Friday, 20 January 2012

the prayer of the clothespin







attach me to the tree
to your breath
to the light flickering
in the shadow
to the dark spreading
inside the day
attach me to anything
i don't care
as long as you free me
from myself.


..
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29 comments:

  1. pensum20 January 2012 at 23:44

    ah, the beginning of a new series. how wonderful.

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  2. mythopolis21 January 2012 at 00:34

    I would do anything to hold you up along that line to flutter in the wind. I am a clothespin. It is what I do. I hold you until you are ready to sail.

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  3. Neil21 January 2012 at 01:23

    Lovely image, and poem, Roxana. Clothes pegs have always had a humanity to them, perhaps because they exist to hold up empty clothes that nevertheless feel in the wind like the ghosts of human beings. Old fashioned clothes pegs of the kind that gypsies used to sell from door to door in my childhood - just a split piece of wood with a bulbous top - used to be called dolly pegs, because you could make them into a doll, with a piece of cloth for a dress, the top for a head, and the split ends for legs.

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  4. Michael T Stowers21 January 2012 at 03:05

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. erin21 January 2012 at 03:19

    but freed from yourself what would you be? would we see you? would there be anything at all to attach? is this the desire to shed the ego? and then? and then?

    xo
    erin

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  6. Gentle21 January 2012 at 21:25

    Oh, how beautiful...
    'attach me to anything/ i don't care / as long as you free me/ from myself.'

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  7. Miriam21 January 2012 at 22:25

    aaah,carligele,carligele mele dragi:)imi pare asa rau ca in romana nu suna foarte aproape de ceea ce simt eu pentru ele:)

    da,dragele de ele,cum atarna ele cuminti,acolo,in asteptarea vesmintelor,atat de pline de sens fiecare-si totusi golite,carligele care tin strans fiecare dintre gesturile noastre,carligele ne ofera un lasou vizibil pentru leganarile noastre in vantul alb,ce gingase sunt ele...da,ne elibereeaza si ne fac sa nu uitam cine suntem mai presus de...
    minunat,exact ceea ce imi doream:)

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  8. Lynne with an e22 January 2012 at 10:30

    A clothespin practising the art of non-attachment. Very zen.

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  9. Michael T Stowers22 January 2012 at 11:31

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Anonymous22 January 2012 at 19:15

    Anon, the 2nd ;):

    A picture worth the metaphysics of time, maybe the cover on the book of time. I'd venture guess you read a few philosophers. I see at least a couple, pegged tightly on those lines.

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  11. Anonymous23 January 2012 at 02:26

    hello beautiful roxana, ah another masterpeice, this is powerful art.
    the colour of the image worn with abrasive time the colour of pale violation and the clothespins giving a knotted barbed wire look to the image conjuring timeless electrocutions and concentration camps.
    the crucifixion the thorns of the crown of the self.
    and the powerfully revealing words of the verse.
    I have found joy in the meditation of peeling away the false sense of the self as a cosmic creature taking on light skin and arriving to the centre of the universe to feel the luminous cosmic flow we are vessels of light
    and so what is the redemption here?There has to be a salvation somewhere if I am christ crucified by the light.
    yes and maybe it isn't our attachments that our meaningless and mawkish but it is the way we attach that is the essence.
    the self is translucent it is not an isolated entity that only finds identity and solace in the cosmic connection and the self shines through and identifies itself in its connections with mortality.
    it is not the embrace but how you embrace perhaps that allows the flickering light of the self to permeate the mortal world.
    and for a bit of humour here-I used to listen to Elvis Presly live in concert on an album Iwill pluck the line out of context Im cheating and he says because he is stoned

    the stage is bare and I am standing here without any hair....haha
    but this kind of meditation is very revealing because attachments can be fruitless.

    sending you more new years kisses.

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  12. Anonymous23 January 2012 at 02:34

    and to switch metaphors here yes you have to empty yourself to allow the self to breath and to discover what it can breath through.
    so much of modern materialistic life is suffocating.....

    new kisses

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  13. Owen23 January 2012 at 04:13

    Clothespins dreaming of flying off, may they all sail aloft in a flock, quietly clattering away into the distance, while the clothes lines stay tied there, whistling when the wind blows. Somewhere between the two, may be whole and full of serenity.

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  14. billoo23 January 2012 at 07:06

    lovely!

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  15. swiss23 January 2012 at 14:40

    when i'm looking at this i'm seeing electrical cables with crocodile clips. much more sinister than i'm sure you intended!

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  16. Prospero23 January 2012 at 17:06

    In a moment of unparalleled calmness and serenity, she knew herself to be trapped by a languid overture of feeling--and it all seemed unreal, a dusty, thin gauze of imperfection--but she accepted this cloudy and perpetual state, especially after she recalled that when she was a young child a transitory light shone on her angel-blue matelassé pillow, and that meant, according to the elders, that she would remain as mysterious and intangible as a three masted schooner in a narrow-mouthed bottle.

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  17. Michael T Stowers24 January 2012 at 00:37

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  18. billoo24 January 2012 at 08:23

    2nd thoughts..."I don't care"? not so sure, not so sure...

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  19. James Owens25 January 2012 at 20:45

    this eternal longing ... i don't understand it and never will understand it, i suppose, though i share it very deeply ... this desire to be unhinged from the self, when it is also true that we can know the world or anything else only through the self, this concentrated point of awareness ... i wonder if this is not what we really want -- always to be lost at the first quaking of ecstasy just before our disappearance, as if eternally caressing the rim of an orgasm that will be forever a half-second away ...

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  20. Michael T Stowers26 January 2012 at 00:02

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  21. Roxana26 January 2012 at 00:40

    thank you for all your comments, i will get back to you soon, it is just that i was in a hurry to post today's snow :-)

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  22. A l a i n 28 January 2012 at 04:36

    La PAIX dans notre monde, est un RÊVE qui s’éveille. L'Amour, la Joie et le Bonheur c'est vraiment bien, je possède en moi la PAIX, toi aussi... Alors j’investis dans ma Prospérité avec toi.

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  23. Plum'28 January 2012 at 18:18

    Incroyable poème...un souffle...

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  24. Anonymous29 January 2012 at 21:04

    and...eternity isn't all its cracked up to be.

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  25. Roxana1 February 2012 at 20:39

    Michael, and a series with objects, i see why you might enjoy that :-)




    a mythological clothespin, Dan?
    :-) now that is some food for thought!





    Neil, what a joy to see you on the Bridge again, you've been missed, you know that. dolly pegs, that is wonderful! i think they had already become obsolete in that function when i was a child, because we have never played like this.





    erin & James & mts, i am answering your comments (or some of your comments) together here as i think or feel that they touch on the same issues - indeed, so many questions and no answers. but i think that all depends on what one understands as 'self', the nature thereof or it could also simply be its existence or not. we are so cursed, in our western civilization, to think in dichotomies and that either-or logic, while sometimes (always?) everything which is worth saying/or can be articulated at all lies beyond that.
    i so love these lines from the Lankdvatdra Sutra:

    "The saline crystal and its red-bluishness,

    The milky sap and its sweetness,

    Various flowers and their fruits,

    The sun and the moon and their luminosity :

    These are neither separable nor inseparable."

    (of course, our poets know this too :-)

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  26. Roxana1 February 2012 at 20:47

    Gentle, you know that :-)




    da, Cerasela, ce păcat că în română cârligele nu şi-au câştigat dreptul la un nume mai frumos, of, au fost lipsite în mod hain de orice pretenţii la metafizică - şi sufăr la fel şi cu ţurţurii, ce oroare! :-)




    Lynne, you've made me laugh, indeed, so very much to the point haha.




    Anon, the 2nd :-) (give me a name for you, if you prefer, a non-revealing name, but still something else than 'anon' - though of course i should accept that each choice is revealing of something, isn't it? :-)
    the image of philosophers' ghosts swaying there in the wind on my clothes line is simply delicious, i'll see if i cannot push another one or two in there in the future, just for you :-)

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  27. Roxana1 February 2012 at 20:56

    Madeleine, wow, you've managed to jam everything into your generous comment, from the barbed wire to the stoned Elvis! :-) as you know, i am always grateful for the sparkling flow of your creative associations, it is such a pleasure to read you :-)
    snowy hugs for you, as we lie here buried in snow these days...




    dear Owen, may your warm wishes be heard, and may they come into being, somehow, someday...




    billoo, lovely comments, again! :-P




    swiss, sinister indeed! i have to disappoint you, this was a very peaceful and banal clothes lines in the garden behind my block of flats, some neighbour prefers doing that rather than using the balcony etc. :-)




    Prospero, schooner!!! now that was a difficult one, and no amount of Latin could come to rescue, only the ever-present Wikipedia! :-) but before coming to it, i have to confess i had remained for days caught in the charm of the "angel-blue matelassé pillow", and rested there, oblivious of the world and its noise. thank you...

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  28. Roxana1 February 2012 at 21:04

    mts,
    your poem for which i am most grateful touches me deeply indeed, for i have too been obsessed with many of the issues you raise there, ah, time of course, more specifically the relation between the past as it was and memory, and our fictional reconstruction of it (both on individual and collective level - the latter would be historiography, no?), the extent to which we seem to be unable to live other than through narration, and fictionalizing etc.
    "disarray, stretching
    unnoticed between what has been and is remembered to have been being." - that is much of the story this Bridge aims to tell, beyond telling.





    Alain, oui, quelle belle priere pour la paix et la joie interieure - je sais que tu comprends ca tres bien, a travers ta vision bouddhiste...




    chere Plum', tu es la de nouveau, ca me rend heureuse! :-)

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  29. Lydia8 February 2012 at 23:37

    To use clothespins as a metaphor for oneself is sheer genius. Not only that, it has been years since I saw a clothespin and this image seemed a trip back in time.

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