je est un autre (colours 1)

This is the first post of a longer project on which i have been working, entitled je est un autre ('i is another', a famous quote from Rimbaud). It deals with the double and the other, symbolizing the multiplicity of the self and its thousand refractions (not a surprise, i hear you say :-).








There is also a poem which i once wrote on the same topic. And thanks to the endless creativity interplay on this web, the poem evolved into a 'poem for two voices', a gift that the ever amazing swiss (am i quoting you here, Joanne ? :-) made me soon afterwards. He echoed each line of mine with his words (an answer, which leads to many other questions - forever open):

the untold stories

those stories

plunging their roots

growing out of you

into the bone of

blooming

my heart

uncontrollable

poisonous and hungry

that foliage

the unwritten sisters and

that becomes sibling

daughters of mine

child, your flesh

agitating their dark foliage

abundance

in me

unbearable

listen to me you

listen to me

to whose feet my untold

there are stories

stories

washing around you

my unwritten

unheard, un-noticed

bodies of despair command

their loss

me to kneel

forces you to your knees

they put a rope around

chokes the breath

my neck

in your throat

they take my

stuffs your mouth

mouth

with despair

they want revenge

what is it you want

they tear me

to fall

down

to go

in search of

what?

hear me out you

listen!

to whose feet I don’t

i am not

The strange dialogue which emerged therefrom compelled the readers to hear it spoken, as all poetry should basically be: living, breath-born word. Joanne-of-a-thousand-skills made a marvellous first audio version, to which you can listen here:


http://www.garageband.com/mp3player?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSgY1C1Ymk


Of course, being very curious myself and swiss - i dare say - not very far from this when it comes to playing with different materials, we couldn't refrain from wondering how we - the humble authors :-) - would enact it. If you are curious, you can listen to us here, but i must warn you: firstly, Joanne is a pro and we can't even dream of comparing ourselves with her and secondly, this is my first attempt at editing audio (even mixing our voices was a hell of a task for me). and we didn't even know that one needs 'stereo mikes' for something like this, as i was told later. So don't be too harsh on me/us :-)
(i have the courage to let you listen to this only because swiss liked it very very much)




poems for two voices, poem 2 (the unwritten stories)
Roxana & Swiss


Oh, and here is a slideshow for the ones who are really hungry for images (click on the small slideshow icon for full screen view):

the leaves of tea

the leaves of speech
unfolding gently
between you and me
each sound
a swirl into
silence.
my hair redolent
of cypress incense
your soul bearing
the invisible smile.
between us
the distance of a thousand seas
between us
the closeness of a thousand gifts.

pale blossoming

in the air
your absence
taking the shape
of me
light be gentle
i ask now
through this veil
that used to be
my voice
light be gentle with me
make my body remember
what it is to be
the pale blossoming
branch of desire

vision and wire circle or: in a strange confessive mood

i am closing my right eye, and staring for many minutes at the tip of my nose, then at my hand, that i keep close to my face, in a vertical position. i am slowly opening my right eye, and closing the left one instead. i am doing this again and again, for hours. i don't know what to make of the wonder i have just discovered, that the image forming in front of me changes if looked at with one eye or another. i am shattered. the world is no longer the world. my hand will never be whole again. doubt has seized my heart. i am closing my right eye, carefully, hoping each time that i am proven wrong, that this was only a momentary delusion. that there is still a way to make the being stable and right.

when i was about 10 years old, i noticed that my eyes got gradually weaker. one day, however, i stumbled upon another groundbreaking discovery: if one uses the fingers to pull at the corner of the eye towards the temples, until the eyes change into an almond shape and then into one thin line narrowing the horizon, the bright clear vision is restored. not for long, eventually tears come and blur the view, but long enough.

by then my conviction that the world is deeply flawed had only become deeper. and I was of the firm belief that nobody would ever like me if i wore glasses. as it happened, i still harboured a somewhat incomprehensible optimism which made me gather all the patient virtues of the little pragmatist who was still alive in me back than (however feebly breathing, i should add). i came up with a brilliant emergency plan: i would employ my new eye-pulling tactics as often as needed to save face in dangerous situations, as implied, for example, by the necessity of jotting down what the teacher was writing on the blackboard. and at the same time i would spend 20 minutes daily (i have no recollection as to why i settled for this precise duration) to exercise wearing my mother's glasses at home and thus correcting my view.

four years afterwards, the result was a complete disaster. i lived surrounded by a perpetual vapour in which all things had lost their natural contours. one day, the flawed world collapsed. my schoolmate betrayed me. intrigued by the sudden and repeated change of the girl he shared the bank with into an implausible chinese doll with misty eyes, he had eventually managed to pull out my secret, which landed in my teacher's ear. and from there in my mother's ear, who, with a puzzled look on her face, took off her glasses and looked at them as if she had seen them for the first time in her life.

i look at the cottage in front of me. then i discover it. i look at the wire circle, wondering about its hidden meaning, and i want to look still closer. step by step, i approach it. i change the place.

suddenly, the time stands still. at the centre of the wire circle the cottage rests in its fullness. shapes have mutated in front of my blinded eyes, and a mandala has emerged. right through the heart of the cottage, there flows another time, unknown to the world. i am roundness myself, sacred in a new body.

and then it happens. slowly, against my desperate wish to resist, my left eye closes. i want to hang onto the cottage walls, to fasten myself to its bricks, the quiet roof. to stop it from gently sliding to the right, breaking through the circle of perfection.

i fail. a bird shrieks in the bush. i turn around.
there is a flutter of wings somewhere, and I am still.

Travelling,
but staying still.
O, sun,
how do I attain the skill
of your footsteps ?


Adonis

light and dark again

light cannot
penetrate deep
unless it is
carried there
by a
wandering soul
without purpose
or the crush
is too great

darkness predates
upon
a weak intent
as light flees
downward
drawn by a mirror

Sun
blind my eyes
that I may see
this dream
I am in

Separate me
my earth body
my sky soul
this split
is worship
this calm
is unknowing
this dint
of the light

there she
nurtures us
as the shadow
fades light
we apologise
to the darkness
unforgiven

In the firelight
all the words
burn
my thoughts
to air

Light falls
softly
at the edge
of darkness
there is no pain

falling from darkness
this lightness
comes the point
where sand
shifts to dust
when black
fades to white

we are stolen by sunlight

Born to die
dying to be reborn
I give in to
nothing

(all quotes from Peter Bradburn's poetry: 10 Love Poems, Mercurius: Poems on Change and Union and Imago. you can read him here)

in japanese style

making tea
in the afternoon
white blossoms
scattered by the wind
memories of you

the rain my tears
how could you know
my lonely spring

the beautiful foolishness of things

collaboration. the roots go back to the latin 'collaborare', which means: to work with ('com' + 'labore'). but is it possible that the work is no work at all, occurring as naturally as the flow of a river, and the 'with' - a dialogue in the mystery of the encounter?

I use Celan's words here, his famous description of the poem (which, however, can stand for every work of art) as an interplay between solitude and the Other:

'The poem is solitary. It is solitary and on the way. Whoever writes it is given to it for the journey. But does not the poem by that very fact, therefore already here, stand in the encounter – in the mystery of the encounter?

The poem wants to reach this Other, it needs this Other, it needs a vis-à-vis. (...) The poem becomes - and under what conditions - the poem of a person who, as before, perceives, who faces that which appears. Who questions this appearance and addresses it. The poem becomes dialogue...'

two banal water bottles, hanging on a string, in front of countless windows: such an encounter is implausible, if not genuinely absurd, and yet everything combines so well, that one is led to believe that nothing can be more natural, that this is the way things are, or, even more, should be. beauty emerges.

Michael Tweed, who maintains a fascinating However Fallible blog triptych (I think of them as a butterfly - his body and the wings, right and left, unity which can become a flicker, an ineffable tremble in the glimpse of a second), is a Canadian artist with a more than impressive portfolio. If I had to say only one sentence about his work, I would say that he makes art out of a bit of dangling string, then out of that art he makes a 'way', in the japanese sense, a 'do', a spiritual path. But this of course is a very poor way of speaking, there is no 'then' here, and no 'making': everything happens instantly, that very moment in which the line between the invisible and the visible becomes fluid and goes right through us, returning us to that which we truly are, the middle-ground between being and nothing. Merleau-Ponty's 'chiasme', and I hope he doesn't think I am too wrong here...
I remember the simple story of my Japanese pottery Master, who told me one quiet afternoon: 'I will rest when my hands have created the 無空有 bowl'. mu-ku-yu, a word coined by himself, 無 (void)空(emptiness)有(existence): the unity of being and non-being.
Michael Tweed's works are to me this space in which 無空有 reveals itself, in the glimpse of a second, the butterfly wings' flicker.

And now I can no longer postpone what I want to tell you: to my utmost amazement, Michael has invited me to collaborate with him on an ongoing project which blends my images and his zen-like poems written here from a rather surprising feminine perspective (yes, indeed!). Now you will certainly ask yourselves how these either too dark or too vivid pictures of mine, that entangled world of longing and despair, could possibly be a suitable companion for such an undertaking. I have done so myself. But against all odds, however implausible, if not genuinely absurd, this might appear, he thinks that it can work (and even talks of publishing one day!!!).

Let's see what you think about this foolish idea, which could perhaps, if we succeed, become a mirror to the beautiful foolishness of things.

yet even if it be so

My Lord has departed
And the time has grown long.
Shall I search the mountains,
Going forth to meet you,
Or wait for you here?

No! I would not live,
Longing for you.
On the mountain crag, rather,
Rock-root as my pillow,
Dead would I lie.

Yet even if it be so
I shall wait for my Lord
Till on my black hair -
Trailing fine in the breeze -
The dawn's frost shall fall.

In the autumn field,
Over the rice ears,
The morning mist trails,
Vanishing somewhere...
Can my love fade too?


Longing for the Emperor
by Empress Iwa no Hime ( - 347 AD)

Poem în o

Acum când sângele meu s-a preschimbat
în apă vino să te scalzi seara
la lumina astrelor pure pleoapele
mele vor rămâne închise pe veci

ca doi lotuşi calmi şi palizi
pe atât de negre pe atât de negre ape. O!

Nichita Danilov

Now that my blood has changed

to water come bathe this evening

in pure astral light my eyelids

will remain closed forever

like two lotuses calm and pale

on such black on such black water. O!

Poem in O

(tr. James Owen)

James translated it after I complained about the translation he had posted on his blog - by Sean Cotter and published in second-hand souls - which sounds like this:

Now that my blood has changed
to water come tonight to swim
through transparent planetary light my
eyelids will lie flat forever closed

like pale lotuses floating calm
on water, so black, so black. O!



I think his version is so much better and I am grateful.

I am so drunk

I am so drunk
I have lost the way in
and the way out.
I have lost the earth, the moon, and the sky.
Don't put another cup of wine in my hand,
pour it in my mouth,
for I have lost the way to my mouth.


Rumi
(tr. Shahram Shiva)














for noura, thanking her for her warm message
from one spirit to another
from one heart to another

Can thinking take this gift into his hands, that is, take it to heart?

from Heidegger

Kindness in words creates confidence.

Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.

Kindness in giving creates love.

Lao Tzu

stray reflections

what is meant by "for"?

this longing

for the end of longing

that some call death

and others life.

the light falls around us

never in us

it's there

in the seeping of the days

the darkening of your face

fall

now

like a cloak to the ground

silently.



fragments of a Black Sun