un estruendo (paul celan)

Un estruendo: la verdad

misma ha comparecido

avanzando entre los

hombres,

hacia el centro

del torbellino de metáforas.

the webbing of a hundred roots.

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,

und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;

und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm

oder ein großer Gesang.

[…]

Doch wie ich mich auch in mich selber neige:

mein Gott ist dunkel und wie ein Gewebe

von hundert Wurzeln, welche schweigsam trinken.

Nur, dass ich mich aus seiner Wärme hebe,

mehr weiß ich nicht, weil alle meine Zweige

tief unten ruhn und nur im Winde winken.

The only poetry book I took to Romania this autumn was Rilke’s Stundenbuch. I love the following:  ‘yet no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence’. I cannot say how much.

I rage a lot, I push and thrust and burn and break down. I seek to understand with all my powers. but I cannot grasp what is beyond the little logic I stumble with. Love in the dark. What if it is so.

What if it is so that That Which Sustains Life must remain within the glorious haze, within the earthen scented soil, within the tissues of our hearts that may never truly understand. What if it is so that That Which Sustains Life adores riding me through shuddering waves of regret and valleys of emotional rage and through the still deserts of my crumbling sanity. What if it so that his is Her cruel though dead effective way of making me cross thresholds that I would not cross in my fear and lowliness. Transformation is no longer as threatening looked at this way. I embrace uncertainty, I make you the only still centre in the universe. The one miraculous spot where the pendulum hovers and shivers.

I accept. I accept the storms and the darkness and the sweetness of the contraries they promise.

I am leaving tomorrow. Taking the long way to America.

yes, perhaps?

the sock monster, a great cartoon series rippled from here. i suggest you read it from time to time.

le sourire-premier.

Ma vie bascule encore sous mes décisions. Je me retrouve toute émotionnée face à un rayon de soleil égaré, un dimanche après-midi en novembre. Je le passe au foyer. J’ai retrouvé mon équilibre, après tout. Marquée au vif par cette énorme gratitude, j’espère ne jamais perdre ces racines-là. Je salue avec un sourire-premier tout ce qui est temporaire, magnifique, éblouissant, immédiat.

Et j’ai eu aussi un peu de temps pour le kitsch-ci. Il faut, de temps en temps.

Voilà. En attendant de prendre de plus importantes décisions, je reste, bien à vous, chers lectrices et lecteurs. Aimez, osez, volez!

Les amis qui s’en vont et les autres qui restent
Se faire prendre pour un con par des gens qu’on déteste
Les rendez-vous manqués et le temps qui se perd
Entre des jeunes usés et des vieux qui espèrent
Et ces flashes qui aveuglent à la télé chaque jour
Et les salauds qui beuglent la couleur de l’amour
Et les journaux qui traînent comme je traîne mon ennui
La peur qui est la mienne quand je m’réveille la nuit

 

himalaya glaciers melting.

thresholdin’.

if someone were to ask how i was and i were to think about it rather than answering that “yes, i was fine, and how about them”, i would probably not know the answer. it is hard to stay grounded and acknowledge that i have moved on in different ways. that in the midst of all this thresholding i am, actually, fine and true and beautiful and at ease and smiling at the future. that i’ve made decisions that have made me grow away from people that used to live near me. that i may think i have not gone anywhere can be traced to the absence of any sustained effort to make a home in one place. and that the way this is judged in some parts more than others. for they do not believe in miracles and connection and vision.

i still do.

and that this feeling might be shared by others i love and miss.

baby baby baby.

i found this back today and loved it as much as i did when i first read it. perhaps. i’m not gonna think about that statment too long, so as to avoid it being broken. it’s autumn, it makes me wonder about the past and the future.

it’s by Friederike Roth.

Wir beide

Draussen bei den stillen, den schönen
Lippenblütlern, ach dieses Wort
(weisst du noch die alte Mühle?)
hab ich von dir, Lippenblütler
sagen gelernt. Du hast
was weiss ich
erzählt von blassen von ins Traurigzart
getauchten Farben.

Ich hab nicht zugehört.
Bloss deine Lippen mir
die weichen angesehen
so dünnhäutig damals so zart
ach, wie denn
verschwindet warum
so eine Lippenkleinigkeit?

Geh nicht fort.
Ich find dir den Ort.

Geschichten hast du erzählt
von Wolken vom herabgefallenen Monday
vom alleinigen Wind
und von der Kraft der Wörter der Töne der Farben.

Dann waren
wie denn verschwinden warum
eingezogen die Lippen ein Schnitt.

Hier steh ich. Hier
neben dir
erloschenem Bündel aus Narben.

Beide lachen wir
Lange schon nicht mehr über die Kraft
der Farben.

träume und erkenntnistheorie.

Gib mir noch eine kleine Weile Zeit: ich will die Dinge so wie keine lieben…

Rilke says hello…

leaving scotland.

Leaving Scotland before the driech of November is difficult. I have come to love the crisp clarity of early autumn that many writers have taken as all that is most beautiful before it dies, all that is ripe before it is decaying. It is the point of balance that we all want to capture at its peak and prolong to infinity. We are desperate to learn about how the apex of maturity forms and builds up. We are less keen on experiencing how the coating on the shiny, tough edges start to peel. As rust builds underneath the surface, we may pass off the minor changes in skin texture as mere tiredness.

I miss you too much and the autumn mornings cannot soothe.

miranda (w.h. auden)

My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,
As the poor and sad are real to the good king,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

Up jumped the Black Man behind the elder tree,
Turned a somersault and ran away waving;
My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.

The Witch gave a squawk; her venomous body
Melted into light as water leaves a spring,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

At his crossroads, too, the Ancient prayed for me,
Down his wasted cheeks tears of joy were running:
My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely.

He kissed me awake, and no one was sorry;
The sun shone on sails, eyes, pebbles, anything,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

So to remember our changing garden, we
Are linked as children in a circle dancing:
My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,
And the high, green hill sits always by the sea.

	-- W. H. Auden