another kind of sleep

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest.
The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being.
Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms.

In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.









from The Poetics of Reverie (Gaston Bachelard)



..

first poem for Miriam

you used to read poems to me

while the summer heat lingered

on our skin, like honey.

sometimes, you would fall asleep

and i would come to your body like a thief,
like that thief of roses whose bones,
bleached and glittering, are still
to be found in the garden
long after the unspeakable struck.

in b&w and more
here



..

the mirror and beyond

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique.
The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life, newly assimilated and imparted by the artist, in fidelity to his personal vision.


Andrei Tarkovsky, from Sculpting in Time

There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion — these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door. . . The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real.


from a letter of a young girl to her mother, in which she writes about Tarkovsky's films, as quoted in Sculpting in Time




..

early september

returning home, and returning home in early autumn - impossible not to fall prey to the sweetness of melancholia, i don't even try not to, supposing that i were someone investing such struggle with meaning (which i am not, i don't know whether fortunately or less so).

back then, in the days of childhood, autumn used to mean diving into a world of distinct tastes and fragrances, a world of jubilation untouched by what i would later learn to call nostalgia: grape juice and fresh walnuts. grape juice from the small vine adorning the front wall of our house, facing the street, and fresh walnuts from the big tree, pivotal like an axis mundi in the middle of our garden. i was not aware then that we were blessed to be allowed to have this small piece of land around the house, even to have a house, when everywhere around us houses fell under the madness of the communist regime, eager to replace them with the grey blocks of flats, the ugliest buildings ever. i would also find out later that our house had finally been included on the black list, the erased area had spread around us like a death wave, at last reaching the point of swallowing us when the revolution came, only months before the fatal blow.

i don't know the name of these grapes in english, for whatever mysterious reason they are called 'ananas' in Romania (meaning 'pineapple', though everybody had yet to see a real pineapple back then). i was fascinated by their dark-bluish colour and by something like fog on their skin, the way breath stains a glass in winter or haze seems to remain attached on the hair of the beloved, on a frosty day. as everybody else privileged enough to have a garden, my father used to make wine in a big barrel which would be brought out of the cave weeks before the wine ritual and left in the yard, filled with water, to our delight (among other games, we could bathe in it, on really hot days). it is a custom still alive now, when good wine is widely available.

i bought these from the market the other day. coming home, i had found the grapevine gone, it had gone dry, my mother said, there are blooming oleanders now in its place, their beauty as sweet and poisonous as every memory is, i said, oh why are you upset, my mother asked, don't you like the new look of the garden and the new light green paint on the walls of the house, and for no reason at all i remembered these lines:

see the world ripple beyond this current.

(I look at you with eyes of oleander)

& in this ocean

a single harp plays a taunting homage.

but i didn't say anything.

upon my tongue of now, this taste of then, forever - a taste of fog and, beyond that, the fragrance of the unspeakable, the silent tune of a single harp.

..