نقيلي أحلى زهرة يا فراشة نقيلي - Butterfly

نقيلي أحلى زهرة يا فراشة نقيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

نقيها حلوة أحلى من ضحكة أطفال

وخلي الزنبق يصرخلها من قلبه موال

والعصفور يترغلا ويترجم شو قال

وشق الفجر ينغّملا ع اوتارو تهديلي

نقيلي أحلى زهرة يا فراشة نقيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

نقيها بلون المرمر وحكايات النار

وتراب الجرد الأسمر والتلج الختيار

و من حلم الوادي الأخضر و عنفوان الغار

ولو بعرف أوصف أكتر ما بقلك نقيلي

نقيلي أحلى زهرة يا فراشة نقيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

نقيها بلون المرمر وحكايات النار

وتراب الجرد الأسمر والتلج الختيار

و من حلم الوادي الأخضر و عنفوان الغار

ولو بعرف أوصف أكتر ما بقلك نقيلي

نقيلي أحلى زهرة يا فراشة نقيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

زهرة تلبق للشقرا على شعرا تشكيلي

*

- زكي ناصيف -

Frank Loyd Wright - Posters -

On Losing a Friend - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -

On Losing a Friend ....

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

"You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky!"

“Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions.”

*

Bit by bit… it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

*

All men have the stars… but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For other they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. 

You — you alone — will have the stars as no one else has them… In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night… 

And when your sorrow is comforted, you will be content to have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky!

On Love - Khalil Gibran -

On Love - Khalil Gibran -

"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation"

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them.
And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

On Friendship - Khalil Gibran -

On Friendship 

-Khalil Gibran-

"For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend. 

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. 

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

A New Refutation of Time - Jorge Luis Borges -

A New Refutation of Time (Passages From)

- Jorge Luis Borges -

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”

In the course of a life dedicated to letters and (at times) to metaphysical perplexity, I have glimpsed or foreseen a refutation of time, in which I myself do not believe, but which regularly visits me at night and in the weary twilight with the illusory force of an axiom.

A world of evanescent impressions; a world without matter or spirit, neither objective nor subjective, a world without the ideal architecture of space; a world made of time, of the absolute uniform time of [Newton’s] Principia; a tireless labyrinth, a chaos, a dream.

Behind our faces there is no secret self which governs our acts and receives our impressions; we are, solely, the series of these imaginary acts and these errant impressions.

Once matter and spirit — which are continuities — are negated, once space too is negated, I do not know with what right we retain that continuity which is time. Outside each perception (real or conjectural) matter does not exist; outside each mental state spirit does not exist; neither does time exist outside the present moment.

During one of his nights on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn awakens; the raft, lost in partial darkness, continues downstream; it is perhaps a bit cold. Huckleberry Finn recognizes the soft indefatigable sound of the water; he negligently opens his eyes; he sees a vague number of stars, an indistinct line of trees; then, he sinks back into his immemorable sleep as into the dark waters. Idealist metaphysics declares that to add a material substance (the object) and a spiritual substance (the subject) to those perceptions is venturesome and useless; I maintain that it is no less illogical to think that such perceptions are terms in a series whose beginning is as inconceivable as its end. To add to the river and the bank, Huck perceives the notion of another substantive river and another bank, to add another perception to that immediate network of perceptions, is, for idealism, unjustifiable; for myself, it is no less unjustifiable to add a chronological precision: the fact, for example, that the foregoing event took place on the night of the seventh of June, 1849, between ten and eleven minutes past four. In other words: I denny, with the arguments of idealism, the vast temporal series which idealism admits. Hume denied the existence of an absolute space, in which all things have their place; I deny the existence of one single time, in which all things are linked as in a chain. The denial of coexistence is no less arduous than the denial of succession.

The vociferous catastrophes of a general order — fires, wars, epidemics — are one single pain, illusorily multiplied in many mirrors.

And yet, and yet… Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny … is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.

Looking Death in the Face

Ramses II

Looking Death in the Face

By John Kaag and Clancy Martin
The Stone, NYT, Dec. 26, 2016
Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, was born about 3,000 years ago and is widely regarded as the most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire. The Greeks called him Ozymandias. When he died in 1213 B.C.E., he left a series of temples and palaces that stretched from Syria to Libya, and countless statues and monuments commemorating his impressive reign. By the 19th century, when European colonization reached Egypt, most of these statues were gone, and the ones that remained were in ruin. In 1816, the Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered a bust of Ramses and acquired it for the British Museum. This is when Ozymandias’s life, in one respect, truly began.

“Ozymandias,” perhaps the most famous sonnet Percy Bysshe Shelley ever penned, was written in 1817, as the remains of the famous statue were slowly transported from the Middle East to England. Shelley imagines a traveler recounting a journey in a distant desert. Like Belzoni, Shelley’s character discovers a great bust, half-buried in the windswept sands. Next to the wreckage is a pedestal where the monument once stood. Inscribed in shallow letters on the slab of rock: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Of course, as Shelley’s poem tells us, nothing remained of these works or the king of kings. Just sand.

The poem’s message is perennial: All of this will be over soon, faster than you think. Fame has a shadow — inevitable decline. The year 2016 has delivered a string of deaths that serve as bracing reminders of this inevitability: Prince, Nancy Reagan, David Bowie, Elie Wiesel, Bill Cunningham, Muhammad Ali, Gordie Howe, Merle Haggard, Patty Duke, John Glenn. Of course, it has also been a year that has ushered in a new empire and, simultaneously, the specter of apocalypse. The year’s end is a time to take account of kingdoms built, but also the sheer rapidity of their destruction. It is a chance to come to terms with the existential fragility that is overlooked in most of our waking hours and that must be faced even by the greatest among us.

We tend to defer the question of living or dying well until it’s too late to answer. This might be the scariest thing about death: coming to die only to discover, in Thoreau’s words, that we haven’t lived.

Facing death, though, is rarely simple. We avoid it because we can. It’s easier to think of “dying” as an adjective than a verb, as in a dying patient or one’s dying words. This allows us to pretend that dying is something that is going to happen in some distant future, at some other point in time, to some other person. But not to us. At least not right now. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week, not even next decade. A lifetime from now.

Dying, of course, corresponds exactly with what we prefer to call living. This is what Samuel Beckett meant when he observed that we “give birth astride the grave.” It is an existential realization that may seem to be the province of the very sick or very old. The elderly get to watch the young and oblivious squander their days, time that they now recognize as incredibly precious.

When dying finally delivers us to our unexpected, inevitable end, we would like to think that we’ve endured this arduous trial for a reason. Dying for something has a heroic ring to it. But really it’s the easiest thing in the world and has little to do with fame and fortune. When you wake up and eat your toast, you are dying for something. When you drive to work, you’re dying for something. When you exchange meaningless pleasantries with your colleagues, you’re dying for something. As surely as time passes, we human beings are dying for something. The trick to dying for something is picking the right something, day after week after precious year. And this is incredibly hard and decidedly not inevitable.

If we understand it correctly, the difficulty is this — that from the time we’re conscious adults, maybe even before that, we get to choose how we’re going to die. It is not that we get to choose whether we contract cancer or get hit by a bus (although certain choices make these eventualities more or less likely) but that, if we are relatively fortunate (meaning, if we do not have our freedom revoked by circumstance or a malevolent force we can’t control), we have a remarkable degree of choice about what to do, think and become in the meantime, about how we go about living, which means we have a remarkable degree of choice over how we go about our dying. The choice, like the end itself, is ultimately ours and ours alone. This is what Heidegger meant when he wrote that death is our “own-most possibility”: Like our freedom, death is ours and ours alone.

Thinking about all of our heroes and friends and loved ones who have died, we may try to genuinely understand that death is coming, and to be afraid. “A free man thinks of death least of all things,” Spinoza famously wrote, “and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.” But we don’t even begin to think about life, not really, until we confront the fact that we are doing everything we can not to think about death. And perhaps we’re not so much afraid of dying, in the end, as of not living and dying well.

Everyday life has no shortage of things with which to waste our time: the pursuit of money, intelligence, beauty, power, fame. We all feel their draw. But the uncomfortable, claustrophobic truth is that dying for something like money or power tends not to be a choice at all. David Foster Wallace argued that for most of us dying in the pursuit of wealth or prestige is simply our “default setting.” The problem isn’t that we’re picking the wrong things to die for, but that we aren’t actually picking. We chose to live by proxy. We allow ourselves to remain in a psychological trap that prevents us from seeing what might be genuinely meaningful in our own lives. In doing so, we risk, according to Wallace, “going through (our) comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to our heads and to (our) natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.” We might call this the Ozymandias Trap — Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! — and be on guard against falling into it ourselves.

Most days we discover that we’re not quite up to the heroic task of extricating ourselves from the Ozymandias Trap. Others, we fear we’ve failed miserably. It is not realistic to love in the awareness that each day might be your last. But at least we can stop pretending that we will endure forever.

In Tolstoy’s famous story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, the dying hero reluctantly accepts his own mortality, albeit only once he can no longer avoid the truth:

It’s not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and … death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn’t it obvious to everyone but me that I’m dying … it may happen this moment. There was light and now there is darkness … When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing …

Ivan Ilyich can’t pretend that he’s not dying. He recognizes what Ramses II apparently did not: With his death, there is no justification of his life, there is no proof of himself to leave behind, there are no monuments where he is going. He has lied to himself all of his life about the fact that he’s going to die.

In the end, Ivan is liberated from his self-deception. And we, too, can free ourselves from this delusion. As soon as today. Right now.

If we succeed, we may find that confronting the fact of our own impermanence can do something unexpected and remarkable — transform the very nature of how we live.



John Kaag is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and author of “American Philosophy: A Love Story.” Clancy Martin is professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

We Met in a Dream - Gibran -

Unforgettable Youth Memories - Ocean Drive, RI, USA

We Met in a Dream
- Gibran -

It was but yesterday we met in a dream.

You have sung to me in my aloneness,

and 

I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.

But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,

and 

it is no longer dawn.

The noontide is upon us 

and 

our half-waking has turned to fuller day,

and 

we must part.

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,

we shall speak again together 

and

you shall sing to me a deeper song.

And if our hands should meet in another dream

we shall build another tower in the sky.

***

The Logical Song - Supertramp -

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful

A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical

And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily

Oh joyfully, playfully watching me

But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible

Logical, oh responsible, practical

And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable

Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world's asleep

The questions run too deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned

I know it sounds absurd

Please tell me who I am

I said, watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical

Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal

Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're Acceptable

Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!

Oh, take it take it yeah

But at night, when all the world's asleep

The questions run so deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please tell me what we've learned

I know it sounds absurd

Please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am

'Cause I was feeling so logical

D-d-digital

One, two, three, five

Oh, oh, oh, oh

It's getting unbelievable ..

Songwriters: Richard Davies / Roger Hodgson

The Logical Song lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Desnos’ ‘J’ai tant rêvé de toi’ (‘I’ve dreamed of you so much’) -Original + Translation

Original + Translation

Desnos’ ‘J’ai tant rêvé de toi’ 

(‘I’ve dreamed of you so much’)

J’AI TANT RÊVÉ DE TOI

J’ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.

Est-il encore temps d’atteindre ce corps vivant

Et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance

De la voix qui m’est chère?

J’ai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués

En étreignant ton ombre

A se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas

Au contour de ton corps, peut-être.

Et que, devant l’apparence réelle de ce qui me hante

Et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années,

Je deviendrais une ombre sans doute.

O balances sentimentales.

J’ai tant rêvé de toi qu’il n’est plus temps

Sans doute que je m’éveille.

Je dors debout, le corps exposé

A toutes les apparences de la vie

Et de l’amour et toi, la seule

qui compte aujourd’hui pour moi,

Je pourrais moins toucher ton front

Et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres

et le premier front venu.

J’ai tant rêvé de toi, tant marché, parlé,

Couché avec ton fantôme

Qu’il ne me reste plus peut-être,

Et pourtant, qu’a être fantôme

Parmi les fantômes et plus ombre

Cent fois que l’ombre qui se promène

Et se promènera allègrement

Sur le cadran solaire de ta vie.

Robert Desnos, 1930

I’VE DREAMED OF YOU SO MUCH

I’ve dreamed of you so much that you are losing your reality.

Is there still time to touch this living body

And to plant on this mouth the birth

Of the voice that I hold dear?

I’ve dreamed of you so much that my arms accustomed

In embracing your shadow to crossing over my chest would not 

reach Around your body, perhaps.

And that, before the real semblance of what has haunted

And governed me for days and years,

I would become a shadow, doubtless.

Oh sentimental hesitations.

I’ve dreamed of you so much that there is

Doubtless not time for me to wake up now.

I sleep standing up, my body exposed

To all semblance of life

And love and you, the only one

Who matters to me now,

I would be less able to touch your forehead

And your lips than the first lips

And first forehead to come my way.

I’ve dreamed of you so much, walked, spoken,

Slept with your ghost so much

That all that remains for me to do perhaps,

And yet, is to be a ghost

Among the ghosts and a hundred times

More shadow than the shadow which strolls

And will stroll blithely

On the sundial of your life.

On Hate, Reality & Sorrow. - Gibran -

On Hate, Reality and Sorrow .. 

- Gibran -

The Reality of The Other Person Lies Not In What He Reveals To You, 

But What He Cannot Reveal To You. 

Therefore, 

If You Would Understand Him, 

Listen Not To What He Says, 

But Rather To What He Does Not Say.

**

A woman said unto a man, "I love you." 

And the man said, "It is in my heart to be worthy of your love."

And he woman said, "You love me not?"

And the man only gazed upon her and said nothing.

Then the woman cried aloud, "I hate you."

And the man said, 

"Then it is also in my heart to be worthy of your hate."

 **

“Hearts united in pain and sorrow

will not be separated by joy and happiness.

Bonds that are woven in sadness

are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.

Love that is washed by tears

will remain eternally pure and faithful.”

***

When My Sorrow Was Born - KAHLIL GIBRAN- Featuring Eeyore..

When My Sorrow Was Born

BY KAHLIL GIBRAN

When my Sorrow was born I nursed it with care, and watched over it with loving tenderness.

And my Sorrow grew like all living things, strong and beautiful

and full of wondrous delights.

And we loved one another, my Sorrow and I, and we loved the world about us; for Sorrow had a kindly heart and mine was kindly with Sorrow.

And when we conversed, my Sorrow and I, our days were winged and our nights were girdled with dreams; for Sorrow had an eloquent tongue, and mine was eloquent with Sorrow.

And when we sang together, my Sorrow and I, our neighbors sat at

their windows and listened; for our songs were deep as the sea and

our melodies were full of strange memories.

And when we walked together, my Sorrow and I, people gazed at us with gentle eyes and whispered in words of exceeding sweetness.

And there were those who looked with envy upon us, for Sorrow was a noble thing and I was proud with Sorrow.

But my Sorrow died, like all living things, and alone I am left to

muse and ponder.

And now when I speak my words fall heavily upon my ears.

And when I sing my songs my neighbours come not to listen.

And when I walk the streets no one looks at me.

Only in my sleep I hear voices saying in pity, “See, there lies

the man whose Sorrow is dead.”

Gibran In New York ...... - Gibran -

Gibran About New York ..

I run through the streets of this gigantic city, and shadows run after me. 

I gaze with a thousand eyes and listen with a thousand ears all through the day; 

and when I come home late at night I find more things to gaze at and more voices to listen to. 

New York is not the place where one finds rest. 

But did I come here for rest? 

I am so glad to be able to run. 

I spent yesterday afternoon in the Museum — and I am astonished to find so many wonderful things in it. 

It is surely one of the great museums in the world in spite of its being only fifty years old. 

America is far greater than what people think; 

her Destiny is strong and healthy and eager.

- Gibran -

New York Met Gibran Time

New York Met Modern Times 

A Heart in New York - Simon & Garfunkel -

A Heart in New York

Simon & Garfunkel

New York, to that tall skyline I come, 

flyin' in from London to your door

New York, lookin' down on Central Park

Where they say you should not wander after dark

New York, like a scene from all those movies

But you're real enough to me, but there's a heart

A heart that lives in New York

A heart in New York, a rose on the street

I write my song to that city heartbeat

A heart in New York, love in her eye, 

an open door and a friend for the night

New York, you got money on your mind

And my words won't make a dime's worth a difference, 

so here's to you New York

Songwriters: GRAHAM HAMILTON LYLE / BENNY GALLAGHER

A Heart in New York lyrics © Imagem Songs Ltd., Goodsingle Ltd., Imagem Songs Limited, COPYRIGHT CONTROL (NON-HFA), ALMO MUSIC CORP. OBO IMAGEM SONGS LTD., MECHANICAL COPYRIGHT PROTECTION SOCIETY LTD, GOODSINGLE LTD

Serenade - David Garrett, Schubert, Theophile Gautier ...

Schubert Serenade - David Garrett .

Schubert Serenade, Piano .

Sérénade

Sur le balcon où tu te penches 

Je veux monter... efforts perdus ! 

Il est trop haut, et tes mains blanches 

N'atteignent pas mes bras tendus.

Pour déjouer ta duègne avare, 

Jette un collier, un ruban d'or ; 

Ou des cordes de ta guitare

Tresse une échelle, ou bien encor...

Ôte tes fleurs, défais ton peigne, 

Penche sur moi tes cheveux longs, 

Torrent de jais dont le flot baigne 

Ta jambe ronde et tes talons.

Aidé par cette échelle étrange, 

Légèrement je gravirai, 

Et jusqu'au ciel, sans être un ange, 

Dans les parfums je monterai ! 

-Theophile Gautier-