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

Friday, March 25, 2016

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

"element bearable to no mortal"


Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal...

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.   

from "At The Fishhouses" by Elizabeth Bishop

Sunday, March 13, 2016

whiteness can be best desribed by greyness






and yet whiteness
can be best described by greyness
a bird by a stone
sunflowers
in december...

the most palpable
description of bread
is that of hunger....

a transparent
source-like description
of water
is that of thirst
of ash
of desert...
lack hunger
absence
of flesh
is a description of love...

from "A Sketch for a Modern Love Poem" by Tadeusz Różewicz
translated by Czeslaw Milosz

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

warped time





Anne Akiko Meyers performs Somei Satoh's Birds In Warped Time

Friday, March 4, 2016

stillness, full, complete


If only once there were utter quiet.
If the random and approximate
fell silent and the neighbors' laughter,
if the murmur that my senses make
didn't hinder me so much when I am awake ---

Then I could in thousandfold thoughts
up to your border think you
and possess you (only for the length of a smile),
in order to give you away to all that are living
like gratitude.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours
translated by James Owens

Thursday, March 3, 2016