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If I was a graph theorist, a perfect graph theorist, how would you know it was really me?
Okay, kiddies, post changes tack right now, Tourmaline is laughing and happier, and, however will tell the story of the songs that she used to hold the cold gray rain down to a drizzle while working this morning. And before I forget --- if any reader is wondering whether this was in any way their fault: it's not, can't blame you completely. ( The more cheerful Tourmaline tone you know and love )
Shufutinsky's "Stray Summer" would have helped if I knew any words beyond the refrain (Google.ru , go forth and prosper!) but I stuck for a while with Lubé's "Come on, play on" (that is the best way I can think of to translate "А ну давай, наяривай" as the slang descents into places where Irene's vocabulary flash cards dare not follow.)
I have parted with springtime youth
But the giddiness of spring remains
I wander, cheerful and sinful
On our country's boundless plains.
I have said my farewell to love's trembling
But merriment I haven't drained all through...
On the great roadless mud
I sing, and I play, for you.
Well come on, play on, seven-stringed guitar,
Why sit and mourn when night is full of moonlight and of stars?
Well, pour another, do not skimp, drinking's a delicate thing ---
Well, go on, go on, play on, let the guitar ring!
They may tell more than this about me
They may gossip far more than this share:
That I drank like a slob, did crazy antics,
And walked lordlike, my nose in the air...
Give me Russian songs, I ask; for them
I will walk barefoot through half this land...
I have parted with the youth of springtime
But spring giddiness I still understand.
Well come on, play on, seven-stringed guitar,
Why sit and mourn when night is full of moonlight and of stars?
Well, pour another, do not skimp, drinking's a delicate thing ---
Well, go on, go on, play on, let the guitar ring!
Hmm, this translation is still rough, but whatever (it feels like a translation, rather than what I aim for in all my efforts, like something an English poet might write, with stolen ideas). After I'm done writing this particular story, I'll head over to YouTube and see if there's a video of that song. (It will require hooking my speakers back up, first, which is why my Facebook status informs the civilized world I am translating songs I cannot hear.)
It seems like a logical choice of song to keep depression at bay; there's the reminders of the giddiness of spring, the question of why sit and mourn, and all that. But no, Tourmaline's little monsters need reverse psychology; they need to be fed until they fall into a diabetic coma.
I went to take out the garbage, hoping that the fresh air would do something for them darned serotonin and dopamine levels (sugar didn't help, in the amounts I could afford; I tried.) After pitching the great black bag over into the Dumpster, I stood and watched as two geese flew above, calling. "Ah, you got lost from the flock, didn't you?" I smiled at them, always compelled to talk to animals --- and then the rest of the V flew in, twenty geese or so, and my strays were not strays but forerunners (there is a metaphorical motif moral to this. Somewhere.)
And a girl in an apron stood in the yard, amid green and yellow Manitoba maple leaves, and sang that song that loyal readers of this blog, all 0.12 of you, know had changed her life before:
What is autumn? It is the sky
Weeping sky beneath our feet
In the puddles birds and clouds
Come apart and fly.
Autumn, at long last we meet.
In the puddles birds and clouds
Come apart and fly.
Autumn, at long last we meet.
Autumn, in the sky
Ships burning stand
Autumn, wish I'd
Fly far from land
Yonder, where sorrows
Drown in the sea
Autumn, dark faraway!
What is autumn? It is the stones,
Faith over the blackening Neva
Of the most important things autumn again reminds our souls
Autumn, I am restless now once more.
Of the most important things autumn again reminds our souls
Autumn, I am restless now once more.
Autumn, in the sky
Ships burning stand
Autumn, wish I'd
Fly far from land
Yonder, where sorrows
Drown in the sea
Autumn, dark faraway!
What is autumn? It is the wind
Once again it plays with broken chains
Autumn, will we crawl to, will we fly to the dawn:
What will happen to our homeland and to us?
Autumn, will we crawl to, will we fly to the answer?
Autumn, what will tomorrow bring to us?
Autumn, in the sky
Ships burning stand
Autumn, wish I'd
Fly far from land
Yonder, where sorrows
Drown in the sea
Autumn, dark faraway!
In flocks the city
Melts in the gloom
Autumn, what have
I known of you?
How long will they tear,
The leaves burning bright?
Autumn is eternally right.
Yes. Shevchuk is more brilliant than I will ever be, but strangely, although this song helped, mine gods did it help, it was my own whining, later, that got me to snap out of it.
Or maybe it was all motivation to at last translate this song fully?
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