I must confess. I have many thoughts on my mind; therefore, I haven’t been able to focus. I read through Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué Madness, but I could not pay attention to the poems. Since the collection is selected from 1976–2035, the poems are too ahead of my knowledge.
Is the night gone yet, that the sky’s hurrying to show its lights.
A flock of birds carries the coming season on little wings in flight.
An autumn evening, I went to send her off…
Returning home, feeling sad and chilly…
Leaves on tree branches falling,
each leaf gets flown far, far away…
On the night of parting, what sadness keeps you silent.
I only hear you telling me ever so softly,
that it’s really late and time for me to go home.
The day was dreary, transporting the evening into night.
I force myself to smile, but my heart’s already in tears…
An ethereal night of moonlight and stars.
Stars filling the sky, each twinkling brightly.
A poetic mood comes upon me.
Taking my soul back to the road of memories…
Are we apart yet that my heart’s feeling desolate.
The road ahead, wide and windy, with just only me.
Drunken with wine, but my soul already in frost.
Leaves on tree branches,
the last leaf, falling, gets flown far away…
Translated by Vương Thanh
Đêm qua chưa mà trời sao vội sáng
Một đàn chim cánh nhỏ chở mùa sang
Chiều vào thu tiễn em sầu lạnh giá
Lá trên cành từng chiếc cuốn bay xa…
Đêm chia ly buồn gì sao chẳng nói
Chỉ nghe em nói nhỏ trở về thôi
Ngày buồn tênh cũng đưa chiều vào tối
Mím môi cười mà nhớ thương khôn nguôi
Mộng tràn ngập đêm trăng sao
Sao đầy trời từng chiếc lấp lánh
Rồi một chiều xuân thơ trinh
Cho lòng mình về với dĩ vãng
Xa nhau chưa mà lòng nghe quạnh vắng
Đường thênh thang gió lộng một mình ta
Rượu cạn ly uống say lòng còn giá
Lá trên cành một chiếc cuối bay xa
Tuấn Khanh
The title of this rom-com says it all. The romance between Sinh (plays by Scott Ly) and Amenda (plays by Rachael Leigh Cook) takes the backseat to the travelogue. It’s cheesy but beautiful, which is perfect for a Sunday rainy afternoon.
Steve Eder and Jo Becker write for The New York Times:
Since the rebranding, the law school has developed an unusually expansive relationship with the justices of the high court — welcoming them as teachers but also as lecturers and special guests at school events. Scalia Law, in turn, has marketed that closeness with the justices as a unique draw to prospective students and donors.
I am surprised that the NYT reporters take this long to discover the connections between Scalia Law and the Supreme Court.
“À ơi,” the sweet voice of gentle Mother
Her lullaby warms even the mountains and rivers
Mother’s love is beautiful and pure
With fragrant hands, she opens thousands of history pages
O Mother, O Mother Vietnam
Your love’s in a thousand melodies of lullabies
You teach your children to be just and compassionate,
to remember their roots and heroic ancestry.
Vietnam’s like a sad river branch with many twists and turns;
The moon dimmed, the water murky, the poor people, the bloodsheds…
Now, Mother’s voice is low, deep and sad
The two abysmal dark regions, a single source of suffering
Gentle Mother with shining virtue like a mirror
Her Flower of Compassion grows in her children’s garden
Mother sings a wonderful lullaby
Mother sings a lullaby of Love of Flowers and People…
Translated by Vương Thanh
À ơi! Lời ngọt Mẹ hiền,
Tiếng ru ấm cả ba miền núi non
Mẹ tươi lòng ngát như son
Tay thơm Mẹ mở ngàn trang sử vàng.
Mẹ ơi, Mẹ hiền ơi. Ơi Mẹ Việt Nam
Tình thiêng muôn sợi tơ (ơ) đàn Mẹ rung
Dạy con nghĩa núi, tình sông
Dạy con nhớ gốc, khơi dòng liệt oanh
Nhánh sông sầu mấy khúc quanh
Trăng mờ, nước tủi, dân lành máu tuôn
Giờ đây tiếng Mẹ trầm buồn
Hai miền u tối, một nguồn đau thương
Mẹ hiền đức sáng như gương
Hoa Nhân Ái nở trong vườn con tươi
Mẹ ru, Mẹ ru tiếng hát tuyệt vời
Mẹ ru, Mẹ ru, Mẹ ru tiếng hát Lòng Đời Ươm Hoa…
Tuệ Nga
Kudos to all the leaders and parents for making the camping trip fun, engaging, and valuable for all of us. I also appreciate the feedback to help improve our next trip and reduce wasted food.
As I said briefly in our meeting, all the adults should step up to take the leftovers home. I wouldn’t mind taking home the extra eggs, but I wouldn’t be able to turn them into delicious flan like Chị Trâm Anh did. In fact, I have been eating bún all week.
As for the leaders, please don’t take it too hard on yourselves. I definitely appreciate transparency, but oversharing can be overwhelming. With all the emails flooding my inbox, I have trouble keeping up with all the information. I am absolutely fine with not getting emails that don’t involve me.
We are grateful for your dedication and contribution to our Cub. It’s a labor of love and I can’t do what you do. So please keep up the great work, my leaders!
“I ain’t a killer, but don’t push me. / Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to getting pussy.” These two lines from 2pac sums up The Glory. The 16-episode Korean drama is dark, suspenseful, and a bit too long. The plot is also a bit complex. I enjoyed bingeing it, but didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
The map of me can’t be all hills & mountains even though i’ve been country all my life. The twang in my voice has moved downhill to the flatland a time or two. My taste buds have exiled themselves from fried green tomatoes & rhubarb for goat milk & pine nuts. Still i return to old ground time & again, a homing blackbird destined to return. I am plain brown bag, oak & twig, mud pies & gut-wrenching gospel in the throats of old tobacco brown men. When my spine crooks even further toward my mother, i will continue to crave the bulbous tang of wild shallots, the familiar game of oxtails & kraut boiling in a cast iron pot. I toe-dive in all the rivers seeking the whole of me, scout virtual african terrain sifting through ancestral memories, but still i’m called back home through hymns sung by stout black women in large hats & flowered dresses. You have to risk the briar bush to reach the sweet dark fruit & ain’t no country woman all church & piney woods. There is pluck & cayenne pepper. There is juke joint gyrations in the youngun-bearing girth of this belly & these supple hips. All roads lead me back across the waters of blood & breast milk, from ocean to river, to the lake, to the creek, to branch & stream, back to the sweet rain, to the cold water in the glass i drink when i thirst to know where i belong.
Crystal Wilkinson
I haven’t skated on ice in a while. I want to go back to relearn the basics. Instead of following the Ice Sports Industry (ISI) curriculum, I want to create my own roadmap. This is what I came up with:
Our sorrow and our love move into a foreign language.
–C.P. Cavafy (tr. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
English is dead even though you still say English
Words even though you still put them in English order
Your English is dead yet it tugs away from you
Like a strong dog fighting a leash the harder
It fights the greater is your fear
It won’t if it gets free return En-
glish fights you like a language you’re
Taking in school knowing you’ll never see the country
In the spring the trees outside the window are
Alive with life in the fall alive
With death all year the teacher’s voice slips past you
A distant ambulance in a strange city
English is dead the one Great Dane you’ve ev-
er seen in real life howls in the street still but its howl is
Noise to you now now you don’t recognize
The feeling in its cry its foreign vowels
Shane McCrae