“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Søren Kierkegaard
life is a terminal illness with a bad prognosis. – Carl Jung
Life is lived in a forward direction but only understood backward
sergei yesenin (1895-1925)
“bitter tears” of the “evening silence”, translated by Anton Yalovlev, The Last Poet of the Village.
In this world you can
search for everything,
except Love and death.
They find you when the
time comes.
- another long poem
Is it my fault that I’m a poet
Of heavy suffering and bitter fate?
After all, it wasn’t my choice—
It’s just the way I came into the world.
Is it my fault that I don’t cherish life,
That I love and simultaneously hate everyone,
And know things about myself I don’t yet see—
That is my gift from the muse.
I know there is no happiness in life,
Life is lunacy, the dream of a sick soul,
And I know my gloomy tunes bore everyone,
But it’s not my fault—that’s the kind of poet I am.
I will not lie to myself,
Woe has settled in my misty heart.
Why am I known as a charlatan?
Why am I known as a brawler?
I’m not a villain. I haven’t robbed anyone in the forest.
I haven’t shot wretches in dungeons.
I’m merely a street rake
Smiling at passing faces.
I’m a mischievous Moscow playboy.
In Tver, every neighborhood dog
Recognizes my breezy gait
In the backstreets.
Every bedraggled horse
Nods its head to greet me.
I’m a good friend to the animals,
Healing them with my verses.
My top hat is not to impress the women.
My heart can’t bear meaningless passion.
It makes it easier, soothing my sadness,
To give gold oats to a mare.
I have no friends among people.
I’m loyal to a different kingdom.
I’m ready to put my best tie
On the neck of any local hound.
Now I won’t hurt any longer.
Swamp is drained in my murky heart.
This is why I’m known as a charlatan.
This is why I’m known as a brawler.
The rude are destined for joy;
The tender are destined for sadness.
I pity nothing;
I pity no one.
I pity myself a bit;
I pity stray dogs.
This path has led me straight
To a tavern.
Why are you yelling, you devils?
Am I not my country’s son?
Everyone here has pawned
His pants for a drink.
Hazy eyed, I look out the window;
My heart is heavy and hot.
The street in front of me,
Wet from sunlight, rolls on.
There is a boy in the street.
The air is fried and dry.
The boy is so contented
And picks his nose.
Go right ahead, my dear,
Get your whole finger in there,
Just don’t burrow into your soul
With the same force.
I’m toast… My courage is failing…
Look at my host of bottles!
I collect corks to plug
The holes in my soul.
two poems by W.S.Merwin
Separation
BY W. S. MERWIN
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
- the second one
Rain Light
By W.S. Merwin
All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
苏轼《西江月 平山堂》
三过平山堂下，半生弹指声中。
十年不见老仙翁，壁上龙蛇飞动。
欲吊文章太守，仍歌杨柳春风。
休言万事转头空，未转头时皆梦。
- 平山堂位于扬州西北的大明寺侧，乃欧阳修于公元1048年（庆历八年）知扬州时所建。欧阳修是苏轼的恩师。
Marcel Prouse
I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book!
Yoshida Kenko
It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.
Pope Leo XIV on movie, November 15, 2025
Dear brothers and sisters,
Although cinema is now over a century old, it is still a young, dreamlike and somewhat restless art form. It will soon celebrate its 130th anniversary, counting from the first public screening by the Lumiere brothers in Paris on 28 December 1895. From the outset, cinema was as a play of light and shadow, designed to amuse and impress. However, these visual effects soon succeeded in conveying much deeper realities, eventually becoming an expression of the desire to contemplate and understand life, to recount its greatness and fragility and to portray the longing for infinity.
Dear friends, I am happy to greet and welcome you. I also express my gratitude for what cinema represents: a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all. It is wonderful to see that when the magic light of cinema illuminates the darkness, it simultaneously ignites the eyes of the soul. Indeed, cinema combines what appears to be mere entertainment with the narrative of the human person’s spiritual adventure. One of cinema’s most valuable contributions is helping audiences consider their own lives, look at the complexity of their experiences with new eyes and examine the world as if for the first time., In doing so, they rediscover a portion of the hope that is essential for humanity to live to the fullest. I find comfort in the thought that cinema is not just moving pictures; it sets hope in motion.
Entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up, and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined. In reality, you know that your art form requires concentration. Through your productions, you connect with people who are looking for entertainment, as well as those who carry within their hearts a sense of restlessness and are looking for meaning, justice and beauty. We live in an age where digital screens are always on. There is a constant flow of information. However, cinema is much more than just a screen; it is an intersection of desires, memories and questions. It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our mind is educated, our imagination broadens, and even pain can find new meaning.
Cultural facilities, such as cinemas and theaters, are the beating hearts of our communities because they contribute to making them more human. If a city is alive, it is thanks in part to its cultural spaces. We must inhabit these spaces and build relationships within them, day after day. Nonetheless, cinemas are experiencing a troubling decline, with many being removed from cities and neighborhoods. More than a few people are saying that the art of cinema and the cinematic experience are in danger. I urge institutions not to give up but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value of this activity.
The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us and sometimes even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.
In this Jubilee Year, the Church invites us to journey towards hope. Your presence here from so many different countries, and your artistic work in particular, is a shining example. Like so many others who come to Rome from all over the world, you too are on a journey as pilgrims of the imagination, seekers of meaning, narrators of hope and heralds of humanity. Your journey is not measured in kilometers but in images, words, emotions, shared memories and collective desires. You navigate this pilgrimage into the mystery of human experience with a penetrating gaze that is capable of recognizing beauty even in the depths of pain, and of discerning hope in the tragedy of violence and war.
The Church esteems you for your work with light and time, with faces and landscapes, with words and silence. Pope Saint Paul VI once spoke to artists, saying: “If you are friends of genuine art, you are our friends,” recalling that “this world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair [Address of Pope Paul VI to Artists, 8 December 1965]. I wish to renew this friendship because cinema is a workshop of hope, a place where people can once again find themselves and their purpose.
Perhaps we could bear in mind the words of David W. Griffith, one of the great pioneers of the seventh art. He once said, “What the modern movie lacks is beauty, the beauty of the moving wind in the trees.” His reference to the wind cannot but remind us of a passage from John’s Gospel: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” [3:8]. In this regard, dear seasoned and novice filmmakers, I invite you to make cinema an art of the Spirit.
In the present era, there is a need for witnesses of hope, beauty and truth. You can fulfill this role through your artistic work. Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity. Do not be afraid to confront the world’s wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated. Good cinema does not exploit pain; it recognizes and explores it. This is what all the great directors have done. Giving voice to the complex, contradictory and sometimes dark feelings that dwell in the human heart is an act of love. Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it. Without being didactic, authentically artistic forms of cinema possess the capacity to educate the audience’s gaze.
In conclusion, filmmaking is a communal effort, a collective endeavor in which no one is self-sufficient. While everyone recognizes the skill of the director and the genius of the actors, a film would be impossible without the quiet dedication of hundreds of other professionals including assistants, runners, prop masters, electricians, sound engineers, equipment technicians, makeup artists, hairstylists, costume designers, location managers, casting directors, special effects technicians and producers. Every voice, every gesture and every skill contributes to a work that can only exist as a whole.
In an age of exaggerated and confrontational personalities, you demonstrate that creating a quality film requires dedication and talent. Thanks to the gifts and qualities of those whom you work alongside, everyone can make their unique charisma shine in a collaborative and fraternal atmosphere. May your cinema always be a meeting place and a home for those seeking meaning and a language of peace. May it never lose its capacity to amaze and even continue to offer us a glimpse, however small, of the mystery of God.
empire
Niall Ferguson, a historian well known for defending the Anglo-British Empire, mocked historian William Dalrymple for criticising imperialism whilst arguing that India’s widespread use of English was a competitive advantage. That being the result of “that wicked Empire you are so fond of denigrating”, Ferguson jibed. The old boast in miniature: empire as civilisation.
Is Scotland one of the last remaining colonies? From the annexation of 1707 to the East India Company’s collapse, one pattern repeats: Scotland’s elite pursued advancement through empire, and in doing so locked their own nation into annexation and dependency.
Jules Renard
His Journal, 1887–1910 (published in 1925) is a masterpiece of introspection, irony, humor and nostalgia, and provides an important glimpse into the literary life.
It is not how old you are but how you are old.
If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.
Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.
We don’t understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it.
Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
Positano
Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone. — John Steinbeck
波西塔诺深深地影响着你。它是一个梦幻之地，你不会轻易相信它是真实存在的，直到你离开后，它才变得栩栩如生。
Saved by Stoppard
Sir, In 1993 my wife and I went to see the first production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, and in the interval I experienced a Damascene conversion. As a clinical scientist I was trying to understand the enigma of the behaviour of breast cancer, the assumption being that it grew in a linear trajectory spitting off metastases on its way. In the first act of Arcadia, Thomasina asks her tutor, Septimus: “If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?” With that Stoppard explains chaos theory, which better explains the behaviour of breast cancer. At the point of diagnosis, the cancer must have already scattered cancer cells into the circulation that nest latent in distant organs. The consequence of that hypothesis was the birth of “adjuvant systemic chemotherapy”, and rapidly we saw a striking fall of the curve that illustrated patients’ survival.
Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia.
Michael Baum Professor emeritus of surgery; visiting professor of medical humanities, UCL
Saya Kiyohara@sayakiyohara.bsky.social
171.
Does the tree worry
it will forget how to bloom
when spring comes again?
#haiku #poetry #autumn
VerilyBitchie
the answer to why boys clothes are so fucking boring is, apparently, due to a shift which occurred in the 18th century, when clothes went from being a signifier of social class, to being a signifier of gender instead.
history of clothing