« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
May 31, 2005
three passions
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
Bertrand Russell
Posted by amin at 10:38 PM | TrackBack
May 28, 2005
kiarostami's characters
I’m drawn to unique people. Since we can’t put every single person in front of camera, we have to look for extraordinary people or ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
Abbas Kiarostami
Posted by amin at 2:25 AM | TrackBack
May 27, 2005
sonnets 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Shakespeare
Posted by amin at 12:56 AM | TrackBack
May 24, 2005
on the blue shore of silence
1)
Let us look for secret things
Somewhere in the world,
On the blue shore of silence
Or where the storm has passed,
Rampaging like a train.
There the faint signs are left,
Coins of time and water,
Debris, celestial ash
And the irreplaceable rapture
Of sharing in the labor
Of solitude and the sand.
2)
I will have to wait for the fog,
The flying salt, the scattered sun,
For the sea to breath and breath on me;
Because water is not just water
But a hazy intrusion,
And the waves roll on in the air
Like invisible horses.
3)
And so I have to learn
To swim inside my dreams
In case the sea should come
And visit me in my sleep.
And if that happens, all will be well
And when tomorrow stirs
On the wet stones, the sand
And the great resounding sway of sea
Will know who I am and why I return,
Will accept me into their school.
And I can be content again
In the solitude of the sand,
Graduated by the wind
And respected by the sea-world.
Pablo Neruda
Posted by amin at 12:07 AM | TrackBack
May 23, 2005
humanity of the moment
Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough--there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins.
Robert Frank
Posted by amin at 3:49 AM | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
night
Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime.
Brasssai
Posted by amin at 5:12 PM | TrackBack
May 4, 2005
russell on wittgenstein
I told him he ought not to simply state what he thinks true, but to give arguments for it, but he said arguments spoil its beauty, and that he would feel as if he was dirtying a flower with muddy hands.
Bertrand Russell
Posted by amin at 11:31 PM | TrackBack
May 2, 2005
the hell-fire of life
The hell-fire of life consumes only the select among men.
The rest stand in front of it, warming their hands.
Friedrich Hebbel
Posted by amin at 9:43 AM | TrackBack
May 1, 2005
kierkegaard on the poet
A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul."
Kierkegaard