Sunday, 5 July 2009

in that garden









































i imagine you asking:
can pain subside?
is night the only answer?


i ask, in what makes, perhaps, the faintest echo of a leaf:
can our bodies still bear the fallout of grace?


before, i would have moved towards you, from within that unspoken, unfinished gesture which so oft has been the only way of revealing myself to you.





it is only time which moves in their throats, like a snake, splitting and trying in vain to shed its hours. in what should have been the raw skin of beauty, they turn from each other. when they have drunk all the red from the tulips and all the gold from the air
and all the black from the poppies, in that stillness. they turn to each other, cold to the bones, ready to tear up their paleness as well.



















35 comments:

  1. Still remember the day when I heard a leaf falling upon the asphalt beneath my feet.
    Allow me to think about 'the night' as being an answer.
    With regard to colour, I guess that they are invented every day anew, starting with the first ray of light, which can't be far away -inventing life all new.
    (what a thoughtfull site you call your own, am very glad to have found it)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't know how you did it, but are really wonderful. Felicitari!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wah, another level of awe.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Je te réponds Roxana je suis sur que tu n'auras pas la finesse de la pellicule , tu as tisser ta personnalité avec des photos d'une atmosphère une certaine métaphore sur les textes aussi. L'art n'est donc ni superficiel, ni illusoire; le photographe, le peintre et le poète ne sont que des ilusionnistes de leur art. Oscar Wilde va même jusqu'à soutenir que c'est plutôt la nature elle-même qui imite l'art; en faite notre vision de la nature est en effet prédéterminée par une représentation culturel. Néanmoins reste la beauté libre, parce qu'elle est belle et rien d'autre.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This, for me, is an epiphany.

    ReplyDelete
  6. In seventh heaven looking at these...

    For some reason the deep red tulips remind me of the ruby slippers that Dorothy wore in Oz...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Now with a raid on the color of a more explicitly to move soon after the B & W color. When all very impressionistic, which means that your images do fascinate me always

    ReplyDelete
  8. how can your garden be so beautiful and menacing at the same time - or maybe it is the beauty that is menacing, its uncompromising mirror demanding truth.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Buna Roxana!M-am intors si ma bucur sa revad blogul tau dupa o saptamana de pauza,frumoase lalelele tale in special ultimele 3.:-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. It is there, in that garden, when the belly of its earth, has turned itself over to your hand, that it is born into its beauty once again...

    Because you touched it so...

    ReplyDelete
  11. technically speaking, I somehow like first two most - and two last colourful ones
    also, moving Recovery handle to the right on the last series and reducing contrast just a bit may be helpful to convey the sadness of the afterlife

    ReplyDelete
  12. I was reading the text attached to your new post and I asked myself: what does it mean?

    we have discussed before this futility of 'writing'.I don't actually mean the futility of words per se but the effect.....i disagree with say Nabokov( as a critic i don't like him)who disliked ideological novels. in short, the text did not move me at all, it felt dead. obviously, it depends on my 'ground-state', my willingness to like it but i was just wondering anyway......this is not a critique in anyway,just musings......

    ReplyDelete
  13. I love the chord change between the two sets of images. And this is beautiful: "i ask, in what makes, perhaps, the faintest echo of a leaf:
    can our bodies still bear the fallout of grace?"

    There is a certain merciless hunger at the heart of the world's desire for the world, this drinking of color from the flowers ... moving to presence in us, using us for its hunger, sometimes even before we feel its pulse....

    ReplyDelete
  14. Robert, thank you for visiting and sharing your thoughts with me. "Still remember the day when I heard a leaf falling upon the asphalt beneath my feet" - this image would make a perfect start for a haiku, or so i imagine now.

    and how much i agree with you regarding the colours and inventing life again - exactly what i needed to hear now...

    (i am glad to have met you as well - i would have never thought to call my Bridge 'thoughtful', but thank you! :-)





    Ha, Gabi! thank you :-) i did them lying in a tulip field, and looking at the flowers upwards while they were swaying in the clouds and a small forest of yellow trees behind...





    merc, another level of awe, wow :-) i'll have to invent another level of thanking you then...

    ReplyDelete
  15. Allan, beaucoup de ce que tu dis resonne en moi - l'artiste comme illusioniste (ca me rappelle ce poste d'Adelino avec une belle citation de Pessoa: http://adelinomarques.blogspot.com/2009/06/o-poeta-e-um-fingidor-fernando-pessoa.html

    qui dit exactement la meme chose) - et surtout la conclusion sur la Beaute: "Néanmoins reste la beauté libre, parce qu'elle est belle et rien d'autre."

    c'est la seule chose qui m'interesse dans mes photos, tu l'as vu bien. Merci de tout coeur, comme d'habitude.

    je sais que je vais perdre la finesse de la pellicule avec le D90, mais j'espere compenser cette perte avec les possibilites plus grandes de creativite, de faire des experiments etc.






    Prospero: and what more could i say now?! oh. what a wonderful word, epiphany.
    i am humbly bowing to you.






    Owen, from the trembling deer to the seventh heaven :-), i cannot say i am unpleased with this transition :-)
    and the ruby slippers of Oz!!!!!! hahaha.

    ReplyDelete
  16. though they represent such anguish, I adore the bottom three pictures

    ReplyDelete
  17. Adelino, i am so happy to hear that! thank you so much, you are too kind to me.




    Manuela, what a beautiful line you offered me: the beauty that is menacing, its uncompromising mirror demanding truth. and this is a Japanese thought, you know - too much beauty, unbearable beauty, is meancing, leads to madness. nobody should dare to enter a forest of blossoming cherry treas.




    Edith, ce ma bucur ca te-ai intors! a fost bine? abia astept sa vad ce minunatii ai adus cu tine :-)
    si ce bine ca iti plac si lalelele mele :-)

    ReplyDelete
  18. ah, S., dear S., your words are like an embrace to me. thank you, dark one.




    merci beaucoup, Simona! :-)




    ah, Eneles: i know what you mean, but you should also know that i need my high contrast, in this life and in the afterlife as well - even if it means sacrificing gentle sadness for that :-)
    but at least there is something that you 'somehow' like :-) what do you mean, 'technically speaking'? as if you had ever spoken another language except this one :-P
    but perhaps some things can never be told, or asked - and even if they were, how could one answer?

    ReplyDelete
  19. kubla, hello

    regarding ideological novels, or any mixture of ideology and art, i can't say i like that either. you could say i am sensitive to that because i come from a geographical space in which history made us witness, in the most cruel and brutal way, what happens when ideology uses art as a weapon. but, leaving this aside: it is just that i've seen too often that art seems to be an inappropriate vessel for ideology - it breaks too easily under that heaviness.

    but this discussion, though interesting, has nothing to do with my post. i appreciate your usual not-beating-around-the-bush when you don't like something, but what could i answer here? i could have tried, if you had articulated your feeling of 'not liking' in an argument, a 'critique'. you didn't even mention if there was a causal relationship between your cognitive response: what does it mean? and the emotional one: i don't feel anything.
    but anyway, even in that case: there is little i could say here, for me, the encounter with a work of art, or a poem, a text is similar to a falling-in-love encounter - there either is an immediate response to it (on all levels, cognitive, emotional etc, in most cases one cannot even explain why this happens, like being struck by shudder) or is not. if i tell somebody: "i love you" and the answer is: "i am sorry, i don't feel anything" - then what else is there to do? either or, unexplicable, going away in silence.

    or so i think :-)




    James: merciless hunger at the heart of the world's desire for the world - you understand that so well :-) i couldn't have expressed it better with my words - luckily i have my imags for that... and thank you for telling me you like the break between the two sets, i was unsure about my choice... now it looks good, indeed :-)




    Sorlil, funny, i hadn't thought of that, but you say 'anguish' and Manuela says 'menacing' - so i don't know, hmmm - it is so fascinating to see my images through other eyes...
    thank you for saying 'adore' :-)

    ReplyDelete
  20. I don't speak other languages? interesting

    ReplyDelete
  21. Eneles, i meant here in the comments, you choose to point out only technical aspects (well, almost always :-)

    (and i needed some language-related remark to introduce the topic of "being without words", "unable to answer" poetic questions)

    but the language of dying tulips - one of the many you seem to master, of course! so i expect you to tear my tales-pictures apart, technically speaking :-)

    ReplyDelete
  22. no, tearing apart you don't get, I like the new ones - cannot choose which one more, though

    my language is that of the living tulips, they may be not as fresh as yours here - yet they live their own life

    as technical comments go, yes I do, every other area is covered by other

    also, text is missing from the last post, how come?

    ReplyDelete
  23. i can only repeat your words as a comment

    can our bodies still bear the fallout of grace
    ....
    when they have drunk all the red from the tulips and all the gold from the air and all the black from the poppies,

    ReplyDelete
  24. these are amazing... as if the abstraction (processsion of abstraction) brings us past the flower as seen object and into the entire fruitfullness of the all... the presence of that light tripping us, calling us deeper. I love the gaze here.

    and the words, tender and hungry, wonderful!

    thank you. *you make me ashamed of myself... :)

    ReplyDelete
  25. and now you are missing :(

    ReplyDelete
  26. now i am back :-)

    thank you for worrying, i will write more tomorrow...

    ReplyDelete
  27. Eneles, what a pity, no tearing, is it wise to break the routine? :-P

    but i don't get your technical comment, what is wrong with them?

    and i am impressed you noticed the absence of words - but sometimes i get tired of them, isn't this one of the reasons i am so obsessed with photography? (even if i have a hunch that many people would stop coming to the Bridge if i only showed images, hmmm)

    ReplyDelete
  28. Marius, thank you sir! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  29. ffflaneur, it is an honour when you repeat my words :-)

    (coming back to our old discussion, thank you for answering, it is such a fascinating topic - i think Romania's case is a bit different in the communist space, because we had a woman in the leading role, Elena Ceausescu, she was not only the dictator's wife but an equally powerful leader (Romanians feared her more than him, actually) - and this was both very good for women who came to play very important roles in the society and very bad at the same time, because this happened only by reinforcing that gender ideology we talked about. i was 14 when the 'revolution' happened, to answer your question, so not so young, i'm afraid, to have no memories or not to experience/understand what our life was)

    ReplyDelete
  30. oh, mansuetude, "past the flower as seen object" - this makes me think of Klee, his famous words that are very dear to me: "art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible"...

    and i love your gaze when you look at my pictures. thank you...

    *i don't get the 'ashamed' part, really!!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  31. routine is good indeed, I eat a kilo of cherries every day now for almost a month, my major source of pleasure ;) regular pleasures.

    nothing is "wrong" here, but from my humble point of view there is contrast and there is contrast. there is difference in the luminocity between parts of the picture, and there is contrast in parts of the picture. you seem to like the former and i prefer the latter. while still satisfying the urge for more contrast, somehow, it removes the inconsistency between parts of the picture, and, more important, retains detail, or, if you like, content, in every part of the picture - for my moderate bourgois pleasure

    ReplyDelete
  32. long live your regular pleasures, Eneles :-)

    yes, it seems that we like different things when it comes to highs and lows. most of time. not always, though :-) (even if i am not sure i got your explanation, my brain is foggy these days anyway, so it's just me this time, i think, and not your inability of explaining :-)

    ReplyDelete
  33. Just! Magnificent!

    Ciau

    Visit:
    lasalasdeazel.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete