Saturday, October 11, 2008

From Daniil Harms - Translation

Your dreams will play a cruel joke.
Your interest in the real life
Will disappear like the smoke.
The Messenger of God won't come.
Your passions and your zeal will wither,
The youth of ardent thoughts will flee...
My friend, leave dreams for the believer -
And free your mind of death - for me.

Daniil Harms.
Translated from Russian by me.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

My Fair Weather Friends...

Yet again, I am alone, and this means - I am not doing well. As usual, my friends, not unwilling to join me at the moments of pleasure and happiness, are conveniently absent during the time of trouble and pain. The pleasant moments I may share, but the pain is always mine entirely. That seems to be the rule of the land, or the general rule of friendship - here...
I feel betrayed. I can't help thinking that I might have been deceiving myself. Do they need me as much as I need them? Do they place the same value on our relationship as I do - or, perhaps, I was merely a not inconventient rest stop on the way to something more important? Is this all just a game?
My ideals and goals are falling before me. I am evaluated in the most private acts by people who have no place and no right to evaluate anyone about anything. And yet, their judgement is passsed on and accepted by most, if not all, involved. I cannot fight, I cannot argue. I am losing my mind. And there is no one to turn to.
I am writing this here because I know for a fact that no one reads my writing - except, occasionally, my husband. This is a private space - not because it is designed to be, but because no one is interested in me in the least... The private public domain - is it not... contradictory to itself? The whole world can become contradictory like that...

Alone

"Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house."

Somerset Maugham. "The Moon and Sixpence."

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Chance Encounter

I stand, like a thief, trying to pick
The lock of your privacy - your mind.
It's the knowledge of you I seek.
I am willing to take the chance
And pay in advance
For the treasures I may not find.
You hear me talk, and you watch me squirm
Under your silence, like a worm.
You play with me, like a mouse plays with a cat...
Maybe, it's all in my head.