secretfragileskies: the border

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

the border

$“The woman he loved most in the world (he was thirty at the time) used to tell him (it would make him desperate to hear it) that her life was hanging by a thread. Oh yes, she wanted to live, she loved life, but she also knew that her ‘I want to live’ was spun from the threads of a cobweb. It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life – and herein lies its secret – takes place in immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.” Milan Kundera, “The Border,” The Book of Laughter and Forgetting p. 206-207 link$

“The woman he loved most in the world (he was thirty at the time) 
used to tell him (it would make him desperate to hear it) that her life 
was hanging by a thread. Oh yes, she wanted to live, she loved life, but
 she also knew that her ‘I want to live’ was spun from the threads of a 
cobweb. It takes so little, so infinitely little, for  a person to cross
 the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, 
faith, history. Human life – and herein lies its secret – takes place in
 immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it 
is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.”



Milan Kundera, “The Border,” The Book of Laughter and Forgetting p. 206-207link
(via journalofanobody)

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Dead men make such convenient Heroes

Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him.
Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.

Dead men make such convenient Heroes.
They cannot rise to challenge the images
We would fashion from their Lives.
It is easier to build monuments
Than to make a better world.

So now that he is safely dead,
We, with eased consciences, will
Teach our children that he was a great man,
Knowing that the cause for which he
Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died
Is still a dream. (Hines 1987, 468).
image; Banksy

“Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.”

—	Queen-Anne’s-Lace, William Carlos Williams (via sketchofthepast)

Then there was someone else I met,

whose face and voice I can’t forget,

and the memory of her

is like a jail I’m trapped inside,

or maybe she is something I just use

to hold my real life at a distance.

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower

plucked from a river of lava

and held aloft on a tightrope

strung between two scrawny trees

above a canyon

in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it—,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it

everywhere, for years,

while right behind you,

the footprints you are leaving

will look like notes

of a crazy song.

from: “How It Adds Up” copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland.

here

The naked weeping girl
is thinking of my name
turning my bronze name
over and over
with the thousand fingers
of her body
anointing her shoulders
with the remembered odour
of my skin

O I am the general
in her history
over the fields
driving the great horses
dressed in gold cloth
wind on my breastplate
sun in my belly

May soft birds
soft as a story to her eyes
protect her face from my enemies
and vicious birds
whose sharp wings
were forged in metal oceans
guard her room
from my assassins

And night deal gently with her
high stars maintain the whiteness
of her uncovered flesh

And may my bronze name
touch always her thousand fingers
grow brighter with her weeping
until I am fixed like a galaxy
and memorized
in her secret and fragile skies.

Leonard Cohen

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia
Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading
A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It
can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

Kenneth Koch

falling

Damiel;

It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. I'd like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say "Now." Now and now" and no longer "forever" and "for eternity." To sit at an empty place at a card table and be greeted, even by a nod. Every time we participated, it was a pretense. Wrestling with one, allowing a hip to be put out in pretense, catching a fish in pretense, in pretense sitting at tables, drinking and eating in pretense. Having lambs roasted and wine served in the tents out there in the desert, only in pretense. No, I don't have to beget a child or plant a tree but it would be rather nice coming home after a long day to feed the cat, like Philip Marlowe, to have a fever and blackended fingers from the newspaper, to be excited not only by the mind but, at last, by a meal, by the line of a neck by an ear. To lie! Through one's teeth. As you're walking, to feel your bones moving along. At last to guess, instead of always knowing. To be able to say "ah" and "oh" and "hey" instead of "yea" and "amen."

Catherine Hessling, La fille de l’eau, Jean Renoir, 1924.

Made4Aid Month

Made4Aid now sells items through a new Etsy shop. GG will be featuring items from the shop this month & next.

Made4Aid is a non-profit-making organisation, raising money for aid and relief work, through the generosity of creative people around the world. Handmade art or craft items - or materials - can be donated to made4aid and will be sold online to raise money for aid. All proceeds go to the relief work of Médicins sans Frontières (aka Doctors without Borders) and World Food Programme USA. You can find more information about where the money goes here.

If you have any items to donate, please read guidelines, here.

paris winter

reblogged booklover: source
ffleur0609

secretfragileskies

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

the border

Milan Kundera, “The Border,” The Book of Laughter and Forgetting p. 206-207

No comments:

august

an altered space

“The world is airtight
yet held together
by what it does not house,
by the vanished. They are everywhere.”

Dead men make such convenient Heroes

Following...

“Maybe that’s what life is . . . a wink of the eye and winking stars”
Jack Kerouac

All Things French

Resources

Influences

The weight of the world Is love

Maze

Films

In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wei

List

Labels

french word a day

Writers

Architecture

Book blogs

About Me

falling

Made4Aid Month

paris winter

Paris

The weight of the world Is love

Followers

Blog Archive

secretfragileskies

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

the border

Milan Kundera, “The Border,” The Book of Laughter and Forgetting p. 206-207

No comments:

august

an altered space

“The world is airtight yet held together by what it does not house, by the vanished. They are everywhere.”

Dead men make such convenient Heroes

Following...

“Maybe that’s what life is . . . a wink of the eye and winking stars” Jack Kerouac

All Things French

Resources

Influences

The weight of the world Is love

Maze

Films

In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wei

List

Labels

french word a day

Writers

Architecture

Book blogs

About Me

falling

Made4Aid Month

paris winter

Paris

The weight of the world Is love

Followers

Blog Archive

“The world is airtight
yet held together
by what it does not house,
by the vanished. They are everywhere.”

“Maybe that’s what life is . . . a wink of the eye and winking stars”
Jack Kerouac