I am so drunk

I am so drunk
I have lost the way in
and the way out.
I have lost the earth, the moon, and the sky.
Don't put another cup of wine in my hand,
pour it in my mouth,
for I have lost the way to my mouth.


Rumi
(tr. Shahram Shiva)














for noura, thanking her for her warm message
from one spirit to another
from one heart to another

Can thinking take this gift into his hands, that is, take it to heart?

from Heidegger

Kindness in words creates confidence.

Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.

Kindness in giving creates love.

Lao Tzu

stray reflections

what is meant by "for"?

this longing

for the end of longing

that some call death

and others life.

the light falls around us

never in us

it's there

in the seeping of the days

the darkening of your face

fall

now

like a cloak to the ground

silently.



fragments of a Black Sun

and I found myself on that day in the fragrance of spring
when he embraced me in my long-sleeved kimono
showing yellow daffodils along a running stream.
He gently praised my twenty-year-old petals.


from the poem A Kimono, by Toshio Nakae
trans. William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura

At first I wondered why I liked these (boring?) images, but then I realised they reminded me of Corot. So I am posting them to check on that :-)
And while doing some research, I discovered that Corot was a passionate photographer himself. It is believed that his experiments with monochrome prints led to an even greater sobriety of colour in his paintings. He confesses to disliking vivid colours:

“What there is to see in painting, or rather what I am looking for, is the form, the whole, the value of the tones…That is why for me the color comes after, because I love more than anything else the overall effect, the harmony of the tones, while color gives you a kind of shock that I don’t like. Perhaps it is the excess of this principal that makes people say I have leaden tones".

to find out more about his photographs, go here:
http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2008/01/hand-drawn-negative.html

Que connaîtrions-nous d’autrui si nous ne l’imaginions pas ?

Gaston Bachelard

What would we know of others if we didn't imagine them?

flower garden at night, drunk with colour

Come to my garden walk, my love.
Pass by the fervid flowers that press themselves on your sight.
Pass them by, stopping at some chance joy,
which like a sudden wonder of sunset illumines,
yet elude.
For lover’s gift is shy, it never tells its name,
it flits across the shade, spreading a shiver of joy along the dust.
Overtake it or miss it for ever.
But a gift that can be grasped is merely a frail flower,
or a lamp with flame that will flicker.


Lover’s Gifts II: Come to My Garden Walk
Rabindranath Tagore

Last night in the garden I offered you my youth's foaming wine.
You lifted the cup to your lips, you shut your eyes and smiled
while I raised your veil,
unbound your tresses,
drawing down upon my breast your face sweet with its silence,
last night when the moon's dream overflowed the world of slumber.
Today in the dew-cooled calm of the dawn
you are walking to God's temple,
bathed and robed in white,
with a basketful of flowers in your hand.
I stand aside in the shade under the tree,
with my head bent,
in the calm of the dawn
by the lonely road to the temple.

Lover’s Gifts XIII: Last Night in the Garden
Rabindranath Tagore

light and dark

Nicole Peyrafitte singing Pierre Joris' poem Altars of Light :

for doors

For doors
are both frame and monument
to our spent time,
and too little
has been said
of our coming through and leaving by them.



from Charles Tomlinson
(The Door)

my redblue expressionist fury

time!
you refused to stop then.
i recant my softness
and my goodness.
the quietness of the leaf
i will break it to pieces.
time!
you refused to bend
to my siren song.
i recant the curve
of my eyebrow
the wholeness of my knee
the glow of my hip
and the ineffable
of my navel.
the grace of the flower
i will tear it apart.
my stabbing red whisper
i will hurl it at you.
time!
you will go down
you will go blind
i will strangle you
with the blue ribbon
of my blood.

And I wonder

O quam te memorem virgo...
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair--
Lean on a garden urn--
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair--
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise--
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.



La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping Girl)
by T.S. Eliot

answering a double call from beyond

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti (Remember)

self-portrait with crescent moon

When I take photos I float

on the verge of myself.
I am many.

Larger than myself
yet I enclose myself no more.

I who is otherwise
filled to the brim with the past
learn to walk through the things
of the present
soundlessly but not quietly
until I am
a body without a face
a heartbeat without a body
the thin edge of light.

Stay with me, my fever,
dance with me, my pain,
swirl me into the shape
of what is being born
now.

When I take photos I float
float to the crescent moon

the white moon
until the soft cloud that I am
I am
casts her shadow upon your face
your pale face
you look up

slightly bewildered
stroke your skin
that skin
as if you tried to guess
what has just touched your soul
that soul
you only catch a glimpse
of my hair
my dark hair
in the mirror
in which the world
meets the world
and that too will soon be
gone
is now

gone.

When I take photos I float

on the verge of myself.
I am many.
Larger than myself
yet I enclose myself
no more.


I who is otherwise
filled to the brim with the past
learn to walk through the things
of the present
soundlessly but not quietly
until I am
a body without a face
a heartbeat without a body
the thin edge of light.

Stay with me, my fever,
dance with me, my pain,
swirl me into the shape
of what is being born
now.

When I take photos I float
float to the crescent moon
the white moon
until the soft cloud that I am
I am
casts her shadow upon your face
your pale face

you look up

slightly bewildered
stroke your skin
that skin
as if you tried to guess
what has just touched your soul

that soul
you only catch a glimpse
of my hair
my dark hair
in the mirror
in which the world
meets the world
and that too will soon be
gone
is now

gone.

(gratefully remembering how the first time I took the camera in my hands
felt like being born again)