Hack hack cough =_=

[petronia]

Am going to clinic tomorrow morning. Maybe a doctor will be kind enough to prescribe me something to help with this problem of not being able to sleep (three days now! quite lightheaded) due to my own respiratory system attempting to drown me when I lie on my back. Coughing hurts too, because I pulled a muscle along my ribs while hacking away. =_= Same old same old.

Otherwise it was a beautiful, sunny spring day, so I refused on principle to trudge home after work even if I'm sick. Had a dish of linguini in proscuitto and cream sauce on Saint Denis instead, after puttering for a while in the used bookstores. Bought a collection of Li Qingzhao's poems translated into French, and a monograph on the Egyptian Book of the Dead (the papyrus of Ani) that I was looking at in the museum the other week. The Book gives the dead knowledge for their journey, but itself is composed of words that are signs, an excess of fraught meaning. When the "snake" hieroglyph is written it's mutilated for safety: headless, body cleaven, or pierced with blades. Birds are declawed, wasps deprived of stingers.

In Chinese ci are titled only after the melody. The translation is more precise about it.

Elle se lève de la balançoire
Sur l'air: Une touche d'écarlate sur les lèvres

Elle se lève de la balançoire
Et languissante elle ploie
ses mains délicates.
Les fleurs graciles s'inclinent
sous la rosée dense.
Sur sa robe légère
quelques gouttes de sueur.

A l'arrivée d'un étranger
au fond du jardin,
En bas de soie,
les épingles d'or
glissant de ses cheveux,
Timide elle s'enfuit.
Mais à la porte elle s'arrête
et tourne la tête
Comme pour respirer
les prunes vertes.

--Li Qingzhao

Going by his photos, Ced spent two weeks eating mostly convenience-store onigiri. >_> Meanwhile I find I have no one to go bistro-hopping with.

Comments

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

-_- I keep falling into limerick at tête/arrête.

Hello, I've just friended you. I hope you recover because it's twice as much of a shame if you're sick when the weather is nice.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Hehe, actually I do as well. XD

I saw and friended you back before I got this comment, even! Yeah, this cold is a serious drag.

[fable.livejournal.com]

Sabina, that sounds awful. >_> Hope the doctor's able to help, and that you feel better soon.

[smurfmatic.livejournal.com]

I can still go about posting music from the other end of the world. You probably had the YUKI already. Well, today I went to Shibuya HMV (same where I bought your TMR last time) to get a new release by Supercar (they released two at the same time, one called "A" for singles, the other, "B" are cleverly B-sides (which I got - because it was two albums - but only one of the two, it was 4000 yens, and the good exchange rate isn't a reason - I do feel the need to give back to the J music industry). And then something by a certain Kaela Kimura. Didn't google her out yet, but her songs seem connected to an ongoing Vodafone promotion. Check it out for me, will ya? I'll rip em when I get to HK. Gotta fit my luggage. Leaving tomorrow evening. Tomorrow morning, I'm going for a last stalk in the sakuras, which are at their peak the exact day I leave the country. >_> Shinjuku Goen, which was closed at friggin' 4:30PM when I tried going there today...

-Ced

[smurfmatic.livejournal.com]

I had one of the most severe allergic reactions to pollen of my life today, as I was train-ing to Mitaka and walking to the Ghibli Museum.

Checkz out ze videos of today/tonight. We went on the riverfront near Iidabashi, where my hosts' live, and there's a university, and sakuras... ... Says it all. Check it out. :D

-Ced

[wish959.livejournal.com]

Geeze, i hope you feel better soon! i spent all my time in Orlando and since coming back also coughing constantly, so i have an idea as to how you feel... I hope that doctor can help you!

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

This sounds very like what I had just after new year's and it was miserable. Hope your local itinerant drug pusher fixes you up with something good.

[dipping_sauce]

Oh, suck :(

You wanna go to the calzone place when you feel better?

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

Get well soon! *sends you orange tea with honey from Covent Garden teahouse*

The poem is lovely, even for someone with little French and no Chinese. Chinese poems translated into French are like those desserts in upscale Asian restaurants: green tea gateaux encased in shells of rose-flavored chocolate, or something like.

[sargraf.livejournal.com]

*hugs Sabrina*

I hope you're feeling a little better today. Those kinds of colds take forever to get over. Take care, okay? We miss you. ^^

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I find Chinese translates better into French, somehow. I'm not sure if it's to do with the structure of the language or not.

Am on antibiotics, so improving. ^_^