on a tide of time

I’m so conscious of the evanescence of experience, so conscious of the fact that everything we do, everybody we know, is carried along on a tide of time and will disappear, that I have a strong sense of wanting to pin experience down before it disappears.

Frank Auerbach

nothing can be pinned down, though~

after christmas eve

i woke up in the middle of the night and, unable to go back to sleep, i went into the living room. after candles had been lit, presents exchanged and candidly opened, wishes made, laughter heard, candles blown out, doors shut behind, everything lay now before me, left to itself, in the quietness of another life, unseen, unknown.

this is what the christmas tree - what everything - looks like when photographed in the dark, camera held tight against my chest - our real nature revealed: light.

under the tree, there lay the puzzle we had completed together, before going to bed. i could have thought of some symbolic meaning, the setting was right for such deep, important visions. yet all i could think of was how beautifully the world glimmered in the dark, and how dangerously frail its unsteady contours appeared - dream-like.

there i found her shoes, too. she had insisted to wear these ones, fond as she was of the little white stars on the straps. you cannot see the stars now - but this is how it always is with stars, perhaps. they are never to be seen, only to be imagined, especially at night.

these are the rail tracks of a train which never stops running, even when bridges between here and there have broken down. 

later, when she finds out that all trains eventually stop, she will hopefully have a friend to sing for her: When darkness comes / And pain is all around / Like a bridge over troubled water / I will lay me down / Sail on, silvergirl / Sail on by / I’m sailing right behind / Like a bridge over troubled water / I will ease your mind / Like a bridge over troubled water / I will ease your mind.

for now, she and her best friend chilly willy are still unaware of the big, important task which lies before them (and at which they will fail, i know. i would like to believe, as some say, that failing is part of the music, but here - i honestly don't know). 

things have been falling apart, recently, and how quickly. and now, i wonder at how still and poised they are, peaceful, unto themselves, unaware of grace and falling, all these things that we don't know how to look at. 

you called me the other day and told me that my voice - you had always said about my voice that it had "the sound of bells", and i would always laugh about such silliness - puts you at peace with the world.

i remember how, every time emily left, bagpuss and all the others would wake up. yet here, things hadn't come to life, they were motionless and quiet, as they always were. 

still, among them, in the dark of the night, some stir of life, slight as the drifting of a curtain, came into being. perhaps it was i, and not things, that was coming to life, unawares. 

and the whitest of orchids

no matter how  - and the whitest of orchids is ashen cloud against my glow -
no matter how warm, how bright, how pure -
i have failed. one always fails. i have asked, just once, just this time, for a different law: that i might be allowed to cross the bridge. that the radiance of what i am, the entire constellation of what is called, i suppose, "myself", could reach you at the other end, fill you like a beam of light. you, shattered with recognition, my orchid thrusting its roots into you, growing out of your mouth. the only possible path for what is, and cannot be any other way.

no. the truth of a person cannot be lifted, as one would lift a piece of luggage before a hasty departure, cannot be transferred and placed into another, to grow there, quietly, like a seed. one flower, and only one, carried within, inscribed into itself, from the beginning. the truth of the seed cannot be broken, cannot be warped into anything else. yet no matter how i hurry to reach your arms, the one who looks at me from there, invented by you, grins back, her face an ugly, pitiful mask.

there is nothing more treacherous than bridges. they give one hope, one ardently takes one step after another only to find oneself, at some point, suspended above the abyss and the other waving welcome, just one more step and i will catch you, i will hold you, beloved, unaware that the defilement is already at work, in each word, in each gesture, that the fall into time has already begun.

more flowers of snow

by unfolding my flowers

they had promised there would be snow the next day. 

i woke up and ran to the window, to no avail. so i had to let my flowers rise and take over the grey, indifferent expanse. iridescence of snow, even on my skin. i knew you wouldn't notice them and yet i was longing to hear your steps, crushing them on your way to me. in the end, though, i also painted a green rectangle in the snow, perhaps i meant it just as a reminder that i should invent you like this, ruthless steps and all, every time i would be tempted to think that i could keep, by unfolding my flowers against the world, grief at a distance.

however frail

go to: however series

the "i" removing itself, step by step, from the world

...

both

there is an autumn of luxuriance, of soft colours, deepened by rain and mist - 

an autumn which is but a different kind of spring, making me unsure of how time flows (and returns, always, to the same point). 

and there is an autumn of austere moods, of slow fading back to the roots of formlessness (except that there will always be, somewhere, quietly pulsing at the core of unadornedness, the blood of  berries - even in the snow its pulse will go on, a steady reminder of the same return). 

i am both autumns.

lightness & laughter

floating, she used to whisper ~

no weeds would dance more freely than her hair,
when the floods come to wipe away
every sin. no breath caressed the skin
 ~ or so she had convinced even the most indifferent lover ~
more ecstatically than her own
(more tenderly, when the moon was right).

when she was finally ready to see
that the sweet virtues of lightness were still
a lie, it was already too late:
they had all been fooled.
the lovers, even in the most ardent arms,
would still remember her breath and even the flood,
she feared, would carry her away with more grace
than a tree.

it was too late to protest, too late to explain:
quietly, she sat down in a corner
and burst into laughter.

tomorrow, and tomorrow

time, of course, is nothing to her. "let's do this tomorrow", i hear myself say, and she asks quickly: is today tomorrow? before running away to play with the dog. and forgetting. i imagine every child has asked this question, i myself must have asked it a thousand times and then forgotten about it, until one day i could not forget any longer. i suddenly feel ridiculous, with my bittersweet knowledge and my clear-cut needs --- 

(and what with my unredeemable past)

(Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
To the last syllable of recorded time; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death)


on the table, the wasps are busy, between the yellow of a lemon slice and a sudden pouring of light. 



 

Demeter

 The mysteries remain,

I keep the same

cycle of seed-time

and of sun and rain;

Demeter in the grass,

I multiply,

renew and bless

Bacchus in the vine;

I hold the law,

I keep the mysteries true,

the first of these

to name the living, dead;

I am the wine and bread.

I keep the law,

I hold the mysteries true,

I am the vine,

the branches, you

and you.

Hilda Doolittle

of course

of course, the way of the blue flower is totally different

(and yet, the same)

there is a way out

speech is blasphemy, silence a lie. above speech and silence there is a way out - said Chan master I-Tuan, roughly twelve centuries ago. 

on this mid-autumn day, no different than other mid-autumn days, than the ones I-Tuan  himself must have known, this way out is the way of the yellow flower.

the frog and the lotus

there is a world where the frog and the lotus are a prince under a curse and a captive princess. later on, when everybody has ceased to believe in magic, the frog and the lotus still mean a multitude of things, like metamorphosis and purity, fertility and self-awareness and so on. this is unavoidable, it would seem.

there is also a world where the frog and the lotus mean nothing else than "frog" and "lotus",  yet just by existing the words themselves place the frog and the lotus under a different kind of curse. together with us, of course. this is unavoidable, it would seem.

how is the world, then, when there is nobody to look at it? there is no such world, it would seem, and this is also unavoidable.

chinese pond, dreaming

twenty years after

i have always hated the imposture of such titles, i found them unsettling even when i would read the books with delight, in those early years (those early years - saying this loud, with different accents, yields different meanings, none of them right, though). it is not in front of god that the soul is groundless, it is in front of memory.  

(and still no lover's lips pressed upon hers taste as excruciatingly bittersweet as those crushed petals, that day)