Sunday, 7 April 2013

as spring approaches, on my street








right before the spring's glow,
let us enjoy the gray once more,
and the hues of the monotonous hour,
and the low tide of the lonely,
unredeemed hope -













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23 comments:

  1. Anonymous8 April 2013 at 06:33

    the first picture seems almost timeless, whilst the second is full of time! Really nice. not so sure about the words, though.

    b.

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    1. Roxana9 April 2013 at 14:59

      hi b
      i love this word, "nice" :-P especially as i have never been able to get its true meaning: is it less than "beautiful"? how does it fare compared to "lovely"? or "pretty"? is there a touch of "interesting" in it? (Susan Sontag has this wonderful essay about beauty, and compares "interesting" and "beautiful")

      sorry to hear about the words, one can't satisfy everyone and in everything, it would be an awful world if we could :-)

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    2. billoo9 April 2013 at 17:02

      Hmm. Nice is one of the most misunderstood words in the language. I think that in the most complete versions of the OED the word which has the longest entry is, believe it or not, 'nice'!

      'really nice' is a bit like the casual 'sweet' (as in: perfect pitch).

      Well, yes, I don't really care about everyone, though!

      :-)

      Keep well,

      b.

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    3. Roxana11 April 2013 at 16:42

      ah the endless subtleties of english language, i will never be able to master them! for ex, i would have never imagined that "sweet" could apply to these photos!

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    4. Lydia16 April 2013 at 11:35

      "Nice" is a word I rarely use and usually bristle at when someone uses it to refer to anything in my life!

      Anyway, gray has always been my favorite color, sicko that I must be! In it I see all promise and peace. I love these gorgeous images!

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  2. Anonymous8 April 2013 at 09:01

    wie wunderschön, vor allem das erste bild. es vermittelt eine stille, die ich jetzt wirklich brauche... hoffe, es geht dir, liebe roxana! renée von den wolken, umhüllt von einem feinen nebel, der sich auflöst, langsam und ohne hast!

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    1. Roxana9 April 2013 at 15:01

      oh ich brauche diese Stille auch, meine Liebe... ich schreibe bald mehr.
      (ich denke an Dich, so umhuellt vom feinen Nebel, sanft und wolkenhaft, und muss zaertlich laecheln :-)
      ich danke Dir!!!

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  3. Unknown8 April 2013 at 11:29

    Bleak but so good :-)

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    1. Roxana9 April 2013 at 15:02

      heh, kind of bleak isn't it? i must try to counteract this in the next post, especially as trees have INDEED started to bloom around here :-)

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  4. Miriam8 April 2013 at 15:44

    da,despre asta vorbeam,despre a avea timp si atentie pentru fiecare secunda,fara tentatia unei clipe din viitor,sau trecut:despre splendoarea prezentului,sau,macar,despre inegalabilul si unicitatea lui.

    atat de exacte despre ceea ce simt,tu stii

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    1. Roxana11 April 2013 at 16:43

      :-)

      dar astăzi prezentul e total diferit, e soare si atâtea flori în jur, oh

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  5. mythopolis9 April 2013 at 23:54

    In the dead of winter, I long for summer...but, in the dead of summer, I long for winter. Living in the hill country, as I do, I like to see the nakedness of the terrain in winter...the curvaceous hilltops...the frames of trees stripped of foliage...in the earliest days of spring, I feel like I am crawling around on the dead ground, looking for the first sign that it is all starting over again.

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    1. Roxana11 April 2013 at 16:45

      aren't we all, myth? :-) (i am also particularly interested in the trees without foliage, they are so more mysterious than covered with leaves - and yet, i am now driven almost crazy with joy at seeing the first buds :-)

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  6. Anonymous11 April 2013 at 02:22

    ...a man who has betrayed
    and has been betrayed,
    may feel suddenly, when crossing the street,
    a mysterious happiness
    not coming from the side of hope
    but from an ancient innocence,
    from his own root or from some diffused god.

    J.L. Borges, Someone



    a

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    1. Roxana11 April 2013 at 16:47

      wonderful! this happens to me so often, this gush of mysterious happiness like wind, blowing through me, without knowing from where it comes or where it goes...
      (and i think no human living is beyond betrayal, we have betrayed so many and, most of all, we have betrayed ourselves, so often, it can't be helped, this is living)

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  7. billoo11 April 2013 at 15:58

    no sound, no movement; all the world was still
    and not a creature in it
    but ourselves,

    me taking aim
    and the animal stopped in its tracks,
    waiting to see what would happen, unafraid,

    a deer, I thought, and then saw a fox,
    and thinking I knew what it was
    I pulled the trigger...

    Everyone becomes
    the thing he kills.

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    1. Roxana11 April 2013 at 16:49

      i know this poem!!! one of the oldest ones on the BS, no?
      so, are you a fox now, billoo? or do you really think a fox can be killed?

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  8. James Owens12 April 2013 at 22:28

    these are beautiful (and interesting -- what would sontag say? can a photo be both?). the first seems to say everything that can be said ... this alternation of the barren branches with those promising new life, like two hands, one withered, the other rich with rings ... the second could be a memory from my own weary afternoons ...

    i am, as you know, always reluctant to see the gray disappear, and i endure many little panics at this time of the year, when flowers start to lift themselves and shout ... i've always felt that eliot was being absolutely sincere in the first lines of the waste land ...

    .

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    1. Roxana15 April 2013 at 00:01

      i know, James. i was thinking about you as well, when i wrote about the gray and the desire to cling to it, for a while longer...

      :-)

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  9. erin15 April 2013 at 16:22

    and since reading it i was thinking of bringing it here, meaning to, and then you ask about philippe jaccottet. but then as you know his work this must have occurred to you while writing this, while feeling all of these tones,

    "Early Spring in Provence"

    In other places in winter, further north, snow hides the ground's barrenness with a rather flaccid layer, its undulations too mellow, and of a whiteness that has always struck me as monotonous, almost artificial: a sort of satin outfit. What is lovely here, by contrast, is to see nearly all the landscape earth-coloured, even the trees barely pinker or greyer than earth, as if, with these tracks, these dried grasses, these roads, these rocks, you were tracing the very foundations of the world, something as solid and simple as the ground, a sturdy skeleton, an immemorial monument in stone, its only embellishment the seemingly inlaid garlands of ivy, their dark green like that of the holm-oak or laurel. No luxury, no excess, no cushioning, nothing that dissembles or distorts: earth alone, from which all emerges, and into which all will return.

    And from the end of February, something marvellous begins as soon as the light starts to soften on the walls of houses: the black branches of the almond, the smoother almost purple ones of the peach, are tipped here and there with a touch of white, a touch of pink. And what is astonishing about their appearance is the fact that these infinitely fresh hues, these fragile flowers, the most delicate of all, come forth not from any abundance, no nest of greenery, but from wood that looks dead, above this dust-coloured soil, in the shelter of these stone walls; which is to say, you see the most frail and dainty of things against the harshest, barest backdrop. It is no doubt precisely because the setting is so austere, that this flowering has nothing mawkish about it. How to convey, without travesty, this mute, airy violence? You might almost call it fire, you'd almost like to say it is in response to fires in the old leaves on park roads that these trees turn a sudden pink, while others' whiteness communes with the last of the snow on distant mountain peaks...

    xo
    erin

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  10. Stickup Artist16 April 2013 at 02:07

    Those trees, some quite fragile, look so stoic, almost defiant against the stark backgrounds. I love the muted tones...

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  11. Anonymous16 April 2013 at 04:14

    beautiful masterpeice
    but the grey for me makes the call to the deepest recesses of my mind.

    and by the way have a beautiful day. hugs

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  12. Prospero17 April 2013 at 03:23

    hoping to redeem hope.
    unhoping to unredeem hope
    hopping to redeem hope (like a bunny)
    redeemed hope
    unredeemed unhope

    and they often ask me what i think about the garden at the sanatorium, and i say that they don't have enough tulips and that the crocuses breaking out of the frozen ground, armed with icepicks, are probably evil.

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