~*Revue_Blanche*~

*la page blanche*
“After a long nap
the cat yawns, rises and goes out
looking for love.”
(from Japanese poetry)

My young kitty seems to have stopped spending too much time for playing. And she treats my hands more carefully, either with retracted claws or just without blood-shedding, as though realizing she hurts me. She begins to study now; she studies the world--around her for the time being. For the last several months of stay at my household she has got much fatter and therefore awkward at times, when she hastens too much, being excited and taking to her heels from an invented chaser, on the polished surfaces of tables and shelves, from where the potted plants and other nice things are thrown down on the floor with her strong hind legs--yet she never misses attacking. Domesticated, the cute little thing has chosen two main jobs for herself: one job is to examine shopping-bags, full of food, and another job is a morning round all over the apartment for the purpose of mice--she is an excellent mouse-catcher--anything for a quiet life. She is a sleek, beautiful cat. I can’t sleep without her presence in my room by night, and she seems to regard my room as her home, and by day she can’t sleep without my presence near by. I believe a bright young thing like she has to have her own full name, and here it is: Mila Secunda Richly-Angorsky. Decipher: Mila--Myla, if you like, is the name my first kitty who is no more; Secunda is the Second in Latin; Richly--Rich is the term that describes her colour; Angorsky--Angora is her breed. I wonder how does the name sound?
It must be said, her wit or her mentality--if we can speak of an animal’s mentality, but we can do it, since there is a new kind of science called “zoo-psychology” now, as I was told--so, her mentality seems to be that of a present-day child who has been educated by computer games. The plots of her playing are chasing, catching, fighting and killing that is all the actions which the most of computer games imply. Personally I never played a computer game, because I had not and still have no free time to do it. And my kitty as though imbibed the very essence of the computer games, and I suspect she was born at home where there were young children that is a new generation, though I’m not sure, because I never knew her home, for she was stray when I found her. Every cat, this most enigmatic animal is a personality--to be more truly, every well-groomed, healthy, satisfied cat is a unique personality. My kitty too; she is a young representative of a new generation, unknown to me.
By the way, she disapproves my sitting at PC, which seems too boring to her, though she guesses this sitting means something wise, something unknown and rather unnecessary to her; she agrees there are other persons around who are wiser because they are older and bigger than she; she is ready for admitting she is much younger than all the others around her. She’s found her own level. In other words, she grows in wisdom and stature and in favour with god and man.
It is said, Art for Art’s Sake is for the well fed. The well fed are all the babies in cradles and my kitty along with them. I am happy if my writings are for my kitty.
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*flight*
Night fell. Thoughts wander. Carved heads of lamps
swing shades dissembling outside the window.
Footsteps of passer-by, dissected by the moon, have died away.
O dark, my bliss… Immovable in this dark-born phantasm,
I feel the argent shades approach. Awaked,
like crazy Aladdin, I take the lamp of midnight dreams
from ancient pictures, and I steal away
into the windy night to fly above the sleepy city.
But Morning threatens always on the sly:
the cry of the new light will overtake,
and silver bullets of the dawn will strike my flight--
and night will leave for crystal of the mirrors
in timeless dwelling of Parisian Vampire.

*snowfall*
The blend of the snow-flecks, the snow as a tardy revenge to the summer tumultuary grass.
The whirl of the snow-flecks--the dreamlike wing--the plural of the white non-existence.
The temper of the snow, the pain of the snow:
to dissect oneself in the sky to be forever one on the earth.
The time of the snow, the cyclic fairy tale, the weird mist of roads, hardly comprehensible.
The sadness of the snow begun from sources and learnt by heart.
The call of the snow, the winter’s touches slowly falling from the dark to my carving hand.
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Through thousands blizzards my good friend, cozy cliché. This text I found on the Net:
“The Splendor of Love”
What is love? It is feeling, desire, happiness, melancholy, contentment, sorrow, delight, inspiration, pleasure, all words and none of them can define the splendor of love, but love shines out of waters of earth smiles out of its flower face, murmurs in its winds of evening and we can hear love in the varied voices of nature. Love is two rivers flashing proud and free in the sun darting down the canyons of their youth until they meet, then mingling until two are one and the one broad river flows slowly and peacefully on through tranquil valleys dreaming the one dream seeking the one sea. Love is a reaching out a bringing together as trees are earth’s arms embracing the sky, as the sky is the cloak of heaven, holding the earth within its folds. In silent splendor, love flows on endlessly seemingly without effect like water sliding over stone a transparent traveler over faults and problems. But just as water begins to leave its mark so does love wear all the rough places smooth. Love is frail beauty like that of a butterfly so delicate and small, a pair of wings that weave rainbows in the air a captive of the wind. Yet for all of its delicacy the tiny butterfly can carry the blue sky on its back and so love the invisible force of the heart moves heaven and earth to bring us joy. Love can be a whirlwind, a power that blows a path through the wilderness that stands in our way and it can be a gentle breeze bringing peace in the evening rocking a cradle renewing a life, and love is a seed from which only love can grow transforming a barren life into a garden of loveliness like the miracle of dawn. The herald of a new day, love is the enchanted dawn of the heart the bursting forth of light out of darkness, and like the turning earth the revolving seasons love is a perfect circle spiraling in ascending splendor within us all around us. With no beginning, with no ending love is always… (Unknown Author)
”I will survive”
Love conquers all. Men’s main aim seems to be conquest. But, dear, as soon as you conquer me you’ll leave me. Nothing constant but change. Therefore I’ll never let you conquer me. I will survive.
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literature on literature
V. Nabokov believed a book has to be read in original language. These are his lines on translation:
“What is translation? On a platter
a poet’s pale and glaring head,
a parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter,
and profanation of the dead.”
More his poetry you can read here:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/05/31/in_the_library_again~2364769

The poem on poesy by Lord Alfred Douglas, the “Apostate” as I call him, regarding his life after Oscar’s death and his memoirs as apostasy--how many apostates and turncoats were and will be…
“To see the moment holds a madrigal,
To find some cloistered place, some hermitage
For free devices, some deliberate cage
Wherein to keep wild thoughts like birds in thrall;
To eat sweet honey and to taste black gall,
To fight with form, to wrestle and to rage,
Till at the last upon the conquered page
The shadows of created Beauty fall.
This is the sonnet, this is all delight
Of every flower that blows in every Spring,
And all desire of every desert place;
This is the joy that fills a cloudy night
When bursting from her misty following,
A perfect moon wins to an empty space.”

As I’ve noticed, citing lines from works by Walter Savage Landor is a sign of good taste, therefore here is his epitaph written to himself:
“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and next to nature Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.”
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the list
Phobia--an irrational, excessive, and persistent fear of some particular thing or situation. Recently I stumbled across the list of phobias, and reading it I found something interesting for myself. A true woman never fears. Apparently I am not a true woman because there are two or three things which I fear. And so, I have: Acrophobia (an abnormal fear of being in high places), Methyphoba (fear of alcohol), Arachnophobia (fear of spiders), Gerontophobia (fear of old age), Soteriophobia (fear of being dependent on others), Teratophobia (fear of freaks of nature), Telephonophobia (of phones), Coulrophobia (of clowns), Harpaxophobia (fear of burglars and robbers), Judeophobia, Russophobia, Nosocomephobia (fear of hospitals), Scolionophobia (fear of schools),
and I want thalassotherapy--if you know what it is, good for you.
Tell me, what you fear?
hackerophobia
Whatever my blog friend says about the safe security on any BCUK site, but the privacy of my passwords have been breached at least two times. Recently I found the letter F disappeared from the word OF in the latest posting. I changed the password, and yet the day before yesterday an unnecessary comma appeared after the word ABOUT in the same posting. Obviously, a hacker shows how mighty he is. I’ve changed the password again, of course, but… I really don’t know what am I to do…
Live and learn!
In the previous posting I wrote about the fear of mice but I didn’t know that the fear is called “Musophobia” (!!)
point of view
Recently I discovered that smoking and drinking alcohol don’t become some nations--but I won’t say which ones. A cigarette and wineglass become either those who have no other joys in life or the permanently tipsy smileys like this:

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*The Year of the Rodent*
Yesterday I looked through my blog, and it seemed so funny. It’s nice that my blog spreads some forgotten poetry by some old authors, yet in other respects the blog looks and sounds sentimental and naïve. But my blog is not a journal, and I’m not a pure blogger and am not afraid to seem sentimental.
Life is but a word; there are only love and death; death is worth living, and love is worth waiting. Life is a whiff of fragrances and smoke of cigars and incense, if you like. And you want to fly where flowers of happiness are blooming in the iridescent shine, where bluebells beckon inviting to Dreamland, and butterflies sing and dance above your face as you are looking up at the stars. You want… You are tired to saying “I want”, you’d like to say “I can” and “I’ve done it”--however that’s a psychological stuff--and I enjoy seeing my hands flying over the keyboard, typing a text on the screen, depicting something, may be my own world, and the world is not too much manifold or variegated. Sometimes the world seems to be a mouse-hole in which the hostess embroiders something, but nothing comes of her work. Sometimes the world looks like Tour Eiffel; the desire for fame overwhelms, and my world submits to the only idea: to create a work of art. Sometimes this world becomes a kind good friend, sentimental and funny, turning into a golden leaflet gone with the wind of changes. In short, the writer’s den on the top of the Ivory Tower.
Remember, it's the Year of the Rat now--whatever that means--perhaps everyone has to buy a rodent and keep it for good luck? Verlaine has the line: “Dame souris trotte Noire dans le gris du soir…” (“Lady mouse minces, black in the gray colour of the evening…”); the poem was written at long sleepless night in the prison--the settings are as important as the characters--at the hour when Apollonian sleep has been interrupted and life slacks up, the poet feels the close and elusive presence of the mouse. Insomnia is opposed to dream. And like a small crack in the Apollonian light and harmonious world, a mouse appears at the sleepless night. At the hour, when your strain ear listens to slightest noise of the night, it’s so naturally to hear a squeak and rustle of mice running about. And their mystery is set off with the invincible sacred fear caused with a mere presence of a mouse. The fear of mice is an enigma of human mentality. The fear connects our soul with some ancient and dark scores that have remained as an obscure symbol. It’s difficult to know the character of the Apollonian fear of a mouse; it seems to be unfounded, senseless and irrational. Neither a serious danger nor an ugly form causes it. A mouse is not ugly. The humans subjected to the Apollonian fear simply have not time to discern its exterior. Sooner they are ready for defining the sense of the fear as the mouse’s quick motion, the quick slipping away; the mouse is as though an elusive crack in their sleep. Friedrich Nietzsche defines Apollonian element as the element of dream, opposite to Dionysian element of intoxication. Apollo’s world is a beautiful dream of life--well-ordered, rational, and serene, distinguished from Dionysian element--life is beautiful as far as we take it as our dream; at the same time we aren’t enabled to forget it is but a dream, for we are afraid that the dream can turn into the rough reality. Thus, being initiated in the mysteries of Apollonian dream, the mind is between two abysses: on the one hand, the danger to believe that it is not a dream, on the other hand, the danger to wake. To wake is to die; to believe in reality is to lose one’s divinity. A winged statue on the tip of a pinnacle can be an image of a human, devoted to the Apollonian dream. The tip eludes, and that at the same time it is the only fulcrum in the real world, the only link which we hold not to lose the sense of reality--it’s a moment. To give oneself to the current moment and at the same time not to lose one’s spiritual balance, to love all the moments of one’s life, preferring the current moments to the past or future ones--that’s what the Apollonian wisdom demands. It as though says: Apollo is not only Musagetes (the leader of the Muses), but he is Moiragetes (the leader of the Moirae), and Parcae, the sad Muses of time are subjected to him. He is Archegetes (director of the foundation), he is Coelispex (he who watches the heavens), he is Neomenios (lord of months), and finally, he is Horomedon, and this rare epithet can be translated as “the leader of time”. Among the official retinue of Apollo, among the nine Muses we can’t find connection with Time till we recall that the Muses are daughter of Mnemosyne that is memory. Memory-Mnemosyne is as though the oldest of the Muses; memory is an ancestor of arts. The capability to foresee implies deepening into a moment. And if the supposition that in Apollonian cults the mouse is a sign of a fleeting moment is right, then the myths of prophecies and oracles have to be connected with the mouse. Indeed, the ancient Greeks called the mouse a most prophetic animal--according to the report of Pliny the Younger (N. Н. VIII, 82). In the fleet motion of the tiny animal the Greeks saw similarity of the fleeting elusive moment, the thin subtle crack that always threatens to disturb the Apollonian dream that, in its turn, can be realized only thanks to the crack. As soon as we understand the symbolic meaning of this fleet, fearsome and enigmatic motion of the mouse, we shall understand one more familiar and enigmatic image: Time-Eternity, the strained, perpetually moving sphere of inward intuitive feelings that could be pictured as an enormous mountain of dark and chaos; the mountain shudders, and from its crack the infinitesimal moment-mouse is born. The mouse, fearsome to many humans, is an embodiment of the elusive moment now. The non-submissiveness and sadness of the Apollonian dream are concentrated in it. This joyful and painfully sad motif sounds in the Hellenic lyric of Anacreon and Sappho, it sounds in the flawless Florentine Quattrocento beauty, we find it in Verlaine’s poetry, as firework it is scattered over the stones of Venice, it is repeated over and over again in the 18th century music. The book “La Canne de Jaspe” by Henri de Regnier gives a great set of symbols, images and personifications for expressing the attitude of the Apollonian poesy towards a moment. “Love is a mute god, and there are no statues for him but embodiments of our desires”. The words throw new light upon the face of the god with the silver bow. John Ruskin said: immortality is not in masterpieces but in the power that create them. The human genius if not a human’s property, it is a revelation of the sun-god. A work of art is a golden dream that can be destroyed or lost, therefore, don’t fear to lose it. A work of art is but a miracle. But the law is higher than a miracle in the Apollonian world. The cycle of death and rebirth more sacred than the golden dream. “Listen, listen--there is someone who speaks by echo’s mouth, who is lonely amidst the world’s life, who holds the double bow and torch, he who is so inconceivably we…”, as de Regnier says about the mystery. “O sacred face! I minted you as medallions of silver, soft as autumn dawn, of gold, hot as the sun, of copper, gloomy as night, of all the metals that sound clear as joy, that sound fatal as glory, love or doom; but the best medallions I’ve made of clay. …And the world’s great dream lives in me to come to life in them”. The Apollonian mentality is out of the sphere of being that can be devastated by time, and its roots are deep in the fleeting stream of moments. Below: the initial sadness and struggle of contradictions, which is base of life. Above: the eternal harmony of being, the most real reality, the transformed face of the true deity. The statue of Apollo stepping on a mouse with his heel--as a plague god and defender against rats and locusts, Apollo was known as Smintheus ("mouse-catcher"). Above: the sun-god, the prophetic dream giver. Below: the mice’s fuss of life. Now we realize: the mouse is not a miserable small animal which the god treads under foot, but a pedestal, which Apollo stands on, and they are united by the ancient struggle, which is the closest union.
All the statuary and mythological ideas of the past are nothing but delusion, if you like, but I would say, it all is a simple logic, or it’s the universal wit plays with a human’s imagination.

sources: obscure or unknown.

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*japonaiserie*
I cover my eyes with the cobweb of the early morning being in the state when I’ve not awaked but sleep no longer. The daylight is like pearl scales of a weird fish that drifts drowsily by a rocky shore, and a cup of tea solves everything, so there is nothing for me but to put my kimono on, to ribbon my long hair and to have some hot green tea, musing about the indifference of beautiful things and about their perfection. On the table there are the Japanese drinking bowl, saucer and milky teapot. The teapot’s handle is in shape of a small snake-like dragon. The drinking bowl is brimmed now. Reflecting the daylight the film over the tea surface wavers making circles and giving trembling yellowish-green sobs because I blow to cool the tea--I pour some more tea--the surface tightens, and another moment a few drops of tea is in the saucer and turning into flat puddles. But all this subsides suddenly: the tea surface is like a becalmed sea, and the millimeter brim of the drinking bowl is like an assurance: that’s will be all right, no more emotions or undulating circles--down with shocks!--only the calm filling the content of the drinking bowl, and the even warming its porcelain. Presently I pour some more tea once again--agitation again--the tea billows, trembles and reproaches silently: “Why? I’ll be in the saucer right now. Couldn’t you leave the saving brim? Couldn’t you take the drinking bowl in hands and get it carefully to your lips, carefully as though it is a cup from the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, and make a sensible burning sip?” The drinking bowl is irritated too, for the teapot can brim it any moment, and again the trembling and guessing will begin: whether it brims over or not? what extent the film can hold to, not spilling its soul?--and the canning provocative teapot tries the nerves of the Japanese-bowl, knowing that the saucer insures it. These things live their own life, filling each other and entrails with the tasty drink and tealeaves, catching the shades, fingers’ caress and sways of the world. The things imbibe all what’s going on around, and it makes no matter how much time will pass--5 years or 500--for somebody will pour boiled water, making aroma tea, will blow and drink in a sunless room or in the sun--nothing will change, just like the inland sea of my love for my beloved ones, humans and animals, which makes to believe that the sea is an offspring of the Niagara Falls or Marianas Trench, and other geisha will bow catching a moment which is beautiful.
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from The Knight who Slept on the Snow by Henri de Regnier
Here lives he who had no adventures because he was too up to date to the era that is no more. Hence there are my loneliness and the fact that I seem proud toward the fate. The meanness of what the fate offered me justified my abstaining from condescending to that. I have limited my desires confining some things that are the desires’ symbols rather than simple things. I have added some flowers to them here and there. The flowers have no other meaning but themselves, and I dearly love them for that. I have several glass and crystal things on the stands. Isn’t that’s enough to have only one vessel to inevoke all the springs we never drank from? Similary, in the frosting of the windowpane I see drawings of the shores I never moored to, and the forests where I never got lost.
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*my favorite song*
“StaY!
(ah-ah…ah-ah…ah-AH!)
Say
(ah-ah-ah…ah-ah-AH)”--
there is so much of the past in the music, so much of youth and desire, so much of pain and beauty. But a cry is not pain, and music is not pain--sooner it’s an endless desire, sex desire, I venture to say. The weather of December feeds my doubts. I’m immersed in my work, I merge with planes, railway stations, hotel apartments and faces; I’m adaptable, I’ve learnt some clichés of acrid intonations and panegyrics, it’s easy for me to generate new ideas or to catch eyes of the faceless mob. I admit, in my wish to live at peace with myself and not with society is a good deal of mysterious, Tibetan and forbidden--esoteric. Who knows… I have my own rhythm that is out of tune with the tired streets. The music stops. The next song. It’s the radio in the supermarket. In the song, which I’ve enjoyed but just and which can be often heard over the radio, I can understand only two words of the refrain: “Stay!” and “Say”. If only anybody told me the names of the song and the singer… A young man’s voice.
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links:
This is the wonderful blog of my friend Emiel Maes from Belgium:
http://ploeg4b.skynetblogs.be/post/5398555/l-o-n-d-o-n
The astonishing adventures of Lord Likely:
http://lordlikely.co.uk/
Le Blog 2007. The Esthetic of Senses. A regularly updated personal photography collection of nature, architecture, artistic nudes and other blows of hearts. Our universe is perhaps yours! Daniel & Didier:
http://danieletdidier.blogspot.com/
the website for carrot lovers:
http://www.thecarrottykid.co.uk/
promoting my book--and myself
http://www.blog.co.uk/user/ohlala007/
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fancy-pansy for ever
The garden attracted with the honeyed bitterness of herbs and the bluish-milky air. The star-spangled sky looked like his long velvet array. His gloves, made of bewitched bat-skin, matched his deep-purple gown. His golden hair was done as a ponytail; his iceblink-coloured eyes were veiled with black eyelashes. When he looked skywards, the fiery flashes made his eyes grayish-blue, and the hosts of heaven admired him at the moment. The magic seal-ring of the moon lit his way. While walking noiselessly he peered at the secluded corners of the garden, and merged with rustles and cicadas’ singing. His baldric had only a sword. The quiver full of barbed arrows was left at the palace. Knowing the language of flowers and stones, he preferred to listen to stones, though they kept silence for centuries, imbibing the sweet infusion of the peace. Now he continued his way in the garden, which he laid out yesterday--two millenniums ago.
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/14/fancy_pansy~2093231
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my jocosity
Some jokes about the Muscovites:

At present Moscow looks like a dosser who has visited the barber’s but just, manicured, pedicured, put a new dinner-jacket on over his dirty underwear, and went to play in the casino.

One of Ten Commandments: “Don’t steal! The government dislikes to have competitors”.

The only way to make Russian people observe laws is to legalize thievery.

The Russian doctors’ dream: May the poor never be ill! May the rich never get better!

A story of a woman:
“On the 9th of May my husband felt unwell, and I called ambulance. The ambulance car arrived only on the 11th of May. In the first place the doctor asked some vodka, then he gave an injection into the sofa and left”.

A true story of an Englishwoman:
On the eve of the New Year holyday she had to go to London by plane. In the Moscow airport she went through registration in the VIP-hall. And she was highly indignant at the unexpected fact that the woman-clerk was tipsy.
“Where is your manager?” said the English woman, “I have to tell him about you!”
The woman-clerk told her where she could find the manager at the moment. The Englishwoman came in the room and saw the vice-manager of the airport was sitting at the desk, being drunk as a lord. The Englishwoman could speak Russian a little and she cried out: “Shocking! You are dead drunk!”
The vice-manager of the airport was genuinely surprised, and hardly being able to lift his eyelids he said: “I am drunk? You’ve not seen the crew of the plane, which you’ll take”.
The Englishwoman was scared out of her seven senses, and she refused to fly to London that evening. She celebrated the New Year in Moscow. And the holyday was unforgettable for her.

Other jokes:

“Open, sesame!” With the help of these words, for six days Alibaba was trying to enter the Internet.

Lately the most famous prophet has died suddenly. It’s Mike Tyson asked the prophet to cast his horoscope, and the prophet said openly that Tyson was born in the Year of the Black Monkey.

In Jordan one Arab contrived to sell--at an exorbitant price--to an American soldier--the watch that used to belong to the prophet Mahomet himself.

Fidel Castro said that he wouldn’t put up his own candidature for the presidency for the next 50 years.
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more poetry
For students-specialist in the philology of the Slavs: There is a good poem about Dostoevsky, his country and his time. The poem begins with the stanza:
“The country shudders.
And Convict of Omsk
has known all,
and all he’s given up for lost”.
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signs of the times or off topic
More gossip about the Muscovites. The FSB/KGB agents respectively are rather good guys, but all together they are a sort of a national disaster. It is said, they in the FSB patronize the criminal groups (in the proper sense of the word) and even are present at criminal showdowns (imagine that!), and what’s more, a winner at such a criminal showdown is the criminal group of which FSB patron’s rank is higher (LOL!). I take it the ending of the showdown should do without blood-shedding. Friedrich Nietzsche said: “He who fights against monsters, has to look after himself not to turn into a monster. Try to observe an abyss too long, and the abyss will look in your eyes”. This is a good advice to the Muscovite policemen of all ranks and departments.
If this brief note sounds like a denunciation, then I’m glad; I really enjoy doing my small denunciation and am about to keep on doing something of the kind in the future.
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“Curiouser and curiouser!”
“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).
They say that Lewis Carroll , while travelling across Russia, recorded the Russian word "защищающихся" ('those who protect themselves', participle, genitive/possessive case) as he marked in his diary. He recorded it in Latin transcription instead of Cyrillic, and the look of this word is truly terrifying: zаshtshееshtshауоуshtshееkhsуа.

*bad as it is, it could be worse*
If you ever heard the Australian accent you’d never laugh at the American one, I was told once on the Net--present company always excerpted, and the opinion cannot concern the amazing Australian actors like Richard Roxburgh whose fan I am. How to describe my own accent? As I speak English my pronunciation sounds much like German or South African. For me there is no use to speak English every day, so I never spent a lot of time practicing in the spoken language. Speaking English I use my native consonant r; and my t and d are hard, and that’s no big deal in my view, but I’m in great difficulty pronouncing the English vowels, and I’d like that to improve. However that may be, nobody can hear my speech on the Net--this being so, as it stands, it is good enough.

an article
Lately I read an article that put me onto some thoughts. Here they are. Let’s suppose, blogging and musing are almost synonyms. Therefore if a human’s mind produces life-born images, and influenced by the emotional loading of the images a thought or thoughts arise, then the thought or thoughts instantly take shape of a statement. Frequently, a man who has not got used to speaking, has in his mind--that cannot be prostrate if it is not asleep--several images that “live” and “awake”, but a thought doesn’t awaken, since the acquired habit for formulating statements is not enough, and taking shape of a statement the thought hangs over in consciousness as an emotion and remains stuck to the eluding image. Memory hardly can keep this “sticking”, since being related to irrationality, emotions do not bear “bytes” of information and do not “incise” the associative chain of conductivity upon our grey matter, which is our memory. And in the mind of a man, who got used to speaking, or rather, who can work on texts, the images form a thought-statement, and more, the statement take a grammatical-literary shape, that is the man begins working on a text. A result of the work may be a completed opinion or a question-problem. Either “engraves” the steady chain of memory, to which one can return to use it at the following acts of mental activity. While working on texts we use a definite vocabulary that can be evaluated quantitatively. The more the quantity is, the richer, more explicit that is profounder the mental process is. Proportion: the more the vocabulary is, the profounder the thought is. Consequently, the more facile the thought is, the less the vocabulary is, and the oftener smileis and emoticon like these ;-) :-\ :-D appear on the Internet forums and communities.

For the Reader with Love and Squalor
This is a censorial cut, two innocent lines from Nabokov’s brilliant work, the abandoned novel Solus Rex . Translation is mine. Other translations are welcome:
“With his thick fingers Prince undid Ondrik’s trousers, extracted the whole rosy mass of the parts, chose the main one and began rubbing the glossy trunk rhythmically”.
source: the collected essays and memoirs entitled 'Nabokov: pros and cons', 1990s.

did you know that…
In December my friend wrote to me: “I hope you had a nice Xmas…” Not exactly. Believe it or not, yet in fact, not everyone in East Europe celebrates Xmas in December. Our, the Eastern Orthodox Christians’ Xmas will be on the 7th of January. The Eastern Orthodox Christian countries are: Belarus, Bulgaria, Republic of Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Ethiopia. So, I’ve not had Xmas yet (today is January 1). Thank you again. Hope you are warm and well and happy, dear friend.
One more comment on the topic:
at the website of the modern day Greek writer Vlassis G. Rassias you can find interesting information about CHRISTIAN PERSECUTIONS AGAINST THE HELLENES
http://www.rassias.gr/9011.html
A small notification:
there is a beautiful website, dedicated to an ancient philosopher and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria
http://www.hypatia-lovers.com/
with kind regards
Lara

P. S.
It’s winter now, I know, but recently I found a melancholy autumn and pagan themed fragment from The Manuscript Found in the Bookcase by Henri de Regnier --a French symbolist poet--that has caught my fancy, and now I’d like to show it to my reader. The translation is mine. If someone can cite another, more professional translation, I’ll delete mine instantly:

…Loneliness perhaps doesn’t exist, and whatever one thinks of loneliness of desire or impassiveness, they are not lonely. They either look at themselves in the future or contemplate themselves in the past; they either foresee or recall; their loneliness is seeming. Any loneliness is seeming. How true is my loneliness, the loneliness of the man who seems to shrink into himself? And yet, sometimes it seems to me that I am lonely, that I am lonelier than any mortal here, in my loneliest dwelling.
…Today I saw leaves fall one by one into the reservoir. May be I erred giving myself to other pursuits but this melancholic hours of counting that like the leaves fell one by one into a sombre and alerted water. Of all days in my life a recollection would remain as a tree filled up with another and a line of following ones, adjoined and going deep into my past as an alternating and prophetic row, distant as my past.
The leaves fall faster and faster; two of them conjoin in the air. The wind weights them carefully one by one before letting them fall, as they are, fatigued and useless. In the reservoir the leaves float on the surface first, and then being soaked in little by little they grow heavy and half sink; it’s yesterday leaves; but there are others wandering under water. One can see them through the lucid icy water, lucid to the bottom, scaly from the deceitful bronze of the sunken leaves.
I know the fate of the leaves; I know how they open and become green, how they die in autumn despite their sham array of many-coloured gold and histrionic purple. The sunset shows red through the trees; the lilac-tinged decay of the twilight gnaws it by its melancholy clouds. The sadness of the moment nearly wounds. The lamp shines in the corner of the spacious hall with tall ached windows, and I stare at the mat glass. I see the falling leaves no longer; I feel something breaks off now and piles up within me. It seems to me that I hear the fall of my own thoughts. They fall from the height one by one as a slow fall of the leaves and I meet them with my entire past that lives within me. Their dead light fall is weightless; they have nothing what they want to be. Vanity has fallen; glory has faded.
The new day. There is the lamp! Yes, I saw the leaves fall one by one, and yet there were the thyrsi in the vineyards and orchards! The lips drank the juiciness of the pears. The child carried the golden apples in his hands; and in the evening, when he turned round at the threshold, with his temples bays-crowned, the buccna sounded in the deep grottoes!
I hear the hoarse trumpets sing from the old cedar in front of the house, at the heavy stone slab! The gold of their sound is as though split. Their breath is jerky and out of tune. They mock at the glory which they trumpet; they say they have no something main, and the distorted sound of the fanfare slips into a throaty scream. It’s peacocks trumpet from their roost, the old cedar at the stone slab. Black, they stand out against the reddish-grey twilights. Like agates on the Tyrrhenian sky they seem black because they have been burnt by their own glitter and consuming heat of their plumage and not because they have been charred by the fiery bonfire of the sunset. Black and prophetic, they as though guard somebody’s tomb, and the stone slab looks like a tombstone this evening. Its eroded block frowns and as though grows heavier. When will you heave off the similar depressing slab, o inconceivably lost, o the catacombs dweller, you who are more than life, who may be possessed only after life and whom I called […]
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P. P. S.
*the sun and the frost*
In the branchy antlers
the sun plays sparkling;
the snow under the hoofs.
The fur is sunshine saturated.
It’s frosty. Steam of breath curls skywards.
The green fir-trees dance in a ring;
the blue skies whirl above.

haiku or something of the kind:
Wind whipped
snow dust.
Translucent veil.

Snow stamped footprints,
what traveler has left you?
Short memory.

Frosty night
I watch the stars.
Other worlds.

The green, wicked, prickly
cactus I’ll garland--
a new-year tree after fast-food.

It’s frosty.
In all the warm clothes
I feel like a penguin.

*Vive la bagatelle!*
Burst into tears the cloud-distraction.
Burst out laughing the pain-action.
Vampire bit his red lip
and gathered the shade-abstraction.

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