nga dy kenget e preferuara te femijerise

N’nji pyll kur hyra s’kerkojsha gja

n’nji pyll kur hyra s;kerkojsha gja

kur brenda u futa

kur brenda u futa

cudi mu ba

cudi mu ba

nen hije pashe nje hene te blerte

nen hije pashe nje hene te blerte

si ylli ndriste

si ylli ndriste

plot pesembedhjete

plot pesembedhjete

 

Me rrenje e nxora e mora n’gji

Me rrenje e nxora e mora n’gji

ne kopsht e cova

ne kopsht e cova

ne temen gemi

ne temen gemi

tej ne ujrat adriatike ajo farfurin

dhe gjithe natyren e perndrin

Buckley 2

A friend sent me a song by Tim Buckey (Sweet Surrender…. a wonderful song), which reminded me of Tim’s son. Here is a taste of Grace by Jeff Buckley- sorry Nadjuska for my absent intro, but the song speaks for itself:

And here’s Tim, since I put it up anyway:

Connecting

New game: eye to eye contact with fellow cafe dwellers. It’s partly libido-gratifying with males, but more pleasant, cleaner and safer with females. One such just walks in from the cold, tall and healthy, dress over pants, perfectly sharp and determinate gaze aiming for the coffee counter. My eyes must be soft from introversion and music: her awareness of them translates into a benevolent smile that illuminates her face. Beauty can finally exhibit itself, light after shadow, muscle under bone. All that beauty locked in her face, until my eyes met hers.

X has been thinking about repetition for months and I cannot penetrate her thoughts until I get to the goddamn Kierkegaard. But as my gaze layers over the girl and her smile layers over me I cannot help thinking that beauty is achieved layer after layer, like the magic of baklava. That humanity is achieved gaze after gaze, word after word, through and through connecting.

way to blue

Sisters of Mercy

My comments are not particularly needed.

How to ruin an office friendship

Having lived in this country for several years, and being as charming
as you are, you might have experienced women expressing their interest
in you quite frankly. But I am not doing justice to your country – I am sure
that there are women there, regardless how rare, that would have the
courage to do the same, especially in that metropolis, especially in
departments like yours. In an case, I worry you might be taken aback.
But clearly I do not worry so much about that as I do about the
dynamics in our cute little office after you read this. Will you be
uncomfortable around me? Please don’t be – I enjoy your company most
genuinely, well beyond the physical.

Maybe it is superfluous for me to put this in words. I have looked at
you with desire.. your skin, your hair, the movement of your hands…
I have giggled like a teenager at the sound of your voice, I have been
flustered at your silliest comments… I suppose this should have been
enough for you to perceive my interest. My fear is that you have
understood, and not being interested, you have pretended there was
nothing there, hoping my little crush would soon pass, like yet
another season. As it might have, as it might.

So why am I making this attempt? Certainly to please you , as well as
to jolt you out of the comfort zone of pretending nothing’s in the
air. But mainly out of curiosity about your response (the fear of you
saying nothing..), out of that irrational fisherman’s urge for yet
another little miracle – I have fished only once in a beautiful island
off the coast of Maine; no luck. Had a little fish bit on my stinky
herring, that day would not have registered so wondrously in my
memory. But you are no little fish, and New York is not the coast of
Maine, and I am still no fisherwoman. I also most certainly suck at
cooking fish.

Is this unnecessary? Yet I feel you should have this, the imperfect
knowledge of my desire (because I do not trust my gaze). You should be
pleased, smoke a cigarette, and do your thing. And still talk to me on
Wednesday

(reader dear, we dress in words, undress in words, always yearning for the naked moment)

Georges Brassens

Ina, i wanted you to listen to this version of a Brassens song by Carla Bruni.

About Brassens: Brassens wrote songs from ‘54 to ‘76. His songs are like a breeze of air…they are a hymn to simple pleasures and sorrows in life with a touch of humor. He was an anarchist and in many of his songs you can see him rebelling to political issues. You can notice his freethinking nature in the song below. This came out in the mid ‘50 i believe (i need to check my cd) and the idea is ‘will power can’t command an erection’.

A Bruni ‘original’

Industrialization and the Forbidden Experience

If you prefer art to words, check out the annotated slideshow of Seurat’s drawings at Slate.com, whose slide # 7 promted me to write this post: http://www.slate.com/id/2176831/nav/ais/. The drawings are quite captivating.

If you are wondering if there is ANYTHING left to be said about industrialization, read on. Maybe what I am going to say has been said before, but maybe I am the first among your friends to point out how unfair it is for the world’s poor to be deprived of questioning the eeriness of industrialization, deprived of the literature, the language, of searching for the soul among the scraps of metal. Factory workers throughout Asia are- no, let me correct myself, economists throughout the ivy and ivy-inspired institutions think they should be- just so happy about being given a chance to survive, to feed one’s children and aging parents, that any ‘reflection’ on what the factory does to the human being as a whole is denied, denied, in the name of survival. You under-developed nations need to feed your people, the risk of famine does not allow you the luxury of reflection. Industrialize first, think about the consequences second.

With ex-communist countries it gets even more complicated, industrialization doubly unquestioned. Most communist regimes (because there was also Pol Pot) glorified industrialization as the only path toward achieving the material base for communism, often with a pathos and artistic language reminiscent of the futurists. The new man and the new woman of the communist factory were as human as mass production can allow, drones, forever fearful of asking the wrong questions, of doubting the path, of being accused of sabotage. After decades of catching up, but not quite getting there, communism collapsed on the laps of all those theorists of modernization whose TIME HAD COME. Clearly, the central planners were undermining industrialization despite their love for it by taking away all incentive (incentive = money) of efficiency and innovation from workers and manager, by supplying without the check of demand. No matter that in today’s markets suffocated by advertising we pretend to consume what we demand. No matter that the real production is elsewhere, while all incentive that money provides is for rent-seeking behavior – for those of you familiar with office politics. I apologize if this basic criticism is leading my post astray. I mean to say, the new glorification of industrialization is even bigger, sustained not by the authoritarian textbooks, paintings and megaphones, but by the lure of the beautiful image. Nicer sell.

Except for the West has its critics, its poets, its musicians still beating the drums of humanity. And poor nations have ivy-educated technocrats. There is no market there for poetry, no market for criticism, and no technocrats to suggest the need for such markets … just yet. And there is me, howling at the moon.

STDs

This is mainly for my fellow Albanians: STDs exist, and they don’t care that you are Albanian, they don’t care that you come from a country that does not know or attempt to know about them, they could not care less that you don’t like condoms and other latex gadgets- they are headed your way. Now don’t freak out, I haven’t heard about an STD epidemic targeting Albanians. But I have had a chance to reflect on our shared ignorance of these diseases, our not so regular trips to the doctor unless symptoms are screaming (and some STDs are silent that way), our general assumption that the partner is STD-free unless she or he says otherwise.

So go to the doctor for regular check-ups and ask for complete tests. Carry a condom or two or three- you never know what tricks your desires will play on you, and you never know how many of them you will need. And for your own sake, use them. Because you don’t want to be sitting there, with 30 other fools like yourself, waiting for the test, wandering if you were ‘that unlucky’. It might be luck, but it is mainly probability. Learn the odds and bet accordingly.

PS: As much as I love you, I will not make it easy for you and post informative links. I want to make the google people trillionaires.

I just have to blame a third party

DISCLAIMER: the author blames the lack of a better idea and the late hour of the night for the distasteful use/abuse of Hegel’s name

… i should use the opportunity of the clarity of mind and bounty of time only afforded by procrastination to try to write a much more important letter, whose mental drafts have been depriving me of sleep for weeks, whose actual nonexistence has made me question myself as an ethical being,

but,

since you refuse to write to me, which means you don’t give a shit, which you do for most cats, dogs, neon lights, distilled oats and short-haired foreign-looking reminds-me-of-suzanne-without-the-oranges is-she-really-that-different-from-me????s, which reminds me of the e-mails my friend pierre sends me, to which i almost never respond, which means i don’t give a shit, which i do for most homeless, toothless, loveless humans and creatures they enslave, which as a whole gives me a much better perspective, but which still baffles me and does not make me any less mad,

I

want to share with you that i just acquired the knowledge that

women get stuck in ideas just like men,

but,

being that Hegel only whispers to those with a penis, the penis being apparently the only oboe that an
idea-to-be-embodied-in-the-state-through-man-as-instrument can ever blow through, infecting those such endowed with the most deadly philosophically acquired disease of thinking that they are THE
instrument,

women get stuck in the mirror image of the idea, i.e. that man is THE
instrument, and being that we live in the age of commodity fetishism, which is the mirror image of the reification already suggested by Hegel, women get stuck in the idea that possession of such instrument
will make them the ultimate EMBODIMENTS of the idea,

but,

being that instruments require upkeep, and being that women are way too in awe of this ideal instrument to notice that it is the idea that is ideal, while the instrument only instrumental, they blow the
instrument without care and risk to fuck up in all eternity the possibility that the instrument will be blown by Hegel instead of them;

 

hence,

i hope you may accept and forgive me having bought into the women story – i am trying to buy out of it, but i might have to sell short – and i sure do hope i may forgive, for i have by now accepted, you having bought into the men story, and hope that Hegel blows you so that your dreams may come true, though it might be more likely that
Rousseau and even Confucius may be tempted your way.