dull gray void. Brushing my teeth and going to sleep at night, waking up and eating breakfast in the morning, that stuff happened all over the place. They were everyday things that everybody was doing. When I thought about it like that, everything became boring. If there's really that many people in the world, then there had to be someone who wasn't ordinary. There had to be someone who was living an interesting life. There just had to be. But why wasn't I that person? So, that's how I felt till I finished elementary school. And then I had another realization. I realized fun things wouldn't come my way just by waiting for them. I thought when I got into junior high, it was time for me to make a change. I'd let the world know I wasn't a girl who was happy sitting around waiting. And I've done my best to become that person. But in the end, nothing happened. More time went by and before I knew it, I was in high school. I thought that something would change.
[A train approaches and rushes by]
Kyon...: [thinking] The passing train gave me a moment to think about my response. Should I voice an opposing viewpoint? Maybe I should wax philosophical about her dilemma. [aloud] ...I see. [thinking] I must be getting melancholic if that's the best I could come up with.
via Wikiquote
Current Mood:  blank Current Music: ハルヒGod knows March 16th, 201110:06 am: They will never make this into an "anime"...
When another person leans on your shoulder, it produces an immediate and predictable reaction in a normal human being - one of wanting to embrace, caress, reassure... Most of all, to protect them from the rest of the world. The consequences of this natural and often sub-conscious reaction greatly depend on the state of your world... If your worldview is focused and temporarily narrowed to some other subject you are likely not to notice the thing happening to you at this very moment. If, however, you are being open to the world at the moment, or to put broadly - free, looking and available, this happenstance may become a route to something new. A momentary flick for some, a long and mysterious journey for others... My journey began exactly like this... I was closed and focused and I didn't notice... However, the fate brought me back and gave me a second chance. Current Mood:  nostalgic
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