crow country

As I was writing this the electricity jumped to a stop. Then it drained from the machines, a siren in reverse. Then-suddenly- the caw of a crow, cracking the silence, startled into awareness, and other birds, as if from a distant past.

Someone sent me this..I don't know the original (forgive me!) but only hear its echo rising through the descending fog.

In the silent courtyard of my home, a crow cawed
Then the sweet rain fell and I remembered you.

--Nasir Kazmi

The birds carry the memory of the stars with them in the morning light. 

Someone is sweeping the leaves in brisk, short movements of his brush. Inside, a janitor cleans the floor with his mop in wide, unnecessarily expansive sweeping movements (when you think he should follow a figure 'eight'). Perhaps his mind is wandering as he works. The movement of my own hands tentative, as the light returns and things find their shape again. My heart rests in silent forms, remembers the words not spoken.

Night & Day

..
..
..
..
..
..

The day looks like night; the night like day.

Turn all the lights right down. Stand in the still moment of darkness. Even the crows can't be heard. 

Don't read the newspaper, don't watch the television. The only rectangles that interest you are books. 

You make it through the morning, spending a few hours in oblivion, reading something that is both fascinating and irrelevant. Now the afternoon... 

Crow stood on the mounds of earth, peering darkly into the shallow tunnels that furrowed the old cricket ground. "This is new, this is new". What kind of kingdom is this, he wondered to himself. And who could have done all this work in one single night?

Which animal has left its imprint here? Where do these long lines lead to? Crow was so full of questions this morning. Everything else was the same, the sun, the trees, the guards high up in the towers, with their sad, blue uniforms. His own friends would join him soon to ponder this great mystery, this irruption of the ludicrous into their ordered world.  

Crow looked at me, puzzled, as I ran past him on my third lap. "It was you, wasn't it?" he asked me inquisitively. There was no answer. But he did wonder, being formed by so many curves of the world, why human beings were so haunted by shallow graves.

Crow, formally ageless, understood for a moment what it was to be human, and something dark grew in his heart.  

'The Parisian Nonsense Machine'

… it is the connexion between signifier and signifier that permits the elision in which the signifier installs the lack-of-being in the object relation using the value of ‘reference back’ possessed by signification in order to invest it with the desire aimed at the very lack it supports.
--Lacan.

"Offence itself has become a cliche." -
--Scruton.

There is a 'habit of faking,' the 'collective fake,' 'fake emotions' and 'institutionalized fakery'  

I haven't read Scruton's book but there is something wonderfully irreverent about the take-down of all those 'intellectuals' who are supposed to be fiendishly clever (if only one could understand what they were saying!)

The university, of course, specializes in the production of buffoons and false experts, the theorists of nothing, who contrive to appear sophisticated by filling their poor students' heads with a jumble of barely comprehensible sentences and mangled thoughts. 

The students, bless 'em, come out after four years, their minds packed with half-baked theories, their ears full of the latest jargon, and one could excuse them if they appear stunned, slightly dazed, wondering if to be clever means only that no-one else can quite understand what you're saying.

The bright ones would have learned to nod in approval, smile at the right time and, if good enough, to replicate the same kind of mindless drivel because they have been persuaded that they can (and therefore should) debunk everything. They've seen though it all, come to the realization that it's nothing more than a wild and provocative game for grown-ups that they can play with some panache. If they are lucky the gates will be opened and they will be taken in, because they were taken in.  

~
As straight as the crow flies.

Does this apply to some other time, some other way of life that has passed you by? Crows now, as far as you can make out, are urban creatures that hop around, barely touching the earth with one foot. Or when they do settle they are too busy scurrying about, pecking at each other over discarded scraps, morsels and trash, their minds constantly alert, on the look out for all that is second-hand, like any city scavenger. 

And their flight is clumsy, awkward, broken and jagged under the morning sun, full of fits and starts and resembles nothing like a pure line of flight. Instead, a kind of erratic zig-zagging motion, darting in and out of your field of vision, like a late-night improvisation that they've only recently learned but will have forgotten by dusk.

Did crows fly any different when there were fewer humans around? Or perhaps it's the built-up environment they now face that precludes any kind of sustained grace? More likely still: they've come to the end of their time and are addicted-like us-to this scrum of half-finished thoughts and throwaways.      

nothing, nowt, nada, zilch, sifr

Nothing is always growing; that, too, is a growing (agrowing).

Besides yourself.

My drift in the world, my drift.

All the deaths carried forward in the human species, all the memories of other lives.

Continental drift, fault lines, the distances between us grow. And still, after all these years we think there was a time-the origin maybe-when there was a kind of oneness. 

There are times to sit still. In the early morning there are no sounds of human beings to be heard, just birds chirping, the gentle breeze rustling in the highest leaves in the trees that makes you think of the falling light in Eastern windows, or the light glinting off high windows in the north, arches over free space. A squirrel's small and hurried steps, the sun's warmth surrounding us, taking away our distinctiveness; larger steps (mine), a few random and stray thoughts..is this the world, then? To what extent is the world still part of the universe, its rhythms, the rich simplicity of the play of elements? 

And now it is so quiet here. I searched all that silence, a desert in a desert, a wavy line made on rock, marking the the precise moment of the disappearance of the sea. Roses and grass grow without being looked upon. 

'What will become of me,
the cornerstones of my heart bring about nothing'

Do you, here, by chance follow my absence.
Today? 

'The sun shall cover us
the sun in our eyes for ever covered
with black crows'

The old sun on our backs, deep in our faces, heavy on our hands. Take a step out of it and I drift, drift like the wind...

(lines by Ingrid Jonker)

a winter mind

Nick Cave Nobody's Baby Now by Saklas

He never shows himself by light.
His form is blurred.
---William Bronk.

The wintered mind, the withered gaze; hands, shaped by regret- or something else, you can't tell any more-remain unclenched; the heart that withholds much...a name, without title, belonging to nobody. A darkened face, the lights dimmed, the low-blue flame sheltered; rooms kept bare like an empty lean grave, the bed unmade, books cold as stone, stillness held, shadowed soul, the locked mirrors of your eyes, the stopped clocks spilling time into silence, unanswered questions, bleak skills, these: silver inheriting the black, words unspoken, windows left open to the night...all this so that when raven alights, she will feel at home, feed on my flesh, and die without knowing it.

A Certain Light

In a certain light we are not who we are. All that was false falls away. In that second space we see behind appearance, the time that generates time, the gaze before the gaze. Beyond the stones there is another reality, other orders of being. Sometimes, as in a dream, we are made aware of them co-existing with our own familiar way of seeing the world and we catch a glimpse of these other realms; we discern our name, reclaim the acts that are ours, and think to ourselves: this is home, our true reality, all else is shadow.

-

-

Anything can happen.

Those overlooked regarded.

Ground gives.

The Heaven's weight

Lifts up off Atlas.

Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.

---Seamus Heaney

-

-

Maybe this other reality is locked into stone, inheres deep in the rock, like a black bird, captive but taking flight; maybe it is our gaze that has turned the world to stone, brought about its silence, when everything is flowing? The bird dreams of a star, catches its own reflection and now waits, age upon age, to be released...

-

-

'Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw

Mistings of civilisation...

Stone likewise. A pebble is imprisoned

Like nothing in the Universe.

Created for black sleep. Or growing

Conscious of the sun's red spot occasionally,

Then dreaming it is the foetus of God.'

---Ted Hughes.

Where are you now? Where are any of us these days? These days, when a whole afternoon can slip by, as light and insignificant as a cloud; the hours fall on your lap...books, and words, and notes are rearranged, clothes folded and put away-as if any of that makes a difference. An empty, clear glass on your table, perfectly empty, and a silver spoon next to it, pointing to it in adoration, gleaming with an unknown purity, truth. Things are in order here, but what of it. Where am I?

~~~

Darling R wants to see the world from every possible angle and sleeps, in her own distinctive way, at a tangent to others. "One must create one's own space in the world," she says, pretending to frown. "Or at least find it"

I think you're going to be a great actress, I comment, trying to tease the little one.

"What? Better than you?!"

R, you cheeky monkey, don't get me started...

~~

The hours fall, and fall. Her eyes fill up with mischief. She folds her arms on the dark failings, and laughs, then opens and closes her hand, as if it was a flash. She can say the word "hippo". Perhaps that's all there is to it, even though 'the word is too frivolous in the English language' (Gunter Eich)

the red and the black

the search for Truth is not easy, especially if one is not searching, or know what the Truth is.

early morning light seeps in. grey and cold objects still finding their Form, their outlines first. A crow falls, falls, swoops down from a height like a thick blanket. why outside my home, and no other? craas blindly against the emptiness of the universe, as if hearing his own voice, awakened to his own ugliness, he could discover his unique soul.

but crow spoke. and you thought of him, was in your mind somewhere; then, by hand and red ink made his way to a blank page of your notebook. no, not blank. scrawled in black are the words: just as it is, unmisted by love. from there-after a suitable elapse of time for breakfast-he, somehow, miraculously, jumps to your computer screen and this blog...reassembled, digitally. and now, i suppose, you read of him too and, despite yourself, think of him (or me), imagine how that ugly craa sounded.

for a second he's lodged in your mind. an image forms, grey at first but bryter, clearer later. this dead crow who's made such a fantastical journey already. not all crows, crows did not fall like the snow, generally, just this particular early-morning one, the one that fell from the sky.

and then you clear your throat, your tongue loosens, moistens, and your lips move unconsciously. you whisper his name to yourself, ever-so-gently, like breath on a dark mirror.

if only the reverse were true! then I, standing upright, would write of you truly, speak to crow, find my Form, so that in a flash you would fall by my side and i would hear the beautiful craaing of your voice unfurling against the emptiness of the universe.

names

i sometimes catch myself. thinking to myself, my mind wandering as i walk across the path, the path i make by my own walking. never look back because you know there's nothing there. you'll never find it. instead, you look down, look down to the fragile earth. thankful. thankful of the life that has been given to you when others...

Levinas: a sobering up, wakefulness.

nothing has moved me as much as this. perhaps Rothko at the tate. yes, of course. and Tarkovsky. yes.Bach, too, at times. but no matter how much (how much?) your mind wanders it comes back. names and names..but the nameless. a letter, on the blank canvas. that is simple, -ko. but the blank page.

why crow? this is not political. why, crow? what names do you have? what names do you have now God, God of the crows?

the lawless heart

what is the way to your heart? what are its stations? and why does the black crow wait, his thoughts like a grave shade within the shade. those folded wings hold what space: forest in the silence; silence in the forest.

'the night is so dark

the way so short

yet you do not wake

against my heart'

the winter soul, that forgets its way; your tracks covered by snow, you forget north and south, the differences between me and you.

the lawless heart. Var. when the ice melts, and the roses awake from their dream, then there is another forgetting, like the shade within a shade.

(poem, G. Hill; photo: courtesy of an incredible artist, Roxana)

,

When we live we occupy a certain space.

And when we don't live?

~~~~

Crow, blue, yellow...no colour comes for you this day. Rooted to the night, your cold eye stares like a star into the abyss. Love alone., The great strength that comes from the harshness of your claws; the great weakness from the harshness of your heart. I must remember to forget. The world that flutters inside you comes from a single word she says.,

~~~

The soul stands in the presence of its God in awful isolation.

The terrible distance of "its"

~~~~~

Why do you say 'we' when there is me, you, the world and all that time in-between?

~~~

You resisted the "polytheism of experience", favouring a puritanical soul instead. For you happiness was a pagan concept. But this black theological coat, how heavily it weighs on your shoulders. Growing more heavy, taking on lightness.

~~~

night

needs no stars

nowhere are you asked after.

~~~~

Linked in the chain

between Gold and Forgetting

Night.

~~~~~

blacker in black, am I more naked

apostate only am I true

Ich bin du, wenn ich ich bin.

(I don't understand German. Don't ask).

~~~

In the springs of your eyes

I drift on and dream of spoils

A net snared a net

embracing we sever.

Celan.

~~~~~

You saw an image form, and stood in the shade. Found a kind of peace there. Held your breath (or died) and looked in many directions. Some laws are binding. Black searching-out the gold, a light that would gently burn so that departures would be muffled, soft as ash. The strangeness of it all. A dream I can't remember. Together alone.

~~~

With all my thoughts I went

right out of the world:

there you were,

you my gentle one,

you my open one.

---G. Hill.

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.

man-eater

"Tell me about my nature", said the princess to the old blind man. And since she was very fond of hearing people talk about her she continued in the same vein: "Describe to me my true form, my very essence in first the most precise language, and then in the most perfect poetic idiom"

But the old man, who was no fool, resisted and could only stammer, "how can I describe such wonders?A blind man cannot even describe an elephant, so how to speak of your soul?" And the princess was pleased. Pass the word: the princess is pleased.

"But still", she said coyly, "my hair, is it straight or curly? Compare me to the moon again" Or have you lost your tongue as well as your sight?"

The blind man was not flustered since he had grown accustomed to such vanity. He just said, "How can I, who has neither seen your face nor touched your body, speak about that of which I have no knowledge?"

The princess was not so pleased by this answer. But she liked to tease him so because she knew that one day he would say what was in his heart.

"But, dear old man, everyone in the land talks about how fair I am. Why, then, are you miserly in your praise, why so reticent when it comes to expressing what needs be expressed?"

Then the old man saw in a vision a black crow, imagined her bosom rise and fall as if she was scared, her claws scratching and tearing his flesh, his eyes. Remembered his blindness. "I see it now"

"Tell, do tell!", she exclaimed excitedly.

"We, the two of us in this cage"

On hearing this crow knew the game was up and flew away as fast as she could. But now crow was in him, and he was in crow.

the two and the one

The phenomenon called 'I'
Is a single green illumination

Of a presupposed organic alternating current lamp
(a composite body of each and every transparent spectre)

The single illumination

Of karma's alternating current lamp

Remains alight without fail

Flickering unceasingly

Together with the sights of the land and all else
(the light is preserved. . . the lamp itself is lost)

The phenomenon called "I"
is a blue illumination
of the hypothesized, organic alternating current lamp
(a compound of all transparent ghosts)
a blue illumination
of the karmic alternating current lamp
which flickers busily, busily
with landscapes, with everyone
yet remains lit with such assuredness
(the light persists, the lamp lost)

In the twenty-two months, which I perceive
lie in the direction of the past
I have linked these pieces on paper with mineral ink
(they flicker with me,
everyone feels them simultaneously)
each a chain of shadow and light
mental sketches as they are,
which have been kept until now

~~~

Along the snowy paddy ridge
crows shuffle on in a row

Body bent on the snowy paddy
a crow utters two calls

Head down on the snowy paddy
a crow eats snow pecking at it

Head up on the snowy paddy
a crow takes a look around

On the snow in the snowy paddy
a crow waddles, waddles

Reaching the end of the snowy paddy
a crow eats snow pecking at it

At a height of the paddy snow
a crow has her mouth agape

His beak in the paddy snow
a crow keeps himself still

Onto a dry ridge of the snowy paddy
a crow gives himself a jump

With a rudder over the snowy paddy
a crow makes a slow flight

Over the snow ridge in succession
crows fly up toward the west

Left behind in the snowy paddy
a crow keeps his legs apart

The crows flying toward the west
are now just like sesame seeds.

---Myazawa Kenji

~~~

Snow settled on the rooftops of Kyoto ^
Her heart restless now ~
A prisoner of fate [ ]
A life lived in circles @
She made a --- for it
Slid away from me \

One got away >>>
Leaving the many #
For the time being...

Caught a sight of her reflection,
next to mine " '
Waited patiently for the right time:
Never was me & you
+ my heart, and hope to die.

So we turned away from one another ()
Tears and snow fell
*
*
*
There was no ?
It was the time of the end.

~~~

Early morning quiet. When everyone's left, so no-one's left. The slow creaking of the house, like a ship in frozen waters. The slow winter sun, enters the room. Extends its fingers to the table. Strikes the glass like an idea. Circles it. The light is not reflected or refracted, not absorbed or sharpened or splintered; the light becomes more intense, quickened into a dazzling singleness of purpose. Holds the colours at bay, near to its surface, for a perfect moment,then re-emerges as a line of beauty. And the empty glass breathes again.

There are no birds in China

Crow was restless, bored by the monotony of his life in the beautiful Forest.

Give me time to think, asked Crow.

Oh, okay, I will dear crow, since time is all I have, said God.

How strange the dark one was. Slick, clumsy, without natural grace. A fierceness of heart, but not the iced brain to command. Roots in ashes, his ancient heart and modern mind contested for space.

The depth of your knowledge is the degree of being in the object of your thought; the quality of understanding is the quality of your attachments. Only touch the earth briefly, dear crow, find its rhythms, learn strategies of survival, remember the invisible paths by heart. Do not trust the word of Man. No good can come of it.

Crow glided downwards,God's light on his back. He saw many strange things and his child-like heart was frightened: black men in chains, the mullah and a goat, the grotesque, enlarged forehead of Chairman Mao, many, many birds falling from the sky.

Chu Si Hai

Congress, May 18, 1958.
The whole people, including five-year old children, must be mobilized to eliminate the four pests.

"It was many years before we knew that sparrows are good birds" said a man.

Then, Chairman Mao just said suanle ("forget it"). In those days, one man's word counted for everything.

Crow's wings became heavier when he saw all this, like the rain-soaked trees in the forest. A knot grew in his heart, as mysterious as the falling evening shadows across the plains. He saw blood spill on the ground, congeal and disappear. His eye took everything in.

Crow flew back, back into the storm, like an angel with a resolute heart. With his keen perception (which was really just the kindness of his heart) he picked out a small girl standing in a field, talking to God.Crow rested gently on her shoulder.

Ah, I see we have a mutual friend. But the little girl was too sad to notice, too tired and distraught to laugh. It was so cold that the stars had frozen, forgotten how to move and the darkness was bitter, twisted, horrendous, like nothing Crow could ever imagine. A land without light, full of sorrow. Grey ashes drifted upward, silently.

What type of place is this, Crow thought to himself.

Will you hurt me as well? , Crow asked the little girl.

No, don't be silly, dear crow. And she laughed, brought her hand to her mouth to hide her smile, as Crow tilted his head softly to hers as if to share his thoughts with her.

Will I ever see them again, she asked. Crow, who now had time to think, replied: of course you will! I will help you find them.

But beloved crow just talked,and talked,and talked.The little girl thought everything he said was really interesting, full of old-world charm and wonder but after a while, despite herself, she suddenly became very tired and went off to sleep.

Sorry crow, nothing personal, but I'm feeling awfully tired, she said.

Oh, that's okay. Sleep, little princess. I'm used to people dozing off whilst I expound my theorems. Don't tell God, but I sometimes doze off when he lectures me!

And the girl smiled. This time she was too drowsy to put her hand to her mouth. She dreamt she was a bird in an emerald-green forest,a bird in an old tree near a window and that the bird was dreaming of a blue star. In the dream within a dream she flew-as straight as the crow flies, flew along the invisible paths, to the blue star where she saw her loved ones again, talked with them as if they were as close to her as she was to Crow in the real world.

They held her hand, hugged her and stroked her hair and brought her cinnamon rolls and chocolate eclairs (made with fresh cream).

And under that wondrous blue light all souls were one and no-one was lost.

the wandering third

The crows are tossing themselves

recklessly in the random winds

of spring.

One friend has died, one disappeared

(for now, at least) leaving no address;

I've lost the whereabouts

of a wandering third. That seems to be,

this year, the nature of this season.

Is it a message about relinquishment?

--Denise Levertov.

Crow, who knew the colours, imagined blue to be the distance of the soul. Crow, wise to the seasons, thought of space as the absence of time.

A restless god had created crow restless in the idle hours. With His fingers he folded her destiny into that darkness, whispered her name, gently smoothing her feathers down with the blackest of Indian inks as he sharpened her tongue. The Kajol around her eyes would often smudge when she remembered.

Odd, even. She has large eyes, marked in black. And take her mouth. A wide mouth as pale as wax. It seems I am seeing everything more clearly. The details of a whole world are being opened up to me.

(--after James Salter).

But on the day of her departure a small fragment of blue glass fell into crow's eyes. And it was as if there was a whole world in that small speck of coloured dust. How crow loved to live in that blue world of hers!

But as time passed crow began to realise that her friends were disappearing one by one, and this began to weigh heavily on her heart. Many a man had tried to ensnare such a wondrous, strange creature-unique in all the world- capture her secret, but each time she would escape their nets -even if she sometimes enjoyed being bound, sometimes rested her head on their shoulders for human warmth, and even though she occasionally clawed her way into their hearts, softly craa'ed "now!" or "again !" into their ears in the early hours

out of mind

From time out of mind I have known you. Even when out of time, out of mind. Listen. The darkened conversation of the crows in the early morning light. Look out, and out, from your window. There. Perfectly framed by your gaze, but the wrong side of your eyes. The harem of your mind.

Crow, Platonic crow, said: It is the object of desire that makes that which is desired desirable. It magnetically draws you to itself, like a carrion crow is drawn to death.

But that cannot be, said crow, Romantic crow. It is the desire of the lover that makes the loved one the beloved. It is like the raven that is compelled to find his place, his rookery; at once origin and destiny, Spring and Winter.

Even when drunk you were never lost; even when sober, never found. The blurred image of the unfaithful one comes to you in sad times. Paint her image on silk. Still it fades. In this wisp of a life what else can you see but a burning, quivering flame? The puzzle, the enigma of her being, are nothing but pieces of your mind.

For there’s a limit to gazing.
And the gazed-at world
Wants to blossom in love.
---Rilke.

as straight as the crow flies

Dark, wounded, crow sat on the rooftop, alone at last, above the world, his mind slowly turning, glistening with dark thoughts. Nothing is nothing. And nothing brings peace.

From a distance he spied her beyond the window. Sees her clearly. Surrounded by people, engaged in glittering conversation, her head tossed back now and then in convulsions of laughter, her image in the mirror like a painting; the clinking of ice, the crackling of fires, the sparkling, illumined world of humans with its light bouncing off objects, spreading fan-like through green glass; the warmth of human fellowship, the solidarity of being, of two-ness. The rich, luxurious patterned life, a life that is woven from repose and joy and deep still moments...all this was like something out of a story for Crow.

Crow. Above the world, alone at last. Spiked existence, nothing like the angular mind of the humans. Crow, God's failure, felt the warmth of his own body against the bitingly cold northern wind for a while. Then some ice fell into his eye, like a shard of glass, or stinging grey ashes.

Age after age, generation after generation, carrion-crows had survived on the morsels of the one thing necessary. A single thought and sharpened insight had seen them through the passing seasons, the thawing of the great seas, the migrations from warmer climes to the barbarian lands. But now existence was sinking into essence, his silver-pointed words inheriting the black, the summer-gold of his heart fading the more he remembered. Tongue-twisted, he would remain silent, speechless. The frenzy of a chaotic mind, the soul wandering through the endless night, the blueness that leads to blindness. He sees his lifeless shadow on the snow, like a discarded kite, paler and uglier than he imagined, and he thinks to himself: I am not me. I am another.

in the heart of the cave

A presence revealed by pleasure. Each creature here is at home in man..They are making a single sign, and they are dancing in a circle to make this sign..They were for the dark. They were hidden in the dark so that what they embodied would outlast everything visible.
--John Berger.

A hand, a smile, a sign. The sign. Of your presence. But a sign is sign of what isn't here, but there.
The name that names least is the name.

Crow asked Man what it was like to live in a cave, all alone?

You tell me, replied Man.

But the cold, the absence of light, the waiting for the sun over the horizon... how can that be endured, asked the dark one.

Yearning makes the heart grow deeper. In the darkness we do not look for footprints, but summon all our strength and wait attentively so that what was lost may be found again, and again.

Crow was exasperated: You're such a strange one, poor Man. Don't you miss the open, don't you dream of other lives, other realities? Have you no desire to break out of the circle?

You ask so many questions, dear Crow! Here, in the heart of the cave we see many things, dream much, and make many long and arduous journeys. Here, in the inside city there are many strange, exotic, and wondrous places. And is it not said:

We find God everywhere in the world, seeing in material things the spiritual reality which is beyond them. For the spiritual and the holy we are to look at toward all the world, not toward our isolated self-will.

Crow could not fathom man's words: You speak with such a twisted tongue my friend and it saddens me to think of you down here, afraid and unknown.

The man laughed and Crow flew away.

Crow, you are like a black sun, soaring above the real world, with the essence of man in your heart, your flight in the white sky like a stroke of black ink from one of my brushes.

And with that Man, sad at the thought that his friend had left him, took out his knife and carved an image of the crow into the heart of the cave.

You shall always be far from me, beloved Crow. But you shall always be near as well.

stirb und werde

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.

He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.

But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."

---Ted Hughes.

~~~~

Fluttering, zig zagging around the candle, some see this as infidelity on the part of the moth; but for others, this is a true symbol of his faithfulness. What he seeks is not light, but fire; the desire to be burnt to the core, disappear in a flash, be blinded, lost. This is the nature of the moth. This is the nature of the flame.