Wednesday 13 January 2010

asking the moon

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Did I
have a soul
did I
have too much.





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I gathered
some
things.

I took
them
inside.

I asked
the
wily Moon.

Looking
down
on me.

I went
on
pathways.




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What stays
are the remains
and memories
of the backhalf
of life
never again
to be first
of things
now among things
I am only.




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There is a sphere
beyond hope
there is light
in the darkness.

This is all
you know
it is enough
to know.



(excerpts from Transcension, Things and Only
by Peter Bradburn)

45 comments:

  1. Beautiful as always. I don't think the moon is wily, though. The moon is candid - too much so, sometimes.

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  2. Pois é...cá estão as tuas sombras e as tuas penumbras...
    Afinal a tua luz!!!

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  3. There is a light
    there is a one inside
    only left
    to move on

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  4. I yearn to see your library...

    You draw so widely from such rich sources... what a mind, what a mind... I wonder if a map of such a mind exists somewhere... if not a talented cartographer should set himself or herself to the admirable task of creating such a map, though it might be a lifetime of work... and many areas may remain blank, mysterious, inaccessible, hidden . . .

    In the meantime, from the mysterious moonlit source, haunting images flow, to cast an eery light on my dreams tonight...

    Merci Roxana... Hosana...

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  5. I like to think this way. when I loose my way.

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  6. Dearest, did you notice any similarities between our latest coinciding pages. That incessant
    fixation on the soul and the body. That beauteous fixation. Your skin is shaded and enclosed while mine is boundless and alight.

    The peculiarity of heliotropism is that the influence of light on certain plants is either positive, that is towards the light; or negative, away from the light. The term could easily be used in photography... but we will continue to talk about this, i suppose.

    Mysterium Coniunctionis. The moon, in alchemy, is the aqua mirifica, which is to say that it extracts the soul from the body. In a powerful antinomy, it may also restore life to the body and the soul.

    "Luna, as mistress of the albedo, is the femina alba of the coniunctio and the 'mediatrix of the whitening."

    And did you notice the another similarily, my "nuit américaine" day-for-night moon? How is this parallelism possible?

    The moon collects our memories and dreams - and returns them as due (does imagery get more beautiful than this?) This reminds me that Fassbinder loved the scene in Tarkovsky's Solaris (also about memory) where the words "someting about consciousness" are followed by a 5 minute sequence of a car on a highway in Tokyo - certainly the apotheosis of cinema. Anyone who has seen this sequence understands that it is not merely a voyage by car. It is, simply put, the mind reified. Try to accomplish that and you will know the meaning of genius.

    How's your video progressing? Mine isn't. Pasolini, my computer's latest self-appointed moniker,
    ostensibly chosen in reference to the brutal fashion in which the filmmaker was murdered (a computer with a sardonic sense of humor), may give you some insight into the acrimony between both parties. Yet, we are joined at the hip. Pier Paolo, i do not hate you so much as to have you violently extinguished, though the thought has crossed my mind on occasion. The struggle continues.

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  7. Prospero wrote; Mysterium Coniunctionis. The moon, in alchemy, is the aqua mirifica, which is to say that it extracts the soul from the body. In a powerful antinomy, it may also restore life to the body and the soul.
    Merc; There are Worlds in there.

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  8. Hello

    I was snowed in and away so excuse the absence.

    'ask the moon' you write. that is sufficient i think, and then the poem, and your dark pictures. always the longing, the absence, the feeling of unrequited passion? but the requited passion would be soul damaging, beside the point? the ache should be left like it is, leave the things as they are? the pictures have a pose, a certain stance, a way of looking at things, the moon the moon, the barren-ness, the so-called barren-ness of the moon, the ache in the flesh and soul, again a cry, a howl.

    the reader can create his/her own story. you the creator, you give the pain.

    i hope it marks a series of 'secret women' pictures again.

    cheers

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  9. This is often misunderstood: most people think light was born from eternal darkness … but, no, darkness is merely light’s dream of its origin, shadow is the day’s dream of winning the moon’s heart … The beauty and grace and sway of this silhouette haloed in light (more erotic in this sway for its casualness, the ordinary gesture that lifts the throat and the breasts and offers them unconcerned to the soft touch of moonlight) … this is about the amazement of finding that things are as they are, and I come away from these images with a haunting ache that brings me back….

    (Also this reminds me very much of your “Moon Hymn” -- one of my favorite posts, ever -- and I have just looked and listened again, and again I am as entranced as before. The tone of the pictures is very different, but it is easy to imagine those words spoken before this window….)

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  10. Sunlight - movement, to vanish away into time.
    Moonlight - sculpture, eternal.

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  11. couldn't you leave the light on the next time she's undressing?

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  12. les anges de la nuit se drapent d'ombre de lune..
    et puis ils dansent seuls dans les clartés nimbées...
    de leurs ailes ils caressent les velours de l'obscur..
    comme des papillons dans les lueurs du jour..

    passes un beau weekend...:o)

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  13. Neil, i think that, for the poet, the moon is and can be everything :-)wily and candid, at the same time, that is one of her mysteries...





    Adelino :-) i know you like my light and shadows, thank you!




    ah, Dianne, that is beautiful... "only left to move on" - yes...

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  14. Owen, i think a cartographer of my mind would soon lose his :-) nono, better not go in there!
    i am as always thrilled with the way my images resonate in you, i am so lucky to have you here!
    i hope you feel a bit better, though it is hard to overcome the sadness and the feeling of sheer absurdity. yet perhaps your pictures can offer some comfort? i don't know...

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  15. I apologize for the "dew" homophone - so much nicer to be returned from the moon than its due (and other awkward sentences owing to the fact that most alchemists are poor re-readers). One day i will write to you in Romanian and all will be clear.

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  16. ah, but no, Prospero Trismegistus, no apology needed, such collecting of dew (Récolte de la Rosée) has been long due on the Bridge, and its homophone ambiguities only heighten its charm :-)
    (some think alchemy was nothing but a mad and maddening play with words, that the alchemist hallucinated with words as only a poet does).

    and yes, yes yes. i have noticed. how could i have not?

    i am so tired now, i will write more tomorrow, but i have been listening to this while reading your words (and it is one of my favourite songs) so i will just give you the link, it's only the concert version but anyway:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eheoQhb28_E&feature=player_embedded

    (though i am shy to send you music, but read the lines, if you don't like it)

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  17. I love the drama of the images and the beauty of the lines. I have been doing a bit of catching up - and have been most highly impressed. (The previous post I thought out of this world.)

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  18. surprise suprise..!!

    you never allow me to imagine
    what's coming next!

    Roxana, how's doing? still chilly?

    i have very much warm days in here,
    like spring.. +4C !

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  19. how beautifully you 'gather some things', here on the bridge

    and these photos in particular, how i love them, with their remains and memories of light

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  20. and Prospero, soon i will finish the video, it's almost done, next week, i think - but we have to do something about your Pasolini, this can't continue like this, surely le mage alchimiste has to know some secret spells to make him collaborate?

    (and surely you will soon talk to me without words, no need of Romanian or other languages, such imperfect tools :-)

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  21. merc, i was sure you would like Prospero's comment - yes, Worlds...

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  22. The Moon steals it's Light from the Sun, though as the Dark side never sees daylight.

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  23. hello, Kubla,

    i am happy every time you come here, but no need to apologize if you don't, be it a matter of rain or snow or simply need for silence... but you and i, we share this, don't we? the questions you ask: "always the longing, the absence, the feeling of unrequited passion? but the requited passion would be soul damaging, beside the point? the ache should be left like it is, leave the things as they are?", i have often thought of asking you, when reading your poems and your stories... i don't know - i think that for some of us the absence will be always there, lurking at the center of the "requited passion" as well. but i can't talk well about these things, i prefer to do it through my pictures. and you have always known how to look at them when it comes to seeing that longing, the ache in the flesh and soul, the longing for death (i haven't forgotten this, see, you wrote it a while back).

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  24. James,
    shadow is the day’s dream of winning the moon’s heart - one of the most beautiful definitions of the shadow i have ever read. thank you... and also thank you for loving my Moon Hymn, you have no idea how happy this makes me - and amazed that you haven't forgotten about it? how can this be? :-)
    i haven't worked with voice in a while, maybe it is a sign to give it another try? oh, and perhaps to change the userpic as well? :-)

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  25. Robert, this is so interesting, for me the sun would be associated with "eternal" and "sculptural", while the moon has some "vanishing" quality - is this perhaps due to the gender of the nouns in German? i have always thought this to be a horror (despite my passion for german), it is not possible to see the Moon as male...

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  26. The second picture is perfectly beautiful and the last one looks like the moon is behind bars which amuses me :)

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  27. anon, i'm sure you'd give anything to see me post a video of that undressing :-P

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  28. clo, chere clo, quel poem, comme c'est beau - et de plus tu as utilise un mot que j'adore, "nimbe" :-)
    merci de tout coeur, ta sensibilite a enrichi mes images...





    Dave, so nice of you to say so, i'm glad that you found things that could interest you here... "out of this world" is a good description of what i aim at in many images.




    Peter, but of course surprise, what would the Bridge be if not unforeseeable (though so monotonous in her topics, always the same women and flowers :-)
    they say we'll have a bit of snow again, this week...

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  29. thank you, dearest ffflaneur, these lines have spoken directly to my heart, and you can understand so well why - indeed, that gathering of small things which disappear like sand from our hands, only some memories remaining, and our longing for keeping them alive. our Proustian heart beating :-)

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  30. Sorlil, funny, the moon behind bars :-) i was thinking more like the moon having become a cross...
    i wasn't sure which silhouette i should post, and so decided to show both of them, as usual, i am lousy at choosing :-)

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  31. merc, you know, those lines:
    Did I
    have a soul
    did I
    have too much.

    they are my music.

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  32. And you took me back here,
    http://loveisasymbol.blogspot.com/2010/01/she-original-wednesday-24-march-1999.html
    This is your Power.

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  33. dearest, i love these words and music...
    should I leave Erebus
    to his own device
    what Chaos
    when the curtain rises
    and the houselights dim
    ...

    thank you

    Now, for you - this is from the Bank of Mutual Aid Society - a song called
    750000 Anni Fa L'amore

    maybe you know it ( i think you know everything)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWFMKGhiUgQ&feature=related

    presently i'm drowning in cables and sdram (in the cold, in the sky, i can fly)
    i'm afraid an act of god will be required for both of us to be ready at the same time
    but this is right up my alley

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  34. merc, SHE! i could never tell you how much this means to me...

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  35. should i wait for you to finish, Prospero, or should we challenge God together? :-)
    (what flower would Prometheus Unbound bend down to pick in your garden? will you show it to me?)

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  36. ah, dear one, it is so unearthly beautiful, Prospero, i forgot to breeze -
    no, i didn't know this, and you'd be surprised of how much i don't know (especially when it comes to music, but also to gardens, i only know how to look at flowers, as gently as the breeze. nothing more)

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  37. Charme au féminin charme dans le blanc et noir atmosphère de Legendre.

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  38. always these silhouettes and shadow plays. vaguely intimate human forms. hello roxana, how your pictures tug at all the rasas - especially, the aesthetic and the sensual.

    what is it about the moon? how come we can never get enough of it? why does it tug at our heartstrings so? is it becuase 70% of our body is made of water?

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  39. Allan, merci beaucoup, je suis heureuse que tu aimes ca...

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  40. hi Zuma, i am so glad you came by...

    these pictures are from the same series of shaded women in front of the autumn leaves window, remember?

    http://roxanaghita.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post.html

    you also liked them very much (even asked for one of them :-)

    how could we have answers about the moon? i don't know...
    the water percentage in our body makes a too pragmatic answer for me, so i will discard it immediately :-)
    is the idea of mysterious, overwhelming beauty not enough?

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  41. depends. on your answer to this: is it more important to 'know' or 'feel'?
    but then i know what your answer would be...

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