Happy Chinese New Year!

I'm wishing everyone a happy, healthy and harmonious new year!

Now I'm listening to Melodies from New Year's Greetings while typing a paper for tomoroow's evening class. The people from China I used to work with sent me a card which is a really nice gesture.

Picture: a view of the Summer Palace, Beijing (taken in Oktober 2007)

Marina & Sergey

I only just realised I never uploaded the 2nd video here. It's based on the poem Marina dedicated to her husband Sergey Efron:

Писала я на аспидной доске,

И на листочках вееров поблёклых,

И на речном, и на морском песке,

Коньками пo льду и кольцом на стеклах, -

И на стволах, которым сотни зим,

И, наконец - чтоб было всем известно! -

Что ты любим! любим! любим! - любим! -

Расписывалась - радугой небесной.

Как я хотела, чтобы каждый цвел

В векáх со мной! под пальцами моими!

И как потом, склонивши лоб на стол,

Крест-накрест перечеркивала - имя...

Но ты, в руке продажного писца

Зажатое! ты, что мне сердце жалишь!

Непроданное мной! внутри кольца!

Ты - уцелеешь на скрижалях.

18 мая 1920

I wrote on paled leaves of the fan

And on the board of slate

And on the river and sea sand,

On glass with a ring and on ice with skates -

And on the trunks, a hundred winters old,

And in the end - that everyone would know

That you are loved! Loved! Loved! Loved! -

I signed with a celestial rainbow.

How yet I wanted this, that each would bloom

For centuries with me! My fingers under!

And how thereafter I crossed out the name

Leaning my forehead on the table yonder.

But you, within the arm of sellout scribe

Pressed down! You, why you sting my soul?

Not sold by me! Inside the ring!

You - in the tablets will stay whole.

(Click on the picture to watch the video)

To be tender and rabid and noisy...

Быть нежной, бешеной и шумной,

— Так жаждать жить! —

Очаровательной и умной,

—Прелестной быть!

Нежнее всех, кто есть и были,

Не знать вины...

— О возмущенье, что в могиле

Мы все равны!

Стать тем, что никому не мило,

— О, стать как лед!

—Не зная ни того, что было,

Ни что придет,

Забыть, как сердце раскололось

И вновь срослось,

Забыть свои слова и голос,

И блеск волос.

Браслет из бирюзы старинной

—На стебельке,

На этой узкой, этой длинной

Моей руке...

Как зарисовывая тучку

Издалека,

За перламутровую ручку

Бралась рука,

Как перепрыгивали ноги

Через плетень,

Забыть, как рядом по дороге

Бежала тень.

Забыть, как пламенно в лазури,

Kак дни тихи...

— Все шалости свои, все бури

И все стихи!

Мое свершившееся чудо

Разгонит смех.

Я, вечно-розовая, буду

Бледнее всех.

И не раскроются — так надо —

— О, пожалей!

—Ни для заката, ни для взгляда,

Ни для полей

—Мои опущенные веки.

— Ни для цветка!

—Моя земля, прости навеки,

На все века.

И так же будут таять луны

И таять снег,

Когда промчится этот юный,

Прелестный век.

Феодосия, Сочельник 1913

Thus to thirst life:

And to be tender

And rabid and noisy,

To be intelligent and charming -

Gorgeous to be!

More tender than what are or have been,

Guilt not to know...

This, that in graveyard all are equal,

Angers me so.

To be what nobody holds dear -

Like ice become!

Not knowing what has come before now

Nor what will come,

To forget how the heart broke and

Grew back together,

To forget both the words and voice

And shine of hair.

Bracelet of ancient turquoise

On the stem, on

This my white arm

Narrow and long...

Like painting over a cloud

From afar,

One took the mother-of-pearl pen

In one's arm,

Just like the legs jumped

Over the fence,

To forget, how along the road

Shade advanced.

To forget, like flame of azure, how

Days are subdued...

All my mischief, all my tempest,

And poems too!

Laughter will be chased away by

My miracle.

I, always-pink, will be

The most pale.

And they won't open - thus is needed -

Pity this one!

Not for the sight, not for the fields,

Not for the sun -

These my lowered eyelids. -

Flower not for! -

My earth, forgive for centuries

Forevermore.

Thus both the moon and the snow

Will melt away,

When this young, beautiful century

Will rush on by.

I finally finished my 3d video related to Marina Tsvetaeva. The song used only parts of the poems (italicised), and they changed the order of the parts marked pink and red. Clicking on the photo will lead you to the video.

Oh, Felicity!

I'm on a drawing binge today (and it feels really relaxing for I haven't taken my pencils out for ages!) and, looking through the collection of numerous bits and pieces in my folder, I discovered this face:I sketched her about two years ago when I was still working in the old office, during some quick pause between translating commercial correspondence (I was listening to "A Story Girl" from librivox.org at the time). When we were moving office, I saved this one as well as some others, and in the depths of my folder it was kept till today. It seems just yesterday I did it and it seems at least two lives ago at the same time...

I posted another Felicity portrait last summer but there she is "Felicity a couple of years after the events in the book", neatly dressed and with a grown up air, and here she's exactly the girl Peter admired so much, and (remember her cooking talent?) she's even wearing an apron :-)

Another drawing

Maybe you remember a pencil sketch of a house in a wood I posted last year. Colour version to be framed and given to Grandma for Christmas!

Glass Castle drawing

As usual, only a small part of the castle is to be seen... :-/ The quality is so so because it was in a notebook and the part near the spine did not scan well. I've filled half on a thick notebook and a thin notebook writing the "darft of the draft", maybe, I can be through this year? ;-)

In the days of nowhere...

The days after the new year night and beore Christmas seem like days nowhere. You have a free week, but you cannot afford a holiday trip anywhere so you stay at home with your books and films and the interet. You don't venture outside much unless you are invited anywhere for it's dark soon after ou get up and you mostly don't have to get any food since you have plenty of leftovers from new year night. Sometimes you unwrap you cross-stitching you've been doing for (five) years and still haven't done those final touches to think it complete. Sometimes you get o read the book you've meant o read for ages and you can afford to be engrossed in it. Yesterday I picked up "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder which for various reasons I left unfinished on page 120 this summer. And it felt really nice to be totally engrossed in a book after many days. True, in my mind I jokingly regard some passages as "material for technical translation classes", for it has some deailed descriptions of carpenter work etc., which I have to reread one or two times before I can picture how building a roof or making a beadstead looked, but on the whole I think it's a great book and look forward of reading the series further, for, again, it's a book on immortal values, and it being written so simply makes you feel snug and warm like the little girls Laura might feel tucked up in her little bed in their little house.

Queen Maria of Romania

This is a good quality version of the photo I have over my chest of drawers. I just discovered a very informative resourse on her (link hidden in the post title), including her autobiography. I was interested to search a little on her for I visited her summer residence in Bulgaria in 2007 and also because I am now reading an album with short essays on European royalty (a new year gift from myself to myself) and there are a couple of pages on her too.

New Year Here

The town on the 29th, when I bought my tree:

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My real tree in many years! The last time we had a real tree for the new year was when I was ten, Nothing can compare to its smell and shape which is not so perfect as that of the plastic trees but more endearing! Unfortunately the only tinsel I had when decorating was red ;-)

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New year night at the neighbours'. Barsik has grw a lot since I last time took pictures o him :-)

Happy New Year!

In the past ten years we've collected quite a few New Year cards (indeed, they are new year cards, or maybe new year + Christmas, since we are a country where everything was turened upside down after 1917 and we associate all the Christmas traditions like the tree or cards or presents with new year celebrations...and celebrate Christmas in the new year but don't make much fuss of it since main celebrations and presents have already taken place on 31 December/1 January). I've scanned some favourites to display them here.

No year ever went faster or me than 2008. Let 2009 be a happy one. I was looking through a newspaper today, and it mentioned it was a good sign if something happens to your clothes during the new year night. They mentioned torn stockings... Let the hole on my stocking I accidentally made with a zipper mean a lot of luck soon ;-)