O.E. screade "piece cut off," from W.Gmc. *skraudas (cf. M.L.G. schrot "piece cut off," O.H.G. scrot, "a cutting, piece cut off," Ger. Schrot "small shot," O.N. skrydda "shriveled skin"), from PIE base *skreu- "to cut, cutting tool" (cf. L. scrutari "to search, examine," from scruta "trash, frippery;" O.E. scrud "dress, garment;" see shroud). The verb is from O.E. screadian "prune, cut" (cf. M.Du. scroden, Du. schroeien, O.H.G. scrotan, Ger. schroten "to shred").
The orientalist:
Deposited, once again, on the fringes of a well regulated society, with its coherent and self-sustaining stories, its archives and stone-like memory, its official histories and endless, rambling reconstructions of its past; all resting on on the surest of foundations, the strongest of footholds-even if imaginary or sunk deep into the reservoirs of the collective unconscious. He, on the other hand, lingered and tarried like some medieval beast on the periphery of the known: a shadowy figure, clinging to the borderlands; a creature known only through village gossip and folklore, distant and as ephemeral as the morning mist. A fleeting, insubstantial shape of a man; the breathless condition of inner revulsion-a revulsion for the myriad lives that were and were not his; a classical fanatic for whom ideas were incarnated in his eternal gaze.
The old man was no longer the mediator of an experience, because the experience ended with him each time. But in this way he became something still more mysterious and impressive: a stone abandoned in a field, cut by an unknown hand, according to unknown rules. Such survivors, deprived of descendants, have faces that are striking in their isolation. Their uselessness is majestic and the wisdom they possess and surely do not wish to hand on gazes at us in silence, like every memory that agrees to destroy itself.
---Roberto Calasso.
One must either be a monk or thoroughly absorbed in the world to not be concerned about its business.
Ammons: Snow poems: plenitude and nothingness. A self that stopped, that never became, was aborted. "The name nearest the name, names least." Mountains, where 'gigantic motions have been summarized into stillness'. A life, where all possibilities of escape are open; life that "fastens into order enlarging groups of disorder...no finality of vision, that I have perceived nothing completely, that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk."
All the zeroes running through my heart,
Looking for the one.
---b
What is b but the meeting of 0 and 1?
Life, no matter hard you stare at it,
is but a moment.
I close my eyes
And the world disappears.
---Swami
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise
-----W.H.Auden
Eden is more interesting as starting point than as a destination; alienation and the fall are a spectacle worth recording. Fallen time is where all the action takes place.
Home is where the heart is
But where is the heart?
A path well trodden ceases to be a path. Is all philosophizing nothing but the trick of the body? Its inward movement the awe from which wisdom begins, the sigh the withdrawal from the world; pain the awareness of love lost, the realisation that this awakening is only a lonely thought, a tardy replacement for what is no more? Second thoughts.
The romantic genius is one-sided, his truth that of an extremist; the Renaissance genius, or the humanist par excellence, is more rounded, a man for all seasons, a polymath. Also, the former is a man of action whilst the latter is an artist. How one perceives genius is an indicator of the temper of the age we live in. Can there be a poetic genius in the prosaic times we live in, now that language has lost its fluency and naivete? Or a religious genius when faith is grounded on the shores? Who today holds our attention, catches our gaze? The mathematician and scientist speak in tongues...
One sidedness is a sign of greatness, but second rank. The one sidedness of the intellectual creates the illusion of having everything-an abstract all-sided individual
---from Soren K.
A description of faith is not faith. Understanding is not a concept.
Any man's death diminishes me
--Donne
Noh: Zemi motokyio:
Forget the theatre and look at the actor.
Forget the actor and look at the heart.
Forget the heart and only then will you understand Noh
A burnt-out angel that has exhausted all possibilities within; only a silhouette remains.
Orientation:
Facing the right direction, not being in the right place. An elemental soul and an angelic soul: the human being is the cross where they meet. By virtue of the former nature is his 'brother'; by virtue of the latter consciousness or awareness breaks out of its dream-like state
---from Ostaad Elahi
Sheltering your heart from the heat of the day
--D.Mahon
"The best way to escape one's life is to quote: to live in a parallel world that is not yours"
---?
Dada: empty language of meaning ...the world already has too much meaning and must grow light again: the heavy burden of the word must be destroyed in a counter-culture. Iconoclasm.
To live in paradise alone.
--Marvell.
The loneliness which is the truth about things. Socially sanctioned communication has nothing to say.
--from V.Woolf
The paradox: those who are most alone have most trust in the world [the ascetics love the world with a love that outshines the hatred of those who are in love with the world]
--Hohl.
The politics of the sea.
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Oh where on earth did you find this?! :-) basically "zdreanta" means "rag". which reminds me of this funny poem by Arghezi, I knew it by heart when I was in kindergarten, as most children do here. It's a bit long but it's very sweet and the translation is really good, maybe you'll like it:
Rag
by Tudor Arghezi
Did you happen to see Rag,
China eyes under that shag?
He’s a dog with ragged fur
Very handsome, as it were.
Looks like he is patched together
Ragged tatter over tatter.
Shreds of fur over his eyes
Put his nose into disguise.
He’s all tangled as a fool
Like he’s freshly spun from wool.
But amazingly, this slobber
Is a cunning, practiced robber.
Loiters by the chicken coop
With his scruffy furry droop,
Waiting calmly for a hen
To lay eggs for him again,
Clucking happily as she
Makes a fresh egg instantly.
Since he’s been in this household
He has learnt a lot, I’m told,
And he crawls, at steady pace,
Slinks towards that hidden place,
Paw and muzzle through the hole,
And he swallows the egg whole!
“Where’s the egg?” Asked then the lady,
Of the house, “It’s gone—he ate it!”
“Wait a minute, I’ll unlearn you,
Of this rotten habit, too!
I will teach you not to steal.”—
So a hot egg was his meal.
But as soon as Rag chowed down,
He dropped it quickly with a frown
And swore with a big bow-wow.
When he looks now at the hen—
Next door neighbor, in her pen—
Mutters Rag begrudgingly:
“Damn! She’s trickier than me!”
[actually I hadn't seen the two words from the beginning, don't know how I could possibly overlook them, just Odds and Ends, read all those beautiful and deep thoughts and while I was deeply pondering I realized I was looking in fact at two romanian words. I had to burst into laughing: Damn! He's trickier than me!" :-)]
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