Some of the music from the stunningly beautiful the wild blue yonderI gave you the beautiful journey
Without her you would not have set out on your way
She has no more to give you
And if you find her poor, I did not betray you
With all your wisdom, all your experience
You understand by now what Ithaka means
---Cavafy
For the Baroque soul:
Baroque form is dynamic; an indeterminacy of effect (in its play of solid and void, light and darkness, with its curvature, its broken surfaces, its widely diversified angles of inclination; it conveys the idea of space being progressively dilated. Its search for kinetic excitement and illusionary effect leads to the situation where the plastic mass in the Baroque work of art never allows a privileged, definitive, frontal view; rather, it induces the spectator to shift his position continuously in order to see the work in constantly new aspects, as if it were in a state of perpetual transformation....
---Umberto Eco.
To escape the flatlands, the pettiness, boredom, and emptiness of the cycles. Who, I wonder, hasn't dreamt of moving in another dimension, of cutting diagonally through space, orthogonal to all identity, sense and meaning. Wasn't our very beginning such a zig-zag movement, the imagining of the impossible, the flash of spurs that left the animal world behind? To stray and wander, to be restless, to love and hate home at the same time...a broken circle...
You sit on the train, alone and content, with just enough warmth from the familiar world: a good book, hot coffee, a forest-green lead pencil, old tattered shoes. And then, like a child, or a horse, something in you stirs, instinctively. You move to the window. You place your warm forehead against the cold pane and seek out the open skies, the distant blue, mesmerized and lost by all that is strange. I am not the space that I occupy.
Let me run, run, and never find...
The barzakh: neither constrained nor at liberty; neither free nor bound. Like the souls in-between, stuck between memory and desire. A sense of something utterly completed vied with a sense of something startled into scope and freedom.
The sea, the sky, the blue mourning the loss of the red as it is transformed into gold. Broken, breaking free. I return. We do not recognise eachother.
10 comments:
'You sit on the train, alone and content, with just enough warmth from the familar world: a good book, hot coffee, a forest-green lead pencil, old tattered shoes. And then, like a child, or a horse, something in you stirs, instinctively. You move to the window. You place your warm forehead against the cold pane and seek out the open skies, the distant blue, mesmerized and lost by all that is strange. I am not the space that I occupy.'
b, did you write this? It's very good.
beautiful.
thanks, Ceilia and fl.
'fraid I did. One line is 'borrowed' from somewhere..Bachelard probably.
Love the new picture! What are you growing? Any fruit and veg?
But I just don't have the words to describe this desire for speed, the need to escape gravity, the weight of our own shadows so that we break through the surfaces and shatter our own image (old Jewish roots showing!).
It was something Spengler said (or at least that's what I remember): the northern soul's longing for distance, to be alone with infinite horizons vs the greek/mediterranean/classical striving for perfection, proportionality.
Cyrano and the moon: not the desire to 'colonise' but to grow lighter.
'Age walks on our faces-
at the tunnel's end,
if faith can be believed,
our flesh will grow lighter.'
B-
You just make me smile.
fl
hi good morning b, glad you like the merwin, great poet. and i agree with celia, what she said above, i love that sentence with the space at the end. i don't do much own writing these days, only photos and lazy quotes.
Well, b,on Tuesday I really WILL be sitting on the train, watching the Cumbrian mountains as they recede from view and we move through the battered landscape of (what was)the industrial Midlands. Your words will travel with me - they so perfectly capture how one feels and acts on such journeys.
As for the barzakh, maybe it IS possible think of Virgin Rail as a sort of spiritual limbo!:)
You will be a ghostly presence at the barrier when I arrive at Euston. We shall tell each other what we've been reading and we shall have coffee and baguettes.
What shall we grow in the Priory garden? Old, fragrant roses. Nothing useful - no potatoes or beans.
b-
Where did you post about the hunters go? I loved it. And just came to post a comment, but it's not here. :(
-fl
fl, hadn't finished it. It sounded so wooden and fake that I trashed it.
C, hey, that's not fair, you having coffee and bagels without me!
fragrant roses?? what's got into you dear c? :-) Practicality! Beans, beetroot (I'd kill for some beetroot right now), sprouts...all good things, no?
Sorry you can't get beetroot in Lahore. Why not? Easy enough to grow, surely.
Funnily enough, it's one of my fav vegetables, too. It's excellent with some really strong cheddar cheese. I found this out in 1946, when my father took me on an outing to Kew gardens, along with the woman who was about to become my step-mother (a bad move) and her three-year-old daughter. Said step-mother-in-waiting had made cheese and beetroot sandwiches - delicious! I can taste them still. Then my step-sister-in-waiting fell into the pond where we were pic-nicking and I had to give her half of my clothes and so had to sit on the bus home wearing very little and inwardly fuming.
Hmm..never had it with Cheddar..only Cheshire.
But try this: beetroot, olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper and zeera (cumin) and cheshire. Fab!
Or, if you want to make the best raita in town: yoghurt, grated beetroot, s&p, zeera and a tblsp of olive oil.
sorry, c, this image of you in the bus , fuming..I can't stop smiling!
okay, this is real decadence now:
Yes, it is available but I can't be bothered to cook it.
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