Joke

 

Coffee shop jazz

 

Real zombie

 

Zombies eat brains

 

life will not perish

 

O nature, nature, life will not perish!

 O nature, nature, life will not perish! Friends, Helena, life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing — our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing, and yet life will not perish! Only we have perished. Our houses and machines will be in ruins, our systems will collapse, and the names of our great will fall away like dry leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds. Now let Thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, for my eyes have beheld — beheld Thy deliverance through love, and life shall not perish!

Karel Čapek

Explain calculus

 

Владимир Набоков К России

 

Владимир Набоков
К России

Отвяжись, я тебя умоляю!
Вечер страшен, гул жизни затих.
Я безпомощен. Я умираю
От слепых наплываний твоих.

Тот, кто вольно отчизну покинул,
Волен выть на вершинах о ней,
Но теперь я спустился в долину,
И теперь приближаться не смей.

Навсегда я готов затаиться
И без имени жить. Я готов,
Чтоб с тобой и во снах не сходиться,
Отказаться от всяческих снов;

Обезкровить себя, искалечить,
Не касаться любимейших книг,
Променять на любое наречье
Всё что есть у меня, — мой язык.

Но зато, о Россия, сквозь слёзы,
Сквозь траву двух несмежных могил,
Сквозь дрожащие пятна берёзы,
Сквозь всё то, чем я смолоду жил,

Дорогими слепыми глазами
Не смотри на меня, пожалей,
Не ищи в этой угольной яме,
Не нащупывай жизни моей!

Ибо годы прошли и столетья,
И за горе, за му́ку, за стыд, —
Поздно, поздно! — никто не ответит,
И душа никому не простит.

1939. Paris

 

Vladimir Nabokov
To Russia

Let me go; set me free of my shackles!
In the dark, when commotion subsides,
I'm dying; I'm drained by the battles
Within dreams of you, flowing like tides.

Let the ones who at will have abandoned
Their motherland wail and complain,
They're on top; I've already descended —
Don't you dare approach me again.

I'll abandon the books I revere;
I'm ready to live in a cave;
So that you from my dreams disappear,
Every dream I'm ready to waive.

And degrade my own self to damnation,
Drop my name and be stripped to the bone,
For the dialect of any nation
Trade my tongue — the last asset I own.

For this sacrifice, Russia, through tears
through the grass on my parents' tombs,
through the memories of my young years,
through the catkins of birch trees in bloom,

Don't you look at me; I beg for mercy;
In this pit all is burnt to the core,
It is void; your blind search is unworthy.
Don't you try my past life to restore!

It's too late; years, ages have vanished,
For the shame and the grief in my soul,
For its torment — no one will be punished,
And no one will be ever absolved.

Vladimir Nabokov
To Russia

Let me go; set me free of my shackles!
In the dark, when commotion subsides,
I'm dying; I'm drained by the battles
Within dreams of you, flowing like tides.

Let the ones who at will have abandoned
Their motherland wail and complain,
They're on top; I've already descended —
Don't you dare approach me again.

I'll abandon the books I revere;
I'm ready to live in a cave;
So that you from my dreams disappear,
Every dream I'm ready to waive.

And degrade my own self to damnation,
Drop my name and be stripped to the bone,
For the dialect of any nation
Trade my tongue — the last asset I own.

For this sacrifice, Russia, through tears
through the grass on my parents' tombs,
through the memories of my young years,
through the catkins of birch trees in bloom,

Don't you look at me; I beg for mercy;
In this pit all is burnt to the core,
It is void; your blind search is unworthy.
Don't you try my past life to restore!

It's too late; years, ages have vanished,
For the shame and the grief in my soul,
For its torment — no one will be punished,
And no one will be ever absolved.

Vladimir Nabokov
To Russia

Let me go; set me free of my shackles!
In the dark, when commotion subsides,
I'm dying; I'm drained by the battles
Within dreams of you, flowing like tides.

Let the ones who at will have abandoned
Their motherland wail and complain,
They're on top; I've already descended —
Don't you dare approach me again.

I'll abandon the books I revere;
I'm ready to live in a cave;
So that you from my dreams disappear,
Every dream I'm ready to waive.

And degrade my own self to damnation,
Drop my name and be stripped to the bone,
For the dialect of any nation
Trade my tongue — the last asset I own.

For this sacrifice, Russia, through tears
through the grass on my parents' tombs,
through the memories of my young years,
through the catkins of birch trees in bloom,

Don't you look at me; I beg for mercy;
In this pit all is burnt to the core,
It is void; your blind search is unworthy.
Don't you try my past life to restore!

It's too late; years, ages have vanished,
For the shame and the grief in my soul,
For its torment — no one will be punished,
And no one will be ever absolved.

Vladimir Nabokov
To Russia

Let me go; set me free of my shackles!
In the dark, when commotion subsides,
I'm dying; I'm drained by the battles
Within dreams of you, flowing like tides.

Let the ones who at will have abandoned
Their motherland wail and complain,
They're on top; I've already descended —
Don't you dare approach me again.

I'll abandon the books I revere;
I'm ready to live in a cave;
So that you from my dreams disappear,
Every dream I'm ready to waive.

And degrade my own self to damnation,
Drop my name and be stripped to the bone,
For the dialect of any nation
Trade my tongue — the last asset I own.

For this sacrifice, Russia, through tears
through the grass on my parents' tombs,
through the memories of my young years,
through the catkins of birch trees in bloom,

Don't you look at me; I beg for mercy;
In this pit all is burnt to the core,
It is void; your blind search is unworthy.
Don't you try my past life to restore!

It's too late; years, ages have vanished,
For the shame and the grief in my soul,
For its torment — no one will be punished,
And no one will be ever absolved.

The Encounter by Nabokov

 

The Encounter

Longing, and mystery, and delight…
as if from the swaying blackness
of some slow-motion masquerade
onto the dim bridge you came.

And night flowed, and silent there floated
into its satin streams
that black mask’s wolf-like profile
and those tender lips of yours.

And under the chestnuts, along the canal
you passed, luring me askance.
What did my heart discern in you,
how did you move me so?

In your momentary tenderness,
or in the changing contour of your shoulders,
did I experience a dim sketch
of other — irrevocable — encounters?

Perhaps romantic pity
led you to understand
what had set trembling that arrow
now piercing through my verse?

I know nothing. Strangely
the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow…
Perhaps you, still nameless, were
the genuine, the awaited one?

But sorrow not yet quite cried out
perturbed our starry hour.
Into the night returned the double fissure
of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed.

For long? For ever? Far off
I wander, and strain to hear
the movement of the stars above our encounter
and what if you are to be my fate…

Longing, and mystery, and delight,
and like a distant supplication….
My heart must travel on.
But if you are to be my fate…

Unlike today's relationships, the days of yore promised a love that arrived to stay. Nabokov, the great literary master, wrote this poem for a woman who was instantly won over and became his wife for more than 50 years, till death. © by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes   

 

The Prayer Of Agassiz

John Greenleaf Whittier1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)

• Childhood
• Friendship
• Life
• Love
• Melancholy
• Nature
• Religion

---

---

On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim
Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock and isle and glistening bay,
Fell the beautiful white day.

Said the Master to the youth
'We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery;
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment-hem of Cause,
Him, the endless, unbegun,
The Unnamable, the One
Light of all our light the Source,
Life of life, and Force of force.
As with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen,
What the Thought which underlies
Nature's masking and disguise,
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death.
By past efforts unavailing,
Doubt and error, loss and failing,
Of our weakness made aware,
On the threshold of our task
Let us light and guidance ask,
Let us pause in silent prayer!'

Then the Master in his place
Bowed his head a little space,
And the leaves by soft airs stirred,
Lapse of wave and cry of bird,
Left the solemn hush unbroken
Of that wordless prayer unspoken,
While its wish, on earth unsaid,
Rose to heaven interpreted.
As, in life's best hours, we hear
By the spirit's finer ear
His low voice within us, thus
The All-Father heareth us;
And His holy ear we pain
With our noisy words and vain.
Not for Him our violence
Storming at the gates of sense,
His the primal language, His
The eternal silences!

Even the careless heart was moved,
And the doubting gave assent,
With a gesture reverent,
To the Master well-beloved.
As thin mists are glorified
By the light they cannot hide,
All who gazed upon him saw,
Through its veil of tender awe,
How his face was still uplit
By the old sweet look of it.
Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer,
And the love that casts out fear.
Who the secret may declare
Of that brief, unuttered prayer?
Did the shade before him come
Of th' inevitable doom,
Of the end of earth so near,
And Eternity's new year?

In the lap of sheltering seas
Rests the isle of Penikese;
But the lord of the domain
Comes not to his own again
Where the eyes that follow fail,
On a vaster sea his sail
Drifts beyond our beck and hail.
Other lips within its bound
Shall the laws of life expound;
Other eyes from rock and shell
Read the world's old riddles well
But when breezes light and bland
Blow from Summer's blossomed land,
When the air is glad with wings,
And the blithe song-sparrow sings,
Many an eye with his still face
Shall the living ones displace,
Many an ear the word shall seek
He alone could fitly speak.
And one name forevermore
Shall be uttered o'er and o'er
By the waves that kiss the shore,
By the curlew's whistle sent
Down the cool, sea-scented air;
In all voices known to her,
Nature owns her worshipper,
Half in triumph, half lament.
Thither Love shall tearful turn,
Friendship pause uncovered there,
And the wisest reverence learn
From the Master's silent prayer.