...
Hush, lay down your troubled mind
The day has vanished and left us behind
And the wind, whispering soft lullabies
Will soothe, so close your weary eyes
Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light
Sleep, angels will watch over you
And soon beautiful dreams will come true
Can you feel spirits embracing your soul
So dream while secrets of darkness unfold
...
-- Prayer (Secret Garden)
Son: Daddy what if the sun stop shinin' what would happen then
Daddy:
If the sun stopped shinin' you'd be so surprised
You'd stare at the heavens with wide open eyes
And the wind would carry your light to the skies
And the sun would start shinin' again
Son: Daddy what if the wind stopped blowin' what would happen then
Daddy:
If the wind stopped blowin' then the land would be dry
And your boat wouldn't sail son and your kite wouldn't fly
And the grass would see your troubles and she'd tell the wind
And the wind would start blowin' again
Son: But daddy what if the grass stopped growin' what would happen then
Daddy:
If the grass stopped growin' why you'd probably cry
And the ground would be watered by the tears from your eyes
And like your love for me the grass would grow so high
Yes the grass would start growin' again
Son: But daddy what if I stopped lovin' you what would happen then
Daddy:
If you stopped lovin' me then the grass would stop growin'
The sun would stop shinin' and the wind would stop blowin'
So you see if you wanna keep this old world a goin'
You better start lovin' me again again you better start lovin' me again
You hear me Bobby you better start lovin' me again
You love me Bobby you better start lovin' me again
- Shel Silverstein (A nice clip of this poem)
I like Zurich and ETH very much, you can hardly find the time to attend all the interesting events and Colloquia. So far I've been to a natural history exhibition at Uni Zurich, the Alles ist Spiel exhibition at ETH library, which was fabulous (an exhibition of different games and how they have attracted mathematicians, in a historic perspective), and unfortunately I missed a very good Colloquium called "Joy of Programming".
And tonight I'm off to Nacht der Forschung or Researchers Night 2007 in Zurich, at the Lake of Zurich! It should be very interesting! I'll let you know! :)
"To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be."
- Anna Louise Strong
Flower of stone, flower of stone
That's what I am, left here alone.
Shadows so dark, makes me feel cold
Nothing but emptiness here has grown.
From a performance by Monika Jalili.
Zurich, an alpine city with fantastic sceneries, classy transportations, strangest German dialect, and fantastic chocolates and cheese!
I was going back to my dorm a few nights ago, it was exactly midnight and for the first time since I had arrived in Zurich, I looked up at the night's sky. The W, or Cassiopeia, was right above my head. I remembered the first time I looked at Stockholm's night sky, and how shocked I was for noticing that most everything was not at the place it always used to be; there Ursa Minor was almost above my head and I could see constellations that were not supposed to be seen in the sky at the same time (not supposed to be seen at my hometown's night sky that is).
When you move around, many things change in your environment, the look and feel of the place, the buildings, the signs, the plants, the way people dress and most obvious of all, the language. But for me, none of all those has ever had an effect as powerful as noticing the changes in the sky. It is like the final verdict, that proves that I have moved, and I am in a new place now!
It is just the contrary of a saying we have in Persian, "Where ever you go, the color of sky would be the same!". It is definitely not so, in the outside at least. But perhaps in the inside, skies stay the same. My internal sky has stayed the same for a long time now, it is gray, with a touch of pink!
= = =
Vienna, good old Vienna. It was a weird feeling, walking by the consuming silence of Donna (Danube) again, remembering the meditating nights I had, gazing at the dancing lights of the bridges over the calm flow of the water. The water looked so calm, but it surely carried the huge burden of what it had seen on its way since it had left the springs, the falls it had passed, the floods it had caused..., but it still had a long way to go; and so did I, and so did I.
= = =
Tehran, the hot city of dry eyes and lost cries.... The capital of my country, whose state and affairs hurt me, just like most other things I love do.
The stay in Tehran this time was just a simple one day transit stay, perhaps not that simple though. Our flight from Mashhad to Tehran was scheduled to be at 7:45pm, and we got home in Tehran at 5am next day. Mashhad's airport was just like a war zone that night, I have traveled quite a lot with plane, but I had never experienced such a havoc. The result of it for me was three broken nails (finger and thumb) and a twisted wrist!
= = =
Mashhad, home. It is already three weeks since I left it again, but it looks like a year. I don't know how on earth I survived the last days, I just have a vague recollection of trying to stay sane, keep my face straight, and handle what I had to handle. And also of reciting these verses from a poem by Saadi (here is the song):
There was a boy...
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea,
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.
And then one day,
One magic day, he passed my way.
And while we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me,
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."
-- Celine Dion (A New Day Has Come)
Taciturn, reluctant, reticent...
Somber, dreary, gloomy, ...
Scared, frighted, panicked...
Confused, addled,...
Lonely, desolate...
Respiration, breathing!
"In this I owe a debt to G.K. Chesterton, who pointed out on many occasions that the fantastic, when looked at properly, is much less interesting (and a lot less fantastic) than the everyday.
Take Magical lights, for example, A wizard snaps his finger and light appears. Where's the fun in that? He's only doing what wizards do. But a bunch of apes weren't doing what apes do when they learned, over half a million years, how to take the universe apart and put it together again so that a bit of it was now th electric light bulb."
-Terry Pratchet, The Art of the Discworld
Once upon a time,
in a faraway land,
a young prince lived in a shining castle.
Although he had everything his heart desired,
the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.
But then,
one winter's night,
an old beggar woman came to the castle
and offered him a single rose
in return for shelter from the bitter cold.
Repulsed by her haggard appearance,
the prince sneered at the gift
and turned the old woman away,
but she warned him not to be deceived by appearances,
for beauty is found within.
And when he dismissed her again,
the old woman's ugliness melted away
to reveal a beautiful enchantress.
The prince tried to apologize,
but it was too late,
for she had seen that there was no love in his heart,
and as punishment,
she transformed him into a hideous beast,
and placed a powerful spell on the castle, and all who lived there.
Ashamed of his monstrous form,
the beast concealed himself inside his castle,
with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.
The rose she had offered
was truly an enchanted rose,
which would bloom until his twenty-first year.
If he could learn to love another,
and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell,
then the spell would be broken.
If not,
he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.
As the years passed,
he fell into despair,
and lost all hope,
for who could ever learn to love a beast?
-- The introduction part of the "Beauty and the Beast"
"When you don't show up, it hurts twice. Not only for I realize you don't care to come, but also for I loose the chance to see you!"
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with his might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable." -- "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran
