Ode to the Humblest of Flowers

Dandelion, ecumenic flower,

 the year obeys

your golden ardor

 to assign its happiest days

on unwritten folios.

You are worthy of a hymn,

 unregarded roadside bloom,

your one pure wish to sow

 the earth with seed --

so you blossom and fade,

 contriving the halo around

some unknown saint’s head.

Lucian Blaga, tr. by James Owens 

Odă simplisimei flori

Păpădie, ecumenică floare,
după a ta aurie ardoare
– pe nescrisele file –
anul îşi hotăreşte fericitele zile.

De un pean te-nvredniceşti,
tu, neluată în seamă, floare de rând.
Sămânţă să faci pe pământ
e tot ce doreşti. Alt gând nu porţi.
Dar înfloreşti şi asfinţeşti
alcătuind o aureolă de sfânt.

the solace of flowers

and then the colours came, and with them my endless fascination with vases - my vases full of flowers, again and again... i read in Kafka's letters to Felice that he "has no feelings for flowers", never had, flowers leave him cold, unless they come from her, and even then... 

some pages later, i read: "with the effort needed in order to keep myself alive and to not lose my mind, i could have built the pyramids". 

if only he had known the solace of flowers, it nearly burst out of me, if only ---

and off into the empty sky

you will be able to see more photos from my travel to Japan on the new blog that i have created for telling the story of my trip:  

and off into the empty sky

spring cleaning

and what if the oldest shoes are the dearest?

with more precision and more truthfulness than our memory, they keep track, in each crack and dirt mark and dust-blackened spot, of what we have learned to call "our life", "our past" - though nobody knows exactly to whom this past, this life, belong.

with tenderness, the old shoes stare back at us, while we, gentle hypocrites or simply forgetful, unable to glimpse beyond our self-woven illusions, never take notice.

lurking, waiting for spring

this year i have found myself lurking in the darkest of shadows, waiting for spring, hungrier than ever before. yet the deeper, the more painful this hunger grows, the more aware i become that, when i long for spring, i in fact long for a complicated and tumultuous mixture made out of the springs i have lived through, bits of them scattered throughout my body, springs i imagine to come, springs as i want them to be, floating memories, disconnected from whatever might have given birth to them in the first place (if such a birth has ever existed), hues, words soft like silk, which i tend to taste on my tongue, while all along believing that i lurk, waiting for this spring which has to come now, which has already come, unique, pure, simple and raw. 



don't let the photograph fool you: she doesn't make this mistake. yet.    

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 -

of windows and curtains

my new windows-blog

now

It's entirely conceivable that life's splendour surrounds us all, and always in it's complete fullness, accessible but veiled, beneath the surface, invisible, far away. But there it lies - not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If we call it by the right word, by the right name, then it comes. This is the essence of magic, which doesn't create but calls.

Kafka

Es ist sehr gut denkbar, daß die Herrlichkeit des Lebens um jeden und immer in ihrer ganzen Fülle bereit liegt, aber verhängt, in der Tiefe, unsichtbar, sehr weit. Aber sie liegt dort, nicht feindselig, nicht widerwillig, nicht taub. Ruft man sie mit dem richtigen Wort, beim richtigen Namen, dann kommt sie. Das ist das Wesen der Zauberei, die nicht schafft, sondern ruft.

however futile

go to:  however series

ten little spells to conjure my colours back

*from the Chinese Garden in Berlin

the imagined spring

our broken circles
our tears
the spring we had

long imagined

 -

now there is only stillness
where green should have thrust
its light, with a shiver

the waves

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