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. 

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.

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.

rain in the summer garden

..

romantic palimpsest, revisited

you said:

"one may ask all the questions, but one should not"

i don't even think you knew then
about my love for grammar, the awe-struck trembling
in front of the countless doors hidden in modal verbs,
opened and slammed in my face
every minute.

now, when the summer light has lost its gentleness,
when it cuts through the curve of my thigh as ruthlessly
as an indicative,
i ask:

why did you say i was beautiful?

why did you say my hair smelled like red moss
under cedar trees?

why did you say you wanted us to look at each other
the same way as then, as long as we lived?
(i smiled, amused at this image,
coming from one like you, with your deep disdain for romantic
pose and sentimentalism, we were both, damn it, too old
for rose and myrrh -
but too young to know how to look at a face hiding a face
and another face and yet another face,
an endless labyrinth of deception.
i believed it, though, there was something hard and warm
and true in there
like the heaviness of your touch upon me,
beyond modal verbs,
a kiss like a bird in a mouth
who hadn't yet learned to tell the poem
about kiss and mouth).

why did you say you wanted me to have all the books
you had ever read?

























now, inside the walls of this living library
i, the captive, am free to run from modal verb to modal verb
waiting in vain for a flutter of page to hurt my blood,
for light to break your absence
like bread upon my skin, yet again.

















..

simply amazed

there are gods in everything, i've heard.
i imagine them locked up in their underworlds,
some of them good-natured and big-bellied,
some slumbering away blindly like moles but mostly
vengeful gods, myriads of them, jealous of
everything they cannot see or hear or touch.

jealous of this bed of smooth warm wood
and the rugged carpet on the floor
with something like purple stars on it.

jealous of these sheets with their clean smell
and big, luminous flowers, as a field upon which
death would come like a soft breeze, and smiling.

jealous of this girl's standing naked
and in love in front of the mirror,
oblivious of them and her own beauty,
simply amazed that this can be.

jealous of this small chair,
still wet with the afternoon's rain pouring in
through the open window,
on which a body once sat until dawn,
its shoulders bent, the night like a raven
upon its back, wishing for another body to come
and take it in its arms.

but most of all, jealous of this sudden gust of wind
making the moonlit curtain swirl about the room
like a soul in search of another soul
to flood it with its light.

the bench that was

We remained in the station on a wooden bench. We spent the night, and I left before him. Even now I find it really astonishing and very moving. It was a kind of madness, idiocy, to travel from Munich to the Jura to pass a few hours of the night with me. It was utterly inhuman to sit next to a being whom you sense desires you so much and not even to have been touched. Above all, I thought, I must be very careful with everything I say to him because he understands things in quite an alarming way, in an absolute way.

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia remembering Duchamp,
in Calvin Tomkins's Duchamp: A Biography

..

this harsh, fiery spring

i walk through the fields of spring

in search of myself.
i carry:
the luxurious maps of being,
drawn with meticulous exactness.
a mirror, to make sure i never forget
whom exactly i look for.
a rope to jump, in case i find myself
a child again, flooded with the joy of living.
a handful of seeds to scatter, from time to time
(though more out of boredom, really,
than eagerness to become).

i make lists. i am very precise,
the same precision i use to extract dreams
out of my warm blood. for example,
what it is that stands between me and myself:
these fields, the line of burning, when
they meet the sky. this sunlit wound of waiting.
this freshly cut grass, this bird's wing.
my shadow, when you left.
the dazzling music of each step.
this endless fluttering back and forth,
again and again.

or rather this thought here, now.
the belief that i am still
- and gloriously - alive,
piercing through the heart
of this harsh, fiery spring.

..

this sullen spring

i walk under the trees of spring
looking for you.
my shadow grows thinner.
suddenly, i can't call the shadow
shadow any longer
i can't call the evening evening.
oh, may that not happen with you, too
- i know it does, already -
i turn around and i see myself over there
running in circles
cutting the air with pale little arms,
while i thought myself here,
both feet firmly plunged
into this sullen spring.

..

...

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It depends only on the weakness of our organs that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world.
All Fabulous Tales are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere.

Novalis



..

self-portraits with snow and mirror

looking into the mirror
until one becomes another
at the window gazing

white pure white
the snow has fallen
silver hidden within silver
self nestled into self

note:
after Akahito's poem:

Coming out
from Tago's nestled cove
i gaze:
white, pure white,
the snow has fallen
on Fuji's lofty peak.




..

ivy-bound (12 art nouveau selves in high and low)

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