not a pretty picture. not a good. not a bad. picture. but an argument.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

against nostalgia


Nostalgia by Charles Wright

Always it comes when we least expect it, like a wave,
Or like the shadow of several waves,
                                                         one after the next,
Becoming singular as the face

Of someone who rose and fell apart at the edge of our lives.


Breaks up and re-forms, breaks up, re-forms.
And all the attendant retinue of loss foams out
Brilliant and sea-white, then sinks away.

Memory's dog-teeth,
                                lovely detritus smoothed out and laid up.

And always the feeling comes that it was better then,
Whatever it was-
                            people and places, the sweet taste of things-
And this one, wave-borne and wave-washed, was part of all that.

We take the conceit in hand, and rub it for good luck.

Or rub it against the evil eye.
And yet, when that wave appears, or that wave's shadow, we like it,
Or say we do,
                      and hope the next time

We'll be surprised again, and returned again, despite the fact
The time will come, they say, when the weight of nostalgia,
                                                                            that ten-foot spread
Of sand in the heart, outweighs
Whatever living existence we drop on the scales.

 
May it never arrive, Lord, may it never arrive.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

the conversation

why something instead of nothing?

consider for a moment eternity (eternity!) and then consider the possibility of what might happen inside eternity.  if all were to exist (and all does exist if we label everything that is and happens as we know it, or imagine it, as all), if it were to exist cumulatively, dense, with no distance, there would then be no comparative point of reference and therefore everything, happening simultaneously and inside of itself, would be equally truly denoted as nothing.  (imagine only one body in the universe and no other, no time nor space, nor even your imagination.  you can not see that one body without seeing another to know what the first is.  everything gathered together in the one body of possibility is invisible without a second to measure it.)  but throughout the length of eternity, nothing?  i imagine that for a great long part of eternity it is true, nothing exists, which is to say that everything exists for a great long time without distance. 

but is it not common sense to imagine that inside of the vastness of eternity at some point something happens, some event, accidental or purposeful (or even outside of the meaning or implication of accidental or purposeful) that ruptures the wholeness of everything and inserts distance inside of it, thereby fracturing all into the multitudinous state of being that we witness, this something, these many somethings?

how long might something endure?

might it matter?

who can imagine the vastness of eternity?

driving down the grey empty road i asked myself why something instead of nothing. 

 and then the crow crossed my path



and i understood.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

a bird. a bird. a bird in a frame.

 

ecstasy, real ecstasy, contains equal parts joy and pain.




it is all ecstasy.