Ban ngày đưa rước hai thằng nhỏ, Xuân và Vương, đi tập bơi nghe toàn nhạc rap nhất là Ye và Jay. Gần đây tôi giới thiệu tụi nó nghe thêm T. I. Hai thằng nhỏ thích được đi xe riêng với ba vì ba cho mở âm lượng rất cao.

Ban đêm khi đã quá mệt mỏi sau một ngày làm việc và đưa đón bọn nhỏ, tôi chỉ muốn được những giây phút nhẹ nhàng thư giãn. Mấy hôm trước tình cờ bắt gặp album Người giữ ký ức của anh Phạm Hoài Nam và tôi đã nghe đi nghe lại khá nhiều lần.

Cách hát của anh Phạm Hoài Nam như kể chuyện bằng thơ và 8 ca khúc trong album là những câu chuyện trong ký ức với những sắc màu khác nhau qua phần hòa âm của nhạc sĩ Hồ Tiến Đạt. Album được mở đầu với ca khúc “Màu kỷ niệm” của nhạc sĩ Thái Lạc. Với tiếng đàn dương cầm êm đềm của Vũ Đặng Quốc Việt, Phạm Hoài Nam chậm rãi kể lại, “Ngày tháng đó có đôi ta bên nhau hẹn hò / Cùng nhau bước qua bao la cuộc đời / Cùng nhau sớt chia buồn vui”. Phần dạo nhạc của Cát Du qua tiếng đàn đàn vĩ cầm đem đến tâm hồn người nghe “Màu kỷ niệm” khó quên.

Ca khúc thứ hai, “Tình đầu” của nhạc sĩ Vũ Đặng Quốc Việt, được chuyển qua một màu ký ức khác với phần đệm mộc mạc guitar của Cao Hồng Hà. Phạm Hoài Nam từ từ thả hồn vào ca từ, “Cuộc đời bình yên như thế / Tình chỉ lặng im thôi mà / Đừng ngại vì ai đến đây cho ngày dài thêm”. Ca khúc thứ ba lại đổi sang một màu ký ức đầy jazz qua ca khúc “Người bạn cũ ghé thăm” của nhạc sĩ Hồ Tiến Đạt. Phạm Hoài Nam uyển chuyển nhẹ nhàng với giai điệu swing tươi tắn như một Frank Sinatra của Việt Nam. Phạm Hoài Nam hát như đang tung tăng trong vòng ký ức: “Tìm một người để nói xin chào nỗi cô đơn kia / Có nhau trong nhau vào những đêm khuya / Nỗi buồn, nụ cười, từng giấc chiêm bao / Lắng nghe những lời thở than”.

Với “Ừ thôi” của nhạc sĩ Vũ Đặng Quốc Việt, người nghe được trở về với ký ức trong âm nhạc bán cổ điển đầy khát vọng. Phạm Hoài Nam kết thúc ca khúc nhẹ như thở nhưng chan chứa: “Giờ nhớ nhau / Đành chôn nhớ thương xa vạn dặm / Buộc tiếng tơ vào mơ”. Cảm ơn Phạm Hoài Nam và những nhạc sĩ đã chia sẻ với người nghe những giây phút êm dịu, lắng đọng, và đầy ký ức.

Early wants everything in its place,
likes worrying about things,
especially being late,
which is why it can’t stop shaking your hand
and avoiding your eyes.
Late wants nothing to do with superstition or style,
will never under any circumstance apologize.
Early enjoys being interrupted, overlooked,
and decisively misunderstood.
Late fears only not being late enough
to be seen as ascendingly weird.
Both believe only in riddles, paradoxes,
and the rewards of being impervious and cursed.
Neither care for what Buddhism calls “the seat of truth,”
or any other kind of vain contentment.
As for myself, I believe it best to be sudden,
all at once, and somewhat invisible,
in never standing too close or far away from myself,
being too early or late to accept my fate,
because, essentially, only the dead
don’t care what others think,
which is why I try never to go anywhere,
seldom speak
and would dare to write
anything this inane.

Philip Schultz

Squeezed between the above
and the below, the furthermore
and the never mind, the middle
was always climbing up
and down itself, trying to expand
and disappear, surprised
by its own hunger, and rage,
its ideas as peculiar as the
countries it left behind.
Those of us who lived below
aspired to its better schools
and neighborhoods, believing
it was where God lived one day
a week, and nobody was hated
by everyone else. After all,
looking up is better than
looking down. Basically,
we believed the middle
was a vast backyard without
checkpoints, passports
and wars, just lush gardens
and bright birds singing
about trust and fidelity
to everything left behind.
Basically, we were what
was left behind. Happiness,
our black-and-white TV said,
was owning your own house
and car, syntax, and God,
never feeling abased or spent.
Essentially, it was wanting
what you believed you would
never have, the other side of
everything you didn’t understand,
darkness smothered in light,
names you could pronounce
without an accent, just once.

Philip Schultz

The Little Story is quite little, about
the size of your house and street,
fixates on bank accounts, toothpaste,
clean underwear and what’s behind
the grins of neighbors and friends.
The Big Story obsesses about what things
mean, the day after tomorrow, why something
is or isn’t extravagant enough to satisfy
its ambitions. The Little Story enjoys
being taken for granted, misunderstood,
and misplaced. Too often, it forgets what
its many grudges and mistakes were about,
not to mention, all its conceits. The Big Story
wants to be feared, indulged, and thoroughly
respected, if not believed. Which is why
it names its episodes: Reality, History, Politics
and Missed Opportunities. The Little Story
likes to complain to strangers at bus stops
about its job, wife and kids, how it’s constantly
being smothered by ungrateful subtleties.
The Big Story relishes resumes, privileges,
and everything ever said or thought about fate.
The Little Story abhors sour endings, its own
ludicrous schemes, being left behind and forgotten.
The Big Story worries about being big enough,
especially late at night when its conscience
wants to sleep. The Little Story mainly fears
being swallowed by the Big Story, which fears
only itself. Each agree on one thing: why the Tao
asks us to think of the small as large, the few as many,
and what it means by practicing eternity
while being stuck somewhere in between.

Philip Schultz

Không cần biết bạn đang làm gì, hãy tạm gác lại để đọc bài “Khủng bố ở Little Saigon” của phóng viên A.C. Thompson. Hợp tác giữa ProPublica và Frontline, đây là một bài báo điều tra chấn động trong cộng đồng người Việt trên đất Mỹ. Bài này được viết bằng tiếng Anh nhưng tôi tình cờ tìm được bài dịch sang tiếng Việt. Đọc vừa hấp dẫn vừa sững sờ.

Authur Schopenhauer:

Life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing

Yes, an anxious, impulsive, aloof, slippery fish,
always worrying about being understood,
visible, and hospitable enough,
which is why perhaps it’s seldom docile enough
to entertain even casual visitors
in its moody, inapt grasp
and can’t bear to hold onto anything,
is always dropping things.
I’m its prisoner, it insists,
a refugee forever begging the future to rescue me.
Is this why it’s always angry at me
and refuses to forgive something I said or thought?
Don’t pretend you don’t know who’s speaking to you,
it whispers in my dreams, I’m the poet, not you,
the reason everything you write is irreverent,
tenuous, riddled with duplicitous ambiguities,
that you’re ignorant of the difference between triumph and praise.
Yes, I’m where all your courage, fears,
and intuitions are hidden, the reason reality
so often feels like a vortex of ravenous schemes.
Please, it groans, stop pleading for attention,
a little kindness, an occasional hug,
nothing else can save you,
for just one moment be irritable, frivolous, insatiable,
embrace all your misgivings,
bid farewell to all your disguises,
the wrath of your blessings,
be wrong every other Wednesday,
unfasten the hair shirt of your sacrilege,
honor all your petty details,
appease your terrors and anxieties,
be spiteful, please,
just this one time,
embrace each epic yearning,
rhyme.

Philip Schultz

Alex Vadukul, writing for the New York Times:

For a young Jewish scholar and writer named Mendel Uminer, books are the wellspring of enlightenment. So when he scored a studio apartment a block away from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side a year ago, he brought his books with him — all 10,000 of them. What followed, at least for a little while, was a charmed existence in his 600-square-foot temple of knowledge.

Read “Too Many Books?”

Hiding doesn’t help,
it will find you anywhere,
remind you of your every
unpardonable act and word,
every attempt to undermine its authority.
Fear is its currency, distrust and blame its strengths.
Seldom is it personal, or original,
never bankrupt of ideas on how to prevail,
and yes, it has benefits: helping us distinguish
between mere misery and abject wretchedness.
And of course, it can be performed anywhere,
in any position, while driving, clipping toenails,
strolling absentmindedly down the corridors
of common sense. Its intelligence and devotion to detail,
inexhaustible. Its abhorrence to good news,
every flavor of sympathy, fondness of isolation
are renown. Free yourself of longing, it pleads,
any notion of triumph, strive after the unattainable,
make a shrine of desire and instinct, just sit there
listening to your anxieties resonate into a symphony
of betrayals, forgive and believe in nothing
but the opacity of boredom and endless change.
A sanctuary for self-pity, repository for shame
of every denomination, it’s your last loyal friend,
it croons in your dreams, give in, deny, postpone,
remain unadorned, invisible and divided, forgive
and believe in nothing but boredom and endless change,
forage interminably in its magnanimous garden
of blindness and rage.

Philip Schultz

The name Philip Schultz rang a bell, but I couldn’t recall what I had read from him. I am glad that I picked up Enormous Morning. I am not much of a poetry reader, but his poems are accessible to me. He wrote “Enormous Morning” on his 80^th birthday. I love the ending of this poem:

And yes, here I am,
older than I ever imagined I’d be,
wedged between the living and dead,
singing spoiled prayers, wondering why
I still want to reach across all the sorrow
and make my father understand that forgiveness
isn’t absolution or mercy, but the grace
that love makes, the only true wealth.

I also loved his paradoxical poems such as “The Bog Story and the Little Story,” “Early and Late,” “The Middle,” and “Democracy.” Keep on eye on the poetry section for his poems.

I had a 20-minute one-on-one meeting with our new dean this morning to go over my responsibilities and the scope of my position. I filled him in on my 15-year journey of working at Scalia Law.

In 2011, I took on the position of Web Services Developer without prior knowledge of the content management system and server administration. In my first three months, I learned as much as I could about MODX and Linux. In six months, I redesigned the entire website from scratch and made it responsive, which was new at the time. I documented the evolution of law.gmu.edu in my portfolio site.

I also created a network of Scalia Law Sites using WordPress Multisite for the law school community. The network is powering 50 sites including centers, faculty, and student organizations. I earned an MA in graphic design. I was promoted to Director of Design & Web Services. And the rest is history.

It was cool that the new dean spent time with each member of the Scalia Law School to learn about what we had done and what we’re doing. He not only wanted to get to know his faculty and staff, but also what he can do to help us grow. He is off to a good start.