Thursday, March 31, 2011
once it leaves the dream
But water spreads down the windows
like moss:
it doesn’t know that everything is altered once it leaves the dream.
Jose’ Emilio Pacheco
Translated by Ernesto Trejo
image: birazdenizbirazuyku
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
I am a ghost
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Now a quiet part
The Magic Mountain
A book opens. People come out, bend
this way and talk, ponder, love, wander around
while pages turn. Where did the plot go?
Why did someone sing just as the train
went by? Here come chapters with landscape all over
whatever happens when people meet. Now
a quiet part: a hospital glows in the dark.
I don't think that woman with the sad gray eyes
will ever come back. And what does it mean when
the Italian has so many ideas? Maybe
a war is coming. The book is ending. Everyone
has a little tremolo in them; all
are going to die and it's cold and the snow, and the
clear air. They took someone away. It's ending,
the book is ending. But I thought – never mind. It
closes.
- William Stafford
The Way It Is
A book opens. People come out, bend
this way and talk, ponder, love, wander around
while pages turn. Where did the plot go?
Why did someone sing just as the train
went by? Here come chapters with landscape all over
whatever happens when people meet. Now
a quiet part: a hospital glows in the dark.
I don't think that woman with the sad gray eyes
will ever come back. And what does it mean when
the Italian has so many ideas? Maybe
a war is coming. The book is ending. Everyone
has a little tremolo in them; all
are going to die and it's cold and the snow, and the
clear air. They took someone away. It's ending,
the book is ending. But I thought – never mind. It
closes.
- William Stafford
The Way It Is
image:
Luc Dietrich, Alsace (Overhead View), 1930s Silver print. From arsvitaest
Friday, March 25, 2011
And I stood there, lost
“It happened one day, at a crossroads, in the middle of a crowd, people coming and going.
I stopped, blinked; I understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything; I didn’t understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd. And I started to laugh.
What I found strange at the time was that I’d never realized before. That up until then I had accepted everything: traffic lights, cars, posters, uniforms, monuments, things completely detached from any sense of the world, accepted them as if there were some necessity, some chain of cause and effect that bound them together.
Then the laugh died in my throat, I blushed, ashamed. I waved to get people’s attention and “Stop a second!” I shouted, “there’s something wrong! Everything’s wrong! We’re doing the absurdist things! This can’t be the right way! Where will it end?”
People stopped around me, sized me up, curious. I stood there in the middle of them, waving my arms, desperate to explain myself, to have them share the flash of insight that had suddenly enlightened me: and I said nothing. I said nothing because the moment I raised my arms and opened my mouth, my great revelation had been as it were swallowed up again and the words had come out any old how, on impulse.
“So?” people asked, “what do you mean? Everything’s in its place. All is as it should be. Everything is the result of something else. Everything fits in with everything else. We can’t see anything absurd or wrong!”
And I stood there, lost, because as I saw it now everything had fallen into place again and everything seemed natural, traffic lights, monuments, uniforms, towerblocks, tramlines, beggars, processions; yet this didn’t calm me down, it tormented me.
“I’m sorry,” I answered. “Perhaps it was me that was wrong. It seemed that way. But everything’s fine. I’m sorry,” and I made off amid their angry glares.
Yet, even now, every time (often) that I find I don’t understand something, then, instinctively, I’m filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.”
Numbers in the Dark, a collection of short-short stories by Italo Calvino.
from INTENSE CITY by Luke Storms
image: here
Thursday, March 24, 2011
How to Paint Sunlight
Into the Interior
I am your whispered voice
your inside voice
your interior voice
your unheard voice
your unspoken voice
your unvoiced voice
your unspeakable voice
I am your heart’s voice and your heartless voice
your deepest voice
under layers of living & speaking
the voice of your buried life
your invisible life
your silent life
your unknown life
your unopened life
your unrealized life
the undiscovered life that no one sees
not even your lover
not even yourself
If you will listen to me
if you will lend me the ear
of your mind
and of your bent heart
if you will heed my whisperings…
heed my whisperings…
heed my whisperings…
heed my whisperings…
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti: How to Paint Sunlight: Lyric Poems & Others (1997-2000) New York: New Directions
your inside voice
your interior voice
your unheard voice
your unspoken voice
your unvoiced voice
your unspeakable voice
I am your heart’s voice and your heartless voice
your deepest voice
under layers of living & speaking
the voice of your buried life
your invisible life
your silent life
your unknown life
your unopened life
your unrealized life
the undiscovered life that no one sees
not even your lover
not even yourself
If you will listen to me
if you will lend me the ear
of your mind
and of your bent heart
if you will heed my whisperings…
heed my whisperings…
heed my whisperings…
heed my whisperings…
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti: How to Paint Sunlight: Lyric Poems & Others (1997-2000) New York: New Directions
text: crashinglybeautiful:
image: here
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
choices
“To browse in a bookstore… is to explore a highly selective and thoughtful collection of the world—thoughtful because hundreds of years of thinkers, writers, critics, teachers, and readers have established the worth of the choices. Their collective wisdom seems superior, for these purposes, to the Web’s ‘neutrality,’ its know-nothing know-everythingness.”
Nicole Krauss
image: petit-bookworm
Monday, March 14, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
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