yes and no in your eyes

there are many small and great losses. a moment in the sun, under the sun. like salt before the immense rock-time. stars move on their way in smooth curves. asymptotically to their place. a shadowed land. much has passed. much yet will. by the side of the road, in a field, burnt -out cars rest. crumbling brown-ochre the colour of abandonment. joy and merriment, a thousand journeys..all is fallen now. pile image upon image-if you will. the dark mirror will still collect, darkly. the old descend before you. you, too, for some reason drift. so that they don't know? may the Lord have mercy.

now lights glow so dimly. brighter, later. you'll never know. to my house, and there withdraw myself. stand by the river. the stone bridge floats. to wait by water's edge, like many before. life's become a winter scene painting that looks at life. gaze inwardly, silently for myself. did you see me today, god? in time lilac flowers will come to grow by my grave. side by side, shadowing eachother, we shall lie. both of us, strangely, without name.

in the mirror is Sunday

always will be a summer day

the day with no night

or a number on skin

fate chanced upon by a 'yes' or a 'no'

not long, but it isn't anyway

determined by the interval: we mourn,

maybe, the brevities, as much as to say

form were the enemy-the length of form-

to hide from ourselves

that emptiness of content length couldn't fill

no matter how long it might be-forever if it were.

---eccliasticus, bronk-and a line from celan.

the way it might have been

the way it might have been, what might have been. what remains of the past that never was?

was listening to some jazz last night and thought: starts off loyal to the original, down to each note, every key. fidelity to the score, the way it is. a few random notes are then thrown in, appear all of a sudden. a change of pace, rhythm. picks up where it left off. a new current, change of direction. the introduction of dissonance into the scheme of things. playfulness that spins out, like a greek god parceling out destinies. the first stirrings of something different. the music opens up slightly, like a spring day, the sky becoming lighter. unlocked, unwound. becomes expansive, loose, but retains the dominant theme at its heart. curves out in ever greater sweeping movements, further and further from the centre. vectors of hope.freer, less burdened by fidelity to repetition and ritual. freedom breaking out of structure. the dizzying thrill of the unchartered, of foreign lands. into the blue, open space. how to keep what is fundamental, essential? flight of the imagination. this is how things might be or, more darkly, how things might have been, had there been other lives, other times. but this song away from the song is also a tribute, an act of love. even as it becomes tangential, moves "out there', it retains a loving memory of the shards of the original...they're interwoven into what is new-as if a streaming blue ribbon is sewn onto a different garment...something borrowed, something new. a different kind of truth, of mirroring, reflecting.

like a river, a river man. comes home. leaps across the gaps. never lost the sense of it. carried it with you all the time. like a person who speaks quickly but the eyes, the eyes still sad.

the circle is broken. forgive me, father. the years we had together fade. but i hold them close. the circle is broken. it always was. from the beginning.

'The water in the harbour had the usual harbour litter, orange peel, a fine web of seemingly dusty, semi-iridescent scum hung with small leaves and bits of twig. It made me think of classical lands and of people making journeys in ancient times to famous cities, to study rhetoric or philosophy or to put a question to the local oracle. The harbour water would always have been like this, ordinary, unremarkable, until it had been left behind on the journey out'
---V.S.N.

the drift

wordless. less is more, you say. more or less. threadbare: a nimble intelligence. or so you would like to believe. dances around the point. around, mind you. that's about right. misses the mark, marks the misses. like time waiting to be crossed out. a life time. a lifetime waiting is a life full of time.cancellations. noughts and crosses. or delays. due to poor visibility.

i see what you're saying. it's your silences that have undone me. done me in. an asylum or a refuge. it's there. falls all around us. drifts our way unbidden. do you get the drift? one or two? the meaningless of measurement. we know what distance is. there are distances.when all's said and done. the words not said were not difficult, if truth be told. would be known. but we cannot know. simple, fundamental words across the centuries that have held us together, like 'elementary', dear watson.

I thought that you were an anchor in the drift of the world;
but no; there isn't an anchor anywhere.
there isn't an anchor in the drift of the world. Oh no.
I thought you were. Oh no. The drift of the world.

---William Bronk

the wild blue yonder

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances..
---R.Haas.

Let us love this distance , which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.
--Simone Weil.

For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

Nothing is given; everything is fresh, wild. Unanticipated. If the wonder is that death, the impossibility, all of a sudden becomes a possibility; if the truly amazing thing is that life emerges from the infinite silence of stone, then it is also true that we are dazzled by the fact that death itself-even if for a flickering moment-becomes an impossibility.

There was a mole on your face, a full stop on the blank page..that took me to you. You looked for the place: a hole, a well in the sky, an opening so you could fall upwards...it took time, it took light, it took time to find my human form. And it was not so different from yours.

This earth, this sky, this place I call home. Nothing seems more beautiful to me right now. I am the space where I am.

Near Snaresbrook, on the Central Line, a young girl looked at me as I sat absorbed in Richard Ford's Sportswriter. Her mother and aunt sat there like some commanding matriarchs, stone-like in their solemnity, the world rolling off their sad blue-grey eyes, making no impression. Mountain people. One always recognizes them. They've seen it all before. The elaborate and profuse red and gold embroidered patterns on their black veils indicating the presence of a human soul. Three young white kids got on, boisterous, full of themselves. The young girl just plays with her pony tails-a dreamer who curls up in contemplation of loops, who sees the end in the beginning- and then placed her head gently on her mother's shoulder, pulling her closer to her by the arm, nesting in that immense black assurance: 'Mother, you mean the world to me'.

I listen to the Molla and Reijseger. To listen to this is to hear the music of the earth before human beings set foot there, an earth still quivering, still holding something of the memory of the Creator's hands, the clouds still clinging to the mountains, like a dream, the stone dimly aware that a thousand images lie captive in its heart: But a voice made me come out of the angle where I was beginning to die of an angel's dream.

Or, better still, it is the soaring cry of the First Man. The infinite is placed in us finite beings (if only Descartes had been a Muslim!). This is why we break. This is why we long so much for other skies, for the wild blue. Every act of true perception takes us there.

I am not the space where I am.
I am not what I am.

All the looseness, the dispossessed details, the faint hints, of the rest of the poem settle into the firm order behind the last line. We discover in retrospect what Lowell was doing was keeping all the ingredients of the poem in a state of fluid suspension, floating in readiness for the net with which, in a single moment, he could scoop them up and contain them.
---Raban on Lowell.

The poet sees earth and sky; the scientist or philosopher: only earth-and that too through a prism. The more this earth, this sky reminds us of others, the more we come to love them.
(originally posted, Saturday, 28th of July)

~~~~~~~~~~

Today I was thinking of how little wild blueness is left; instead, we tend to speak in terrible cliches or, worse still, try to beat every ounce of "meaning" from anything we touch or come across. So, I instinctively flinch when I hear someone harp on about "class consciousness" when it comes to a film-in the same way I would if I saw a donkey being thrashed. Or the "nausea " of Hollywood, the "decadence" of the west (yesterday a student actually came up to me and said 'in the west they think freedom means you can have incest.' Yeah, like, keep on taking the pills bro')

Have you ever thought, maybe the beast was within.It's like hearing a mullah speak, or a Communist or George Bush. The same old record, stuck on the same old track. Thinking by slogans, painting by numbers! (Incidentally, found Mao's the Red Book last evening. What a load of utter crap! ) Science, Freedom, Progress..keep on repeating these words enough and, hey, who knows, you might actually convince yourself to believe them! There's no place like home, there's no ...

~~~

crow finds a home

'There is a certain kind of magpie that can learn words; they become fond of some words, and not only repeat them but can be seen to ponder them. To learn a word they must hear it said often, and if a word is too difficult for them to learn they may die. When they forget a word they cheer up greatly when they hear it spoken'
---Pliny the Elder?

Only the magpie recognizes itself in the mirror. Recognizes only itself. Why this particular creature, no-one knows. Turns its face from the drowning world, delights in scattered flesh, is oblivious of judgement. Ancient affinities between crow and man? And why not woman?The dark half-opened eye,the piercing gaze, the raven of my heart searches for scraps of being, settles at last, makes her home. And in this way she, full of herself and speechless, without equal, makes me stumble, fall, crawl.
~~~

I was walking towards her, carrying a half-opened rose..

She was reclining on a carpet, receiving guests
Her neck a lily of immaculate whiteness
Please kneel here, she said, next to me...
This happened in another country, a lost century..

No doubt she married, had three children
Who can track down the details?

Why her precisely, I don't understand.
I'm not sure I'd recognize her on a busy street

And I ask myself why it is constructed so perversely;
so that life is vague and only death is real.
---C. Milosz.

The Lost Horizon

question me an answer

the certain light
a certain light
over the same place at a different time in the day
means it isn't the same place.
and in the real world?
is it any different?
---after William Bronk.

Must everything be a question?

In a certain light we are neither image or word. but are.

listening to a clip (yeah, reading, what's that?) of a 'world sage' and was immediately struck (roxana will no doubt say that that's precisely the problem) by how much I disagreed with his words. But that's not true (I think)...pluralism is not relativism, after all. But yes, of course, one must not try and circumscribe the realm of what is possible or meaningful too tightly or rashly-unless one is a talib. On the other hand, is it merely a modern prejudice to think that a narrow perspective, one that ignores lost horizons, necessarily precludes profundity?

Khair..what got me was this:

Firstly, this idea of no conflict as either a realized state or an ideal. Just can't get my head around that. Then: the 'timeless east' and the 'restless west'. Old hat, my dear.

But the most remarkable thing was him saying that Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism are based on thought. Repeat the words slowly. Rituals, revelation, and texts are distortions, not the real thing, not a direct perception or awareness of Reality (as if one could achieve this on one's own, without grace). So, the testimony of the prophets and the saints is to be replaced by what, exactly? Psychology? The problem is, perhaps, not the world but the wrong approach to the world that makes it, precisely, worldliness; a proper 'love of the world' is always possible and, as Denise Levertov says: the world is not with us enough.

Of course, this is unfair. Always subject to re-vision. But here's the question: why shouldn't all sorts of things and relations be reflections and instances of the spiritual: words, images, music, friendship, love? Beauty is the splendour of the true. Aren't these refuges (Iris M) for the refugees?

Art does not mean dispersion, it means concentration, a way back to God.
--Frithjof Schuon.

r r r r r r r

I have no idea of what's being sung here or who the singer is, but it reminds me of something...can't quite put my finger on it...



1

On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared.

2

Since that day many, many months
Have quietly floated down and past.
No doubt the plum trees were chopped down
And you ask me: what's happened to my love?
So I answer you: I can't remember.
And still, of course, I know what you mean
But I honestly can't recollect her face
I just know: there was a time I kissed it.

3

And that kiss too I would have long forgotten
Had not the cloud been present there
That I still know and always will remember
It was so white and came from on high.
Perhaps those plum trees still bloom
And that woman now may have had her seventh child
But that cloud blossomed just a few minutes
And when I looked up, it had disappeared in the wind.

-Bertolt Brecht, “Remembrances of Marie A.,“ in Die Hauspostille (1927) (S.H. transl.)(Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke in acht Bänden, vol. 4, p. 232)

before you were, you were. if i recollect. nothing reminds me of you, except you. and if by chance you'd stayed a day in my white room, you'd have forgotten me by now, for sure. like a cloud. the sea, like time, brings things to the surface, then lets them fall. a bell records the lost moments of our lives.

the metaphysical implications of departure...

did you land safely, old dougal?
(der...click on the red...just in case...)
~~~

less profound stuff to follow...

I was not a poet, but now I am, in a way. In a way, mind you. I wasn't an infidel, but now the cloak of unbelief is upon me. I wanted to learn you off by heart, mine your soul. Cross my heart and hope to die. I got as far as a few letters before you withdrew your hand, so the rest remains unfinished...

at the crossing of the border there is no border.

what is far is also near. I want to move deeper into today. each thing shines in its own way.

"what she noticed so shrewdly is that the ordinary is so extraordinarily mysterious". common life, brought back to the ordinary prose of the world, the ordinary specialness of people without the need for theology or metaphysics. first things first.

The strength of a man's virtue or spiritual capacity measured by his ordinary life.

and the eye that sees them refuses
to see further, glances of the
surfaces that
speak and conjure,
rests
on the frail
strawness of straw, metal sheen of tinsel.

---Denise Levertov, Saul Bellow, Denise Levertov.

straw man. it's true. the fire within, seeks the fire without-an I for an I-finds it's form there, sparkles, speaks, splinters, breaks, curls. but remains straw. not the gold of cathedrals, but the summer breeze.

the sea

Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgments on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.
---Iris M.

Post-colonial literature. Always hated that phrase. And not too fond of thinking through the prism of gender, religion, race etc., etc. although, of course, that's not to detract from the possibility that where people are 'coming from' is sometimes important. Just don't think it's always or necessarily the case. Dislike even more people who try to draw radical distinctions, as if to say that distinctions are always a product of clear thinking and that reasonableness precludes one from saying: "I'm not sure" or "maybe I am/was wrong".

So, what are you to say of Iris, Hannah? That you like their writings because they're women, english, jewish? What poppycock. Nonsense on stilts! Or Isak D., Penelope Fitgerald.,Berberova, Denise Levertov, M. Robinson? Sparkling prose, concision of expression, deepness of thought, the gem-like simplicity of storytelling...or are you just in touch with your 'feminine self'? So strange as well, from, you know, someone from your part of the world.

'Knowledge of a value concept is something to be understood, as it were, in depth, and not in terms of switching on to some impersonal network'

'Why not consider red as an ideal end-point, as a concept infinitely to be learned, as an individual object of love'

'grow by looking'

'contexts of attention'

'The idea of a patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not as unimpeded movement but as something very much more like obedience'

'empty moral words ('good') corresponds to the empty freedom of the will: the world is devoid of normative characteristics' the scientific view 's compatibility with existentialism

'a moral philosophy should be inhabited'

'we have lost the vision of a reality separate from ourselves'
'the disappearance of the permanent background: Reason, Religion, History'

'a re-orientation, a different kind of energy, from a different source'

'habitual objects of reflection' habitual acts of reflection. second takes. slowness.

'many aspects of goodness'-not a false, empty unity.

'the suppression of the self relates to the real-and what is good'

'freedom is not strictly the exercise of the will, but rather the experience of accurate vision'
(you love the word experience there)

'an attachment to what lies outside the fantasy mechanism'

'a sacrament provides an external visible place for an internal invisible act of the spirit'

'the quality of our attachments is the quality of our understanding'

'without some more positive conception of the soul as a substantial and continually developing mechanism of attachments, the purification and re-orientation of which must be the task of morals, 'freedom' is readily corrupted into self-assertion and 'right-action' into some sort of ad hoc utilitarianism'