Constantin blog

This blog is now officially archived (no new posts). I have moved to a new home at thirld.com/blog.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at wordpress.com, I am hoping that this site will be around for a long time.

You probably know about less: it is a standard tool that allows scrolling up and down in documents that do not fit on a single screen. Less has a very handy feature, which can be turned on by invoking it with the -i flag. This causes less to ignore case when searching. For example, ‘udf’ will find ‘udf’, ‘UDF’, ‘UdF’, and any other combination of upper-case and lower-case. If you’re used to searching in a web browser, this is probably what you want. But less is even more clever than that. If your search pattern contains upper-case letters, the ignore-case feature will be disabled. So if you’re looking for ‘QXml’, you will not be bothered by matches for the lower-case ‘qxml’. (This is equivalent to ignorecase + smartcase in vim.)

So how do we take this useful feature and make it permanent, so that we don’t have to remember to type less -i every time? We could create an alias less='less -i'. But there are tools (such as git-log) that invoke less on their own, and they will not know about the ignore-case option. It would be better if we could tell less that we always want that feature on, regardless of startup flags. This article will teach you how to do that.

On startup, less reads a configuration file, which on Unix systems is in ~/.less. For some ungodly reason, this is a binary file, and you have to use the lesskey program to generate it. First, put the following in your ~/.lesskey:

#env LESS = -i -R

Here -i stands for the ignore-case option we discussed above, and -R is something to handle color control characters correctly (e.g. for git-log). After that, run lesskey. It will read your ~/.lesskey and generate ~/.less. Now you can start less without any flags, and it will run with ignore-case turned on. Lesskey can be used for more complicated things, such as setting up new key bindings. Read the manual page for more details.

Some time after I set this up, I forgot all about it. I came to expect that this feature would always be on. One day I ran less as root to look at some logs, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Oops. Let’s make this a system-wide setting. You could repeat the same procedure for root and any other users on your system, or you could copy your ~/.less file to /etc/sysless, which is the system-wide lesskey.

Bonus tips:

If you need remote access to a computer whose IP changes dynamically, ddclient may be the tool for you. Check out this previous article for how to set up ddclient using a free service like DynDNS. Once set up, you will be able to connect to your box using a pretty name like mybox123.dyndns.org, rather than having to keep track of the changing IP. I should mention that there are many other free DNS services besides dyndns.com, and that many home routers can take care of Dynamic DNS for you (i.e., you can set it up on the router, rather than on your computer).

Today, however, we have a more complicated task. This article will teach you how to:

First, let me explain my use case. At home, I have a router that forwards SSH connections to my laptop, which is behind a NAT. Here, I want remote connections to use the router’s address (i.e., the web-visible address, not the address that my laptop’s interface gets). In the lab, I am also behind a NAT, but the NAT server is outside of my control, and I cannot set up forwarding. Here, I want connections from other lab machines (which are behind the same NAT) to use my laptop’s local interface address, rather than the web-visible address of the NAT server. At both locations, I get a dynamic IP, and I may use either a wired or a wireless connection.

This means that I need two domain names: (these are example names; don’t even think about it)

To make things more complicated, this needs to work regardless of whether I am using the ethernet or the wireless connection. After some googling, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that ddclient can do this. Here is my config file, with explanations following.

# /etc/ddclient.conf

pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid

# mybox.dyndns.com: # updates internet ip on either wireless or wired use=web, \ server=members.dyndns.org, \ protocol=dyndns2, \ login=..., \ password=...        \ mybox.dyndns.org

# myboxinternal.dyndns.org: # updates interface (maybe local) ip on either wireless or wired use=cmd, cmd=find-local-ip, \ server=members.dyndns.org, \ protocol=dyndns2, \ login=..., \ password=...        \ myboxinternal.dyndns.org

I am using a little-known feature that allows ddclient to update multiple IPs / hosts. For mybox.homelinux.org, I use=web, which means that ddclient will take my IP from checkip.dyndns.com. This works regardless of whether I am on the wired or wireless connection, which is exactly what I want. For myboxinternal.dyndns.org, I use=cmd, cmd=find-local-ip, where find-local-ip is a simple script that looks like this:

#!/bin/bash ifconfig eth0 ifconfig wlan0

Ddclient will search the output of ifconfig eth0; ifconfig wlan0 and select the first string that looks like an IP. This is necessary because with use=if, you can only specify one interface. Note that I could not just use cmd=ifconfig, because then ddclient might pick the 127.0.0.1 of the local loopback interface.

You can modify the above to suit your needs. For example, if you have two wired interfaces with different IPs, you may want to update two host names, one per interface. Remember to run ddclient -v to verify that your config file does what you want.

If you’ve ever had to write an essay about something seemingly meaningless, you probably know how this works. You pick a thought (the more unlikely the better), connect everything to it (the less obvious the connections the better), and make sure to overlook anything that goes against your “theory.” Does this projection of meaning onto chaos sound like what art critics do?

All is well until you start believing your own words. That is what happened to me, and I am open-sourcing some of them here, for the whole world to point and laugh and maybe even plagiarize. This story is about Bergman’s Persona and a certain Andalusian Dog, so if you haven’t seen those species yet, come back later.

An unwanted child, an insecure man, an arrogant genius, Ingmar Bergman directed what could very well be the most cryptic movie ever made. Persona is painted in two layers: a foreground that makes sense on a background that mystifies. The upper stratum is Alma’s story of self-acceptance, of coming to terms with her dark side. The backdrop is Bergman’s meditation on cinematography.

The background is visible in the beginning montage, the sequence where the film cracks and burns in the middle of the movie, and in the ending. The foreground occupies the screen the rest of the time. The layers differ in two important ways. First, meaning is accessible in the foreground, while the background stubbornly resists interpretation. Second, editing is done in a much more frantic manner in the background layer, often resorting to cuts of only two or three frames. In the foreground, many seconds pass before a cut is made.

The beginning montage jumps out at us, as if begging for an interpretation. But let us avoid this red herring and start with the intelligible foreground instead. With a movie as outlandish as Persona, we might as well go ahead and make a bold statement about the characters, and then analyze the movie through the window of that assumption. Let our starting axiom be that Elisabet is Alma’s disavowed dark side (cold, indifferent, incapable of love). The foreground layer follows Alma on the journey of accepting that ugly part of herself.

The upper layer starts with Alma opening the door and stepping into the doctor’s office. Bergman is efficient: within the first minute, we already know the names of the characters, and that Alma is supposed to care for Elisabet. The director also breaks the rules from the very beginning: there are no traditional shot/reverse-shots. As if it had a consciousness of its own, the camera studies the characters independently of their interactions. Bergman’s trademark closeups bring us uncomfortably close: we see their every strand of hair, every pore, every twitch.

As Alma introduces herself to Elisabet, we begin to glimpse that she relies on words to give herself confidence (“I’m 25 years old and engaged”). She admits to the doctor that the patient “shows great mental strength,” with which she “might not be able to cope.” Back in Elisabet’s room, Alma tunes the radio to a play. Elisabet turns it off and grabs Alma’s hand in a very possessive way — the dark side demands recognition.

When the nurse leaves the patient to fall asleep with classical music, we see Elisabet’s face for a very long time, until the light fades. Like us, Alma is forced to think about her. Unable to fall asleep, she summons words to remember how good her life is: “I’ll marry Karl-Henrik and have a couple of children, which I’ll have to raise… I have a job that I like and enjoy.” If all of that is predestined, why does her happiness seem so strained? To distract herself from her own existential quandaries, Alma focuses on Elisabet instead: “I wonder what’s really wrong with her.” Alma wants to believe that she is happy with her life; and her words are a shelter against her dark side.

But wanting to believe is not enough. The immense amount of energy Alma spends on making believe finds expression in the film’s unwaning tension. She cannot be happy because she is not complete; she is stifling a part of herself. Her unhappiness is artfully metamorphosed into the film’s emptiness and desolation. Another piece of evidence is found in the later scene where Elisabet’s husband visits the beach house. This is one of Alma’s dreams — an escape from her incompleteness.

After establishing her psychological situation, the film depicts Alma’s slow reconciliation with her dark side. The phases in which this gradual acceptance takes place are curiously parallel to the stages of grief in the Kübler-Ross model (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance).

The film depicts the denial phase in more than one way. Elisabet is Alma’s externalized darkness, which she refuses to accept as part of herself. She takes her voice away, trying to deny the dark side’s very existence. Expressions of denial range from straightforward (“I’m not like you!”) to subtle — Alma’s condescending attitude towards her patient. In the hospital, she opens and reads a letter for Elisabet, thus assuming without question the right to invade her privacy. (In the same scene, Elisabet tears a photograph of her son, confirming that she is “the dark side” in the first place.) Later at the beach house, Alma reveals her deepest secrets, denying even the possibility that Elisabet could hurt her. But breaking into tears, she begins to see that her denial mechanism no longer works (“none of it fits together”). Elisabet escapes Alma’s imagined reins with the letter she types to the doctor. Personifying the dark side’s power to wound, that compromised letter marks the end of the denial stage. Alma can no longer ignore what she knows. “You’re forced to react,” the doctor says earlier.

Anger and bargaining are merged in Persona. The bargaining stage is symbolized by Alma’s attempts to cure Elisabet and make her talk (“you could be me, just like that”). The anger, ignited by the fatal letter, finds expression in Alma’s violence towards her patient. After reading the letter, Alma deliberately puts a piece of glass on the ground for Elisabet to step on. In her anger, she does not realize that she is sapping her own strength.

The film cracks and burns, and after a short glimpse onto the lower layer, Alma is again bargaining with Elisabet. Asking her to talk is hypocritical, because Alma does not want to hear the ugly things her dark side has to say. Failing to get any words from her, Alma falls back to anger, physically attacking her patient. But when she threatens to scald Elisabet with boiling water, Alma’s own self-preservation instinct screams “no, don’t do it!” Anger and bargaining continue to go hand in hand, as Alma calls Elisabet “rotten” and then runs after her to apologize. The balance of power in these negotiations is clearly seen in the opposition between Elisabet’s graceful gait and Alma’s clumsy stumbling.

The onset of depression is marked by Alma’s hallucination, in which Elisabet’s husband visits the beach house. In this new stage, Alma interacts with the man as if she were Elisabet — she literally becomes her dark side (“I’m cold and rotten and indifferent. It’s all lies and imitation.”) Alma is still in the depression stage in the scene with the repeated monologue. The women are sitting face to face, and Alma is giving voice to Elisabet’s story. She might as well stand in front of a mirror and talk. The fact that Alma knows about Elisabet’s son proves that she has stopped repressing her dark side; but her tone indicates that she still very much hates it. In a last attempt to reject her, Alma says[1], “I’ll never be like you.” But the composite face of the two women foretells the inevitability of their reunion. In the climax of her depression, after thrashing her hands on the table and muttering senseless words, Alma cuts her vein and offers her blood for Elisabet to drink. This is her ultimate submission.

She then enters Elisabet’s room at the hospital, and helps her sit up in bed. At Alma’s request, the patient finally mutters “nothing.” This is not Elisabet’s surrender, but Alma’s. The nurse has finally allowed her dark side to speak, given her flesh and blood and a voice, and accepted her as a part of herself. The shot where Elisabet strokes Alma’s hair in front of the mirror is repeated (it was a premonition). The rest of the movie watches the gradual decomposition of the upper layer, through which we begin to see the unintelligible substrate again.

When Alma leaves the beach house, she is a whole person again. She has accepted her dark side and stopped deceiving herself that her life is all good. It does not immediately result that she is happy, but thanks to her new understanding of herself, happiness is at least a possibility. This is the story Bergman is telling us in the foreground: that darkness and ugliness have a place, that no life has a road map, and that everything is improvisation. The many discontinuities in the upper layer suggest that the battle is fought in Alma’s mind, not in the real world.

The foreground tells an understandable and self-sufficient story. Then why does Bergman not stop here? What do the beginning montage and the interruptions at the middle and end have to do with any of this? Here Bergman crosses the barrier from mere film into self-reflexive metafilm. Behind the readable layer of the story, there lies another stratum, eminently strange and utterly incomprehensible.

The lower layer makes its most lengthy appearance in the pre-title sequence. After shots of various parts of a projector, we go through an upside down countdown, the image of an erect penis[2], more shots of a projector and film, and what appears to be an overexposed screen. Zooming in on the screen, we realize that it is in fact film running through the projector, upside down. The film shows a hand-drawn cartoon of a woman washing her hands and face in the river, then pressing her breasts. After a shot of film uncoiling from the projector, we see a child’s hands waving around, then the sound of film spinning stops. We see a fragment of a silent black and white comedy[3], in which a man is haunted by a skeleton and a vampire/devil. A spider moving its legs fades from white and into white; then we see the blood pouring out of a lamb’s neck. The camera pans to the lamb’s eye, which a human hand is about to close. After some more shots of meat cutting and internal organs, we see a right hand holding a left hand, into which a nail is hammered. A still shot of barren trees in winter fades from a gray texture; then we see two shots of a fence around a brick building.

Interspersed between shots of what appear to be dead people (a man and a woman) in a morgue, we see a young boy under white sheets, lying on his back with his hands on his sides. This is a very unnatural sleeping position — we are lead to believe he is dead too. The boy is eventually woken up by the sound of a telephone ringing, after a disturbing shot of the dead woman’s open eyes. Unable to fall back to sleep, the boy opens Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time,[4] but a blurred image on a huge screen in the room catches his attention. As he reaches out to touch the screen, the image comes slowly into focus, morphing back and forth between the faces of Alma and Elisabet. The film’s opening credits follow, divided by very short shots of a monk burning in Vietnam, someone’s lips, water, stones, trees, another few frames from the old comedy, and the faces of the boy, Alma, and Elisabet. After this demoralizingly obscure beginning, we plunge into the relatively understandable world of the upper layer.

So what does this all mean? It is dangerously easy to assume that the boy is Elisabet’s son. A less obvious way to connect him to the story is to say that he is the film’s audience. He exists in the lower layer, and the entire upper layer is what he sees on screen. The bracket opened by the beginning montage is closed in the final sequence, when the boy’s screen turns white and the film in the projector comes to an end.

Midway through the movie, after Elisabet hurts her foot on the shard of glass, the film seems to crack and burn, allowing for another glimpse of the lower layer. We hear some words in reverse (they are the doctor’s words: “Sister Alma, what’s your first impression?”). After some very short shots of the devil and the skeleton from the same old film, we see the nail being hammered into the hand again, this time accompanied by a howl of pain. Through an extreme closeup of a human eye (another device symbolizing the film’s audience), the upper layer takes over again. But after this interference from the unintelligible, the foreground story is corrupted and starts making less and less sense.

Through its strangeness, the lower layer is a tribute to surrealism. Bergman weaves random images together in the same way the dreaming brain does, completely free of the burden of causality. The beginning montage is reminiscent of the 1928 surrealist film An Andalusian Dog[5], in which the only rule was that “no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.”[ref2] Bergman’s first rule is to be entertaining[ref3], and what better entertainment is there than putting our mind to work on an unsolvable puzzle?

Persona is not just a film. It is a canvas containing the film, its audience, and Bergman’s meditation on the film and the audience. This was the director’s ambition from the start — he even wanted to call the film Cinematography. Alma’s story of self-acceptance (the upper layer) is not just being shown, but watched and analyzed by the boy (on the lower layer). Persona is thus a metafilm, a film that contains and discusses itself, a kind of ars poetica[6].

Can we claim that by dividing the film into layers, we have unearthed its enigma? Only after an objective look at our starting axioms. Is Elisabet really Alma’s dark side? Is the boy really the audience of the film? All we know is that these two assumptions have led to a meaningful interpretation. But given the infinite unexplored pathways of the human mind, a different starting point could lead to an equally viable solution. Herein lies Bergman’s genius in its utmost splendor — he has created a labyrinth with more than one exit.

Footnotes:

[1] At this point in the movie, the characters change locations and clothes randomly. This lack of continuity indicates that the upper layer is cracking, and the unintelligible lower one is seeping through.

[2] This is one of Bergman’s clever inside jokes. In the countdown, this picture replaces the number between 7 and 5. In Swedish, the word sex stands for both the noun sex and the numeral six.

[3] These are shots from one of Bergman’s earliest movies, Fängelse (1949), known under the translated titles of Prison and Devil’s Wanton.[ref1]

[4] A novel on the theme of not fitting into society.

[5] There are, in fact, at least four hints suggesting that the opening sequence in Persona quotes An Andalusian Dog. Both Bergman and the writers of Andalusian (Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí) took inspiration from dreams. The cutting of the lamb’s throat in Persona parallels the slashing of a woman’s eyelid in Andalusian. In both movies, a woman’s breasts are being pressed/stroked through her clothes. In Persona, a nail is hammered through the center of a palm; in Andalusian, ants emerge from a hole in the center of a palm.

[6] Poetry about the art of poetry.

[ref1] Michaels, Lloyd (2000). Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521656982.

[ref2] Buñuel, Luis (1983). My Last Sigh, Abigail Israel (trans.), New York: Knopf. ISBN 0394528549.

[ref3] Bergman, Ingmar (1981). Film & Dreams, Petrić Vlada (contrib.), Redgrave Pub. Co., ISBN 0913178616.

I wrote the above text for my English class one year ago. The images I added today. I had first seen Persona when I was in high school, and the only things I got out of it then were a certain bodily reaction around minute 29, and a big “WTF?” by the end. So writing a paper about it turned out to be interesting.

I took the DVD from the library and looked very closely at the opening montage. In 1966, there was no way to pause or rewind. You went to “the movies,” sat in a dark room, and waited for the noisy projector to click into life. If you wanted to see a scene again, you had to wait until the next showing. And yet, Persona‘s opening begs to be watched frame by frame.

Another point of interest is the reversed sound in the scene where the film cracks and burns. Re-reversing the sound with an audio editing application, we hear the same words the doctor says near the film’s beginning: “Sister Alma, what’s your first impression?”

More insights emerged when I later read the screenplay of Persona. This early version of Bergman’s ideas differs substantially from the final movie. The scene where Elisabet’s husband visits the summer house and interacts with Alma — is it a dream or not? Here is what the screenplay has to say:

After a few hours of heavy sleep, she [Alma] is awakened by a feeling of paralysis — a stiffness seeking its way in towards her lungs and groping at her heart. The fog rolls in through the open window and the room floats in a grey half-light. She succeeds in raising her hand to the bedside lamp — but no light comes. (p82)

This seems to support the dream hypothesis, since flipping a light switch in a dream often leaves the lighting unchanged. (The dreaming brain creates its own optimum lighting conditions.)

There are other interesting moments in the screenplay that didn’t make the final cut. During her husband’s visit, Elisabet turns to the spectators “speaking with a rough, almost raucous voice”:

Words like emptiness, loneliness, strangeness, pain and helplessness have lost their meaning.

Actors are taught never to look directly at the camera, because that creates a very unsettling feeling. When the invisible protective barrier of the screen breaks, we are no longer detached observers. In John Lahr’s profile of Bergman in The New Yorker, the director describes anxiety as “my life’s most faithful companion … placed in the very center of my identity — my demon and my friend spurring me on.” No wonder he wants to give us some of that.

About the film breaking incident, Bergman says:

At this point the projector should stop. The film, happily, would break, or someone lower the curtain by mistake; or perhaps there could be a short circuit, so that all the lights in the cinema went out. Only this is not how it is. I think the shadows would continue their game, even if some happy interruption cut short our discomfort. Perhaps they no longer need the assistance of the apparatus, the projector, the film, or the sound track. They reach out towards our senses, deep inside the retina, or into the finest recesses of the ear. Is this the case? Or do I simply imagine these shadows possess a power, that their rage survives without the help of the picture frames, this abominably accurate march of twenty-four pictures a second, twenty-seven metres a minute. (p93)

On the same note, the director writes:

The shadows run over the white wall. Magic, of course. But unusually sober and merciless magic. Nothing can be changed, undone. It all thunders forth again and again, always with the same cold, immutable willingness. Put a red glass in front of a lens, the shadows turn red — but what does it help? Load the film upside-down or back-to-front, the result will not be very different. There is only one radical change. Turn off the switch, extinguish the hissing arc, rewind the film, put it back in its case and forget it. (p42)

Before we do that though: Did you notice how collage makes films like Persona and Amélie interesting? Also, do you know what it is that Elisabet tears from the book at 50:10?

Thinkpad keyboards are the best laptop keyboards I’ve seen. The function keys are placed in groups of four, with gaps, like on a full-size keyboard. The arrow keys are located lower than the rest of the keys, for easy tactile identification. And best of all, the Insert, Delete, Home, End, and Page Up/Down keys are grouped in the familiar 2×3 box pattern one would expect to see on a desktop keyboard.

The only thing I’m missing is a right Windows key (technically a Super key). A lot of handy Amarok shortcuts use the Win key, such as Win+O for displaying the OSD, or Win+P for firing up the playlist. I’ve also set Win+Plus and Win+Minus to change the volume. With only a left Win key, all of the above-mentioned shortcuts require two hands. So what can I do?

I can remap the “back” key (XF86Back) located above the left arrow key to act as a right Win key. (The back key itself is not that useful — in most sensible applications, one can use Backspace for that purpose.)

First, I open up xev and press the key to find its keycode: 166. Then I use xmodmap to test the changes live:

xmodmap -e “keycode 166 = Super_R”

Finally, I save the setting in my ~/.Xmodmap:

keycode 166 = Super_R

Mission accomplished.

I first stumbled upon Ray Kurzweil’s website some years ago. It immediately turned me off with words like “Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever.” It sounded like one of those “How to be happy and get everything you want” books, which rarely accomplish anything but big bucks for the author, and disappointment for the suckers who buy them.

I’ve read The Singularity Is Near now, and my opinion about the book is mixed. I don’t remember what made me look it up in the first place — but I certainly don’t regret reading it.

Kurzweil argues that evolution is an exponential process, and that each new paradigm opens the door towards a faster development of the next one. As evidence, he shows logarithmic plots such as this:

If this were plotted linearly, most of the “interesting” events (like Homo Sapiens, cities, and the Internet) would be grouped together in a small chunk of recent time, compared to the time it took for life before that to evolve.

For Kurzweil, slow biological evolution is not the end of things. Technological evolution, as seen today, is following the same pattern of exponential growth, and as one paradigm reaches the point where it can no longer be improved (vacuum tubes), a new one emerges to provide cheaper, faster, smaller, safer, and more energy-efficient solutions (transistors). The author lists countless examples of the same sort, and expresses optimism that no Moore’s Law will stop us, since we will always come up with something new and better. (This applies not only to computer hardware, but also to the resolution of brain scanning, the speed/cost of genome sequencing, and so on.)

The author goes on to approximate the computational capacity of the human brain, and by extrapolating current trends, he says machines will reach that point some time in the 2020s or 30s. Kurzweil believes that there is nothing magical about the human mind, no “divine spirit,” and nothing stopping us from creating machine brains some day. He further postulates that biological intelligence will merge with machine intelligence, and that humankind will thus transcend biology. Once we learn how to build machines that emulate human intelligence, they will be no less “human” than a biological human, he states.

The Singularity, then, is the point on the exponential curve beyond which growth appears to be almost vertical. In other words, things will change at rates unimaginable to our current selves. Machines will improve themselves and the improved machines will in turn improve themselves and so on. Wait and see :)

The book goes on by analyzing three parallel “revolutions” that are happening right now, shaping the course of science and technology, and opening the way for the Singularity in the following decades. They are genetics, nanotechnology, and strong (human-level) artificial intelligence. Here are some points that I thought were interesting:

For the most part, I think Kurzweil’s points are valid. I have some qualms about his approach, which I will detail below, but for now I highly recommend the book. It is about 500 pages, with an additional 100 pages of notes. Most of the notes are references to other works, and they helped convince me that Kurzweil is not just some crazy guy who wants to upload his brain and live forever. Brilliant minds such as Richard Feynman, John von Neumann, and countless others whose names didn’t jump out at me, have also grasped the concepts of exponentially accelerating change, and the promise of genetics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.

The book made me aware that certain technologies were more real than I thought, and it helped me see the future in a different light. I am more glad than ever that I live today, and not in some other century. I think our generation is going to see some pretty amazing things in the decades to come.

Now for the criticism:

What do you think? Is the Singularity the dream of a maniac or the destiny of the Universe? Is the world moving in the right direction or is it tumbling down to Hell? Is there a point in trying to predict and make sense of our future?

“Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.” (Marvin Minsky)

Since the dawn of self-reflection, I have been an inert gas, Other atoms’ interactions mocking me, as I flew past. Every time I saw two bonding, I would quickly look away, My full outer shell reminding, solitude is here to stay.

Looking at those lucky ions, never did I see the facts, Never did I grasp the science, one who gives, and one who takes. Can the atoms both be merry if their dipole is so charged? Or do their nuclei carry hearts that shattered into shards?

I have circled a few atoms, now that I can speak their tongue: Those with brains looked unimpressive; those with good looks sounded dumb. Those with both were cold and distant, their electrons long since shared, Atoms much stronger than this one waiting for their chance with her.

Now you beckon me with riddles, and all of this is so new — Our polarity is brittle, and I don’t know what to do. But regardless of what happens, Heisenberg remains unkind: One of two forever present: thirst of flesh, and thirst of mind.

Păşind spre mine ai căzut; Eram pe ceruri diferite. (Nu ştiam, a fost vina mea.)

Tăcerea S-a spart în aşchii ascuţite Şi te-ai întors (Nu meritam.)

Mai târziu am aflat Că un da fără ecou Doare mai mult decât un nu.

Şi aşa am rămas Îngeri în ceruri paralele, Comunicând prin nori, Ne vom atinge niciodată.

Pe cer plutesc vise ca frunze albastre. În aer dansează, se împletesc, Devin prea grele şi cad. Curg pe ferestre ca tăceri sărate, Dau de pământ şi fac rădăcini Care foşnesc cu frustrări verzi abia ascunse, Reflectate în două scântei care au uitat să doară, Şi au durut să se uite Cum de pe cer cad visele ca frunzele.

Today I saw a crow on a white birch. The tree had no leaves, and the sun fell on its top branches. I wondered if crows can see colors and if they feel the warmth of the sun.

Today I felt cold and I digged in my closet for a sweater. I looked at the thermometer and saw summer pack its things and leave. I dreamed about living in a place where it is always warm and cloudy.

Today I saw a high school couple kissing. They held each other like they were the most precious, fragile thing. I smiled and turned away and hoped they were happy.

Today I watched a maple samara dance in the wind. It soared and swirled for minutes, as if the life it carried inside had somehow found a way to express its joy.

Today I saw a black crow on a white birch. The tree was dead, bereft of leaves. The sun fell on its top branches, suspending the morning up high where I couldn’t reach it. I wondered if crows ever have nightmares in which they are falling and they can’t  move their wings.

Today I felt cold and I remembered fear. I looked at the thermometer and saw summer betray me. I told myself that when the sun is tired, it lets the cold burn us instead.

Today I saw a high school couple kissing. Checkered tights and a buzz cut were imitating what they thought they should be feeling. I smirked and turned away and wondered why some people even bother.

Today I watched a maple samara swirl madly in the wind, and I wondered if the seed inside felt nausea.