香奈兒

Here is another new short poem written for 小草 Xiao-Tsao (Young Grass) Academy...


＜香奈兒＞

她的愛，一位遠見卓識家的前瞻夢想
是夜間飛舞的蝴蝶　幻化自白晝舒坦的毛蟲　
皆合一：似色彩、似樂音
純白光線藉由菱鏡反射出無限絢爛輝澤，那孕育著一切的潔白明光
如聖心堂的玻璃　夏卡爾筆下五彩的穹蒼　
巴黎歌劇院流溢出的細碎舞步與音符
皆源起與終止於無盡的黑與白　純粹絕對之美
黑與白　最完美的和諧

「自由， 一件華美莊嚴的禮物。」
 “Freedom, a magnificent gift.” ～Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel in 1910

Words, Poems, Reveries, Muse

Yamanoue no Okura, “A Lament on the Evanescence of Life”

What we must accept
  as we journey through the world
Is that time will pass
  like the waters of a stream;
in countless numbers,
in relentless succession,
it will besiege us
  with assaults we must endure.
They would not detain
  the period of their bloom
when, as maidens will,
they who were then maidens
  encircled their wrists
    with gemmed bracelets from Cathay,
and took their pleasure
  frolicking hand in hand
    with their youthful friends.
So the months and years went by,
and when did it fall –
that sprinkling of wintry frost
  on glistening hair
    as black as leopard flower seeds?
And whence did they come –
those wrinkles that settled in,
marring the smoothness
  of blushing pink faces?
Was it forever,
the kind of life those others led –
those stalwart men,
who, as fine young men will do,
girded at their waists
  sharp swords, keen-bladed weapons,
took up hunting bows,
clasped them tight in their clenched fists,
placed on red horses
  saddles fashioned of striped hemp,
climbed onto their steeds,
and rode gaily here and there?
they were not many,
those nights when the fine young men
  pushed open the doors,
the plank doors of the chamber
  where the maidens slept,
groped their way close to their loves,
and slept with their arms
  intertwined with gemlike arms.
Yet already now
  those who were maidens and youths
    must use walking sticks,
and when they walk over there,
others avoid them,
and when they walk over here,
others show distaste.
Such is life, it seems, for the old.
Precious though life is,
it is beyond our power
  to stay the passing of time.

(Translated by Steven D. Carter)

***

*A poem I read back in July, which instantly drew me in with its mysterious strength and powerful imagery. (Re-reading it after a discussion with David about Monet's artistic treatment of water and the place Giverny, and yes, I still love it － it glistens with a sense of transience in beauty and anguished sadness for Eternal Recurrence.)

“The Rose-Way in Giverny,” by Virginia Konchan

And in the reticulate distance
the cued inertia of Lucifer
astounds. Our feet bleed:
buoyant, the body at its task.
What you wanted was what I 
wanted－slant of sun to the left,
twinkling of civilization elsewise;
and the moon (whelp of history)
to our backs, all come-hither
and dream. Motion understood 
is philosophy deferred: peace;
the felt pathos of space and time.
Look, darling, at the establishing
shot. It's downright Biblical,
this thrown-together vista,
world upon world without end.

***

“Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the centre vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief — the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say 'patter' intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.”

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern—to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”

—Vladimir Nabakov, Speak, Memory

***

While under the bridges
Of embrace expire
Eternal tired tidal eyes

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

Love elapses like the river
Love goes by
Poor life is indolent
And expectation always violent

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

The days and equally the weeks elapse
The past remains the past
Love remains lost
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

－Guillaume Apollinaire

Julien Dillens, Marbre, Figura tombale － Femme au bouquet (1885-1889), Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

***

my love for you makes you ancient
to me. my greatest wish would be
that I were to you,

ancient, too. that looking upon
each other, the waters of old rome
would be seen trickling beneath our
feet, not

that we would live forever, but that
we already have.

—from a poem by Ricky Garni

***

"He seeks life where it is to be found: in all that is most delicate, in the folds of things."
...
－Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Andreas, 1932

***

As Distant Music, Obscurely, or But Half Revealed...

During this state of repose, he took his station winter and summer by the stove, looking through the window at the old tower of Lobenicht, not that he could be said properly to see it, but the tower rested upon his eye as distant music on the ear - obscurely, or but half revealed to the consciousness. No words seem forcible enough to express his sense of the gratification which he derived from his old tower, when seen under the circumstances of twilight and quiet reverie... At length some poplars in a neighboring garden shot up to such a height as to obscure the tower, upon which Kant became very uneasy and restless, and at length found himself positively unable to pursue his evening meditiations. Fortunately, the proprietor of the garden was a very considerate and obliging person, who had, besides, a high regard for Kant, and accordingly, upon a presentation of the case being made to him, he gave orders that the poplar should be cropped. Kant recovered his equanimity, and once more found himself able to pursue his twilight meditations in peace.

Thomas de Quincey — The Last Days of Immanuel Kant — via the liner notes for Gavin Bryars' After the Requiem.

***

My sky
interchanges with yours,
so does my dove
now
it flies over yours,
I see two shadows
falling
in
the oatfield
We look with
each other’s eyes,
we find
a place:
rain
we say
like a story
the half-sentence
green,
I hear:
Your mouth
with the speech
of birds
carries twigs and feathers
up to my brow

—Johannes Bobrowski

Sappho

***

Part One...

"Any great realization is only half completed in the brain's pool of light; the other half is formed in the dark soil of our innermost being, and above all it is a state of the soul on whose furthest tip the thought sits perched, like a flower..."

~ Robert Musil, Young Torless

***

Suddenly, softly, as if a breath breathed
On the pale wall, a magical apparition,
The shadow of the jasmine, branch and blossom!

It was not there, it is there, in a perfect image;
And all is changed. It is like a memory lost
Returning without a reason into the mind...

And it seems to me that the beauty of the shadow
Is more beautiful than the flower; a strange beauty,
Pencilled and silently deepening to distinctness.

As a memory stealing out of the mind's slumber,
A memory floating up from a dark water,
Can be more beautiful than the thing remembered.

~ Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

***

On almost the incendiary eve
When at your lips and keys,
Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave……..
On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances,
When near and strange wounded on London’s waves
Have sought your single grave,
One enemy, of many, who knows well
Your heart is luminous
In the watched dark, quivering ….

— From Deaths & Entrances: Dylan Thomas

***

EN:TRANCES

What is the allure and attraction which so invites the photographer to capture entrances?
I feel it strongly and I cannot adequately explain it- through the last two decades as a semi-serious photographer I am drawn to capture the magic of what may lay beyond. The other, the secret, the forbidden—perhaps even the sexual or inticingly erotic?
Closed doors represent a world where we need use our imagination to its fullest. We see the promise of new colour and new experience—a closed glimpse of the exotic ‘other’ life we wish to inhabit. (via Lushlight)

***

且也相與吾之耳矣，庸詎知吾所謂吾之乎？且汝夢為鳥而厲乎天，夢為魚而沒於淵。不識今之言者，其覺者乎，其夢者乎？造適不及笑，獻笑不及排，安排而去化，乃入於寥天一。
（況且人們交往總借助形骸而稱述自我，又怎麼知道我所稱述的軀體一定就是我呢？而且你夢中變成鳥便振翅直飛藍天，你夢中變成魚便搖尾潛入深淵。不知道今天我們說話的人，算是醒悟的人呢，還是做夢的人呢？心境快適卻來不及笑出聲音，表露快意發出笑聲卻來不及排解和消洩，安於自然的推移而且忘卻死亡的變化，於是就進入到寂寥空虛的自然而渾然成為一體。）

~莊子內篇<大宗師>；張耿光釋義

***

荀子性惡篇：「人之性惡，其善者偽也。今人之性，生而有好利焉，順是，故爭奪生而辭讓亡焉；生而有疾惡焉，順是，故殘賊生而忠信亡焉；生而有耳目之欲，有好聲色焉，順是，故淫亂生而禮義文理亡焉。然則從人之性，順人之情，必出於爭奪，合於犯分亂理，而歸於暴，故必將有師法之化，禮義之道，然後出於辭讓，合於文理，而歸於治。用此觀之，然則，人之性惡，明矣。其善者偽也。」

***

金剛經：「一切有為法，如夢幻泡影，如露亦如電，應作如是觀。」

"How should he explain it? As in the sky: Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, dew, a bubble. A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud－thus we should look upon the world (all that was made). Thus he should explain; therefore it is said: He should explain."

~Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, or Diamond-Cutter (from Prajnaparamita/ Perfection of Wisdom genre), English translations by E.B. Cowell, F. Max Mulller, and J. Takakusu.

***

One of my very favourite performances of Svetlana Zakharova: her mystery, her sensuality, her musicality and the suspenseful poetry... This personal love affair of mine is ongoing, and only growing stronger (I am led－in hands and heart－and "possessed" by such passion for this poetic muse). She takes my breath away.

"...[a beauty which] is a consummate example of poetic inspiration, eliciting from the poet's soul a sigh which is at once the poem itself－Dante's response to Beatrice's presence－and a resigned acknowledgement of her transcendent otherness." (Many thanks to Leanne & Cassandra for this.)

～The Body of Beatrice, by Robert P. Harrison

Poetry Feature: Disbelief, Women, Minority, Periphery

Thirteen of my poems, including five pairs originally composed in Chinese and later translated into English (for most with a very long gap of time in between), are featured in Peripheral Surveys' beautiful autumn anniversary edition: Disbelief, Women, Minority, Periphery. Some of my readers (any of you out there...? ;p) might have already come across these poems in my little blog here, but the set is presented in such a visually aesthetic manner and the journal itself is a rich literary and artistic gem to delve into; hence I am linking it here to my poetic-oneiric (barely awake) space. My poetry is here. I have also written some notes on the inspirations behind the poetry and process of my translations, which for me is very much like re-creating again, for a few of the Chinese poems featured in the journal. The notes can be found in my blog post here.

Kenro Izu, Blue series, Still Life 1119b, 2004 (via)

My dear poet-philosopher-musician friend Alain Minod shared this exquisite, musical beauty with me the other day. For me, music is salvation, it is paradise. As Schopenhauer once said, what distinguishes our aesthetic consciousness from the ordinary one is that it lifts, however temporarily, the veil of perception, or maya, and blesses us with glimpses of what is transcendent, what is eternal, what is real and true, the ultimate beauty and truth. In this sense, our aesthetic experience/consciousness is similar in its essence to meditation. How is life possible without music, when life is music...?

“Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.”

~Mishima Yukio

*See also Peripheral Surveys' archive of past issues.

*

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

~Pablo Neruda

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Hands and Horse Skull, 1931
*via: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

眩暈 Vertigo (from the poetic-oneiric archive)

*Read a poem by Arthur Rimbaud and was reminded of this from the archive—an old piece written more than eleven years ago. Rimbaud's poem to follow after Vertigo and image.


(Memories from a Subconscious Nightmare...)

It is the most lavish fragrance, the most devitalising. Does it make me want to kill? Or does it make me want to breathe. I could as if smell the flushes of crimson, and then they paled my hearing into avalanching silences. The silence was so poisonous, so decaying, so huge and hopeless; eclipsing all that was morally good or vital to my health—ceaselessly. It was my angel, my angel with waxen wings. "Was ascension such an unreachable dream?" Asked my angel. It was such a dark night, so dark that it blinded me. It blinded everything. The incandescence of the deepest night had burned the last speck of sombre stars with a lurid smile of bitter sarcasm. This humid and luxurious beauty, this lavish and choking fragrance, brought my extreme disgust and happiness into life and married them with the witness of my very own eye. May I shed my tears, which would never again be produced artificially? Or may I burst out laughing hysterically? If only I could cry out with the slightest sadness. Now this fragrance has turned its own veins into the most ecstatic earthly joy that seems so very vague, and yet so very real. Now this fragrance has left the residue in me the deepest grief. Could I have ever tasted an emotion as sharp? Or am I creating my indifferent tears woven so meticulously into my words—a world that can only be sensed visually but blindly, and can only be conceived of with such a harsh sound by an avalanching silence. I was about to woo, to woo this devitalising fragrance. And I was about to kill, to kill my angel after all the pleasure of worldliness has decayed to its core.

And now, I hear the river flowing in my body, with liquid so dark and polluted that I can hardly distinguish it from the unbounded night and the deceptively purified dream I am in. I have accumulated all my energy just to feel the retardation and inadequacy in me again, yet again. And now I hear your voice, my dearest pantomimist. Now I hear your voice, singing my song for me. You have given me a qualm, a qualitative change, and I can not even ask you to stay, to see me through the whole process—the whole process of passing. Yesterday we screamed together. I could almost feel your etherealisation, so beauteous you nauseated me. I wish I could cry, and ascend to the heavenly hell you have been presenting to me over and over again. Until I can no longer mumble, will I be led into a perfectly muted world, where I can only see your white sand dune, where I can only feel the flow of your words and murmurs of your voice crawling back into my blood, where I can only touch every single sound of your decaying petals by visualising my own pantomime. Now I see you bleeding, the sweetest nectar. Will I dream on? While you live on.

And the next second I woke up soaking wet. 

(Written on 28/June/2001.)

+++

Arthur Rimbaud, “Anguish”

Is it possible that She will have me forgiven for ambitions continually crushed,—that an affluent end will make up for the ages of indigence,—that a day of success will lull us to sleep on the shame of our fatal incompetence?

(O palms! diamond!—Love! strength!—higher than all joys and all fame!—in any case, everywhere—demon, god,—Youth of this being: myself!)

That the accidents of scientific wonders and the movements of social brotherhood will be cherished as the progressive restitution of our original freedom?…

But the Vampire who makes us behave orders us to enjoy ourselves with what she leaves us, or in other words to be more amusing.

Rolled in our wounds through the wearing air and the sea; in torments through the silence of the murderous waters and air; in tortures that laugh in the terrible surge of their silence.

(Translated by Louise Varese)

Agon without a Name

You pierced me

with a repeated force that was lighter
than what was bearable,
that felt less than paradise;
more than an imagined perception ―
sundered wholeness,
emoted affliction.

Inside my orchid flower was your truth,
your heaven that would not open.
I could not.

Those sounds of love, those sighs of love,
endless breaths of love, cascading noises of love,
resigning, removing, rising, falling...
upon the pressure of a finger
and the touch of a palm.

Words extend, they press their lips
on the pain
of an ever-growing tree branch,
curve of my neck,
and yet the leaves would not tremble,
sunlight could not devote.

I loved, and I vibrated;
I inhaled, and I exhaled,
in a way your intensification of my head
did not reveal
the flesh surrounding my heart,
and would not enter
the sculpture of me,
I could not.
A sculpture I was not.

Your fingers glided
like a starving butterfly
over my ribcage,
brushing against vertebrae of my spine,
penetrating the insides of my mind.
With the strength of ephemeral gunpowder,
like quicksilver carefully preserved
and dangerously sealed
in a glass tube.

Whose sorrowful pretence?

The subtleties and vagueness
of my self for you,
sadly it was not.
Fleeting, and yet not,
never fast.
Will never last.

Since it must be so,
no one remembered more
than what they could hope
to forget.
And what would have been my wound
when I was closest to the sun,
closest
to the reflection
of the palest moon?

The Persian Prince Humay Meeting the Chinese Princess Humayun in a Garden, circa 1450, by Junayd, Persian miniature painting on silk. © Bridgeman Art Library / Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France / Giraudon

丘壑，頸項，島嶼：metaphoric hills & vales, symbolic napes & islands

Wherever I look you are islands
a constellation of flowers breathing on the sea
deep-forested islands mountainous and fragrant
fires on a bright ocean
at the root one fire
all my life I have wanted to touch your ankle
running down to its shore
I beach myself on you
I listen
I see you among still leaves
regard of rock pool
by sun and moon and stars
island waterfalls and their echoes
are your voice your shoulders the whole of you standing
and you turn to me as though your feet were in mist
flowers birds same colors
as your breath
the flowers deliberately smell of you
and the birds make their feathers
not to fly but to
feel of you

~W. S. Merwin, 'Islands'

Polygon of Love

This inverted triangle begins
with luminosity
the pearl from Avalon.
Breaths of breathless love ceaselessly flirting,
seducing your Utopian stars,
extending thighs of sighs on the sides.
They die
in morning sunlight;
half awake, half asleep.
Over the stretched dome of skies,
a transparent line closes her air
atop
with the unseen, the unfelt:
a non-collinear,
unique plane
of pearlescent shadows.
Watercolours of a forgotten equinox
in Shambhala.

As the darkened tunnel leading to Utopian vertex
narrows and narrows
and narrows, to almost a disappearance
An Atlantis made of sea rocks with iridescent silver lights
glistening, shimmering, a little gloworm,
whence a flow of Klimt's golden liquid
releases,
vertigo ensues, pleasure remains,
tear stains and a ballet of smiles,
emeralds of burning Absinthe intensified with refined sugar.
(...hallucinations of two hearts...)

They crave ecstasy, distilled
and stilled with Orpheus' music.
I wish I knew the melodies,
what it felt like,
the tryst inside of me.

8' Sep' 2012

This new short poem of mine was inspired partially by the beautifully imaginative creations of jewellery artist Janet Theresa Miller -- her "Whispers of Atlantis" series. I think I must be obsessed with the collection as I cannot seem to get the exquisite imageries and forms out of my mind...

Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus, by John William Waterhouse

An early poem of mine, and Georges Bataille's words...

*About that lone rose flowering in snow, in the deep of winter, flushed and intoxicated with foolishly drunken ecstasy... Those flickering, dying flames setting her ablaze...*

The frozen time, stagnated, you are
the language, flowing for ever. You are
blinded by the black mists. There is a dim light, tinkling.
But seeing through your eyes,
the world is swooning and blurred.
A flower dies in the blink of an eye, and
a flower blooms in the withered twilight.

...... 流光

*     *     *

"And I think that in literature we can see the human perspective in its entirety, because literature doesn't permit us to live without seeing human nature under its most violent aspect. [...] And finally, it's literature that makes it possible for us to perceive the worst and learn how to confront it, how to overcome. In short, a man who plays finds in the game the force to overcome what the game contains of horror."


The night is my nudity
the stars are my teeth
I throw myself among the dead
dressed in white sunlight

~Georges Bataille, "I throw myself among the dead," from The Impossible

Mongolia 16/7

*Dated 16/July/2000 (also some 12 years ago...)

I love the unbounded green fields in Mongolia in particular. Everything was so still, and yet everything was moving and flowing. I could feel the minute, or even delicate, vibration of life within the strong peacefulness. I could feel the rhythm within that silent music. The cattle and horses were beautiful. Their black and brown skin was shining under the sunlight as if it were velvet. The fragrance of grass and the smell of animals; everything came to the smell of stillness in the air. The mountains in a great distance were covered with the greyish-blue silken touch. You can really swim in the vast greenness, swim in the Golden Lotus blossoms and swim in the clean and light sky. So there was this serene beauty in every touch, in the sensuous world belonging both to celestials and human beings. The sunset here began with purely golden shines and then smeared over and dyed the sky and the earth with melancholic pink. Everything was melting together into a pure spark. The sky in Mongolia was not as blue as it sometimes is in London, so blue that it is piercing. The Mongolian sky was light, clean and limpid. Like music. Like a song.


"The poignant song is echoed through all the sky in many-coloured tears and smiles, alarms and hopes; waves rise up and sink again, dreams break, and form. In me is thy own defeat of self."

"It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joy in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet's heart."

"He it is who puts his enchantment upon these eyes and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart in varied cadence of pleasure and pain.
He it is who weaves the web of this maya in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue and green, and lets peep out through the folds of his feet, at whose touch I forget myself.
Days come and ages pass, and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name, in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow."

"Keeping steps with that restless, rapid music, seasons come dancing and pass away---colours, tunes, and perfumes pour in endless cascades in the abounding joy that scatters and gives up and dies every moment."

~ from Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore, extracts of verses 71, 84, 72 & 70

Mongolia 15/7

(*Written when I first travelled to Inner Mongolia on an art and archaeological journey, with a group led by a painter/sculptor/ceramicist and erudite art historian and his wife, around the summer of 2000. It was during moments like this, as described in my journal entries, that I realised that which is the most beautiful, poignant and the most miraculous one can imagine and experience is the nature. How it moves us. How it thrills us. How it compels us to be transported and lifted above our ordinary sense of self-focus and consciousness, whilst our heart is ever so still and our gaze is ever transfixed upon what is all around us, with such tender depths of intimacy and immediacy, such an embrace.)


One day I was looking out from the window of the bus. There were some lilac clouds mingled with the light blue sky, as if a soft piece of lilac silk were being stretched over in an intense nerve. The sky reminded me of Magritte's "The Raw Nerve," though the clouds might be more dimensional through the game played by light and sky. That vast gauzy violet cloud was dripping down to the green earth like waterfalls made of silk. A drip of lilac watercolour got into the pure and white clouds, and then it took over all the beauty and life which formerly belonged to the sky. It was the limpid vibration in a false sense of the ominous. Standing on a plain of the mountain top, my world then was uncharted; another large cloud with amazingly graceful golden embroidery, symbolising an infiltrative omen of glimmerings, was anticipating a miracle that was to come down to earth from heaven.

The lines of the mountains were so tender yet so strong that they resembled the lines of human shoulders. And there was this green mist covering the earth, soft and blurred and silky. Have you ever had this painful feeling when looking at the sunset? It sometimes looks like an enormous wound, a swollen gall, swelling and swelling, spreading all over until it painfully chokes the sky. The world then is only the sky, only the painfully scarlet wound.

René Magritte, The Raw Nerve, 1960

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world)

What a voice. What a heart. The soul transported and transcended in the most beautiful melodies of lyric baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who left us in May this year. I will always miss his music.
"I am dead to the world's tumult, and I rest in a quiet realm. I live alone in my heaven, in my love and in my song..."


Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.

Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,
Und ruh' in einem stillen Gebiet!
Ich leb' allein in meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!

{ English translation below by Emily Ezust }

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!

(*Text for 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,' by Friedrich Rückert, set to music by Gustav Mahler. One of Mahler's five Rückert-Lieder.)


《我被這個世界遺棄》

詩句和音樂看似頹廢灰色的厭世表象之下，卻隱含深刻動人的真情。馬勒認為這首歌曲有一種「眼見情感已經滿溢到舌尖，卻發不出任何聲音」的感覺，甚至認為這首歌曲表達的就是他自己。樂曲裡蘊含的情感內斂醇厚，以極緩慢的速度推進；在豎琴、雙簧管和法國號的主導下，彷彿勾勒出藝術超越俗世之後達到孤絕境界的淒清美感。這對日後馬勒譜寫第五號交響曲第四樂章有明顯影響。

*上述文字取自臺灣國家交響樂團 National Symphony Orchestra 於9/26/2011晚間音樂會節目單之樂曲闡述


‎("...Mahler thought this song conveyed a certain feeling of 'sensing the emotion is already filled to the brim, right at the tip of your tongue, and yet you're not able to make a single sound.' He even thought this song was an expression of himself..." His love, emotions and feelings are so deep and intense that, instead of an avalanching outpour, it was quiet, solitude, even silence -- art and aesthetics unveiling the maya of this world and lifting it into a realm of pure beauty.)


It was a beautiful late September night, immersed in Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and Rückert-Lieder (as well as Wagner's Lohengrin prelude). Mahler's music and love, to me, are like Rilke's poetry -- one of my favourite poets whose words always move and teach me tremendously, my hero-poet who has transcended it all and yet looks back at you like a Bodhisattva, takes your hand to walk on the path together.


Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Daniel Barenboim on piano


an equally heartrending rendition of Dietrich Fishcer-Dieskau with Leonard Bernstein on piano

Lhasa's Story

She reminds me so much of a friend of mine, the way she speaks, the way she always smiles when she speaks... I love the story Lhasa's father told her, and in particular the way she tells it -- with her soft, husky, almost mystic voice. What a beautiful soul she was.



When my lifetime had just ended
And my death had just begun
I told you I’d never leave you
But I knew this day would come

Give me blood for my blood wedding
I am ready to be born
I feel new
As if this body were the first I’d ever worn

I need straw for the straw fire
I need hard earth for the plow
Don't ask me to reconsider
I am ready to go now

I'm going in I’m going in
This is how it starts
I can see in so far
But afterwards we always forget
Who we are

I'm going in I’m going in
I can stand the pain
And the blinding heat
'Cause I won't remember you
The next time we meet

You'll be making the arrangements
You'll be trying to set me free
Not a moment for the meeting
I'll be busy as a bee

You'll be talking to me
But I just won't understand
I'll be falling by the wayside
You'll be holding out your hand

Don't you tempt me with perfection
I have other things to do
I didn't burrow this far in
Just to come right back to you

I'm going in I’m going in
I have never been so ugly
I have never been so slow
These prison walls get closer now
The further in I go

I'm going in I’m going in
I like to see you from a distance
And just barely believe
And think that
Even lost and blind
I still invented love

I'm going in
I’m going in
I’m going in

*          *          *

How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart

And give to this world
All its
Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,

Otherwise,
We all remain

Too
Frightened.

~Hafiz Sherazi

My poems featured in Deathly Romantic's (now Dark Eye Glances) "Mad Poetry"

It is a great joy and wonderful privilege for me that Deathly Romantic Magazine (now Dark Eye Glances) has selected two of my poems (Snow Leopard and Black Panther, for H. & The First Poem: for David) to be featured in the "Mad Poetry" section of its summer issue. I discovered this gem via its editor/publisher Garth von Buchholz's beautifully sensual and swooningly emotional poem Anaïs and Henry, where one can truly feel the poet's passionate heart. I recited the poem out loud after my first reading, as for me, it is almost like a play in itself, in addition to being complete and utter poetry. The poem is written as a dialogue, and according to the poet, partially inspired by The Song of Songs of Solomon. Garth is currently working on a collection of "darkly romantic" love poems for an upcoming book, which I am eagerly anticipating...

Many thanks to Garth and Deathly Romantic, once again, for featuring my poetry. This is like my birthday celebration coming early, and I feel I am closer to the realm of my idol and heroine Morticia Addams (oh, the "goth chick" in me will forever be fascinated and mesmerised by the darkly elegant and impossibly romantic Morticia and Gomez...)! More importantly, it has been a real pleasure getting to know works of other like-minded poets and artists, and I look forward to many more collaborations with Deathly Romantic in the future.


On other surety none; freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall:
And Som are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n,
And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall
From what high state of bliss into what woe!

~John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book V

‎"Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to Its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

 ~William Blake: The Clod and the Pebble, from Songs of Experience

La Confession (by Lhasa de Sela)

Je n'ai pas peur

De dire que je t'ai trahi

Par pure paresse

Par pure mélancolie

Qu'entre toi

Et le Diable

J'ai choisi le plus

Confortable

Mais tout cela

N'est pas pourquoi

Je me sens coupable

Mon cher ami

Je n'ai pas peur de dire

Que tu me fais peur

Avec ton espoir

Et ton grand sens

De l'honneur

Tu me donnes envie

De tout détruire

De t'arracher

Le beau sourire

Et meme ca

N'est pas pourquoi

Je me sens coupable

C'est ca le pire

Je me sens coupable

Parce que j'ai l'habitude

C'est la seule chose

Que je peux faire

Avec une certaine

Certitude

C'est rassurant

De penser

Que je suis sûre

Se ne pas me tromper

Quand il s'agit

De la question

De ma grande culpabilité

Je n'ai pas peur

De dire que j'ai triché

j'ai mis les plus pures

De mes pensées

Sur le marché

J'ai envie de laisser tomber

Toute cette idée

De "vérité"

Je garderais

Pour me guider

Plaisir et culpabilité

Two poems written for me...!

By my very dear friend, the poet-philosopher-musician Alain Minod. Thank you sincerely Alain for these beautiful creations and for allowing me to share them in my little space.
Read more of Alain's writing and poetry here, and listen to his music and poetry reading here.


Name and Sun

My name is a small shadow
He stays along
A half broken wall
The holes are stars

My name is a little iced
But he is a  stone
Thrown away
To the beats of eternity

But he is in love
With the sun

Each time that he meets him
Early
On the morning
Or
On the evening
He gathers the flowers
Of the life

During the nights
He brings several flowers
And tries
To make others names
Than the well-known

Then he is – in one’s turn –
Glittering
In the holes of the present
Then he touches the love
And – so – he breaks
A little more the wall

Every flower
That he keeps with him
Is dayfully enlightening
Amongst his shadow

Is he really looking
For my ecstasy
At any rate
He is not falling down
And – standing up –
He calls  me
In order to
Make
A little less
Shadow

And – each time –
I keep more memory !


*          *          *


For You : I would like to send : A real kiss that I lend - after all the
distance - the best of my thought - For your sound of music caught -
You the lightning presence - Dream of flower- taken on the late hour
Freedom in the air - Something in your ear - Is still falling in my mind - Something very kind - Something new from you - ( in my country happyfew ) dance like a fountain - With wind amongst men-
Here in the deepth of winter - Is that spring water ?...

Piazzolla's Saudades for Oblivion: emotional soundscapes of his poetry...

"I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another… then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

― James Joyce, closing line of Ulysses

“I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.”

― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

― James Joyce, closing line of 'The Dead' from Dubliners


〝醉生夢死不過是她跟我開的一個玩笑。有些事情你越想忘記，就會記得越牢。當有些事情你無法得到時，你唯一能做的，就是不要忘記。＂ 
"Living a befuddled and intoxicated life is merely a joke she made with me. The harder you try to forget about some things, the harder you remember them. When there’s something you can never get, the only thing you can do is not to forget."

― from the film Ashes of Time directed by Wong Kar-Wai


＂你知不知道有一種鳥沒有腳的？他的一生只能在天上飛來飛去。一輩子只能落地一次，那就是他死的時候。＂
"Do you know there’s a kind of bird without legs? All its life it only flies in the sky. All its life only one time it lands on earth – that is the time it dies."

(...also Wong Kar-Wai, forgot which film it is from...)

La Mélancolie (detail), by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532
*image via Wikipedia

One of the beautiful Piazzolla songs used in Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together, a film about longing, time, memories, love, loss, chance, and "the end of the world"...

Wong, in regards to the interpretation of the film said: "In this film, some audiences will say that the title seems to be very cynical, because it is about two persons living together, and at the end, they are just separate. But to me, happy together can apply to two persons or apply to a person and his past, and I think sometimes when a person is at peace with himself and his past, I think it is the beginning of a relationship which can be happy, and also he can be more open to more possibilities in the future with other people." (via)




Santiago Cimadevilla performing Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion." With the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra (Latvia), conductor Imants Resnis. Live performance in Liepaja, December 2007.

吳爾芙情詩：Virginia Woolf's Love Letter

在腹語術的魔法下  星宿暈眩著小宇宙永世輪迴
每個人在此分此秒  皆經歷著一場屬於自己的小死亡儀式
精神層面的死亡  生理層面的死亡  情慾層面的死亡  藝術層面的死亡
詩層面的死亡  愛層面的死亡  哲學層面的完全死亡
吳爾芙筆翼的墨水  舌尖的墨水  指梢的墨水
蝕鏤著深邃雙瞳裡無止盡的哀戚
我的情人奧蘭朵啊  何時能奢望著再也不覓不尋不惦不戀妳/你？

*          *          *          *          *

Under the spell of ventriloquy, entranced, removed, constellations
Vertiginously dance and reincarnate through aeons of micro universe
In this moment, in this second, everyone is experiencing
His own Rite of La Petite Mort, belonging to no one but himself.
A little death spiritually, a little death physically,
A little death erotically, a little death artistically;
The little death of Poetry, the little death of Love, the little death,
Utterly, philosophically speaking.
The ink on the tip of Virginia Woolf’s pen, the ink on the tip of your tongue, the ink
On the tip of your fingers… Etching ceaselessly the deepest grief in your eyes,
Immeasurably, inconceivably. Ah, my lover Orlando,
When do I dare, to never again
Search for you long for you think of you infatuate
Over you?

梅蘭芳黑白青衣：Mei Lanfang’s Sepia Qingyi

若眼眸為靈魂之窗  手指則是道盡故事的獨舞者
穹蒼潤澤幻化  從世宗的雨過天青雲破處  徽宗的剔透冰裂玲瓏瓷
靛藍泛紫斑滲透著紋路  如血  如詩  如火  如花
到黑白影像中廣袤如墨的青衣綢緞  瀑布似流暢著水袖的樂音
空洞窗櫺與月華宣紙淺淺隱藏著洩漏不了的秘密
它卻為最美的絳唇  點綴出最美的頌歌

*          *          *          *          *

Mei Lanfang’s Sepia Qingyi

Should eyes be the window to the soul,
fingers are the dancers narrating all stories, all tales.
Ever-evolving hues of the sky:

From a morning sky after the rain, where clouds break,
ice-crazing of porcellaneous translucency,
where light filters through its celadon glaze,
purple veins of permeating sapphire—
Reminiscent of blood, of poetry ablaze, of paradoxically languishing eudaimonia;

To the vastness of qingyi’s silk in black and white,
coruscating like the darkest ink,
a cascade of singing melodies from the dancing water-sleeves—
breathing, conversing, ever-changing, ever-fixed…
Hollow flowers in the windowpanes, moonlight-swept paper drapes,
softly hide the secret never to be told, never to be known.
The secret that embroiders the most beautiful paean
from his most beautiful carnelian lips.

More on Mei Lanfang here...

Qingyi (青衣)：Guimen Dan (閨門旦) is the role of the virtuous lady. It is also known as Qingyi (青衣）or Zhengdan (正旦). Qingyi means 'green robes' in Chinese, although the term traditionally extends to the colour black. This type of dan characters used to wear black robes. Qing Yi are normally mature and sometimes married women. They may be rich or poor, young or of middle age, but they have to be mature women to fall under this category. Qingyi focus more on singing and they have little movement. Opera schools in China tend to have difficulty recruiting students for this kind of role, since it requires a good voice, good looks and a good height. The most famous qingyi of the last century was Mei Lanfang. Examples of Guimen Dan are Du Liniang (杜麗娘) from The Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭) and Wang Baochuan (王寶釧）from Wujiapo（武家坡). *Via: Wikipedia

Snow Leopard and Black Panther (for H.)

The musky incense of nag champa, was what led
the snow leopard to the black panther:
her lustrous smoothness, the scent and warmth
of her fur and skin – an uncharted territory.
The turquoise half-hidden behind his long eyelashes, lingering shadow of long eyelashes,
was what led the black panther to the snow leopard: his quiet prowess
and elegant strength – disarming, surreptitious beauty,
the most arresting stillness.
The snow leopard softly cocoons the black panther
with ripples of golden kisses: she did not know the reason why; nor
did the stars in her pantherine night sky.

Pacing in passionate vexation, behind the invisible bars in her eyes,
the black panther lays her gaze upon the snow leopard.
With such agitation, a prayer and a plea encircle
the black diamonds scattering amidst her dangerously soft leaps.
Those sun-embroidered lines of the snow leopard’s timeless form
embrace and penetrate like a metallic thread, glowing, illuminating:
A frozen motion, thoughtlessness in sehnsucht;
a mind within, a mind without. A mind of no mind.

What melts the black panther’s restlessness
is the motionlessness in the snow leopard’s glance beyond
(but is what she perceives as beyond
truly looking backward, or rather looking inward?) –

As they flow together and walk together in the ceaseless waves
of Mo Chhu’s deep sapphire, Po Chhu’s avalanche white,
they meet, without intention of direction.


The quiescence and mutuality of infinity.

*     *     *

Sehnsucht
(n.) “the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what”; a yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one’s home. See also here.

~23^rd/July/2012

*English translation of the lyrics:

With every word,
with every smile,
with every look,
with every caress...

I approach the water
drinking your kiss,
the light of your face,
the light of your form.

To love you is a plea;
it's the song of a mute;
the look of a blind man;
a naked secret.

I surrender myself to your arms,
with fear and with calm;
a plea on my lips,
a plea in my soul.

With every word,
with every smile,
with every look,
with every caress...

I approach the fire,
and all that it burns;
the light of your face,
the light of your form.

To love you is a plea;
it's the song of a mute;
the look of a blind man;
a secret exposed.

I give myself to your arms,
with fear and with calm;
a plea on my lips,
a plea in my soul...

海市蜃樓: a short impression on Dubai

This mirage city built on sand and sea is quite indescribably bizarre. My initial romanticised exotic impression on arrival at the airport – subtle wafts in the air of what resembles the scent of my favourite Nag Champa incense – quickly turned sour after spending forever at immigration and on the way to the hotel. An unusually tiring journey by air for seven (plus two) hours. The port-side hotel’s friendly staff then quickly restored my good impression (I’m such an easy mark) with their wonderful professionalism, lovely attentiveness, and beautiful little canapés (吃, what else?). So much sand in the air that the view from the cab looked almost dreamlike, the strange, cachophanous mixture of architectural styles, and those incredibly elegant men dressed in impeccable “veneer white” from head to toe (and stay white!)… Perhaps tomorrow morning my mood will be lifted more by admiring all those beautifully glassy blue and green eyes, and olive skin glistening under the sunlight (reminding me of my SOAS days).

*          *          *

The smell of frankincense permeating in the air, stronger and stronger; the intoxicating Middle Eastern music, and the calls to prayers filling the dome... All of this is making me seriously light-headed and "I just want to go to sleep..." Then, a few hours later I woke up to face the bitter and cruel realities, of airport security, argh~~~ And those people in a hurry to friggin' go nowhere... don't they ever find themselves just a tad moronic? (Pardon my semi-French here...) Changi, at times like this how I do love coming back to you...!

*          *          *

The sweet nightingale
sings like a lyre
the flower-filled meadows
are laughing for joy;
a flight of birds soars up
from the enchanted forest;
the maidens’ chorus
promises a thousand delights.

~Carmina Burana; cantiones profanae.
(Alys Clare translation in the author’s book “The Enchanter’s Forest.”)

*Words written and images taken by me in late April, 2012.

That which speaks to me these days...

視之不見，名曰微；聽之不聞，名曰希；搏之不得，名曰夷。此三者，不可 致詰，故混而為一。其上不皎，其下不昧，繩繩兮不可名，複歸于物。是謂無狀之狀，無物之象，是謂惚恍。迎之不見其首，隨之不見其后。執古之道，以御今 之有。能知古始，是謂道紀。

---《道德經：十四章》

"Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped. Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom." 

---Tao Te Ching, Chapter xiv


故常無欲，以觀其妙；常有欲，以觀其徼。此兩者同出而異名，同謂之玄。玄 之又玄，眾妙之門。

---《道德經：一章》

Very Advaita Vedanta...
"One experiences without Self to sense the World,
And experiences with Self to understand the World.
The two experiences are the same within Tao;
They are distinct only within the World.
Neither experience conveys Tao
Which is infinitely greater and more subtle than the World."

---Tao Te Ching, Chapter i

*          *          *

"... So what happens? I am clinging not to you, but to the idea, to something which will help me to escape from myself. You may be attached to an experience, to an incident, which has given you great excitement, a great sense of elation, a sense of power, a sense of safety and you are clinging to that. That experience, which you have had, what is it? That experience is registered in the mind and you hold it. That something you are holding on to is dead and you also are becoming dead. If you see all this, without any direction, without any motive, just observe it, then you will see that insight shows the whole thing as on a map. When once there is that insight the thing disappears completely, you are not attached."

---Jiddu Krishnamurti, On Attachment

Some thoughts...
D: What a remarkable insight. The mind creates the illusion of existence which creates the 'grasping'. The mind is the trickster that deludes one from knowing that the one collective self is that which is infinite - that which alone exists. Everything else is noise.
Poesis: The more I get into Krishnamurti the more profoundly I "feel" his words - it's really remarkable.
Time is ceaselessly passing, like a running brook, as T.S. Eliot's poem "but that which is only living can only die" - after the mind's illusion of dead/dying experience "having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent." (Nabakov) But then according to D time does not exist!
"...the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now."
They were always there, and never there. Since 'all is always now', the need of grasping ceases to be. Everything else is noise. Hooray.

"It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. ... It is only when the mind is not operating mechanically in the structure of thought that you have an insight."

---Jiddu Krishnamurti

"You know, to love is to be free; both parties are free. Where there is the possibility of pain, where there is the possibility of suffering in love, it is not love, it is merely a subtle form of possession, of acquisitiveness. [...] So each struggle for comfort, for encouragement, really but betrays the lack of inward richness; and therefore an action separate, apart from the other individual naturally creates disturbance, pain and suffering; and one individual has to suppress what he really feels in order to adjust himself to the other. In other words, this constant repression, brought about by so-called love, destroys the two individuals. In that love there is no freedom; it is merely a subtle bondage." An enlightened ideal, perhaps?

---Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

‎"So the 'me' is the creator of that emptiness. The 'me' is the empty; the 'me' is a self-enclosing process in which we are aware of that extraordinary loneliness. So being aware of that, we are trying to run away through various forms of identification. These identifications we call fulfillments. Actually, there is no fulfillment because mind, the 'me', can never fulfill; it is the very nature of the 'me' to be self-enclosing. [...] this ache of emptiness is extraordinarily strong. We do anything to escape from it. Any illusion is sufficient, and that is the source of illusion. Mind has the power to create illusion. And as long as we do not understand that aloneness, that state of self-enclosing emptiness - do what you will, seek whatever fulfillment you will - there is always that barrier which divides, which knows no completeness."
"That intelligent, integrated state is aloneness. When the observer is the observed, then it is the integrated state. And in that aloneness, in that state of being completely alone, full, when the mind is not seeking anything, neither seeking reward nor avoiding punishment, when the mind is truly still, not seeking, not groping, only then, that which is not measured by the mind comes into being."

---On Sorrow and Aloneness, Jiddu Krishnamurti talk, February 3, 1952
(See the full article of Krishnamurti's talk on fulfillment and aloneness here.)

*          *          *

"The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

---Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

Poesis: 雖然眼睛看不見風，但風卻是存在的：聽得見，感受得著，在雲的舞姿裡觀察得到，當它吹在髮梢與樹葉的瞬間，亦能得見。

*          *          *

I broke your heart.
Now barefoot I tread
on shards.
---------------------------------------------
If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

— both poems by Vera Pavlova, (translated by Steven Seymour)

“Remembering is only a new form of suffering.” — Charles Baudelaire

Some response...
Poesis: But then suffering is no different in its essence from absence of suffering, and pleasure no different from absence of it. Following this logic, remembering is no different from forgetting, hence 'forgetting is also only a new form of suffering.' Love is the greatest illusion in the apparent world of individuation. (What random streams of consciousness at midnight...)

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Whatever is dependently co-arisen
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way.

—Nagarjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24:18

Whatever is impermanent is subject to change. 
Whatever is subject to change is subject to suffering.

—The Buddha

Poesis: All of this is nothingness. "There is no difference between samsara and nirvana." Nagarjuna my hero!

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"The suffering in these poems remains intact; it is neither resolved nor negated. What happens for the most part is, the poems dissolve, finally, into the cream of the physical world. If negative capability works at all, it works in reverse, a kind of negative negative capability—which would make it positive—where very real anxiety and irritability over mystery and doubt enable the poet—no, propel him—into the world of the eye, the pure perceptual habit that checks all cognitive drives, not before they’ve begun but after they’ve begun, and done their damage. [...] —until it seems that perpetual fear is a propellant into the innocent, fearless, and vulnerable world of the senses. So that the poet paralyzed with fear lying in a hammock on a beautiful day—unhappy man in a happy world—does not suffer any less when he looks around him; he does not cease to suffer, he only ceases to try to understand."

(Read Mary Ruefle's full essay 'On Fear' here.)

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「荼蘼—韶華勝極」「開到荼蘼花事了，塵煙過，知多少？」
～《紅樓夢》＜壽怡紅群芳開夜宴＞
「一從梅粉褪殘妝，塗抹新紅上海棠；開到荼蘼花事了，絲絲天棘出莓牆。」～宋, 王淇春 ＜暮遊小園＞
佛說:「一切有為法，儘是因緣合和，緣起時起，緣盡還無，不外如是。」

Self Portrait by Francesca Woodman

Woodman’s interest in self-presentation—and self-preservation—emerges even in a note written around the time of her first suicide attempt. “I finally managed,” she explains, “to try to do away with myself, as neatly and concisely as possible…. I would rather die young leaving various accomplishments, some work, my friendship with you, and some other artifacts intact, instead of pell-mell erasing all of these delicate things.” Woodman reverses the traditional terms of the arrangement: death, like photography, is simply a series of chemical reactions. Living is “erasing”; dying a way of ensuring that what was will continue to be, of fixing certain things in place. [...] ...her long exposures as a portrait of “legs—and time.” Her wording recalls a statement issued by early photographer William H. Fox Talbot in the 1830s, when he praised the infant medium’s ability to document “the injuries of time.” 

 ---by Elizabeth Gumport, via New York Review of Books

Indian religious philosopher, thinker and spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1985)

"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery." ---Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

(*image: Nakazora n°983, by 山本昌男 Masao Yamamoto, 2004.)