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Soukie’s Place

keeping track of random thoughts

Pardon the Mess

The website is undergoing a long-overdue upgrade and maintanance.

Category: life

Haiku
Beauty in Simplicity

February 20, 2012 by Pavel Soukenik

How simple can a literary form be while still managing to say something beautiful and interesting? Very simple. Consider the following two examples:

after his turn to wash
her sweater tighter
newlyweds
a frogfish
frozen to the bone
gets all chopped up

The language is straightforward – everyday even – there are no metaphors or similes in sight, it does not rhyme, the meter is free too, and it’s frighteningly succinct. I borrowed these examples from Katharine Hawkinson and Shuson Kato1, two haiku poets.

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Challenges of Translating 13th Century Texts
A Look at ‘Genjo Koan’

May 9, 2011 by Pavel Soukenik

This article was revised and updated on October 7, 2018

While Genjo Koan is one of key writings in Japanese Zen Buddhism, this article is not focused on its philosophical or religious aspects but on the challenges of translating old texts. Genjo Koan, written by Eihei Dogen, is notoriously difficult to translate. Japanese, like all languages, has changed a lot since the 13th century, and Dogen often intertwines Chinese characters and quotations.

Even more crucially, when sentences in the original language can be interpreted in several ways, and the translator doesn’t know which one was meant, he can accidentally eliminate it because the translation usually cannot preserve the same range of meanings.

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Of Keyboards and Men
Childhood

May 8, 2010 by Pavel Soukenik

My Grandma worked in a sugar factory that stood at the end of my village. Part of the year was always filled with the constant noise of tractors hauling beet from the fields to be transformed into refined sugar cubes that would later be served with tea or coffee in nice porcelain cups.

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"You Better Run"

May 2, 2010 by Pavel Soukenik

I have never been an athletic guy – I lack the talent and the passion – but for a couple of months now I have found myself hooked on running.
A big obstacle in doing something good for ourselves is time. Life is throwing many things at us and this can sometimes build up stress faster than what can be taken away during the little time we spend relaxing. So without reclaiming some of that time, there is not much that can be done.

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The Lure of Virtual Life

April 10, 2010 by moravienne

A collage of internet sites
Can you compete with this?

A few thoughts came to my mind as I was drinking coffee and watching myself and seven out of ten other visitors of a café: all at our phones or laptops, looking up things on the web. No sound of keyboards, the people not writing but not talking either; most of them being on their own, spending time in the virtual world. It is perhaps only a step from reading a book, but still it changes the atmosphere.

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Journal Is a Silver Bullet

January 24, 2010 by Pavel Soukenik

A woman writing in a journal
A journal is an intimate and useful companion

Keeping a journal has different connotations for different people. It could be old-fashioned and noble for one, practical and analytical for another, or stupid and pretentious for the next person. I used to be that next person.
What good is there in recapping the events of the day, laboriously putting down the details of all that transpired? I think the answer to this remains “not much.” But that is also not the best way of doing it. If you only wanted a record of what happened, a miniature camera could do a better job.

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