The Earth

by Lucian Blaga - 1919

On our back we were lying in the grass: you and i.
The sky melted like wax in the burning of the Sun
flowing along the fields like a river.
Pressing silence was mastering the Earth
and a question fell through my soul to its bottom.

Wouldn't have to tell
anything the Earth? All this-Earth
unforgivingly large and killingly mute,
nothing?

To better hear it i pressed my ear
Against the ground - doubtful and obedient -
And from underground i heard
your heart's noisy beat.

The Earth was answering.

Cowboys & Indians

About maybe 5 years ago i had an email signature that sounded like this:

"It's easy to win when you own both teams".

I kept that signature for about a year or so despite some cries from my "friends" to remove it. Until myself i got bored with it.

Kinda like when i was kid and i was playing villains and deputies with my childhood friends in my home-town.

We were splitting in two teams by affinities and who knows by what other completely childish criteria and started chasing each other, nobody was getting hurt, all that mattered was the action. Maybe just our throats after all that yelling. And all the neighbours were ignoring us, it was our escape in doing all the crazy things we couldn't normally do. It was a privileged time.

But it's bad for you when you're not enrolled in none of the teams and have to play the role of the ball  in a game or that of a yo-yo that you buy in a toy store. And you have to also look sad and/or mad all the time which in a situation like this only comes naturally.

Gloss

by Mihai Eminescu - 1883

Time is passing, time is coming,
All are old and all are new;
What is right and what is wrong
Ask yourself and reason too;
Don't you hope and don't go fretting,
What is wave like wave is gone;
If it's tempting, if it's calling,
You remain as cold as stone.

Many happen right before us,
In our ears the sound of many,
We remember more or less
If we ever listen any?...
You stay put or step aside,
Yourself rediscovering,
When with senseless noise in flight
Time is passing time is coming.

Don't you let the needle leaving
The cold reason's balance center
For an instant that is changing
For the happiness's cover,
Which from its own death is born
For an instant in our view;
To who knows no need to warn
All are old and all are new.

Watchful as to a vaudeville
Find yourself in the big world:
May someone play even devil,
You will guess him afterwards,
If they're crying, if they fight,
In your corner stand alone
Understanding from their art
What is right and what is wrong.

From the past the future fathom
Of the same page are two sides,
See the next top at the bottom
Those who learn to read them right;
All that's been or yet to come
In the present we have too,
But of meaningless of them
Ask yourself and reason too.

Cause to same old means are subject
All the things that still exist,
And since old times to the present
World is happy, world is triste;
Other masks, the same old story,
Other voices, the same setting,
For this life is illusory
Don't you hope and don't go fretting.

Don't you hope when see deceivers
Build a bridge to their success,
You'll be left behind by losers,
Even if you are the best;
Don't you fear they'll try again
To their own to brake them bones,
Don't associate with them:
What is wave like wave is gone.

With the sweet song of a mermaid
World is whirling shiny nets
To change actors in the setting
Pulling you like a magnet;
Sneak aside and run away,
Without even noticing,
From your distant path away
If it's tempting if it's calling.

If they laugh you step aside,
If they curse you shut your mouth;
What you want with your advice,
If you see they're way too loud;
Let them say what they will say
Let them pass and let begone;
If the world has gone astray
You remain as cold as stone.

You remain as cold as stone,
If it's tempting, if it's calling:
What is wave like wave is gone,
Don't you hope and don't go fretting;
Ask yourself and reason too
What is right and what is wrong;
All are old and all are new:
Time is passing, time is coming.



Translator's note:

Very few or only those who ever tried know what a huge effort is to translate a poem and try to keep the same words while making them rhyme and rhythm. But translating from real poets is not as difficult because their language is bound towards universality, on a secret, karmic level. If only the translator can put aside the emotional charge involved with translating from the greatest.

The form of this translation, especially the number of syllables in each verse, is not perfect, as the original in Romanian, but i did my best trying to build an intercultural bridge.

Do You Remember The Beach?

by Ana Blandiana

Do you remember the beach
Covered with bitter shivers
On which
We couldn't walk barefoot?
The way you were looking at the sea
Pretending listening me?
Do you remember
The hysterical gulls
Wheeling in the ringing
Of the unseen bells of a church
Celebrations with fish,
The way in which
You were furthering running
Towards the sea
And yelling you needed
The distance
So you just can see me
The snowing
Was dimming
Mixed with birds in the water
With almost joyful despair
Was watching
The tracks of your feet in the sea
And the sea
Was closing like an eyelid
Over the eye in which i was waiting.

The Only Thing That Matters

by Lucian Avramescu

the woman is the only thing that matters
and i affirm this knowing that plenty
would raise their eyebrows...
her skin knows all the languages of the universal happiness,
glued to her, like to the earth,
i understand constellations, heaven and hell,
joy and sorrow;
the walking through myself
does me better and better
not to speak anymore
about the architecture of self or the one
that makes dim all the great cathedrals of the world
San Pedro, The Dome of Milan...

the woman is the only thing that matters
with her body in your arms
you can cross an ocean
even if you don't know how to swim
except in the waters of her eyes

without woman
our limo is only a broken carriage
and the bank account is smaller even if gets bigger
the friends are
full of the fever of treason
tapdoles are swimming in the most expensive wine

oh ay
the robin is singing in the top of your bosom
you happily dress in prison's clothes
like you were going to a wedding
count the coins on the sky
like a universal nabob
even if the wind is blowing through your social buttonholes:
the train runs over you
and a whisper, if left whole
follows the letters of her name
ready to weave plans for the future
when nearby a luxury morgue is lurking

the woman, gentlemen, is the only thing
that cannot be replaced except by its own self
her skin knows all the languages
of the universal happiness,
the circle of illusions
is her currency
through which we win the world crises
that's why i believe
her science
to make us happy and unhappy
gives you the title of
doctor honoris causa
of our complicated soul algebra.

the woman, gentlemen - not to bother you anymore -
the woman with her skin
which teaches us the alphabet of the blind,
with her always up side down cups of her breasts
in which we never read anything
the woman
with all the silverware of her smile
or her bareness that fills the universe
is the only thing that matters
gentlemen

The Actors

by Marin Sorescu

The most daring - the actors!
With their sleeves rolled up
They really know how to live (for) us!
Never seen a more perfect kiss
Like of the actors in the third act,
When sentiments start to clarify

Their death on the scene is so natural,
That compared to its perfection,
Those in graveyards,
The real dead,
Tragically, forever dead,
They seem to move!

And us, still in our only life!
Not even this one know how to live.
Talking small or being silent for years,
Embarrassed and unaesthetic,
And (we) don't know where the hell to keep our hands.

If I’m Not Asking Too Much

By Marin Sorescu

- What would you take with you

If you had an opportunity
To commute daily between heaven and hell
Just to teach some classes?

- A book, a bottle of wine and a woman, Lord,
If i’m not asking too much.

- You are asking too much, We’ll take the woman.
She would talk too much,
Fill your head with small things,
And you wouldn’t have the time to prepare your classes.

- Lord, i beg of You, take my book,
I will write it myself, if i had beside me
A bottle of wine and a woman.
That’s what i wish, if i’m not asking too much.

- You are asking too much.

- What would you take with you

If you had an opportunity

To commute daily, between heaven and hell

Just to teach some classes?

- A bottle of wine and a woman, Lord,

If i’m not asking too much.

- You’ve asked that before, why are you stubborn?

It is too much, I told you, We take the woman.

- What do You have with her, why so much persecution?

Better take my wine,

It softens me and i couldn’t prepare my classes,

Getting inspiration from the eyes of my lover.

Silence, long minutes,

Maybe even eternities,

Letting me time for forgetting.

- What would you take with you

If you had an opportunity

To commute daily between heaven and hell

To teach some classes?

- A woman, Lord,

If i’m not asking too much.

- You are asking too much, We’ll take the woman.

- Then better take my classes,

Take my heaven and hell,

All or nothing,

I would commute between heaven and hell for no reason.

How could i scare and frighten the sinners in hell

If i didn’t have the woman, as teaching material, to show them?

How could i uplift the right ones in heaven,

If i didn’t have the book to translate to them?

How could i stand the trip and the differences

In temperature, luminosity and pressure

Between heaven and hell

If i didn’t have the wine to give me the courage?

The Wheel

By Marin Sorescu

I live in a wheel.

I can realize it
By the trees.
Every time i look through the window
I can see them
With the leaves in the sky,
Or on the ground.

And by the birds
That fly with a wing in the south
And with a wing in the north.

And by the Sun
That today rises in my left eye,
And tomorrow in the right one.

And by me
Who sometimes i am
And sometimes i am not anymore.

It's Enough

The Advantages Of Partitioning

It is a mystery to me why IT people that knew for decades so many things everyday people struggle with in computing don't care a thing and don't teach us nothing.

There are hundreds of millions of PCs in this world that run inefficiently because of minor software settings that can be easily remedied with a few administrative measures that can be even included in the installation kit, and more or less transparent to user.

I just read in a major IT publication that one of the reviewers in there had installed the second operating system on a portable, and having a menu produced at start-up, saying which one to choose. There was even a screen-shot with the menu at start-up.

But he used a feature i'm not aware of yet, a virtual hard drive. Probably a different way of the same old partitioning concept. Probably a huge contiguous file on your hard drive that can be used as a different hard drive.

Windows 7 and XP have the option to partition a hard drive at installation, as an advanced option, as i remember since i installed them last time.

But at installation, which usually comes at the most unexpected time, you don't have time to mess around with learning partitioning and complicate your life by taking new risks.

But let's describe it a little bit. Instead of seeing the computer with one hard drive, you can see it with many. It is the same hard drive, the same space, but physically divided into several contiguous areas that you can see as many smaller hard drives.

So you install the operating system on one of them then you can put in your data like photographs, music and games like before or you can put your personal stuff in other partitions.

There are several advantages of doing this. First all of the operating system and programs are confined to one physical area and they do not mix with data, if you choose to put it on o different drive letter. You can limit the OS (Windows) partition to a predetermined size so you know when things are going out of control and installed too many programs on your computer and need to get rid of the unused ones.

All the programs being together close to one another, the average access time compared to the physical average access time for the whole drive is multiplied for those by the ratio between the size of the whole drive and the size of OS partition. Another reason to keep it small.

There is less fragmentation for the programs you install since you didn't mess that partition by adding and deleting tens of thousands of files like the modern age home computing requires. This adds to the performance of the computer.

But one of the unseen until more recently advantage of keeping you data separate from your OS is ease of upgrading and reinstalling the operating system, like the gentleman mentioned above did.

They where trying for decades to advertise the newer operating systems as being possible upgrades for the old one already on your computer, not only because of the new features but with the designer's intent for the user to be able to keep his data while installing the new version in top of the old one.

That never worked too smoothly for several reasons, and people too often ended up reinstalling and loosing some data and more important, time. And more important, the hard drive was more clogged with files and more fragmented than if you just clean installed the new version on a newly formatted hard drive.

So if you have multiple partitions, you cam simply install the new version of the OS or even a totally different OS on a free partition that you can leave it there after the initial partitioning for this purpose only. You can even have like XP, 7 and Linux on you computer in the same time!

You will have a menu at start-up with which one to boot and you will transition smoothly, by sharing the data from data partitions between different OS, with no risk of data loss, having time to learn new features, less stress, only advantages.

Major OS producers should have worked on having a default partitioning scheme for different hard drive sizes that can be readily used by the average person as a regular option as opposed to an advanced one that can be furtherly tailored by the advanced user, and all i described above could happen smoothly, with no one needing to know all these things.

For people who got enough of the loosing data and time and administering their computer, here came the option of storing personal data in the cloud. It doesn't matter where you are, what computer/device you use and how broken the software you use on it is, since your data is safe in the cloud.

Only thing is it's not with you anymore. For people who are not comfortable with their personal stuff being on unknown servers, there is the option of partitioning, only if software producers made it easy for us.

We Are Not Running This Show

A multiple user conversation thread of comments on an article or on a blog post is the ultimate communication nightmare. There are endless possibilities. One can apparently answer to somebody's comment but choose words and expressions by which he actually answer to somebody else's or change the original sense of the post or of one of the comments in the thread.

This can go even further when somebody can post an article or a tweet with a totally different subject or area but insert in it words or expressions by which he can answer directly or subliminally to a targeted post or comment.

Or even further, one can anticipate somebody's post or behaviour and create a post, comment or even a news event before that person's actions, that can, beforehand, nullify, deny or even imply that a person is causing the event since they knew what you were going to post.

It all depends on the publisher's true intentions, and who has the bigger picture, more means and workforce. It may be that social networks were intentionally created with this purpose, by people who are ahead of average us and are baiting us into going into this global one to one, one to many and many to many communication race that only they are prepared for.

Freud

There must have been a reason Freud developed his theories in Vienna.

Where East meets West. In fact, a lot of things happened in there, including the studies of Eminescu and Tesla (no, the later studied in Graz).

"peoples originated from interstellar deities (termed Theozoa) who bred by electricity, while “lower” races were a result of interbreeding between humans and ape-men (or Anthropozoa). The effects of racial crossing caused the atrophy of paranormal powers inherited from the gods, but these could be restored by the selective breeding of pure Aryan lineages."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theozoology#Theozoology

Which reminds me of this:

"Scientology teaches that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

WT...

I was sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee the TV was open i didn't pay attention they were a bunch of people with some glasses sitting at a table and then i don't know why i took a closer look and then i realized what they were talking about, luckily enough i had time to grab my camera and let you all witness this. It just happened, today after 1:00 PM.

I Can Read Your Mind

Don't think sorry's easily said
Don't try turning tables instead
You've taken lots of Chances before
But I'm not gonna give anymore
Don't ask me
That's how it goes
Cause part of me knows what you're thinkin'

Don't say words you're gonna regret
Don't let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusation before
And I ain't gonna take any more
Believe me
The sun in your Eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing

Chorus:
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind, I can read your mind

Don't leave false illusions behind
Don't Cry cause I ain't chnaging my mind
So find another fool like before
Cause I ain't gonna live anymore believing
Some of the lies while all of the Signs are deceiving


Since they can read it they probably can also write it. So it's a RAM thingy.

Easter Bunny

The closest thing i have in my computer related to Easter... Happy Easter!

Banc comunist

Un cocoşat mergea la miezul nopţii prin cimitir şi aude o voce:  "Ce-ai în spate?” la care el răspunde: "o cocoaşă" iar vocea îi spune: "dă-o'ncoace" iar cocoşatul pleacă şi scapă de cocoaşă.

A doua zi fostul cocoşat se întâlneşte cu un şchiop şi'i spune povestea.

În noaptea următoare, la miezul nopţii, şchiopul se duce şi el la cimitr şi aude şi el o voce:  "Ce-ai în spate?" la care el răspunde: "nimic" iar vocea îi zice: "ia cocoaşa asta".

More Than This II

Click here to hear the song, click on the picture to make it bigger.

I could feel at the time

There was no way of knowing
Fallen leaves in the night
Who can say where they're blowing
As free as the wind
And hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning

More than this - there's nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there's nothing

It was fun for a while
There was no way of knowing
Like a dream in the night
Who can say where we're going
No care in the world
Maybe I'm learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning

More than this - there's nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there's nothing

March Madness In April

Click on the picture to see more

Mammatus

Mamatus?

Click on the picture for a better view. Click on the blue link for more images.

Băsescu şi flota

Cred că ştiu ce a făcut Băsescu cu flota. A vândut-o la preţuri normale şi a băgat banii în corupţia din România băi frate şi cât a fost primar la Bucureşti şi-a construit în linişte viitorul de preşedinte. Nu vă speriaţi că am impresia că nu mai scăpaţi vreodată de el şi de ai lui. You can't escape the başçavuş escu.

Români, vi s-a pregătit ceva...

Picture this. Your relative is calling you on the phone from thousands of miles, several phone companies, thousands of fiber optics repeaters, one cell phone tower away. One hand on the TV remote and the other on the phone. Which do you press first? Would you give up a few minutes of hot debate on TV about the latest models' scandals, pseudo news or sugary soaps, or let your relative hear them in the background, after all it's them who are calling, bothering us with their home sickness and strange ideas about normality, make them feel closer to what's like to be home.

Imaginaţi-vă. O rudă vă sună la telefon de la o distanţă de mii de km, câteva firme telefonice, mii de repetitoare de fibră optică şi un turn de celulare. Cu o mână pe telefon şi una pe telecomandă. Pe care să alegi? Ai renunţa la câteva minute de dezbatere aprinsă la TV despre ultimele scandaluri ale vreunei modele, pseudo-ştiri sau telenovele siropoase sau îl laşi şi pe ruda ta să le asculte în background, doar ei sunt cei care sună, deranjându-ne cu dorul lor de casă şi idei ciudate despre normalitate, să-i facem astfel să se simtă mai aproape de cum e să fii acasă.

http://designinstruct.com/digital-art/photo-manipulation/how-to-create-a-dark-and-mysterious-tv-head-scene/

χάρισμα

χάρισμα -  "favor freely given" or "gift of grace."

It is the unconscious power that one has over somebody else's will. There is submitting charisma and submissive charisma.

It comes from the facial features. Any facial feature that is slightly exaggerated or asymmetrical, thus being perceived by the observer as viewed from an angle, usually from below.

A big chin is one of the first qualities that gives the perception of viewing a face from below. A child being held is having a point of view that gives the impression of a bigger chin of a person that is otherwise "normal".

A mustache gives the impression of a bigger chin by fooling the perception into thinking the mouth is higher on the face. A beard actually enlarges the viewing perception of the chin. An asymmetrical eye or eyebrow and a big chin gives the impression of viewing the face from an angle below.

All of the above gives the charismatic person the power of the mother that holds her child from the mere fact that some facial features of the charismatic leader are perceived as seen from the position of the child being held.

It also comes from attitude. A calm and reassuring attitude is the second condition of the charismatic "leader". I put here the word leader between quotes because a charismatic person needs more qualities to be a leader.

There are many people whose charismattic qualities are nullified by the lack of reassuring attitude.

This is also obvious if we refer to the same proposed theory, of the submission of a person by seeing a face as a child being held by mother.

But most of the charismatic people realize sometimes in life that he/her posses this quality and fall into the temptation of using and end up depending on it.


When people with little education try and exercise their charismatic qualities over those with more education sometimes are being rejected by the failed subjects and often labeled as trying to patronize or having a patronizing attitude.

The opposite is also true, men looking for women prefer a smaller chin or elevated eyebrows as a person would appear to have if seen from above.

Usually what happens nowadays, innate charismatic persons are being hired by others, usually becoming "politicians" with the only purpose of projecting an image of a leader and news breaker to the submitted crowds. (There is an interesting discussion here, as real politicians could be in fact all hired charismatic persons, and in rarer instances they might have learned to use their charisma for themselves)

I put the picture below as an example as i wrote this with this face in my mind. I read so many negative articles about this gentleman that is impossible for me not believe that his sole quality for the proposed function is charisma.

http://www.academiacatavencu.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/interviu2-468x351.jpg