NEVERENDING TIMELESSNESS

(M.C. Escher, Ascending and Descending, lithograph, 1960)

the
beginning

the immortality of Jesus
the Jesus of immortality
the mortality of matter
the matter of mortality

the latter of the former
the former of the latter
the end of a beginning
the beginning of an end

the
end

AGAPE

sort of introduction

I was delivered on the twelfth of February nineteen sixty seven and for many years since I’d lived with an entirely erroneous conviction that it was my very birth which announced the cosmic little step of Armstrong. Since the day I experienced the illusory sweetness of the first person singular for the first time, perhaps, I’d nourished that thought of mine that i had a strong urge to live in a place where five persons at most would’ve inhabited an area of about a million square miles, full of silence and the secret sound of blood slithering in the head.
Henri Michaux – a neighbour of mine - insisted that ‘the only hours that count are the still ones’. However, my personal stillness has become a burden recently, like a tombstone over a carcass that’s suddenly come to life.
Personal history’s made up of events, which – having turned into memories – become a narrative.
The former are insignificant, don’t feel like the latter…

let us say it’s easier
to write ‘bout the sublime
let’s say the beginning
favours a poem that
accepts a short and draft dream
subtle shapes slanted sceneries
stones get softer females make
up their lips and the sky’s all made up
too

i’m sweating suavely the beginning’s looking
for the end i’m seeking my fly in the darkness
of the staircase
seek and ye shall find
and it’ll even be more quiet

we’ll be moved
our perverse ideas
exposed entirely
into an open mouth

zip up and fly away
before we get slaughtered
by silence

(Cecily Brown Teenage Wildlife, 2003 Oil on Linen)

memento mori

‘Indeed, I haven’t got the foggiest

‘What you are driving at’ – roared the wind

To a fell down tree.

‘Well’ – the trunk’s vernacular was getting slightly dry – ‘tis true that

‘It has been over three billion five hundred million eight hundred and seventy thousand five hundred

‘And sixteen years now since decomposition of connective tissue began.’

love between the sheets

well, such things happen (they say)
one can find a diamond in the street
so

we look each other deep in the eye and our ears
are full of humming silence – beautiful and delicate

as feline fur it finds its way between us
making no sound measuring the distance
between word and meaning since it simply adores
the aroma of warm bed sheets and a homebrew


love in orange

a mellow smile is grinning
a ray of light is time
passing across the window pane
in cigarette smoke
it falls asleep
how ‘bout making love
anyway our wet thoughts
have been in spasms
for quite some time now
an action in blue


love for the departed

 whenever you happen to come by
I’ll surely be here as well
how about taking a nap together – gods incarnate
of never-ending warm evenings on a hot beach…
have i told you yet that we’re in love like
deep in the ocean
wide and soft
fishes sneak stealthily past
i embrace the presence
repeat the vow
and burst out laughing in the storm
between a smiling winter

(Francis Bacon, Two Figures, 1953)

wise love

 It was sweltering hot at the beginning of May this year. I’d left all the windows wide open before going to bed and when the morning had just broken I heard some terrible yelling outside. I came up and looked out from the window to see what’s going on.
‘The doorbell isn’t working!!! How’z it goin’?’ – asked Socrates.
‘My trainers seem a bit tight. How ‘bout yours?’ – Plato asked him entering the hall.
Socrates stroke his fringe and dashed into the living room.
‘By no means. I feel divine.’
‘Hello. I’ll put the kettle on’ – said I and went into the kitchen to turn some music on.
The sun was still rising above the roofs and the whole tenement-house was full of crystal clear spring morning silence.
‘You’re gonna sniff those flowers of his away!’ – said Socrates and sat, laid back, in the armchair with a book he’d taken off the shelf.
‘ Bach is so modern, don’t you reckon, Socrates?’ – asked Plato, hidden behind the vase.
‘Bach is music, that’s it’ – murmured Socrates and closed the book.
Having brushed aside his fringe, Plato leaned against the wall, stood astride and started caressing the inside of his thigh with a rose he’d taken out of the vase.


pathetic love

 oh, you’re wearing those lace knickers eventually
you mentioned unfaithfulness i’ve been
ill-treating you with

‘didn’t compose much, toured a lot’
incongruent series create a coherent
totality

i prefer miller to borges or the other way round
to cut a long story short – broken up sentences
seem to be the longest suit

a three/fourths tempo and unstable nights
everything comes together nicely in a tear
in trousers i hate confessional poetry



love and melancholy

The welfare state is drowning in words

Taxes in Texas - Texas in tatters

A notorious politician found dead, presumed innocent

Listening, observing whether their cuff-pins match

And how about a coffee

Full of flavour

A passionate kiss

A taste of timelessness

(Michelangelo Pistoletto up front, the blog author and friends inside arte povera, so to speak...)

love

a wave you are

philosophy of firmament

an apple you are

the soundtrack of a documentary

the shape of stride

a critical time

a comforting time

conjectured contour of a distant continent

a sylvan symphony

a sound sleep

the fate of the sun

a soft cittern

a land of fjords

a cave a mountain

the nahuatl answer

arte povera

arte ricca

love’s delivering

love is dying

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS - INCUBATIO

Taoism might seem to express an approach towards fate that is similar in many aspects to that of Stoicism. However, it does so in a specific Chinese way of thinking, resulting from an utterly different attitude to the world.
Whereas our - i.e. European - culture since time immemorial (since ancient Greeks – excluding Epicurus, perhaps - that is) sees rules, regulations and generalisations as the essence of learning, whose basic paradigm brings about absolute supremacy of abstraction over everyday experience, generalisation over individual being and rules over spontaneity, the way of Tao is anything but the aforementioned.
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the mythical creators of Taoism, contrary to Stoics were not rationalists. The ultimate reality of or in Tao is an inexpressible and miraculous mystery. This attitude originates in mystic contemplation making it similar to the approach of an artist, whose main if not the only task is to try and unveil – for a fraction of a second at least – the mystery of existence to her or himself and in consequence to the other – a spectator, a reader, a visitor to a gallery or a listener. It is also free from European moralising. In stark contrast to our culture Taoism points to that aspect of human freedom which is best represented by spontaneity. Totally free and under no pressure Tao acts fully spontaneously in each and every second.
As each and every being is unique all generalisations (including the one you are reading now) from moral to scientific to religious to philosophical to whatsoever are anything but true.
Here again comes spontaneity, which means an existence beyond (not for or against) any rules or regulations and at the same time in unison with one’s own unique nature and the ever changing harmony of the chaos, which we have all agreed to call the world.
Such an approach is rooted in and originates from disinterested contemplation (Thomas Aquinas' visio echoes beautifully here, I believe. Strangely enough).
Seconds out then…

 Driftwood

It’s no real change to forget setting the sun
And wake up to a warmer cup of tea
A silhouette in the doorway
I get laid again
I lie down to rest
So I’m here still surrounding
And the sound is coming closer
And the edge is being sharpened
And a dream
A pitch dark dream
And I drench the dream and drift

***

It may be a cruel month
Prospects are hanging in anticipation

At the river we were lurking in twilight
The bank swam up and I leaned my chin against it

Mutterings of long gone moods
Departed in disappointment

***

There’s a chair sitting in the room
The table’s stretching its legs out
All the other ones are absorbed
In chores and sucking pleasure it is
I who does not belong

It all began so wanly later
I welcomed other shades for scrutiny
And then disharmony was caused
The basic colour stayed on divided
Up into seconds isolated sounds

***

Sitting down in a chair ain’t no answer
An apple nowhere near rough estimate
So impressions have grown into the mind
Appearing as reality.
This way no answer has been offered.
Is the night leaving? Or is it just breathing
And rambling? Thoughts heaped up
Have gone berserk and flashed.
Perverse recurrence of questions
And heavy twilight where one could
Make out things that otherwise might
Just as well have stayed unnamed. Lies
Resurrected and spread all over. Guts
Dispersed with digestion. This is how
Vague reality unveiled what was too obvious
To be one

***

It may well be assumed
That the sun carves its own shape
Apart from preposterous assumptions
In deepest black which does not need a god
With crops galore in store

The weary greed of explanation
Fiddling in someone else’s pockets
And even a thirst for tea isn’t given time
For completion and in the brightness of the night
They kill infants incessantly conceiving new ones

***

When the eyes drowned
The so much hated world in despair
In hysterical laughter there occurred to be
A little room for disbelief
Whose other end vanished in the dark
Where moments fought and trod on one another
They later perched on branches meant just for them.
The mouth
Devoured the laughter and agreed to be stroked
By disbelief that
Right there was their shape

***

Fairfield Porter, Apples and Roses, Oil on Canvas, 1967

How is it possible you ask

Well,
You wake up in the morning
And the first thing you feel
Is subtle rosiness of roses
Annoying gall cuts thru from behind
The room is tumbling somewhere into greyness
In the background
Massive serenity floats down
From the indifferent roof onto
Lustful apples and right there
Unmarked
Blood is carried

You say it should be marked anew but
I suppose
A sketch is more important
Incomplete
Without exaggerated beauty

***

I had invented an utterance that commenced

And completed. In the pitch dark

Rustling noises of the coming

And going. The words focusing in

Focusing out. Somewhere, in the middle,

The sense weighted the presence.

The sentence was ready

To disappear leaving unconsciousness

A little anxious and comforting.

No more noise.

Intuition, unaccentuated, devoid of

Intonation

GEOGRAPHY OF LIGHT

what is it? well, contrary to popular belief there is a plethora of answers, most of them confusing and none satisfying enough, methinx.
let's just consider several suggestions off the cuff.
- is it a candle 'burning bright in the shadows of the night'? well it is and of course it isn't. do u fancy open flame inside your hardware?
- sure, it is a snapshot of an object made of stearin (a glyceryl ester of stearic acid, derived from animal fats created as a byproduct of processing beef used as tallow in the manufacture of candles). well partly, as it is not a photograph;
- yes it is a sought-after artifact - oil on canvas by gerhard richter, or rather its representation on a computer screen as i still have to wake up in the middle of the night at the break of dawn to earn a living, so no it's not a richter at all;
- yes it is one ray of light (an idealised beam) after another leaving signals for the eye to detect them;
- it surely is a result of billions of actions taken unconsciously by somebody called me so that eventually i could realise i'm LOOKING AT SOMETHING and name the agent, the action, the object and the relationships within the holy trinity;
- it is a lie of the mind (Lie of the Mind - a brilliant collection of plays by Sam Shepard, a must);
- nothing is real everything is possible - William S. Burroughs;
... and it has only just started ...