စိတ်ထဲရှိသမျှ

Shared below is the “Denken a den Freund bei Nacht” by Hermann Hesse (Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 1953), written back in September 1914. Today I'd like to dedicate this peom in honour of my friend’s memory, who passed away two years ago today, as it resonates with themes of friendship, longing, and the sorrow of parting. I have also shared the English translation by James Wright (Jonathan Cape, London, 1977), for those of us who do not speak German. Denken an den Freund bei Nacht Früh kommt in diesembösen Jahr der Herbst. Ich geh bei Nacht im Feld,

အသက်ကြီးလာလေလေ နှစ်တွေကုန်တာမြန်လေလေ ဆိုတာဟုတ်တယ်။ ၂၀၂၅ ကို welcomed ခဲ့တာ recently လို့ထင်ရပေမဲ့ နောက်လဆိုရင် half of the year is already to be gone မဟုတ်လား။ ၂၀၂၅ မှာ Russian နဲ့ German classic literature စာအုပ်ဖတ်တွေ များများဖတ်မယ်လို့ planned ထားခဲ့ပေမဲ့ အခု ၅လကျော်လာပြီ “what is to be done” စာအုပ်မပြီးသေးဘူး။ စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာကတော့ still fucked up နေတုန်း။ တချို့ရက်တွေမှာ ၄ နှစ်အရွယ် ကလေးတစ်ယောက်လို့ မကျေနပ်တာတွေကို တစ်ခုပြီးတစ်ခု ခြေဆောင့်ပြီး အော်ဟစ်၊ ပြောဆို ငိုလိုက်ချင်တယ်။ တချို့ရက်တွေတော့ fuck this, fuck that, fuck all ဆိုပြီး

Portrait Bernard Noël- 1930 où est la lettre? cette question vient d’un mourant puis il se tait tant qu’un homme vit il n’a pas besoin de compter sa langue quand un homme meurt il doit rendre son alphabet de chaque mort nous attendons le secret de la vie le dernier souffle emporte la lettre manquante elle s’envole derrière le visage elle se cache au milieu du nom

You smiled today. Not any smile but one of which I had never seen before. It was natural, filled with joy, and impossible for you to hide. Two days ago, you told me that you were looking for a specific book. I was glad that you had made reading a part of your habit. Then you told me the book was not for you. It was for your girlfriend. You wanted to buy her, Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Ye (Inwa), the Burmese version. I told you a bit about the book, how difficult it is to find, and how it was banned within the country once. You listened without questions.

Where you live dictates how you live and how you think, whether you like it or not. Your country influences your outlook, your opportunities, and even how you interact with others, including your neighbouring countries. The customs, the politics, the food, the beliefs, and the media subconsciously program your brain to focus on them whether you’re aware of it or not. The best way to change your life is, of course, to change your environment: ideally, your physical location. To be precise, to leave your country and change the people you hang out

ရောက်ရာအရပ်မှာ အလိုက်သင့် ပြောင်းလဲ နေထိုင်ခြင်းဟာ မင်္ဂလာတစ်ပါးဖြစ်တယ်လို့ဆိုကြတယ်။ ဒါကြောင့်လည်း ရောမရောက် ရောမလိုကျင့် ဆိုတဲ့ စကားပုံတွေ ဖြစ်ပေါ် လာတာ မဟုတ်လား။ အနောက်တိုင်း ယဉ်ကျေးမှုကို အထင်ကြီးတဲ့ အရှေ့တိုင်းသားတွေကို coconut လို့ ရိုင်းပျစွာ ခေါ်လေ့ရှိတယ်။ coconut ရဲ့ outer shell မာလာခွံဟာ အညိုရောင်ရှိပြီး၊ အတွင်းအသား coconut meat ဟာ အဖြူ ဖြစ်နေလို့ပါပဲ။ အနောက်တိုင်းယဉ်ကျေးမှု၊ အထူးသဖြင့် ဗြိတိလျှယဉ်ကျေးမှုနဲ့ ကြီးပြင်းပြီး၊ ဗြိတိလျှယဉ်ကျေးမှုကို အထင်ကြီးပြီး၊ ယခုအချိန်အထိ ဗြိတိလျှယဉ်ကျေးမှု အတိုင်း ပြုမူ၊ နေထိုင်၊ ကျင့်သုံးနေတဲ့

When she called me, I was sipping sweet Burmese tea and reading a book which I had bought last week, a collection of short stories set during the Japanese occupation. Outside, the dark clouds were forming, and soon the drizzle began, accompanied by a playful wind that shook the mango tree. Young buds and baby mangoes fell hard onto an old tin roof above me, making a loud rattling sound. I pressed my phone hard against my ear and tried to keep up with her over the rain and traffic noise. She was telling me about a dream,

I juggled multiple Burmese political books last year, and this was the only non-political book I read, and I loved it. The book tells the story of a teenage boy, 14 years old, growing up in 1930s Japan, and his uncle, who cares for his nephew and offers him advice—loads of it, most particularly in Japanese ways. In addition to the story, it educates the readers not only on art, science, language, history, politics, and philosophy but also teaches a powerful message on the value of thinking for oneself and standing up for others during troubled times.

As we move through our lives as human beings, all of us, young and old, encounter sadness, hardship, and pain, each in our own way. Of course, those are not things anyone ever wishes for. But it is thanks to sadness, hardship, and pain that we come to know what a free human being is. There is not limited to the pain and suffering that one feels in one’s heart. Likewise, the pain and suffering that we feel right in our bodies hold the same sort of meaning.