This autumn we discussed a passage about an Afghan girl, which appears in the new second-year coursebook and comes from a book called Mud City. It reminded me of an Irish cartoon based on a book called The Breadwinner, and it turned out that both books belong to the series written by the Canadian author and activist Deborah Ellis.
The cartoon made me think of another one – produced by the same team and called Song of the Sea. My cousin first showed it to me about four years ago, and I was moved by the beautiful story, animation and soundtrack including the touching title lullaby. Speaking about the title, I think it resonates with a line from a poem by Maximilian Voloshin: «люби далёкий парус корабля и песню волн, шумящих на просторе».
If I had to choose a manifesto, I’d probably pick the last eight-line stanza of the poem as it features so many things I love and so many ideas I believe in: loving and appreciating what you have, living in the present, the sea, the colour blue, the old-fashioned word «окоём» – which somehow reminds me of the word «взор» which Yuri Gagarin used during his space flight… By the way, my dear Lana Del Rey refers to the colour blue in her songs too as a symbol of love and freedom, but that’s another story.
25/11/2021
/Photo taken in Ireland in July 2018 by me/