Author of A FOREST OF NAMES @weslpress 2020 | @NEAarts Literary Translation Fellowship 2019 | TEDx talk: https://nitter.cf/t.co/o1zsox1zTy |
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Today marks the one-year anniversary of the release of my first of book of poems *A Forest of Names*, published by @weslpress. The poems consider the names of schoolchildren killed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and ways these names shed light on our humanity and our dignity.
Ian Boyden retweeted
【查日也有查日的美】
那年春天，望着窗外连绵的山，
我阿妈说：
“日（山）有各种：岗日，雪山；
查日，岩山；邦日，草山；
长满树木的山，辛那日；
堆满沙子的山，其麦日……”
“小时候唱过一首歌：
上山的话，就上邦日那样的山；
下山的话，就下其麦日那样的山；
意思是上山容易，下山也容易。”
望着那座宝瓶状的山，
我接过话来：
“每座山是什么样的山，
就是什么样的山，
为什么非要把这样的山
变成那样的山？
这周围的山，
本来就是查日那样的岩山，
拉萨人喜爱，
把它们比作八瓣莲花。
非要变成邦日或者辛那日吗？
查日也有查日的美，
如今，那些以为人定胜天的人，
连山也不肯放过。”
1. 日：རི།山。
2. 岗日：གངས་རི།雪山。
3. 查日：བྲག་རི།岩山。
4. 邦日：སྤང་རི།草山。
5. 辛那日：ཤིང་ནགས་རི།口语。树山，长满树木的山。书面语：ནགས་རི།
6. 其麦日：བྱེ་མའི་རི།口语。沙山，堆满沙子的山。书面语：བྱེ་རི།
原诗写于2018-4-28，拉萨。
2026年10月29日修改。
#lhasa #tibet
@_IanBoyden @weredstar
"With the loss of memory, the continuities of meaning and judgment are also lost to us."
—John Berger, from "Uses of Photography"
隨著記憶的喪失，意義與判斷的連續性也隨之從我們身上消失。
昨晚又把这首旧诗改了又改。刚才拍了挂在墙上的拉萨地图，图2是GPT做的：
我找到了这幅拉萨地图……
唯色
我找到了这幅拉萨地图。
在书架深处，层层叠叠的杂志之间。
我立即摊开，俯下身，
细细辨认。尽管我不太会看地图——
那种点、线、面交错的平面。
我熟悉这幅地图，胜过熟悉这座出生之城，
就像身在异国的嘉央诺布，一岁回来，
住了十个月，从此无法再归，
一旦说起，滔滔不绝，像是从未离开，
甚至记得一幢幢房子的名字和故事，
坐落在哪条巷子，曾属于哪家世族。
说起夏日傍晚，盲眼的阿觉朗杰领着乐队，
缓缓绕行帕廓，悠悠唱着囊玛，
他会轻声哼唱，我却不忍吐露——
老房子已所剩无几，
换了主人，拆了重修。
但我愧对这幅地图，如同愧对那位已故长者，
他的赠予，是暗夜里不敢拒绝的托付。
他指点着老城里所有房屋：几十座佛殿，
许多有旧名、有佚事的府邸，
琳琅的商铺与热闹的茶馆，
马厩、水井，还有邮局、警察局……
它出自两个逃难的奥地利人[1]之手，
在得到庇护的七年里感激地绘下。
我认出了坛城形状的祖拉康，
认出了被炮火或挖掘机捣毁的一片片废墟……
地图上没有欢乐，也没有泪水。
据说，忽必烈从一本地图册上
看见“拉萨的白色屋顶，耸立在云雾缭绕的
世界屋脊之上”[2]，这过于浪漫，
符合他者的想象，却描绘不出这几十年的
易容术、移魂术，以及各种变形术。
啊，还有谁，能重绘一幅喀瓦坚[3]的地图？
那自然生起的挚爱，依然闪耀洁白的光芒，
而世间罕见的琉璃宝瓶，早已摔碎在顽石上[4]……
2019-3-10写，2025-3-10改，
2026-10-15再改。
注释：
[1]两位奥地利人：彼得·奥夫施奈特（Peter Aufschnaiter，1899—1973）与海因里希·哈勒（Heinrich Harrer，1912—2006）。二战期间从英属印度拘留营逃出，辗转进入图伯特。1948年绘制拉萨地图，主要测绘工作由奥夫施奈特完成。
[2]引自意大利作家伊塔洛·卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino）的小说《看不见的城市》（1972），张必译。书中描写忽必烈从地图册上看到拉萨。
[3]喀瓦坚（ཁ་བ་ཅན།，Khawa Chen），意为“雪域”，是藏人对图伯特的传统称呼。
[4] 诗末两行借用了根敦群培（Gendun Chopel，1903—1951）的文字与意象：前者出自《白史》结尾的誓言诗，表达对本族与雪域的挚爱；后者以世间罕见的琉璃宝瓶被摔碎在石头上为喻，悲叹珍贵之物的毁灭与不可挽回的失去。
#lhasa #tibet
I found this map of Lhasa.
It was deep in a bookshelf,
tucked within layers of magazines.
I spread it out at once, then, leaned over
and studied it closely, despite the fact
that I’m not very good at reading maps,
those flat surfaces where points, lines,
and shapes intersect.
昨晚又把这首旧诗改了又改。刚才拍了挂在墙上的拉萨地图，图2是GPT做的：
我找到了这幅拉萨地图……
唯色
我找到了这幅拉萨地图。
在书架深处，层层叠叠的杂志之间。
我立即摊开，俯下身，
细细辨认。尽管我不太会看地图——
那种点、线、面交错的平面。
我熟悉这幅地图，胜过熟悉这座出生之城，
就像身在异国的嘉央诺布，一岁回来，
住了十个月，从此无法再归，
一旦说起，滔滔不绝，像是从未离开，
甚至记得一幢幢房子的名字和故事，
坐落在哪条巷子，曾属于哪家世族。
说起夏日傍晚，盲眼的阿觉朗杰领着乐队，
缓缓绕行帕廓，悠悠唱着囊玛，
他会轻声哼唱，我却不忍吐露——
老房子已所剩无几，
换了主人，拆了重修。
但我愧对这幅地图，如同愧对那位已故长者，
他的赠予，是暗夜里不敢拒绝的托付。
他指点着老城里所有房屋：几十座佛殿，
许多有旧名、有佚事的府邸，
琳琅的商铺与热闹的茶馆，
马厩、水井，还有邮局、警察局……
它出自两个逃难的奥地利人[1]之手，
在得到庇护的七年里感激地绘下。
我认出了坛城形状的祖拉康，
认出了被炮火或挖掘机捣毁的一片片废墟……
地图上没有欢乐，也没有泪水。
据说，忽必烈从一本地图册上
看见“拉萨的白色屋顶，耸立在云雾缭绕的
世界屋脊之上”[2]，这过于浪漫，
符合他者的想象，却描绘不出这几十年的
易容术、移魂术，以及各种变形术。
啊，还有谁，能重绘一幅喀瓦坚[3]的地图？
那自然生起的挚爱，依然闪耀洁白的光芒，
而世间罕见的琉璃宝瓶，早已摔碎在顽石上[4]……
2019-3-10写，2025-3-10改，
2026-10-15再改。
注释：
[1]两位奥地利人：彼得·奥夫施奈特（Peter Aufschnaiter，1899—1973）与海因里希·哈勒（Heinrich Harrer，1912—2006）。二战期间从英属印度拘留营逃出，辗转进入图伯特。1948年绘制拉萨地图，主要测绘工作由奥夫施奈特完成。
[2]引自意大利作家伊塔洛·卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino）的小说《看不见的城市》（1972），张必译。书中描写忽必烈从地图册上看到拉萨。
[3]喀瓦坚（ཁ་བ་ཅན།，Khawa Chen），意为“雪域”，是藏人对图伯特的传统称呼。
[4] 诗末两行借用了根敦群培（Gendun Chopel，1903—1951）的文字与意象：前者出自《白史》结尾的誓言诗，表达对本族与雪域的挚爱；后者以世间罕见的琉璃宝瓶被摔碎在石头上为喻，悲叹珍贵之物的毁灭与不可挽回的失去。
#lhasa #tibet
Ian Boyden retweeted
感谢两位译者，将我的这首诗译成了英文，再译成了西班牙文🙏🙏 。回想起与诗人、译者@_IanBoyden 细说这首诗的那些时光，那时他在岛上，我称之为卧佛岛…
worldliteraturetoday.org/blo…
Ian Boyden retweeted
Eihei Dōgen: “Flowers in the sky emerge from the earth. The whole nation has no way to buy them.”
Ian Boyden retweeted
Here is my interview with Christopher Nolan: are you a bard for a civilization at dusk?
Ian Boyden retweeted
🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."
My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."
I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.
Hedgie🤗
Ian Boyden retweeted
Cette photo mérite absolument tous les prix. Elle a même sa place au Louvre.
Elle relate précisément l’inertie de l’individu face à l’effondrement.
Regardez la composition. Un chef-d’œuvre involontaire.
Au premier plan, le sable doré, les tongs abandonnées, la glacière. Le décor ordinaire du bonheur estival. Deux personnages assis, de dos, comme dans un tableau de Caspar David Friedrich. Sauf que Friedrich peignait des hommes contemplant le sublime. Ici, ils contemplent la catastrophe. Et ils ne bougent pas.
Au centre, le parasol. Publicitaire, criard, dérisoire. Un pastis face à l’apocalypse. C’est presque trop parfait : la France qui prend l’apéro pendant que le monde brûle. Aucun scénariste n’aurait osé.
Et puis le ciel. Les deux tiers de l’image. Cette muraille de fumée qui avale la lumière, ce dégradé d’ocre et de noir digne d’un Turner. La nature qui reprend la palette des maîtres pour peindre notre propre fin.
La femme photographie l’incendie avec son téléphone. Mise en abyme totale : nous documentons notre disparition au lieu de l’empêcher.
Cette image dit tout. Le déni, le confort, l’habitude. Nous sommes tous sur cette plage. Nous voyons tous le nuage. Et nous restons assis, parce que l’eau est bonne et qu’on a posé nos congés.
Les historiens de l’art parleront un jour de cette photo comme on parle du Radeau de la Méduse.
Sauf que cette fois, le naufrage, c’est nous qui le regardons depuis la plage.
💔🌍
"Our civilization’s founding act has been to burn hundreds of millions of years of stored being-time in the space of about two centuries… & to exhale it into a sky whose consequences will be inherited by beings who have no vote in the matter because they have not yet been born."
Derangement of Time by Roshi Joan Halifax upaya.org/2026/07/derangemen…
Derangement of Time, an excerpt from my new book UNFINISHED VOW.
"Mountains belong to those who love them because love dissolves the illusion of separation."
—Roshi Joan Halifax
upaya.org/2026/06/belonging-…
Mountains have been my life for decades. This essay reflects my years walking on high mountain trails. It also is grounded in the writings on Eihei Dogen: Sansuikyo (Mountains and Rivers Sutra). Belonging to Mountains and Rivers: On Eihei Dōgen’s Sansuikyō
Ian Boyden retweeted
"You might be dead" is a remarkable sentence.
It contains, in four words, the complete psychology of the savior complex.
You don't know where I'm from. You don't know my country's history. You don't know what political tradition I come from, what my people have survived, what we built before and after contact with American power.
You just know that without America, I might be dead.
The assumption is total. It is not argued. It doesn't need to be argued. It is the water the argument swims in.
The world before American intervention: darkness, death, dictators.
The world with American intervention: the possibility of survival, extended generously from Washington.
This is not a political position.
This is a creation myth.
In this myth, the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have no history, no agency, no political tradition, no capacity for self-determination until America arrives and either saves them or, regrettably, fails to save them in time.
We were here before you arrived.
We had revolutions, philosophies, legal systems, agricultural civilizations, and democratic traditions before your country existed.
We will be here after your empire has gone the way of all empires.
The sentence "you might be dead" tells me nothing about my mortality.
It tells me everything about how you see the world.
Ian Boyden retweeted
We look at our neighboring worlds and we see a grim warning. Venus is a runaway greenhouse hellscape, its surface hot enough to melt lead. Mars is a frozen, bone-dry desert. Earth is the anomaly,a perfectly balanced, delicate jewel where the conditions for life are miraculously just right.
Yet, we continue to treat our atmosphere as if it were an infinite dumping ground.
A fragile canopy. A destabilized climate. A global crisis.
Ian Boyden retweeted
To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis:
Show us your laptop.
Show us your iCloud.
Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation.
You won’t.
You won’t because you know what I know. Any one of us, frozen at our worst moment, photographed in our lowest hour, looks like a monster. Looks like a stranger. Looks like someone who deserves to be cast out.
That is not who we are.
My mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident when I was just a kid. Cancer took my brother Beau, my best friend and my rock. I battled alcoholism. I battled addiction. I chose the coward’s way out more times than I can count.
For years I believed the defining chapters of my life were written by tragedy, loss, and shame.
I no longer believe that.
Pain can shape us. Loss can humble us. Failures can leave scars that never fully fade. But none of them have the authority to define us.
And it sure as hell ain’t the critic that counts.
That authority belongs to us alone-the person in the arena.
Every setback presents a choice. Play the victim, or cut the bullshit and take ownership for who we become next.
Life does not determine our character. It reveals it.
Again and again we are asked the same question. When shit happens, what next?
We are not defined by what happened to us. We are not defined by the worst photo, the worst text, the worst tattoo, the worst night. We are defined by the person we choose to become. And by the courage to choose that person, every single day.
So before you reach for the gavel - show us your laptop.
You won’t.
The whole world saw mine. And I am still here. Still becoming. Still choosing. Still standing.
That is the only definition that matters.
Ian Boyden retweeted
William Blake (1757–1827) saw it clearly in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked paths without Improvement are paths of Genius.”
Ian Boyden retweeted
In this moment, is it still possible to face the gathering darkness, and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?
—BARRY LOPE Z,“Love in a Time of Terror”
Ian Boyden retweeted
While the usual minions spread new falsehoods about fellow UN experts and me, here is what Israel and its supporters want absolutely you not to see. The body of evidence.
Warning: highly disturbing content.
youtube.com/watch?v=e3pApprH…
