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Tuesday 3 March 2015

Where Is the House of the Friend?

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..and another photo of me! Not taken by me, still pretty handsome! #fly #crow #three #sepehri: image via Black Crow @FartingCrow, 12 January 2015
 
In the false-dawn twilight
a rider enquired of a passer-by:
Where is the house of my friend?
The sky paused
The passer-by held a branch of light
which brushed the dark sand

He pointed to an aspen:
before you reach that tree
turn off at the garden path
that leads into a space more green
than any god could dream
and go down that path
as far as the wings of honesty can reach

Continue beyond the end
of the first part of your life
and then turn again
take two steps
toward a flower that grows untended
alone
at the base of a fountain
whence springs the second part of your life
stop and you will be swallowed up
by fear transparent as water

In the closeness of the space that flows
something rustles
in one of the surrounding pines
a child has climbed
to pluck a young bird
from a nest made of light
and you call out to that child

Where is the house of my friend?


Where Is the House of My Friend? (After Sohrab Sepehri): TC, 2009/2015


image

stiil from Where Is the Friend's House, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1987

Sohrab Sepehri: Neshâni (Address)

still from Where Is the Friend's House, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1987 (image via Poemas del Rio Wang, 28 December 2009)

نشانی

خانه دوست کجاست؟ در فلق بود که پرسید سوار

آسمان مکثی کرد
رهگذر شاخه نوری که به لب داشت به تاریکی شنها بخشید
و به انگشت نشان داد سپیداری و گفت:
نرسیده به درخت
کوچه باغی است که از خواب خدا سبز تر است
و در آن عشق به اندازه پرهای صداقت آبی است
می روی تا ته آن کوچه که از پشت بلوغ، سر به در می آرد
پس به سمت گل تنهایی می پیچی
دو قدم مانده به گل
پای فواره جاوید اساطیر زمان می مانی
و تو را ترسی شفاف فرا می گیرد
در صمیمیت سیال فضا، خش خشی می شنوی
کودکی می بینی
رفته از کاج بلندی بالا، جوجه بردارد از لانه نور
و از او می پرسی خانه دوست کجاست؟


Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980): Neshâni (Address): text via Poemas del Rio Wang, 28 December 2009


stlil from Where Is the Friend's House, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1987


Where Is the Friend's Home: Abbas Kiarostami, 1987 (video wrapper)

Tomorrow an entire generation will learn who Israel’s PM @netanyahu is… the man who won't allow #Iran to go nuclear !: image via Defund NPR PBS & NEA @Jarjarbug, 2 March 2015


We'll do okay (ridiculous): image via Sohrab Sepehri 3 @Sohrabsepehri3, 26 February 2015


"What woman flower: @san3tm"": image via Sohrab Sepehri 3 @Sohrabsepehri3, 23 December 2014


"feransesz: Undoubtedly, the discovery of a river to the sea is unlikely" he might be homeless but still manages cartoons: image via Sohrab Sepehri 3 @Sohrabsepehri3, 4 December 2014

.. and he was a good man, a great painter, and an amazing poet #SohrabSepehri: image [Sohrab Sepehri, 1928-1980, self-portrait] via Mostafa Modirrousta, 6 October 2014


Bir bekleyiş sallanmadaydı Bir bakış yolda kalmıştı ve bir ses yalnızlıkta ağlıyordu #SohrabSepehri: image [Sohrab Sepehri, 1928-1980] via Ahmed Bozkurt @LePoetTravaille, 3 January 2014

Neden İran sineması? #Kiarostami: image [from Close-Up, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990] via Zeynep Cavusoglu @zepcavusoglu, 15 March 20133



Still from Close-Up [1990], dir. Abbas Kiarostami: image via Bombastic Scholastic @BombasticScholastic, 3 February 2015


Still from Close-Up [1990], dir. Abbas Kiarostami: image via Bombastic Scholastic @BombasticScholastic, 3 February 2015


Still from Close-Up [1990], dir. Abbas Kiarostami: image via Bombastic Scholastic @BombasticScholastic, 3 February 2015

Neden İran sineması? #Kiarostami: image Close up #Iran #kiarostami: image [from Close-Up, 1990] via Stella Morgana @stellamorgana, 16 November 2013

Sohrab Sepehri'nin 21 adet şiiri internette ilk kez okuyucuyla buluşuyor: #sohrabsepehri: image [Sohrab Sepehri, 1928-1980] via Nerduban @NerdubanCom, 16 August 2014

El viento nos llevará Forough Farrokhzad #Poetuit #Cine #Kiarostami: image [from The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999] via Jorge Fuentes  @jjorgefuentes, 26 December 2013

Embedded image permalink

Le parole che racchiudono gli ultimi mesi della mia vita. Fotogramma di #Kiarostami, Il vento ci porterà: image [from The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999] via Tina Raissi @Laneskij, 27 August 2013

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"Le vent nous emportera" d'Abbas #Kiarostami: un hymne à la vie et aux régions septentrionales d'#Iran: image [from The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999] via Voyages et cinéma @routardcine, 18 July 2014
 

#Kiarostami,s "The Wind Will Carry Us" visually such a beautiful film #iranian #cinema: image [from The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999] via Philip Bolton@philipdocom,12 February 2013

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Avec un sens incroyable de la couleur,
#Kiarostami exalte la beauté naturelle du #Kurdistan: "Le vent nous emportera": image [from The Wind Will Carry Us, 1999] via Voyages et cinéma @routardcine, 25 July 2014


Dede kapıyı aç! #Hamsarayan #Koro (#KisaFilm) #Abbas Kiarostami (1982): image [from Hamasarayan / The Chorus, 1982] via Mahmut Islam @mahmutislam, 24 September 2013
 

La banlieue de Téhéran capitale d'un pays très riche en Pétrole! Merci #Kiarostami & #Farhadi pour vos beaux films!: image via Dadsetan Djavad @Dadsetan, 9 April 2014


You can sympathize, understand, show compassion. But feel my pain? No. #Kiarostami #TasteofCherry: image [from Taste of Cherry, 1997] via Alma Krillic @ AlmaKrillic, 2 August 2014



If I told you, ... you wouldn't understand. #Kiarostami #TasteofCherry: image [from Taste of Cherry, 1997] via Alma Krillic @ AlmaKrillic, 2 August 2014


Et La Vie Continue... (Va Zendegi edame darad, 1992) Abbas Kiarostami #Kiarostami: image [from And Life Goes On / Life, and Nothing More, 1991] via Xacobo Martínez @Iacobus_81, 9 August 2014


Untitled, 1978, Abbas Kiarostami © 2003, from a series of 32 photographs, 122 x 93 cm.#Fotografía #Cine #Kiarostami:
image via Xacobo Martínez @Iacobus_81, 9 August 2014



New York, US. A worker cleans the snow from the pavement in Midtown Manhattan as snow falls again in the city: photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via The Guardian, 2 March 2015

You see that, Sara? Just like Sheldon and Shmuley promised! Ticker tape blizzard on the limo ride to AIPAC already!? You called it, babe! And all for us! Plus the hotel bottle deposits!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

lovely images...!

Mose23 said...

Always makes me chuckle - Bibi harping on about nuclear capabilities.

You will be swallowed up/ by fear transparent as water - I think I know the taste of that.

Every word of the poem a refusal of that dull brute will to certainty.

You make me want to go back to Kiarostami's films. Haven't seen anything by him in an age.

TC said...

And you know it's supposed to be a secret that Bibi has plenty of nuclear capability of his own, instantly at his disposal -- a Los Alamos technician was fired for saying so, but did anybody ever have doubts?

The casual disrespect he and his team on the ground bestowed upon, in particular, Obama and Susan Rice -- odd coincidence, both schwarzes, and you know those apartheid believers are famously colour blind -- must qualify the Beebster as the rudest guest ever.

When his team and the Christian right are singing the same song, no one dare utter a peep, because, we're meant to know, names are being taken.

Not that art matters overmuch in such a world, but if it's creative capabilities that were to define power, the cinema of Iran would qualify it as a superpower.

In reality, meanwhile, the dogged and resolute Israeli approach to dealing with people who make you nervous -- that is, eliminate them altogether -- which has been seen with Gaza as well as Iran, sets one to thinking of how that strategy has worked in the past.

Having a whole people hate you, and having their children hate you, and their children's children, can't be a restful thing, so that the leap of purpose from merely resenting an opponent to entirely obliterating them becomes, by a strange logic, inevitable -- and how better effect the deed than have somebody else not only finance it but carry it out, under the aegis of Operation Running Sore, or whatever name is picked this time.

TC said...

By the by, is it just me, or does Sabzian, the non-actor whose haunting performance in Close-Up is so real it's hardly a performance at all, not bear a striking resemblance to the Sohrab Sepehri we have seen in photographs??

That gaunt, grave, suffering face, old beyond its years.

(Sepehri died at 51, of leukemia.)