Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Flight of the Wild Geese

周末和朋友聊起《野鹅敢死队》(The Wild Geese)来,找到这张照片和插曲《Flight of the Wild Geese》。《音频下载

There is so much to be done - Tell me what more, what more, can we do? 这一句让人热血沸腾,想马上就做点什么。

Flight of the Wild Geese
- by Joan Armatrading

Sad are the eyes, yet no tears.
The flight of the wild geese brings a new hope - rescue from all this.
Old friends, and those that we've found.

What chance, to make it last?
When there's fighting all around, and reason just ups and disappears.
Time is running out.
There is so much to be done - Tell me what more, what more, can we do?

There are promises made, plans firmly laid.
Now madness prevails, lives will be ended!
What more - What more - What more can we do?

What chance, to make it last?
What more, can we do
?

Friday, February 24, 2006

大学时的钢笔画(之七)


大学寝室,画里是复印的Sophie Marceau的照片,当时墙上是个别的什么美女。

Sophie Marceau的电影其实只喜欢一个-“La Boum”,大学时看的,现在有两张DVD。很不喜欢“Beyond the Clouds”,极其讨厌Michelangelo Antonioni和他的电影,当然,可能是我错了。

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Useful Lies

The art is a lie that leads us to the truth.
The diagram is a lie that leads us to the truth.
The model is a lie that leads us to the truth.
- Picasso and Albatross

Saturday, February 18, 2006

渡口

由《前赤壁赋》想到彼埃尔和安德烈在渡口的对话,那是《战争与和平》里最优美的篇章之一。彼埃尔所转述的赫德,在我看来,和苏轼是相似的;不同的是,苏轼和大多数中国人一样,并没有那个“上帝”的概念。

夕阳、渡口、河、朋友、争论,青春洋溢,如在眼前。可是套用安德烈的话:使我信服的不是这个,不是托尔斯泰在这里想说的道理,而是他所描述的生命本身。

王国维感叹说:“哲学上之说,大都可爱者不可信,可信者不可爱。”信夫!


War and Peace, Book 5, Chapter XII

Prince Andrey listened to Pierre's words in silence. Several times he did not catch words from the noise of the wheels, and he asked Pierre to repeat what he had missed. From the peculiar light that glowed in Prince Andrey's eyes, and from his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain, that Prince Andrey would not interrupt him nor laugh at what he said.

They reached a river that had overflowed its banks, and had to cross it by a ferry. While the coach and horses waited they crossed on the ferry. Prince Andrey with his elbow on the rail gazed mutely over the stretch of water shining in the setting sun.

“Well, what do you think about it?” asked Pierre. “Why are you silent?”

“What do I think? I have heard what you say. That's all right,” said Prince Andrey. “But you say, enter into our brotherhood, and we will show you the object of life and the destination of man, and the laws that govern the universe. But who are we? —Men? How do you know it all? Why is it I alone don't see what you see? You see on earth the dominion of good and truth, but I don't see it.”

Pierre interrupted him. “Do you believe in a future life?” he asked.

“In a future life?” repeated Prince Andrey.

But Pierre did not give him time to answer, and took this repetition as a negative reply, the more readily as he knew Prince Andrey's atheistic views in the past. “You say that you can't see the dominion of good and truth on the earth. I have not seen it either, and it cannot be seen if one looks upon our life as the end of everything. On earth, this earth here” (Pierre pointed to the open country), “there is no truth—all is deception and wickedness. But in the world, the whole world, there is a dominion of truth, and we are now the children of earth, but eternally the children of the whole universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am a part of that vast, harmonious whole? Don't I feel that in that vast, innumerable multitude of beings, in which is made manifest the Godhead, the higher power—what you choose to call it—I constitute one grain, one step upward from lower beings to higher ones? If I see, see clearly that ladder that rises up from the vegetable to man, why should I suppose that ladder breaks off with me and does not go on further and further? I feel that I cannot disappear as nothing does disappear in the universe, that indeed I always shall be and always have been. I feel that beside me, above me, there are spirits, and that in their world there is truth.”

“Yes, that's Herder's theory,” said Prince Andrey. “But it's not that, my dear boy, convinces me; but life and death are what have convinced me. What convinces me is seeing a creature dear to me, and bound up with me, to whom one has done wrong, and hoped to make it right” (Prince Andrey's voice shook and he turned away), “and all at once that creature suffers, is in agony, and ceases to be… What for? It cannot be that there is no answer! And I believe there is… That's what convinces, that's what has convinced me,” said Prince Andrey.

“Just so, just so,” said Pierre; “isn't that the very thing I'm saying?”
“No. I only say that one is convinced of the necessity of a future life, not by argument, but when one goes hand-in-hand with some one, and all at once that some one slips away yonder into nowhere, and you are left facing that abyss and looking down into it. And I have looked into it …”

“Well, that's it then! You know there is a yonder and there is some one. Yonder is the future life; Some One is God.”

Prince Andrey did not answer. The coach and horses had long been taken across to the other bank, and had been put back into the shafts, and the sun had half sunk below the horizon, and the frost of evening was starring the pools at the fording-place; but Pierre and Andrey, to the astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood in the ferry and were still talking.

“If there is God and there is a future life, then there is truth and there is goodness; and the highest happiness of man consists in striving for their attainment. We must live, we must love, we must believe,” said Pierre, “that we are not only living to-day on this clod of earth, but have lived and will live for ever there in everything” (he pointed to the sky). Prince Andrey stood with his elbow on the rail of the ferry, and as he listened to Pierre he kept his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the sun on the bluish stretch of water. Pierre ceased speaking. There was perfect stillness. The ferry had long since come to a standstill, and only the eddies of the current flapped with a faint sound on the bottom of the ferryboat. It seemed to Prince Andrey that the lapping of the water kept up a refrain to Pierre's words: “It's the truth, believe it.”

Prince Andrey sighed, and with a radiant, childlike, tender look in his eyes glanced at the face of Pierre—flushed and triumphant, though still timidly conscious of his friend's superiority.

“Yes, if only it were so!” he said. “Let us go and get in, though,” added Prince Andrey, and as he got out of the ferry he looked up at the sky, to which Pierre had pointed him, and for the first time since Austerlitz he saw the lofty, eternal sky, as he had seen it lying on the field of Austerlitz, and something that had long been slumbering, something better that had been in him, suddenly awoke with a joyful, youthful feeling in his soul. That feeling vanished as soon as Prince Andrey returned again to the habitual conditions of life, but he knew that that feeling—though he knew not how to develop it—was still within him. Pierre's visit was for Prince Andrey an epoch, from which there began, though outwardly unchanged, a new life in his inner world.

Friday, February 17, 2006

大学时的钢笔画(之六)

这幅画是有关工作的,就不多说别的了。

今天和Beijing Loafer聊了会儿,他说科学不是生活的全部,我想他是对的。

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

大学时的钢笔画(之五)

背景上文字是“Windmills of Your Mind”的歌词,喜欢里面层层叠叠,连绵不绝的意象,很象是古人所谓的“连珠喻”。

读书走神时画了这串钥匙(“Keys that jingle in your pocket”),纸团上是Sting的歌,都是那时候常听的。《音频下载

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walking along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circle that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Sunday, February 12, 2006

大学时的钢笔画(之四)

这些画都是用的这瓶墨水,背景的文字出自袁枚《随园诗话》卷三·一一:

贫士诗有极妙者,如陈古渔:“雨昏陋巷灯无焰,风过贫家壁有声。”“偶闻诗累吟怀减,偏到荒年饭量加。”杨思立:“家贫留客干妻恼,身病闲游惹母愁。”朱草衣:“床烧夜每借僧榻,粮尽妻常寄母家。”徐兰圃:“可怜最是牵衣女,哭说邻家午饭香。”皆贫语也。常州赵某云:“太穷常恐人防贼,久病都疑犬亦仙”“短气莫书赊酒券,索逋先畏扣门声。”俱太贫,令人欲笑。

-古人讲究乐而不淫,哀而不伤,“太贫”是要让人笑话的。

Friday, February 10, 2006

大学时的钢笔画(之三)

罗大佑的《稻草人》

终日面对着青山
终日面对着稻麦
午后的云雀背着艳阳
那样飞 那样笑 那样歌唱

轻风吹在我身上
雨珠打在我脸上
午后的牛羊凝向远方
彩虹挂出的希望

蓝蓝的青空在上
却有着云雀与彩虹的梦
多象不知足的云雀四处飘荡
何处是我的归宿
是否在天际的那一端
奇怪着稻草的身躯如何飞翔

终日面对着青山
终日面对着稻麦
晨花 露珠 夕阳 星辰
春耕 秋收 冬藏

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

大学时的钢笔画(之二)

雨果的文字;李丹的翻译

喜欢这一段“星光照彻他的灵魂”,可老是在书里翻不出来,今天网上找到了中英文对照。 第四部原文只是“圣德尼”,中文为“卜吕梅街的儿女情和圣德尼街的英雄血”,李译真是煊赫华丽,令人心神俱旺。


Volume 4  Saint Denis
Book Fifth  The End of Which Does Not Resemble the Beginning
Chapter IV A Heart Beneath a Stone

Try to love souls, you will find them again.

I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.

第四部 卜吕梅街的儿女情和圣德尼街的英雄血
第五卷 结尾不象开头
第四章 石头下面的一颗心

应当知道爱灵魂,你日后还能找到它。

我在街头遇见过一个为爱所苦的极穷的青年。他的帽子是破旧的,衣服是磨损的,他的袖子有洞,水浸透他的鞋底,星光照彻他的灵魂。

幸福函数

精巧细致(Subtlety)和质朴健壮(Robustness)是矛盾的,做信号处理时常有这感触。一个随便什么的曲线中,哪些成分(Component)是重要的呢?什么分辨率(Resolution)是合适的呢?如何定义价值函数(Cost Function)呢?苹果和桔子的权重(Weight)该如何分配呢?都是些难题啊。

工程里或许还稍简单些,再牵扯到人呢?人的幸福函数又是什么呢?“生亦何欢,死亦何苦”,那么这个函数并不与生死完全相关了;“终生的所有也不惜换取刹那阴阳的交流”,说明和时间之间是非线性关系了;“快乐即幸福”,有重复定义之嫌,何况快乐又如何量化呢?“幸福就是在痛苦中解脱”,-和“黑就是不白”是一个逻辑啊;“幸福是给予”,都以“给予”来逃避的话又怎么办呢……

看厌了性灵文章,常觉其离世事太远,-简直没有心肝;可看多了激昂文字,也本能的警惕,以至于厌恶。

最近重读了几篇散文和小说,零零碎碎发了这些感慨。