(marginalia vitae)
This was a season almost likeable. The theme of violence, of course, continues stretching and developing. The scenery, all of it, is breathtaking. The detail of the sets is amazing, stunning even. The speakers of Dothraki and Valyrian have learned to speak Dothraki and Valyrian (compared to the initial seasons). The Winter and the Long […]
Read More Game of Thrones, Season 6This book is not for the faint-hearted. It invites and compels the reader to embark on a journey of self-awareness and reconciliation, chunks of unpalatable history, fragments of lives and stories that span decades and continents. Those couple of hundred pages are massive. And in the middle of all that are the dead, separated by […]
Read More Ināra Vērzemneks. Among the living and the dead.The furniture has been moved. The things have been moved. Thanks to fabulous friends, the bookshelf has acquired a new shape and size. Now for phase three: unpacking the boxes, moving the books. All the many, many kilos of them. and meanwhile, I need to fix the holes in the walls and repaint the walls […]
Read More phase two finishedI cannot unlove you; when the morning sings out moonlight, as the snow turns to ashes at dawn, I gently finger the rough edges of what you left of me, leaving. Serrated, larger than life, sharp, silently seeping with something red. It is cold, the snow scintillates, throwing tiny maroon reflections back at the mourning […]
Read More holes in the universeWatched Logan the film. Great exit for two wonderful actors (Of course they both die heroically in the fictional universe). Great entry for a very young actress (Who demonstrates that it is always a bad idea to upset little cute girls and teach them to kill) Great balance in the lead triangle. Maybe a little […]
Read More wolverine is dead, long live the wolverineme: that wonderful game with wolves in it. Resident Evil. students: Final Fantasy.
Read More titlesOne of the most beautiful poems I have recently read is this: a breezy august sweater she wore bearing me around my shoulders (Kate Kaulakalna) The picture is perfect. The time stands still, projecting a feeling of emptiness, simultaneously reflecting the temperature gradient of late summer and a filial sensation of continuity and memory. The […]
Read More The perks of being on the sidelinesthe moon floats in the hazy Aegean blue like a Cheshire cheese. the air is moist and kind of cold, though hectically warm. i have lost the right words. yes, as the trite metaphor goes, silence engulfs me. no, not only engulfs, it also enfolds, consumes and drowns me. this silence is black, and it […]
Read More when there are no words, there is silence. or so they say.one of those moments in a teacher’s life. those moments. when the truth is spoken by the lips of the infants. terrible truth, too. from a student’s paper, analysing translation: He (Newmark, 1988) has categorized cultural words in five groups; words related to: Ecology; Material culture (food, clothes, transport, etc.) Social culture (work and leisure); Organisations, […]
Read More what students writeMy ingenious Kat getting out through the kitchen window. I probably have to secure my computer and other electronic things before he secretly takes them over.
Read More This is how he does itbehind the sunglasses you wore your tired eyes; reflections of sparrows mated vehemently across the space of fresh minted sunshine. the wetly-thawed earth was fragrant with emerald moss. starlings chirped darkly, looking for morning worms under the din of the city. i saw you sitting alone, at a crowded bus-stop. the traffic went by unrestrained […]
Read More triviafor another year we two have been separated by a common heaven. for all this time, i’ve been writing letters to you in my head. i miss you. and this is a cactus that decided to blossom on the window-sill. apparently, it likes it there. sometimes, i meet you in my dreams, and we do […]
Read More the cactus plant blossoms gloriouslyso i am sitting in the class, where the students have to prepare and present a news report about anything they found interesting. and so there is this girl reading hers. what i hear, is “scientists have discovered a cloak which they called the curse of the gays…” so i walk up to her to look […]
Read More what students saydear diary, i know you are not my real diary, because i have no diary, only a scrapbook, and nobody addresses a scrapbook with ‘dear scrapbook’. well, i am rambling. and using my poetic licence to write imaginary things as i imagine them. so, dear diary… sometimes life tastes of dry leaves and burnt cabbage. […]
Read More sometimes postand so i said – i will die one day, that’s a fact. and my colleagues at work went berserk with ‘shush, don’t say so’ and ‘you do not mean it’, and ‘how can you say so, we must think of living forever’. and i thought – why should i succumb to the cult of […]
Read More the taboo wordsLord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God. (Jn. 6:68-69 NLT) Jesus stands in the middle of the road and looks at those who find his words offensive. They are the same people he fed, healed and […]
Read More a brief meditation on John 6:68-69*a little winter poem*. i think it will look fine in the heat (such as it is) of the summer: today it snows right out of the blue they fall, correct in every aspect, criss-crossing the near to the far, cross-stitching the perspective to this silence, this mute mobility outside the glass. Snowflakes, little feathers […]
Read More was clearing the rucksack and found thisfound this one today. too many feathers to sit in the nest. too few to really fly. pity, it would have made a wonderful sparrow one day. mother nature sometimes goes for the smartest, not the fittest, it seems (sigh).
Read More a fledgling sparrowhere’s this, from a student’s paper: ‘The pathetic fallacy is a term that uses nature to express the characters or their emotions.’ this somewhat makes me wonder (annually) about what i am actually doing there at the uni. maybe i should use some nature to express my emotions. such as birches. or that would be […]
Read More apparently, people contract insanity in springmy Kat is not mythological. he has no healing powers. he sleeps everywhere. he makes weird grunting noises when happy. he wakes me up at unseemly hours. he does not even pretend to understand what i say or feel. he is easy to wash. he likes drinking from the tap, and tries to open it […]
Read More the truth about my Katwhen the sunlight comes into my room, and i, too, am at home, i see cobwebs in the normally dark places. some are ornamental. some are dirt. ultimately even the originally ornamental cobwebs turn to dirt. who’s to blame for that? the spiders, who have laboriously woven their little webs to catch whatever insects happen […]
Read More when the sun shines long enough (a limp allegory)my Kat changes his weight and size depending on external conditions. he becomes small when he wants something. he becomes light when he walks on the banister. when he decides to wake me up by jumping onto me from the window-sill, he becomes heavy. at night, when he guards me as we sleep, he grows very […]
Read More resizing of catscherry blossoms fall slowly, a meditation over mud trodden by many over blood, and unexpected memories. gentleness perishing silently over violence perished like snow over grass.
Read More actually, when it rains, the water is white, not invisiblein Numbers 21, the people of Israel encounter one of those wilderness experiences. Moses has successfully got the people out of the slavery. slavery is bad, right? right? but slavery also means that there is someone else, someone ‘above’ taking care of the logistics of life, the food, the homes, the jobs – as long […]
Read More snakes and salvation (sermon notes, written up so they make some sense)