In the seven woods

"I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny."

Waiting 
by J. Burroughs

To follow knowledge like a sinking star

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life!"


Tennyson "Ulysses "

unavoidable assumptions

" There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such
              many as mass, there are only
eyes in all heads,
to be looked out of "

- W.C. Williams
 

the last breaths of twilight..

"In the night there are of course the seven wonders
of the world and the greatness tragedy and enchantment.
Forests collide with legendary creatures hiding in thickets.
There is you.
In the night there are the walker's footsteps the murderer's
the town policeman's light from the street lamp and the ragman's lantern
There is you.
In the night trains go past and boats
and the fantasy of countries where it's daytime. The last breaths
of twilight and the first shivers of dawn.
There is you.
A piano tune, a shout.
A door slams. A clock.
And not only beings and things and physical sounds.
But also me chasing myself or endlessly going beyond me.
There is you the sacrifice, you that I'm waiting for.
Sometimes at the moment of sleep strange figures are born and disappear.
When I shut my eyes phosphorescent blooms appear and fade
and come to life again like fireworks made of flesh.
I pass through strange lands with creatures for company.
No doubt you are there, my beautiful discreet spy.
And the palpable soul of the vast reaches.
And perfumes of the sky and the stars the song of a rooster
from 2000 years ago and piercing screams in a flaming park and kisses.
Sinister handshakes in a sickly light and axles grinding on paralyzing roads.
No doubt there is you who I do not know, who on the contrary I do know.
But who, here in my dreams, demands to be felt without ever appearing.
You who remain out of reach in reality and in dream.
You who belong to me through my will to possess your illusion
but who brings your face near mine only if my eyes are closed in dream as well as
in reality.
You who in spite of an easy rhetoric where the waves die on the beach
where crows fly into ruined factories, where the wood rots
crackling under a lead sun.
You who are at the depths of my dreams stirring up a mind
full of metamorphoses leaving me your glove
when I kiss your hand.
In the night there are stars and the shadowy motion of the sea,
of rivers, forests, towns, grass and the lungs
of millions and millions of beings.
In the night there are the seven wonders of the world.
In the night there are no guardian angels, but there is sleep.
In the night there is you.
In the daylight too."

"Les espaces du sommeil"
Robert Desnos

 

"Come, Words, Away"

"He wanders towards the promised land. That is to say:
he moves from one place to another and dreams continually
of stopping. And because this desire to stop is what haunts
him, is what counts most for him, he does not stop. He
wanders. That is to say: without the slightest hope of ever
going anywhere.

He is never going anywhere. And yet he is always going."

-Pages for Kafka



I'm now reading (from the used shelves at Pendragon)


" Paul Auster traces the compulsion to make literature
( or art )through essays on Franz Kafka,Paul Célan,
Laura Riding,Knut Hamsun,John Ashberry and others.In
one piece he considers George Bataille's belief that
" a moment of rage " is behind all great works: in
another he sees the legendary highwire artist Philippe
Petit as a fellow practitioner " of the art of solitude".

from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething

"The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"

-Kubla Khan / Samuel Taylor Coleridge

mushroom hunting @ montery market

"Cnoc Sidhe Gamhna "

"Advance, Advance ! for a farewell dance,
Ere the nightly pomp is o'er:
From a Mushroom's cone shall our pipers drone,
The sward our elastic floor:
While the Phooka-horse holds his frantic course
Over woods and mountain-fall,
And the Banshee's croon a rhythmic rune.
From the crumbling ivied wall!"


"The Fairies of Knockshegowna"
by R.D. Williams

correspondances

"La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,"