Misty Mountain Scene - Looking For A Haiku
Monday, May 12, 2008
Podcasts
Al-Jazeera.net
12 May 2008
08:00 am
12 May 2008
08:00 am
• Video: Democracy Now! - 09 May 2008
• Radio: BBC World Service (Arabic/English) | Classic FM Live
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Reader
Ophelia by Pierre Auguste Cot
(1837-1883)
Click here or on image to enlarge
Her life is spent between pages. Someone else's words feed her soul. Someone else's thoughts and characters have become embedded in the tapestry of her life. But, where do they end and where does she begin? Her mind is not an empty vessel, after all, waiting to be filled with the musings of another.
So then you have to ask, do the books she can not live without merely mirror what already exists in her heart? Do they reflect truths that she already knows, yet remain buried deep within complex layers of her psyche until she recognizes them as her own through the eyes and words of an author? She finds that the layers peel away with each new experience. Exposure to different authors helps her to blossom. Even an author who lived and breathed a century before in a time vastly different from her own. She can picture them sitting as they write, wondering if it is good enough and making revisions in the midst of candlelight. Never knowing that their words would mean so much to a girl not even born yet. Authors in another age with courage enough to scribble their very soul on paper. Yes, this person had more courage than she. For her days and nights (when not spent reading) are spent imagining tales and writing words she never intends anyone to ever read. She accepts the fact that she will never be a "writer".
Or will she? It remains to be seen.
But to be a reader? This she is proud of. She knows she is part of a delicate dance between authors and those that read the product of their craft. For what is the beauty of a sonata if it is unheard? She is crucial to the dance, yes even to those who penned their words centuries ago. For their stories become a part of who she is, that is their immortality. They feed her and contribute to her. She is the parasite absorbing their creativity to feed her own. And she grows.
7 September 2006.
• Source: The Reader: An Autobiographical Tale by Stephanie Pina
Have You Ever Been In Love?
![Les Amants [The Lovers] by René Magritte (1898-1967)](http://www.salehbadrah.com/poetictouch/ptfiles/art/images/lesamants1a.jpg)
Les Amants [The Lovers]
by René Magritte (1898-1967)
Click here or on image to enlarge
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "Maybe we should just be friends" or "How very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way to your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
• Source: The Sandman - Vol. 9 The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Granada - Frank Sinatra
Granada
by Frank Sinatra
Granada, I'm falling under your spell,
And if you could speak, what a fascinating tale you would tell.
Of an age the world has long forgotten,
Of an age that weaves a silent magic in Granada today.
The dawn in the sky greets the day with a sigh for Granada.
For she can remember the splendor that once was Granada.
It still can be found in the hills all around as I wander along,
Entranced by the beauty before me,
Entranced by a land full of flowers and song.
When day is done and the sun starts to set in Granada
I envy the blush of a snow-clad tierra nevada.
Soon it will welcome the stars
While a thousand guitars play a soft carbinera.
Then moonlit Granada will live again,
The glory of yesterday, romantic and Granada.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Maryam
Maryam - Quran - Surah 019
Recited by Abdul Baset Abdul Samad (Mujawwad)
Background Picture: Holy Quran - Sorat Maryam by Qatari Mother
Recited by Abdul Baset Abdul Samad (Mujawwad)
Background Picture: Holy Quran - Sorat Maryam by Qatari Mother
Pokarekare Ana - Hayley Westenra
Pokarekare Ana
A Traditional New Zealand Love Song
Maori
Pökarekare ana
ngä wai o Waiapu,
Whiti atu koe hine
marino ana e.
E hine e
hoki mai ra.
Ka mate ahau
I te aroha e.
Tuhituhi taku reta
tuku atu taku rïngi,
Kia kite tö iwi
raru raru ana e.
Whati whati takupene
ka pau aku pepa,
Ko taku aroha
mau tonu ana e.
E kore te aroha
e maroke i te rä,
Mäkükü tonu i
aku roimata e.
English
They are agitated
the waters of Waiapu,
But when you cross over girl
they will be calm.
Oh girl
return to me,
I could die
of love for you.
I have written my letter
I have sent my ring,
so that your people can see
that I am troubled.
My pen is shattered,
I have no more paper
But my love
is still steadfast.
My love will never
be dried by the sun,
It will be forever moistened
by my tears.
• Related Link: ~ Pokarekare Ana (comprehensive background)
Thursday, May 8, 2008
The Neck Of A Maiko
Sometimes if one is lucky then one can meet a maiko or geisha in the small streets of Gion in Kyoto. Like this one who was so kind to wait for a few moments so that people like me could take some pictures of her:) ~ manganite | Click here or on image to enlarge
I Have A Dream - Martin Luther King
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history
as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our
nation... ~ Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream
• Video: Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream (YouTube)
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Umm Kulthoum
Called by some Kawkab Al-Sharq (Star Of
The East) and by others 'Empress Of Arab
Tunes,' Umm Kulthoum, with a voice
powerful and clear, can still be heard daily
on radio stations in the multitudes of coffee
shops and taxis all over the Arab world.
Even though she died over two
decades ago, her love lyrics,
national odes and religious
chants continue to affect
millions of people. Her audience,
as if on cue, hums along or cries
in despair in reaction to her
range of pitch, filled with
nostalgia and yearning,
touching the very Arab soul...
• Umm Kulthoum - Legendary Songstress Of The Arabs
Umm Kulthoum (BBC Xtra)
• Related Links:
~ Umm Kulthoum Necklace
~ A Gathering Of Giants
~ Serat El Hobb - Umm Kolthoum
~ Umm Kulthoum Story
~ Epic of a nation
~ My darling, my song-bird
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Afghan Women Praying
Afghan women pray outside
the shrine of Hazrat Ali in
Mazari Sharif, Afghanistan,
06 May 2008. (AP)
Monday, May 5, 2008
Slideshow
Lebanese singer Myriam Faris shows a copy of her new album 'Bet Oul Eih' (What are you saying?) during the launching ceremony in Beirut, late 05 May 2008. (AFP) Click here to enlarge
Mystery Over Schiller's Skull Deepens
Friedrich Schiller's bust, created by German sculptor Johann Friedrich von Dannecker at the end of the 18th century. (AP)
Click here or on image to enlarge
BERLIN - 05 May 2008 (Reuters) - A painstaking two-year investigation to determine which of two skulls belonged to Friedrich Schiller has found neither is a match, prolonging a 180-year-old mystery over the celebrated German poet's remains.
A team of international experts came to their surprise conclusion after comparing DNA samples from the two skulls in question to material from the graves of the poet's relatives.
"The investigations into the relics which have been attributed to Friedrich Schiller have proven that neither of the skulls is authentic," said a statement released by the Weimar Foundation and MDR broadcaster who had supported the research.
German anthropologists from Berlin and Freiburg had initiated the project and earlier this year they exhumed the graves of several of Schiller's family members in southern Germany.
The puzzle over the skull began in 1826, 21 years after Schiller died when the mayor of Weimar had 23 skulls dug up from a mass grave in which the poet was buried.
The mayor identified the biggest skull and one which bore a resemblance to the dramatist's death mask as Schiller's and it was brought to the home of his contemporary Goethe before being buried in a crypt in the eastern city of Weimar.
Later, Goethe's tomb was placed next to Schiller's in the crypt which still attracts about 41,000 visitors a year. Schiller had spent the last years of his life in Weimar which is mostly famous for being Goethe's home for almost 50 years.
However, in 1911, another skull was retrieved from the mass grave and researchers claimed that was the real one, sparking a lengthy dispute amongst academics, historians and anthropologists about the origin of the two skulls.
It is now a mystery where the dramatist's skull is.
Schiller, who lived between 1759 and 1805, wrote plays which are still performed regularly both in Germany and abroad. His poems include 'Ode to Joy' which Beethoven set to music in his Ninth Symphony.
The team of experts came from institutions in Germany, Austria and the United States.
(Writing by Madeline Chambers)
The Oriental
Die Orientalin (The Oriental)
by Friedrich von Amerling
(1849-1926)
The Young Eastern Woman
by Friedrich von Amerling
(1849-1926)
Sunday, May 4, 2008
To His Coy Mistress
To His Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Piano Artist
Piano Artist - A serene young lady plays on a grand mahogany piano
in a white angel-like nightgown. | Source: onlinechicboutique
Click here or on image to enlarge
in a white angel-like nightgown. | Source: onlinechicboutique
Click here or on image to enlarge
Fairouz Performs In Sharjah
Lebanese diva Fairouz performs in her musical 'Sah El-Nom' in the Gulf emirate of Sharjah, 02 May 2008. (AFP)
Edward Said At Victoria College
I was born in Jerusalem and had spent most of my formative years there and, after 1948, when my entire family became refugees, in Egypt. All my early education had, however, been in élite colonial schools, English public schools designed by the British to bring up a generation of Arabs with natural ties to Britain. The last one I went to before I left the Middle East to go to the United States was Victoria College in Cairo, a school in effect created to educate those ruling-class Arabs and Levantines who were going to take over after the British left. My contemporaries and classmates included King Hussein of Jordan, several Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi boys who were to become ministers, prime ministers and leading businessmen, as well as such glamorous figures as Michel Shalhoub, head prefect of the school and chief tormentor when I was a relatively junior boy, whom everyone has seen on screen as Omar Sharif.
The moment one became a student at VC one was given the school handbook, a series of regulations governing every aspect of school life - the kind of uniform we were to wear, what equipment was needed for sports, the dates of school holidays, bus schedules and so on. But the school's first rule, emblazoned on the opening page of the handbook, read: 'English is the language of the school; students caught speaking any other language will be punished.' Yet there were no native English-speakers among the students. Whereas the masters were all British, we were a motley crew of Arabs of various kinds, Armenians, Greeks, Italians, Jews and Turks, each of whom had a native language that the school had explicitly outlawed. Yet all, or nearly all, of us spoke Arabic - many spoke Arabic and French - and so we were able to take refuge in a common language in defiance of what we perceived as an unjust colonial stricture. British imperial power was nearing its end immediately after World War Two, and this fact was not lost on us, although I cannot recall any student of my generation who would have been able to put anything as definite as that into words...
Edward Said at Victoria College | Click here or on image to enlarge
In the spring of 1951 I was expelled from Victoria College, thrown out for being a troublemaker, which meant that I was more visible and more easily caught than the other boys in the daily skirmishes between Mr Griffith, Mr Hill, Mr Lowe, Mr Brown, Mr Maundrell, Mr Gatley and all the other British teachers, on the one hand, and us, the boys of the school, on the other. We were all subliminally aware, too, that the old Arab order was crumbling: Palestine had fallen, Egypt was tottering under the massive corruption of King Farouk and his court (the revolution that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Free Officers to power was to occur in July 1952), Syria was undergoing a dizzying series of military coups, Iran, whose Shah was at the time married to Farouk's sister, had its first big crisis in 1951, and so on. The prospects for deracinated people like us were so uncertain that my father decided it would be best to send me as far away as possible - in effect, to an austere, puritanical school in the north-western corner of Massachusetts...
• Edward Said: Between Worlds
• Related Links:
~ Victoria College 1902-1956: Educating The Elite by Samir Raafat
~ Egypt's Eton recalled by Fatemah Farag
(See also: Edward Said: Out Of Place (1999) - Chapter VIII)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Piano - D. H. Lawrence
Piano
by D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
by D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Sulaf Jalil
Sulaf Jalil, a main anchor
at Beirut based Iraqi TV
Al-Sumariya, attends a first
aid course for Iraqi journalists
at Baghdad's journalism
university, 28 April 2008. (AFP)
Haifa Wehbe - Cannes Film Festival
Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe poses, 24 May 2007, upon arriving at the Festival Palace in Cannes, southern France, during the Cannes Film Festival. (AFP)
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Haifa Performs In Bahrain
Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe
performs at a families-only
concert in Manama, Bahrain,
30 April 2008, after Islamist
lawmakers tried to ban her
concert. She opened in a
low-cut but relatively
conservative evening gown
and told the crowd: "It's nice
to be here in Bahrain, though
they scared me. But this is a
civilized country, we shouldn't
let them scare us". (AP/AFP)
Amal Hijazi & Rola Saad - Fox Movies Dubai
Lebanese singer Amal Hijazi arrives for the Fox Movies launch in Dubai, 30 April 2008. (Reuters)
Lebanese singer Rola Saad arrives for the Fox Movies launch in Dubai, 30 April 2008. (Reuters)
Dove Cottage
Dove Cottage (William Wordsworth's House), Grasmere, The Lake District, Cumbria, UK | Source: Nemesis 79
Click here or on image to enlarge
Click here or on image to enlarge
