If the sky is such a cliché
Why is it falling?

If the tree is such a cliché,
Why is it dying

If soul is such a cliché
Where is it hiding

If love is such a cliché
Why isn’t there enough to go around.

For my part
I can’t get enough of the sky.

For my part, I can’t wait
For those leaves to come back.

For my party
I am inviting the clown Love

For my birthday I want a cake
Revealing the color of my soul.

Ana Božičević

I took Đán and Xuân to Whitetail. I managed to snowboard down the double black diamond terrain without falling. I did two runs with the kids then went back down for lunch. I drank some wine and went back up myself to do four more runs. I got exhausted. We left Whitetail around 2 pm.

My snowboarding is catching up with my skiing. I am so happy that I am determined to take up snowboarding this year. It is quite a learning experience and the reward is just gratifying. I didn’t think I could pull it off, but the hard work paid off.

I have to give Đán the credit for inspiring me to snowboard. Last year, he just decided to pick up snowboarding instead of skiing. We took a semi-private lesson together. I gave up and went back to skiing. He advanced at snowboarding and he is just so darn good that I have to give it another shot. I want to be young and cool too.

I encouraged him to pick up skiing again. He gave it a shot, but didn’t want to do it. He has gone to the dark side. As for me, I still love to ski. I like them both and don’t have to choose one over the other. I am trying to get Xuân to snowboard, but he is not interested. Because he’s so comfortable and confident on skis, he doesn’t have the patience to relearn snowboarding. He rather skis fast with his cousins and brothers on blues and blacks then being stuck on the greens with a snowboard. I hope he’ll give it a shot in the future.

Dạo này cố gắng hạn chế chi phí không cần thiết. Không thường xuyên đưa mấy đứa nhỏ đi ăn ở ngoài. Vợ cũng chăm chỉ nấu nướng nên về nhà ăn vừa chất lượng vừa ngon. Đi làm đem theo hộp cơm với đồ ăn thừa cũng xong. Lúc trước hay thưởng mấy đứa nhỏ trà sữa mỗi khi đi công viên trượt patin. Giờ đây tụi nó không còn muốn đi nữa nên cũng khỏi ghé vào tiệm trà sữa.

Những gì ở trong nhà tự sửa chữa được thì làm. Chẳng hạn như tự thay thùng nước nóng tiết kiệm được mấy ngàn đô. Ngoài dàn máy lạnh máy sưởi ra, mọi thứ trong nhà có thể làm được nhờ nợ nhà 15 năm qua và YouTube. Tôi cũng không sắm sửa đồ mới gì cả. Tủ quần áo của tôi có thể dùng thêm mười mấy năm nữa. Đồ đạc trong nhà và vật liệu nấu ăn thì vợ mua sắm.

Lý do hạn chế xài phung phí để đám nhỏ biết được giá trị của đồng tiền. Tôi không muốn tụi nó thấy gì cũng đòi hoặc muốn gì được đó. Nó không biết được cha mẹ phải đi làm mới có tiền. Ngày xưa mùa hè tôi đi phụ mẹ kiểm tra và xếp áo ở xưởng may 10 xu một cái. Làm một ngày mười mấy tiếng chỉ được mấy mươi đô. Tôi không dám xin mẹ tiền mua những thứ đắt giá vì tôi chứng kiến được mồ hôi nước mắt của mẹ làm kiếm tiền. Thậm chí có những lúc giành giật nhau vì mấy đồng xu. Đến bây giờ tôi vẫn bị ám ảnh về những chuỗi ngày đó.

Tuy giờ đây công việc của tôi không còn vất vả như mẹ hôm xưa, tôi không biết tương lai gần đây sẽ ra sao. Tôi phải chuẩn bị tinh thần, tâm lý, và luôn cả vật chất đề nếu có mất việc làm tôi có thể xoay sở. Tôi không muốn sống mà phải lệ thuộc vào việc làm. Tôi còn phải tiếp tục làm 20 đến 25 năm nữa. Tôi không biết sẽ còn đủ trí óc để theo đuổi ngành hiện tại không hay sẽ bị sa thải. Liệu sau khi nghỉ hưu sẽ được sống bao lâu.

Cả cuộc đời nô lệ tiền bạc thì cuộc sống này có ý nghĩa gì nữa? Nghĩ đến chỉ thêm chán nản. Tương lai chẳng có gì để mong đợi. Cuộc đời của tôi kể như là xong. Chỉ có thể đi xuống từ đây chứ không đi lên nữa. Tôi chỉ cố gắng lo cho mấy đứa con để tương lai của tụi nó tươi sáng hơn tôi. Hy vọng trong tương lai cánh cửa mới sẽ mở khi cánh cửa cũ khép lại. Đến đâu hay đến đó. Để gió cuốn đi.

Nothing troubles my being, but I am sad.
Something slow and dark strikes me,
though just behind this agony,
I have held the stars in my hand.

It must be the caress of the useless,
the unending sadness of being a poet,
of singing and singing, without breaking
the greatest tragedy of existence.

To be and not want to be … that’s the motto,
the battle that exhausts all expectation,
to find, when the soul is almost dead,
that the miserable body still has strength.

Forgive me, oh love, if I do not name you!
Apart from your song I am dry wing.
Death and I sleep together…
Only when I sing to you, I awake.

Julia de Burgos (Translated by Jack Agüeros)

I’ve always loved skiing down the double black diamond terrains. With short turns, I could control my speed and maneuver around the moguls. I want to get to that level with snowboarding as well.

I went to Liberty all by myself this morning. With the warm weather, the condition was a bit icy. Nevertheless, I went for the double black diamond. The first run, I fell at the top as soon as I tried to turn. I slid head first all the way down. I couldn’t stop myself. Luckily I didn’t steer off the terrain. The second time, I fell at the top, but managed to get up for the second half. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth time, I continued to fall. I have yet to master quick turns on snowboarding. I couldn’t get the board to turn around quick enough.

By the seventh time, I decided to ride as wide as I could and find good spots to make my turns. Instead of trying to do quick turns, I let the board go straight down for half a second before I commit my turns. The speed increased, but I managed to bring my board around.

I survived the double black diamond. It was a great learning experience. I am no longer in fear of snowboarding down the steep slope. I still have to practice more to master my quick turns. Once I could snowboard down the double black without falling, I will have accomplished my goal for this winter.

My Dear Sons,

I understand you are hating me right now. You think I am ruining your life, but I am trying to prevent you from ruining your life. I can’t sit back and watch you sink deeper and deeper into the digital ocean. Taking away your digital devices is a difficult decision, but I have to make it because I love you.

I understand your frustration right now, but it will be better for you in the long run. I don’t know how long it will take before I let you get back online, but I need you to know your priorities. Playing video games and spending hours on devices aren’t your priorities. I talked to you about priorities and responsibilities over and over again, but nothing sank in. My words don’t mean anything because the digital world has taken over your head.

You don’t want to go anywhere because you want to stay home to spend time on your device. Your mother and I give you so many opportunities we didn’t have when we were kids, but you took them for granted. You gave up ice skating. You gave up ice hockey. You gave up swimming. You gave up rollerblading. You don’t even want skiing or snowboarding anymore.

How many times have I told you that skiing or snowboarding is a privilege not all the kids your age could have. It is not a cheap sport, but we are bootstrapping as much as we can to give you some fun time during the winter. You choose to stay home and spend time online.

You are losing interest in playing piano. You rather spend time playing video games than practicing piano. If you continue down this path, you will struggle with school work as well. You have yet to figure out how to balance your time. In the last several months, I gave you the freedom to take responsibility for your own choices, but you had shown that you were not ready to keep your balance.

We tried to cut down digital time to an hour a day, but that didn’t work either. You could not leave the device when your time was up. We had to repeatedly ask you to log off. My biggest failure as a parent is not being firm enough with you. My words are no longer effective when I am being too soft with you.

I struggle with what I should do. Should I let you do whatever you want and hope for the best? I can’t stop caring, concerning, and worrying about you. It would be much easier for me to let loose, but I just can’t watch you ruin your life. I don’t know how you will turn out in the future. I just hope that I won’t regret anything I could have done for you but I didn’t.

You are right. I am not a good father. Being a parent is way more stressful than I had imagined. I am not concerned about being a failure. I am not concerned about how you will turn out. My concerns are that you will go on and live a good life when I will no longer be around.

Love,
Dad

One’s is to feed. One’s is to cleave.
One’s to be doubled over under greed.
One’s is strife. One’s to be strangled by life.
One’s to be called and to rise.
One’s to stare fire in the eye.
One’s is bondage to pleasure.
One’s to be held captive by power.
One’s to drive a nation to its naked knees
in war. One’s is the rapture of stolen hours.
One’s to be called yet cower.
One’s is to defend the dead.
One’s to suffer until ego is shed.
One’s is to dribble the nectar of evil.
One’s but to roll a stone up a hill.
One’s to crouch low
over damp kindling in deep snow
coaxing the thin plume
of cautious smoke.
One’s is only to shiver.
One’s is only to blow.

Tracy K. Smith

WordPress’s Site Health suggests that I should be using persistent object cache for this blog. Last night I tried to install and secure Redis on Ubuntu 22.04 on my DigitalOcean Droplet, but I couldn’t get Redis to work. I restored my snapshot then tried to install and secure Memcached. That didn’t work either. I restored my snapshot again. I am not sure what I was doing wrong.

Congratulations to Marcin Wichary. His monumental, two-volume, 1,216-page Shift Happens: A book about keyboards is being backed for almost half a million dollars. He has been working on this book for many years; therefore, he definitely deserves it. It will be a great book. If you can afford it, go back it. It’s a bit of a luxury for me. By the way, check out the conversation with Robin Rendle about the book. I have followed Robin’s writing for a while now. It was nice to hear his voice.

Với chất giọng ấm áp và cách trình bày truyền cảm, Minh Đức hát nhẹ nhàng và trung thành với những ca khúc vượt thời gian. Vì phong cách không phá cách cũng không gào thét của anh đã được đóng khuôn nên anh cần một người nhạc sĩ biến đổi phần hoà âm phối khí một chút. Nhạc sĩ Đạo Nguyễn đã thành công với trọng trách đó bằng cách thổi vào những âm hưởng jazz. “Đường chiều” (Hồng Duyệt) mở đầu album với giai điệu blues êm dịu nhưng dễ say. “Giọt lệ cho ngàn sau” (Từ Công Phụng) được dàn dựng dàn dây với ban nhạc jazz thật phê. “Một đời quên lãng” (Ngô Thụy Miên) được hoà âm với giai điệu Latin để hộ tống phần song ca của Minh Đức và Thái Hòa. “Những chiều không có em” (Trường Hải) đầy chất blues buồn. Những ca khúc còn lại được hòa âm theo không gian thính phòng lãng mạn. Đúng nghĩa với đề tài của album, Minh Đức và Đạo Nguyễn Đưa em vào cõi mộng.