Bury a Friend

This is great find from 8B. This girl is talented and her talent comes through nicely!

Thanks for sharing!

Lithuanian Honey Cake

Trafika Europe Issue is here!

TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

I was just in need of a fix at my desk. Life and Death are wearing me out has been wearing me out and it was supposed to be a leisure read.

That and preparing for the PhD qualifiers. Well, to be fair, it wasn't so much bothersome as it was time consuming and saturating.

Tomorrow I unload and then it'll only be Life and Death are wearing me out to wear me out. At least some Lithuanian curiosities will soothe the free time!

Individuation

Behold the red color in the infinite hues of the evening sun
Oh, behold the red color in the eternal round the flowers sing
The silence seems like a guardian watching over the desolate garden
From afar comes the sound of a voice weeping at the barrier
For them the flowers bloom freely in the garden,
flawlessly revealing to you the message of Gold
An old man slumbers in the loquaciously fertile garden
In his dreams one hears the perfect song from the day of your birth
Flowers in the garden die without decaying,
sending up into the air, like a cyclone, the melody of Gold

Behold the red color in the infinite hues of the evening sun
Oh, behold the red color in the eternal round the flowers sing
Oh, behold the red color above the endlessly spinning wheel
Oh, behold the red color within the hues of the unfading garden

The softly rustling grass seems to take your shape
From afar came a shadow that now stands on the cliff
For them the flowers, swaying, summon the moisture of the rain
The time of Gold arrives
and rains down flawlessly upon you
Behold the red color in the infinite hues of the evening sun

Preparing for the PhD qualifiers is starting to bore me. I need a lot of Shisho in my system to keep my focus and determination. This Saturday, I'm passing the exams.

Meanwhile, I caught up with a lot of good horror (For once) that piled up and it was overall delightful! I don't know if it's me or the gore/horror productions are just getting crappier to my taste. It is getting redundant to rewatch oldies of the genre.

Hereditary

The best horror I have seen in these late years. It's so visceral in its heavy realistic family landscape, and it adds up to the insane atmosphere and the story. Rewatching this many occasions to come

Suspiria

I was waiting for this one because Tilda Swinton, Tilda Swinton, Tilda Swinton. I didn't watch the original and the story was very appealing. Too bad it's confined to the Amazon platform. I thought there wasn't enough noise around it.

 The Wailing

On rewatch because I need some poor bastard thrown into something much bigger than him and us and I like my stories without decisive boundaries.

 Train to Busan

I skipped it for a long time because I'm not in zombies. But it proved a good experience.

Tag

One of my favorite directors with one of the worst choices of main characters. I skipped this until I didn't find anything to watch and had to watch it. I knew I'd like the concept but when I watched the trailer, the main actress was just ekh. I didn't like her game, her acting. She rubs me the wrong way and I'm pretty sure if someone else handled the character, it would still come off as the clueless human booger she is, yet it wouldn't be so ekh herself.

I feel rubbed the wrong way with this movie, because as much as I'm an old fan of Sono and still rewatch his Suicide work from time to time, I couldn't stomach his choice of actors. So what do I do? 

Ekh.

Shisho help me out here.

I'm Always in You

Brilliant find by 1-3

On His Birthday

“There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers — one's as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they've never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by — they'd like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it! They're suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it - secretly he believes that he represents reality".

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Do I, then, belong to the heavens?

Why, if not so, should the heavens

Fix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,

Luring me on, and my mind, higher

Ever higher, up into the sky,

Drawing me ceaselessly up

To heights far, far above the human?

Why, when balance has been strictly studied

And flight calculated with the best of reason

Till no aberrant element should, by rights, remain-

Why, still, should the lust for ascension

Seem, in itself, so close to madness?

Nothing is that can satisfy me;

Earthly novelty is too soon dulled;

I am drawn higher and higher, more unstable,

Closer and closer to the sun's effulgence.

Why do these rays of reason destroy me?

Villages below and meandering streams

Grow tolerable as our distance grows.

Why do they plead, approve, lure me

With promise that I may love the human

If only it is seen, thus, from afar-

Although the goal could never have been love, 

Nor, had it been, could I ever have

Belonged to the heavens?

I have not envied the bird its freedom

Nor have I longed for the ease of Nature,

Driven by naught save this strange yearning

For the higher, and the closer, to plunge myself

Into the deep sky's blue, so contrary

To all organic joys, so far

From pleasures of superiority 

But higher, and higher,

Dazzled, perhaps, by the dizzy incandescence

Of waxen wings.

Or do I then 

Belong, after all, to the earth?

Why, if not so, should the earth

Show such swiftness to encompass my fall?

Granting no space to think or feel,

Why did the soft, indolent earth thus

Greet me with the shock of steel plate?

Did the soft earth thus turn to steel

Only to show me my own softness?

That Nature might bring home to me

That to fall, not to fly, is in the order of things,

More natural by far than that improbable passion?

Is the blue of the sky then a dream?

Was it devised by the earth, to which I belonged,

On account of the fleeting, white-hot intoxication

Achieved for a moment by waxen wings?

And did the heavens abet the plan to punish me?

To punish me for not believing in myself 

Or for believing too much;

Too eager to know where lay my allegiance

Or vainly assuming that already I knew all;

For wanting to fly off

To the unknown

Or the known:

Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?” 

Sun and Steel

The One Who Knows the Stars

The sands of the road listen
to the songs of long silent stars
The words “the dream is certain” whirl up a cloud of dust
Waves rise up in the wind
and vanish as is their fate
What do they show this transient life? In order to eliminate
the uncertainty of a moonless night,
far away they answer me – Oh trees, what is it that you know?
Oh wind, invite me to that land!
Oh trees, protect my dream!
Oh waves, cleanse the path I take!
Oh sands, illustrate the reason why! The sands of the road listen
to the songs of long silent stars
The words “the dream is certain” whirl up a cloud of dust

Witness Report #2

文字通り、現在、世界は詐欺的、脅迫的に足りすぎており、人々は満腹にも関わらず不足感を抱き続けるというほどに飼育されております。[05:23]

Literally, the world is prospering in the manner of fraud and (threating / menacing), people are domesticated not to leave behind a sense of deprivation despite enough nourishment.

実は、既に、「夜」は存在しておりません。[06:15]

Acutally, night already has ceased to exist.

ですが、ただでさえ、「夜」が足りない「現存する人々」から「影」を引き算するのは好ましくありません。[07:01]

But it is undesirable that subtracting shadows from (living/existing) people as they are already short of night.

さて、皆様、「百足らず様」と「闇足り様」が、この仮想的夜を維持して下さっている間に、足りすぎ世界について、考えを巡らせましょう。[07:49]

Well, guys, let’s take a time for contemplating on this world full of prosperity while Hyaku Tarazu Sama and Yami Tari sama maintain this virtual night.

もしそうしなければ、町中に「影のない武者」が溢れることになります。[07:55]

Otherwise, the avenue would be full of shadow-less warriors.

Translation by Taylor Seo