I always think of August as a bittersweet month. I feel it’s the last time to relax and enjoy before we start the next academic/work year in September. For the past fifteen minutes, I tried to describe specifically this feeling that I have towards August, and I couldn’t. The only thing that comes up to me is an image: sitting on our front porch back home at the end of the day, observing the night swallowing the light while Om Kalthoum sings in the background, and an overall feeling of loss takes hold of me. So I’m announcing the month of August as a month of loss. A month where plants wither and dry out, wheat fields are cut down, and a greater, emptier space is observed at the end of the horizon.
Some of you might read loss as a dreadful thing to be feared and lamented, but one has to remember that loss precedes gain. That is, sometimes one has to lose in order to gain. So maybe loss is not that bad. I wrote a poem to celebrate loss, which I’m sharing at the end of this post.
interesting things:
- about translation between the Arab and Spanish world article
- Emel Mathlouthi came to Palestine. If you’re not familiar with her work, i recommend this song. And here’s the original song of her rendition Holm.
- How do you deal with loss? tomorro marks the 3rd anniversary of Beirut’s port explosion. Here’s a sarde with two grieving, fighting parent.
- A glimpse into Mario Benedetti’s genius (an Uruguyan poet):
- Moods: “Sometimes I feel like a poor hill and sometimes like a mountain of repeated peaks. Sometimes I feel like a cliff and in others I feel like a blue but distant sky. Sometimes one is a spring between rocks and sometimes a tree with the last leaves. But today I feel just like an insomniac lagoon with a jetty without boats; a green lagoon motionless and patient according to its algae its mosses and its fish, serene in my confidence. Trusting that one afternoon you approach and you look, you look at me.
- i was in the Basque Country last week: one of my favorite spots on earth. Here’s a poem translated from their native language- euskera-
- interview with the Palestinian queen of seeds: on the politics of preserving seeds.
- Cuba’s national poet Nicolás Guillén (it’s so sad that I couldn’t find any poem of his translated to Arabic!), but i did find his obituary in el-itihad newspaper in 1989! (photo taken from the national library archive).
- last thing, if you haven’t listend to Lex Friedman’s interview with Mohammed el Jurd – you really should!
writing prompts:
- what have you lost in the past few years? Can you write an obituary to bid them farewell?
- flavors! this weekend when you’re having a delicious meal- stop for a second and think of ways to describe these flavors.
- What have you gaine in the past few year? can you welcome these things?
poem of loss: Perfecting the Art of Loss
So many people praise and hail triumphBut a few do so with loss and losing.A neglected art that I recently heard ofWhen I was busy becoming and choosingWho will I be and what will I do with my life:I drag all past experiences and hardly movingI watch myself from a far- enough!Enough preparing for a life that is already leaving.left with moments of beauty, of fear and hesitation,I announce that I want to start losingyes- losing with a sense of intentionstudied and proclaimed when sayingthat with each loss I perfect and accept
AICHA BINT YUSIF 