A Short Post on Jean Cocteau and Cinema

There must be some curse that doesn’t let me see La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. Every time it’s on TV I either forget or cannot find time to watch it. Naturally, when I received an email update from Cornerhouse telling me that on Sunday this classic was being screened, I jumped up and down with joy.

I was going to Cornerhouse relishing the thought of sinking into a chair in a dark hall and watching one of Cocteau’s masterpieces. At the counter there was a small queue, which I joined. As I approached the counter, I suddenly noticed a big A4 sheet of paper telling me that all tickets for Cocteau’s film had been sold out.

‘What, completely?’ I asked the guy behind the counter, still refusing to believe that I was missing this film yet again.

‘Yes, completely’, he nodded, ‘we’re sorry’.

Don’t think I blame Cornerhouse, or those people who bought tickets before me. I don’t even blame myself, as it never occurred to me that there might be a lot of people like myself. So, I’m trying to be philosophical and say: never mind.

Sunday was fully rectified on Monday morning, when I woke up to the long-awaited news of Dame Helen Mirren and Martin Scorsese each winning an Oscar. I didn’t watch this year’s ceremony. On the one hand, as I have to get up early in the morning, I wouldn’t be able to stay awake at work. On the other hand, I didn’t watch any of this year’s nominated films, but that has to do with personal reasons, rather than an overall change in my attitude to cinema. In addition, last year I was almost compelled to watch the Oscars, as I interviewed Mark Rothemund and Gavin Hood, who were both nominated in the Best Foreign Film category. As we know, Hood’s Tsotsi has scooped the award, and I had one of the biggest balls in my entire life.

Back to Cocteau, I’ve seen Orphee. Cocteau brilliantly reworks the ancient myth, not only through cinematography and imagery of the film, but also through the narrative proper. In particular, in this revocation of the myth, Orphee cannot look at Euridice even after he’d safely transported her from the world of the dead, otherwise she will disappear again.

What I find most interesting is the scene in Cocteau’s film, when Death (Maria Casares) sacrifices herself for Orphee (Jean Marait), so he could return on Earth and continue to please people with his art. As I haven’t yet read Les Ombres Errantes by Pascal Quignard, I cannot say whether in his text the following quotation is somehow related to this scene, or not. Evidently, though, that Cocteau’s scene symbolises the immortality of Art, and Quignard says in his novel:

Les artistes sont des meurtriers de la mort (The artists are the murderers of death).
And as everyone would agree, the myth of Orphee plainly states that ars longa, vita brevis. As do the works of Jean Cocteau.

And to conclude this little post, a brilliant quotation from Jean Cocteau which he dropped in the interview, describing a postal stamp with his portrait of Marianne, France’s national symbol. He explained that Marianne was in fact a secretary’s wife, for which reason he didn’t want to create anything pompous. His Marianne indeed looks like a secretary’s wife, complete with a perm. And he said:

I think this stamp is too conventional, but perhaps it is better this way. When one is licked by so many, it doesn’t pay to be too singular, lest one is licked in disgust.

(The image is taken from the site covering the works of many artists, including, apart from Jean Cocteau, Lee Miller, Albert Camus, Andy Warhol, etc. Pay a visit and discover the amazing work by some of the greatest artists of the past).

Loving Manchester

This text I wrote recently on the train, in Russian. It is a chapter in my reflections on Manchester, which I provisionally call ‘The City of Optimists’. Some of them I published in Russian on my Russian blog, and, judging by the comments there, the impressions of my experiences in Manchester (and in England in general) are much appreciated.

A note on the text: I used three Italian words, partially because they belonged to my text; partially because I had an Italian colleague sitting next to me, which may have made me remember that trait of many Italian cities. They used to consist of città (city proper), contado (countryside) and distretto (suburbia).

It seems I manage to write about Manchester with love. This is fine: to live in one city for several years in a row, one needs to love it. And for that the city has to have something in common with your native or best-loved city, or, on the contrary, to be totally different. It is like in relationships with people: you fall in love when another person fits comfortably in your environment; or when your environment weighs you down, and this other person transforms it with their presence. It is a mistake to think that relationship should have no habitual quality about it. It should avoid usualness and conventions, which are similar to indifference. But a habit by itself is an organising element. Habit relates to habitat, which is nothing else but one’s space, one’s environment. Don’t say that you have got no habits or that you would not want to share them with someone.

And so I find Manchester at once unusual, and not. A year after my moving here, when a more or less objective reflection had become possible, I realised, for example, that I was living in a district very much like the one where I used to live in Moscow. This was usual. What was not usual, was the absence of the capital city’s dazzle, lustre, charm, spirit. And I feel the lack of these. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to overestimate Moscow’s spirit, especially as I am being related about its changing. In Moscow, I used to like speed, space, parks, boulevards, strange houses that hid cosily in some unknown streets. Moscow is a big city where you can have the luxury of not visiting the suburbs; in Manchester, the line between città, contado and distretto is painfully fine, and possibly this is what I have found the most striking.

But, all in all, I want to love this city exactly because it is so similar and dissimilar to my native one. My love is rather rational; there is no passion with which I relate to even those cities where I have never been. But it is love; not respect, nor compassion. I want to love this city because it is easy and convenient to love flawlessly beautiful people, beautiful places, beautiful memories. Yet how sincere is such love, and is it love, after all? Or perhaps, it is a manifestation of a conventional, habitual, usual belief that only flawless beauty is worthy of affection?

BBC Manchester Bloggers Meeting – Second Time Lucky!

Like many other people in Manchester tonight, I’ve just returned from the BBC Blogging Workshop. No winds could stop us this time, but no winds were blowing, anyway.

The goal of the workshop was to bring together the Mancunian bloggers of all degrees of proficiency and to cover a variety of topics, from choosing the right platform to making money with your blog. The BBC Editorial Guidelines were also briefly looked at, and the meeting was led by Robin Hamman, with participation of Richard Fair and Craig McGinty. I also did a bit of talking.

……………………………………………………..Robin Hamman & Richard Fair in the BBC Club Bar

After the workshop some of us headed to Lass o’Gowrie, an Irish pub up the street from the BBC in Oxford Road, where we took this photo:

Back row, left to right: Thomas McEldowney, Robin Hamman; front row, left to right: Paul Griffiths, Craig McGinty, and Andrew (who is not a blogger yet, but will certainly have become one after he leaves the pub tonight).

The recurrent topic, which I can’t help finally picking upon, is: what blogs are for, and who reads them. As Richard Fair likes saying, one absolutely must have a degree of arrogance to send their thoughts *into space*, expecting that someone somewhere will read those musings. But, methinks, arrogance is supported on this occasion by such simple fact that on this planet, inhabited by several billions of human beings, there WILL always be someone who stumbles into your writing. Add to this the fact that blogging allows you to develop your own editorial guidelines and house styles, and voila! you no longer depend on a prospective publisher. You simply publish a post, it becomes instantly available, and who knows what happens next? You may be read by millions of people all over the planet Earth.

My very first post on this blog was exactly on this topic. After months of indifference and several weeks of intense research and thinking of what I’d write about had I become a blogger, I created Los Cuadernos. And I still vividly remember staring at the screen for ten minutes, having no idea of what to say. Eventually I said it.

Blogging used to be understood as either a journo’s platform, or a personal diary. This is how I also understood it, until I looked at various blogs and realised that your content is by no means restricted by those two types of writing. Still, blogging is associated with journalism, just like writing is associated with “serious” literature. When one considers becoming a writer, they don’t want to be unknown writers. They want to belong to the same league, as Tolstoy, Joyce, etc. Same for bloggers. The very thought of sending your musings into the same virtual space, where Nick Robinson publishes his texts, must be scary, as well as exhilirating.

And that’s the thing about blogging. It’s purely virtual, yet the effect it has on your life and the life of your readers is quite tangible. Once you realise that your content is interesting, you strive to maintain the level or even to raise it. In terms of writing and research, this has never been a problem to me. But I was conscious that I wanted to use as many opportunities of the Internet as possible, including uploading or embedding videos, audios and images. And in just half a year after I started Los Cuadernos I’ve learnt technical skills that I thought I’d never need.

Why is this necessary? Because, as we know, scientia potentia est (knowledge is power). In the end, you’re not obliged to publish on the web under your real name, in which case you’ve got unlimited opportunities to explore the audience’s reaction to various styles, topics, etc. And if you don’t enjoy it, you can always stop. But if you’re totally new to internet and blogging, you’ll pick up a plenty of new skills, which can be used for many purposes. And if you know that you’re being read, and when you hear people telling you that they enjoy your content, you feel that those late hours you’d spent typing a post *for nobody* haven’t been in vain.

And to finish it all off, I’ve just subscribed to Richard Fair’s Mind, which I enjoy reading and have been reading for some time (as Richard knows from my comments). But – which is exactly relevant to tonight’s meeting – Richard hasn’t got that flashy orange icon that signals to everyone that they can subscribe to his blog. I always used to type Mind’s address directly into the browser. Luckily, tonight I remembered that those icons often appear on the right side of one’s browser window. Richard’s icon was there, and from now on I will be reading him in Google Reader.

Some Interesting Signboards

Hans Christian Andersen wrote about the storm that shifted the signboards. It looks like the winter frosts have left England more or less unscathed, whereby all signboards remained in their places.

However, some of these signboards are such gems that I simply couldn’t pass them by. The picture of the signboard below was taken in Liverpool at the end of January, in a cafe in Liverpool Lime St station. My attention was first caught by the phrase ‘if you look under the age of 21‘, but ‘a free criminal record‘ offer is totally unique for the market, I think. I wonder if there is a big boom among consumers…

And the picture below was taken this evening, when I was walking from Oxford Rd station to Deansgate where I take a bus home. You probably recognise the location. Seeing such board after a long working day is like a check on your intellectual faculties. What do we eat with, after all?

My Trips to Bolton -2 (Ye Olde Man & Scythe)

When I went to Bolton a week ago, I didn’t manage to take any decent shots of Ye Olde Man & Scythe, one of Britain’s oldest pubs. (Don’t tell me anybody that North West of England is not worth of visiting or inhabiting). The reason was that there was a van or a truck standing right in front of it, and obviously I didn’t feel so generous as to photograph the vehicle.

Thankfully, a week later it was completely different. There was no van, or truck, but there were a plenty of people walking past.

Some people were even attempting to chat up a young girl (who you can see on the right), oblivious to the fact that she was a mannequin. I must admit: every so often I fall the victim of mannequins. I mistake them for real people. The first time it happened in Moscow, many years ago, in a sportswear shop, when I needed an advice, and went up to a well-dressed young man, who confidently stood at the entrance to the sportswear section. My eye-sight was not perfect then already, so it took me to come up close to the figure to realise that I was intending to speak to a dummy.

This fairy, however, wasn’t a very simple fairy. She was very airy, for which reason, I believe, she had a ‘Mop&Shine’ stood between her feet – to keep her base down to earth.

This fairy was not the only one who was inviting you under the pub’s roof. Another airy creature was gazing from the window in the room above the entrance. You can see her on the very first picture in this post, but I tried to get a closer look at her.

The pub, as some of you may know, had existed since 1251, and was partially rebuilt in 1636. The bar inside the building shows the end of the 1251 wall.

Two views of the sitting space in the inner yard. The right picture was taken from the walk between the two buildings, and gives you a peek at the leaden barrels of bitter in the pub’s cellar.

I think some of the visitors were quite amused to see a girl in a red coat, with two bags (yes, I did some shopping, as well), first snapping pictures outside the pub, and then walking in and continuing to snap inside the building. One of those people were looking out of the window while I was trying to get a better shot of the female figure in the room above the entrance. I might not have walked into the building, but he looked like a pub’s owner, so I thought I’d come in and ask if he minded me taking pictures of his property. No, he wasn’t the owner, but he didn’t mind, and neither would the owner, he said. So, I carried on taking pics, my conscience being cleared.

Oh, I forgot to say why I ended up going to Bolton for two weekends in a row. First, I’m working full time in Warrington these days, and commuting between Manchester and Warrington takes me three hours in total each day. Needless to say, I don’t have much time to go anywhere after work during the week. And when I went to Bolton on the 10th, at Whitakers I found the buttons for the coat that I knitted. And then came a severe test to my math skills, or rather to my occasional absent-mindedness. I knew there were seven button-holes, but the buttons were being sold in pairs. So I bought three pairs, knowing all the while that the coat has got seven button-holes. Thus, a week later I had to go to Bolton again, to get another pair of buttons.

My Trips to Bolton -1

There may be something good about visiting an optician. The visit (and the news of your becoming more shortsighted after three years – as if I expected a miracle to happen instead!) may inspire you to take a bus and to go in almost any available direction.

I did this on the last two weekends. A week ago I went to Bolton after I underwent a test at the optician. I wasn’t upset by the news, as it was quite exactly what I thought it would be. I ordered new lenses to my glasses. It wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t very cold. And of the spur of the moment I took a bus and went to Bolton.

I’ve been to Bolton before, but most of the times I didn’t have a camera with me. On the occasions when I did it was a bit of a pain to have the photos developed first, and then to scan them. But last December I got a new phone for my birthday, with a good camera in it. So, now I’m taking pictures whenever I see something worth of commemorating.

This is what Bolton looked like on February, 10th (the picture above). Although I never got caught in the rain, there was some light drizzle, and the town was sober and silent.

I see a very subtle irony in the picture on the left. They may debate ad infinitum, which of these two – prostitution or journalism – is the oldest job on Earth. But if we consider both as institutions, then religion and Church are just as old. And there is something ironic that the buildings of the two these oldest social institutions are located so close to each other.

(Almost) the same spot looked like this a week later:

I must admit, though: I liked The Bolton News building. When you see it from its narrow side, it doesn’t seem interesting. But if you only walk a little down the street, you’ll see it differently. I don’t know about you, but it reminded me of a ship. And this ship is headed towards the church. I know some of you will find it natural. As for me, I’ll take a pause.

The Lovers by Rene Magritte

One of my favourite paintings is The Lovers by Rene Magritte. We see a man and a woman sharing an intimate kiss, but their faces are covered with white cloths. You can certainly interpret this as an image of blinding passion. However, I prefer to view the picture as an image of two people who were destined to meet one another. They don’t know each other by face, but they share this moment of profound intimacy because they have recognised one another.

Awhile ago, whilst looking at the painting, I realised that this scene (or rather something that must have happened prior to it in order for this moment to take place) has been described in one of my favourite novels. I speak about Chapter 13 of Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The text is available online in two English translations, for those who never read it, and I have to say that the passage I’m quoting below is not rendered impeccably in either version; however, the 1997 text generally follows the original Russian text closer, whereby I’m quoting from it. In this chapter (called The Hero Enters), the character of Master is fully introduced to us for the first time.

'She was carrying repulsive, alarming yellow flowers in her hand. Devil knows what they're called, but for
some reason they're the first to appear in Moscow. And these flowers stood out clearly against her black spring
coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! Not a nice colour. She turned down a lane from Tverskaya and then
looked back. Well, you know Tverskaya! Thousands of people were walking along Tverskaya, but I can assure
you that she saw me alone, and looked not really alarmed, but even as if in pain. And I was struck not so much
by her beauty as by an extraordinary loneliness in her eyes, such as no one had ever seen before! Obeying this
yellow sign, I also turned down the lane and followed her. We walked along the crooked, boring lane silently, I
on one side, she on the other. And, imagine, there was not a soul in the lane. I was suffering, because it seemed
to me that it was necessary to speak to her, and I worried that I wouldn't utter a single word, and she would leave,
and I'd never see her again. And, imagine, suddenly she began to speak:
' "Do you like my flowers?"

'I remember clearly the sound of her voice, rather low, slightly husky, and, stupid as it is, it seemed that the
echo resounded in the lane and bounced off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed to her side and, coming up
to her, answered:

'"No!"
'She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, understood that all my life I had loved
precisely this woman! Quite a thing, eh? Of course, you'll say I'm mad?'

'I won't say anything,' Ivan exclaimed, and added: 'I beg you, go on!'

And the guest continued.

'Yes, she looked at me in surprise, and then, having looked, asked thus:

'"You generally don't like flowers?"
'It seemed to me there was hostility in her voice. I was walking beside her, trying to keep in step, and, to my
surprise, did not feel the least constraint.

'"No, I like flowers, but not this kind," I said.
'"Which, then?"

'"I like roses."

'Then I regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily and threw the flowers into the gutter. Slightly at a loss,
I nevertheless picked them up and gave them to her, but she, with a smile, pushed the flowers away, and I carried
them in my hand.
'So we walked silently for some time, until she took the flowers from my hand and threw them to the pavement,
then put her own hand in a black glove with a bell-shaped cuff under my arm, and we walked on side by side.'
'Go on,' said Ivan, 'and please don't leave anything out!'

'Go on?' repeated the visitor. 'Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on.' He suddenly wiped an
unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued: `Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley
leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the
way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without
knowing each other, never having seen each other, and that she was living with a different man ... as I was, too,
then ... with that, what's her ...'
'With whom?' asked Homeless.

With that... well... with ...' replied the guest, snapping his fingers?

'You were married?'

'Why, yes, that's why I'm snapping... With that... Varenka ... Manechka ... no, Varenka ... striped dress, the
museum ... Anyhow, I don't remember.
'Well, so she said she went out that day with yellow flowers in her hand so that I would find her at last, and that
if it hadn't happened, she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.

'Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that same day, an hour later, when, without having noticed the city, we
found ourselves by the Kremlin wall on the embankment.

We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years. We
arranged to meet the next day at the same place on the Moscow River, and we did. The May sun shone down
on us. And soon, very soon, this woman became my secret wife.
Links: Bulgakov, Mikhail. Master and Margarita (1967, English translation by Michael Glenny).Bulgakov, Mikhail. Master and Margarita (1997, English translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).

O Felici Occhi Miei: Arcadelt and Caravaggio

The sheet music to a popular madrigal O Felici Occhi Miei by Diego Ortiz and Jacob Arcadelt can be seen in The Musicians by Caravaggio

Our fascination with Renaissance Italy never ceases. This time we have unambiguous evidence of what music the contemporaries of Caravaggio preferred. One piece that was quite popular was a madrigal by Jacques Arcadelt O Felici Occhi Miei.

(As a matter of fact, last year the Victoria and Albert Museum hosted two exhibitions that were linked together thematically, as geographically, and were of immense importance to all “Italianised Englishmen”, if we are to use the 16th c. slang. One was on Leonardo da Vinci; another on Italian Renaissance household; and I wrote about both on my blog in early November).

Now, I got somewhat interested in the piece of music that I recommended in the mentioned post purely because it was composed in the 16th c., which I studied in great depth. The piece is called Divisions of Arcadelt’s O felici occhi miei, and was composed by Diego Ortiz.

The piece in question is a madrigal by Jacob Arcadelt, a Flemish composer born between 1504 and 1505, who spent a lot of his time in Rome and then in Paris, where he died in 1568. Immensely popular for his madrigals and chansons, he also composed masses and motets. The very first printed madrigals appeared in 1537, and the year 1539 saw the publication of four out of six volumes of Arcadelt’s madrigals.

The madrigal in question is called O felici occhi miei (Oh, my happy eyes), and this is the text:

O felic’ occhi miei, felici voi,
che sete car’ al mio sol
perche sembianz’ havete
de gliocchi che gli fu si dolc’e rei.
voi ben voi sete voi,
voi, voi felici et io,
io no, che per quetar vostro desio,
corr’ amirar l’onde mi struggo poi.

(My word-for-word translation:

Oh my happy eyes, happy you are
That you can dearly behold my sun,
For [this is what] the face
To the eyes, to which it was so sweet and regal.
You are beautiful, glowing,
You are happy, and I,
And I am not, for to quieten my longing desire for you,
I look up at you whereby I then suffer).

The comparisons we find in this madrigal are typical of the Renaissance poetry. The most prominent poet who comes to my mind is certainly Petrarch (Canzoniere); but similar motives we can find in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 24. Face is the Sun (the term can be extended to include God); a lover cannot stop looking at the face of his beloved, like a man cannot stop looking at the sun; but the beauty of both bedazzles the viewer, bringing him to tears (strictly, as figuratively, speaking). Such motive, I am sure, goes well back in the dawn of history of literary figures.

Caravaggio - The Musicians (1595) — In this painting by Caravaggio we see one of the boys holding a sheet music with Diego Ortiz’s work

You can follow the links below to see the score sheets for this madrigal. What is interesting, however, is that a few years ago art historians have identified the Arcadelt’s manuscripts as being included in Caravaggio’s paintings. O felici occhi miei apparently features in painting above, The Musicians (1595, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Which only proves how popular was the madrigal O Felici Occhi Miei by Arcadelt even quarter of a century after his death.

(The image is taken from Florence Symposium Program page).

Below is a video with the madrigal recorded by Ernst Stolz and Trond Bengston, featuring the piece of art by Andrea Previtali. It is followed by Pro Musica Antiqua ensemble from Milan singing O Felic’ Occhi Miei a-capella.

Links:

Biography of Jacob (Jacques) Arcadelt at Wiki.
Biography of Arcadelt at HOASM.
Music of Renaissance Italy – Florence Symposium Program.

Previously on this post there was a link to O felici occhi miei music score in a .pdf file. I discovered recently that the link was no longer working, but the file is still available on the original site. Flauto Dolce has been created by Andrea Bornstein and has already amassed a marvellous collection of music score sheets and ‘is dedicated to the publication of original music and arrangements for recorder made available in various formats‘. Students of both Renaissance and Baroque music will be pleased to find a wide selection of compositions from these periods, some available in MP3. Mr Bornstein also indicated on his website that he was interested in collaborating with musicians who would consider to ‘realise the continuo of pieces from the XVII and XVIII centuries‘. No money offered, but the work will be licensed under the Creative Commons Licence. If you are such musician reading this post, don’t hesitate to contact Flauto Dolce.

You can go to Jacob Arcadelt’s page on Flauto Dolce, where you will find not one, but five of his compositions. Please note that you will need to register on the site to access any content.

The Routes of Inspiration

The poem that you’ll find below bears no dedication, although it would never have been written, had I not been driven to learn more about Portugal last summer. My interest was sparkled by the work of Victor Gama that I came across during Futuresonic Festival in Manchester in July 2006. Rather naturally, I suppose, I got interested not only in his work, but also in Portugal and Angola. However, my knowledge and understanding of Europe is overall better than that of Africa, whereby I focused on Portugal, especially since I’ve never been there.

So, I was searching Google Images when I saw the picture that captivated my attention straight away. It was taken by a Portuguese photographer, Joao Leitao, and commemorates a fountain, which – to judge by many other images of it that I would find later – is a powerful tourist attraction in itself. To say that Leitao’s photograph is atmospheric is to say nothing, really. For a colour image, it is unique and is all the more impressive because it carries an air of an old oil painting.

In early October I suddenly managed to put my impressions about this picture into words, and so this poem came to life. The English text is a word-for-word translation, thus unfortunately it doesn’t give an idea of how this poem actually sounds in Russian. Anapaest is the main foot (i.e. two unstressed syllables+one stressed); odd lines contain six stressed syllables, followed by two unstressed; even lines contain five stressed syllables, followed by one unstressed.

If any poetry translator is reading this, and would like to try their hand at adapting the word-for-word translation, you’re very welcome to publish it right in the comment field or to email me. I’m sure all parties who were involved, directly or indirectly, in the making of this poem, will appreciate the effort.

Синтра. Пейзаж в тонах Веласкеса

Ранним утром уставшее за ночь от слез, постаревшее небище
Выдыхает, осипнув вконец, клочья белых туманов
На дома и долины когда-то любимого папского детища,
Что тревожило яростно древний покой океанов.

В этот час в воскресенье газетчик стоит на углу мокрой улицы,
Совершая, ссутулившись, таинство медиамессы, –
Но его горожане по-прежнему спят и не интересуются,
Что предскажет им новый пророк от печатного пресса.

Беззаботно фонарь зацепился крюком за кирпичное здание
И качается мерно над камнем булыжным. А ветры
Зимний призрачный холод несут в городок на краю мироздания,
На холмы старой Синтры. И в проблесках тусклых рассвета

Одинокий фонтан, переполненный неба рябым отражением,
Что ручьями сбегает по тверди его кринолина,
Тихо плачет, смущенный впервые замеченным жизни течением,
И восторженно смотрит поверх черепичной равнины…

October 3-7, 2006

The poem was first published here.

(Sintra. A Dimly Tinted Landscape)

At dawn an old huge sky, exhausted after a night of tears,
Has gone coarse and expires the pieces of white fog
On the houses and valleys of the once beloved papal daughter,
Who used to rampage the ancient calm of the oceans.

At this hour on Sunday a newsagent stands on the cone of a wet street,
Stooping, performing the sacrament of the media-mass, –
But his citizens are still sleep and don’t take interest
In the visions of a new prophet of the printing-press.

A streetlight carelessly holds on to brick wall by the hook
And swings in rhythm above the cobbles. The winds
Carry the winterly, ghostly cold to the town on the edge of mankind,
To the hills of Sintra. And in the dim gleams of sunrise

A lone fountain, overrun with the sky’s stippled reflection
That pours down its farthingale in streams,
Cries in silence, having noticed the motion of life for the first time,
And looks in esctasy over the plain of the roof-tiles).

A Nokia Affair and the Change of Sex

I received this leaflet from The Carphone Warehouse a couple of days ago, and I felt outraged.

First of all, I was alleged to have had a relationship with Nokia 6610i.

I categorically state that I have never had this phone in my hand.

In its exclusive interview to The Carphone Warehouse reporter, this impostor states that it’d given me the best years of its battery. Considering I’ve been in England for three years and have recently got a new, third, phone, this “best years” statement is an exaggeration, to say the least.

Moreover – is this a common phoney psychology, excuse the pun? – my bel ami says:

‘… In my mind, our relationship was solid. Then The Carphone Warehouse started flaunting younger, sexier models. I mean, these latest phones all seem to be more attractive… I began to feel like I couldn’t compete with them anymore… All I want is for Julia to be happy. So as difficult as this may be for me to say, I’ll understand if I’m traded-in for a younger model. After all, it’s not every day Julia gets a fantastic opportunity like this… Whatever Julia decides, I will always be grateful for the life we’ve had together‘.

What sort of altruism is this??? ‘They are younger, sexier, and throw themselves at Julia, so I’ll step aside‘ – if you’re so insecure about yourself, dear, then I don’t even want to know you. Had you really given me the best years of your battery, you would’ve known well that Julia never went after the features.

As if this wasn’t enough, there came this phrase:

… they’ll give him up to £20 for me and 10% off any accessory when he upgrades to a monthly contract.

When I first read it, it didn’t ever occur to me that ‘he‘ and ‘him‘ were related to myself. Then the truth came down upon me. Whereas at first I didn’t notice anything unusual about an allusion to the ‘youngier, sexier models‘, I suddenly realised that such expression was employed because I was considered male.

OMG…

I couldn’t believe it. I closed the brochure and looked at the address. And then I saw it. The brochure was addressed to ‘Mr Julia S…;’, with all correct details below. So, first I was alleged to have had a phone which I never had, and then I was also turned into a man, thanks to someone’s mistake.

I don’t actually have ‘feelings’ for my phone, although every time I dropped my first English phone, I felt ashamed. Having said that, I wasn’t ashamed that I was hurting this poor mechanism, but rather that I couldn’t hold it properly. That phone effectively died after being accidentally dropped into a sink, but again, instead of showing remorse for the phone, I was embarrassed at myself.

The younger, sexier models ‘throw’ themselves at me, screaming: ‘Let’s get together, Julia‘, ‘Fancy a fresh start with me, Julia?‘, ‘Ready for a new relationship, Julia?‘, ‘We’re made for each other, Julia‘. It feels like the old adage of a man as a social animal is being taken to the extreme. Not only that you’re expected to socialise and to have someone in your life just for the sake of it, but the same rule is now extended to the ownership of inanimate objects.

Obviously, I’m not about to give in. I’ve got the Sony Ericsson phone in my life, my relationship with it (*him*) is very satisfying. Younger models can throw themselves at someone else. And let’s hope they get the sex right this time.

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