the floating bridge of dreams

first snow

2012-01-25T23:55:00.000+02:00

first snow--
great luck to be here
in my own hut

Bashō
(tr. by David Landis Barnhill)

the prayer of the clothespin

2012-01-20T23:28:00.003+02:00

attach me to the tree

to your breath

to the light flickering

in the shadow

to the dark spreading

inside the day

attach me to anything

i don't care

as long as you free me

from myself.

on the under side of things

2012-01-07T21:34:00.004+02:00

A curse is written

On the under side of things

Behind the smiling mirror

And behind the smiling moon

Follow follow.

T.S. Eliot

...

2012-01-01T14:45:00.003+02:00

Beneath things is a great well of silence, resounding with life.

Claude Margat

..

...

2011-11-18T23:49:00.003+02:00

the Bridge will be silent for a while.

..

in the end...

2011-11-11T17:37:00.004+02:00

in the end it is only colours that matter. they remind me of you at sunset, when light turns upon itself and autumn comes to die upon your skin, lingers for a while in your eyes then suddenly sinks into you to make your bones glow from within, for just a while longer.

in the end it is only the bird's flight that matters. it reminds me of nothing but itself. this and...

the promise of the sky at dawn?

no, just its emptiness. this and the emptiness of the sky.

of sumptuous reveries and demon-lovers (in the Oriental Garden)

2011-11-03T18:46:00.008+02:00

The air in the café was thick with shadows and smoke. His face half-turned away, his eyes half-closed, at times only the cigarette seemed alive in his fingers. There is something unsettling about every effigy, i thought, and the moon, the moon in the window frame bathing him in silver, for some unknown reason i kept thinking about the moon. Then, he turned to me all of a sudden, leaned forward and i thought he would finally reach for my hand. I was pale, i think. Those who say that a body cannot wait should have lived those few seconds of waiting inside my hand, the blue veins running helplessly under the skin. The skin too was paler than the moon. I wanted to give him my wrists.

Instead, he said, "Ah, late antiquity is when we should have lived. The times were romantic, the air was pure, lilacs never died, minarets were flexible, dates, musk and myrrh were like gold dust." The coffee spoon seemed a moon ray bent by some strange magic, at times a glittery snake between his fingers and oh, how i wished for my hair to be that silvery snake, that ray of the moon bent by his dark fingers. The air between him and me, that hollow space which didn't reflect any light back.

He spoke again, and this time he looked into my eyes, and i knew i had to say something but his voice seemed to reach me from such a distance, like the moon through layers of black water. I have to say something, i thought, and became really nervous about it, as if my life itself depended upon my answer, which was rather silly actually, since he was talking of myrrh and horses and oases, none of which really existed, i mean existing in this world of mine, of ours, where the air was heavy with muffled whispers and the moon a tight seal upon my lips.

"Would you have loved to travel with me then," he asked, "on horse or camel, searching for an oasis? But why should we have traveled then, we could have just walked, or, even better, we could have just stood there and the oasis would have sprung forth around us, like a poem. Tell me."

The moon disappeared behind a cloud and the shadows on the walls suddenly faded away. When i turned my face to him, such paleness on my tongue, such hunger for one word, just one word, he was gone too, the last shadow.

Later at home, while waiting for dawn and who says that waiting cannot tear through one's blood and bones like a whip, i opened the book and read:

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

This post continues the series dedicated to the amazing Gardens of the World, which i visited in the Recreational Park Marzahn, in Berlin. You can read more here.

these autumn fields

2011-10-29T00:43:00.008+03:00

between my withering body
and these autumn fields -
the blue.

yellow

2011-10-17T20:20:00.012+03:00

despair is yellow - said the blue peacock -
you poets live off metaphors, i laughed.
with sweet disdain forsythia bloomed everywhere,
my dress glimmered with little yellow butterflies
which made you smile.

despair is yellow. i ask you to come to my throat
like a knife, i sweep through you recklessly,
once more, before the last.

time spreads in us both its peacock tail.
we fumble for the fall of leaves, for the thinned blood,
we live off metaphors, once more, before the last.

on a bridge, groping

2011-10-12T01:24:00.005+03:00

(perhaps their vision)

..

the everyday mind, the shadow and the photograph

2011-10-04T02:09:00.004+03:00

Everyday opinion sees in the shadow merely the absence of light, if not its complete denial. But, in truth, the shadow is the manifest, though impenetrable, testimony of hidden illumination. Conceiving of the shadow this way, we experience the incalculable as that which escapes representation, yet it is manifest in beings and points to the hidden being.

Heidegger

we've known for a long time that the photograph is not that copy of the real some would have liked us to believe. but what if one could conceive of it as a kind of - heideggerian - shadow ?

another kind of sleep

2011-09-29T01:58:00.007+03:00

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest.
The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being.
Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms.

In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

from The Poetics of Reverie (Gaston Bachelard)

..

first poem for Miriam

2011-09-22T00:46:00.006+03:00

you used to read poems to me

while the summer heat lingered

on our skin, like honey.

sometimes, you would fall asleep

and i would come to your body like a thief,
like that thief of roses whose bones,
bleached and glittering, are still
to be found in the garden
long after the unspeakable struck.

in b&w and more
here

..

the mirror and beyond

2011-09-13T01:03:00.011+03:00

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique.
The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life, newly assimilated and imparted by the artist, in fidelity to his personal vision.

Andrei Tarkovsky, from Sculpting in Time

There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion — these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door. . . The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real.

from a letter of a young girl to her mother, in which she writes about Tarkovsky's films, as quoted in Sculpting in Time

..

early september

2011-09-08T18:53:00.007+03:00

returning home, and returning home in early autumn - impossible not to fall prey to the sweetness of melancholia, i don't even try not to, supposing that i were someone investing such struggle with meaning (which i am not, i don't know whether fortunately or less so).

back then, in the days of childhood, autumn used to mean diving into a world of distinct tastes and fragrances, a world of jubilation untouched by what i would later learn to call nostalgia: grape juice and fresh walnuts. grape juice from the small vine adorning the front wall of our house, facing the street, and fresh walnuts from the big tree, pivotal like an axis mundi in the middle of our garden. i was not aware then that we were blessed to be allowed to have this small piece of land around the house, even to have a house, when everywhere around us houses fell under the madness of the communist regime, eager to replace them with the grey blocks of flats, the ugliest buildings ever. i would also find out later that our house had finally been included on the black list, the erased area had spread around us like a death wave, at last reaching the point of swallowing us when the revolution came, only months before the fatal blow.

i don't know the name of these grapes in english, for whatever mysterious reason they are called 'ananas' in Romania (meaning 'pineapple', though everybody had yet to see a real pineapple back then). i was fascinated by their dark-bluish colour and by something like fog on their skin, the way breath stains a glass in winter or haze seems to remain attached on the hair of the beloved, on a frosty day. as everybody else privileged enough to have a garden, my father used to make wine in a big barrel which would be brought out of the cave weeks before the wine ritual and left in the yard, filled with water, to our delight (among other games, we could bathe in it, on really hot days). it is a custom still alive now, when good wine is widely available.

i bought these from the market the other day. coming home, i had found the grapevine gone, it had gone dry, my mother said, there are blooming oleanders now in its place, their beauty as sweet and poisonous as every memory is, i said, oh why are you upset, my mother asked, don't you like the new look of the garden and the new light green paint on the walls of the house, and for no reason at all i remembered these lines:

see the world ripple beyond this current.

(I look at you with eyes of oleander)

& in this ocean

a single harp plays a taunting homage.

but i didn't say anything.

upon my tongue of now, this taste of then, forever - a taste of fog and, beyond that, the fragrance of the unspeakable, the silent tune of a single harp.

of butterflies and orchids (in the Balinese Garden)

2011-08-30T01:08:00.009+03:00

I stopped at a teashop. A woman named Cho, or Butterfly, asked me to compose a verse alluding to her name and brought out a piece of white silk. I wrote the following hokku on it:

fragrant orchid -
into a butterfly's wings
it breathes its incense.

Matsuo Bashō, Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field (1685, travelogue)
tr. Makoto Ueda

Note:

This the first post dedicated to the amazing Gardens of the World, which i visited in the Recreational Park Marzahn, in Berlin. You can read more here.

beyond thirst (tentative answer to Michaux's Ma vie)

2011-08-19T23:04:00.009+03:00

they say they can take everything away from me,
even that which makes me see the world
coming together in a bowl of tea.
so be it. they may be right.
it is not for me to prove them wrong,
those who can only fulfil themselves
by taking away.
my voice is hardly a whisper, my truths are scarce
(and even those vanish quickly beyond the horizon,
ashamed to glow brighter than the stars).
so be it, then. they are surely right.

when they have taken everything
away from me, even that which
makes me see the world
fading within a bowl of tea,
i will still be the moment
when a sky forms beyond
the line of the heart,
and the moment
when a sky meets a mirror
to empty itself of its blue.

thirst

2011-08-15T01:09:00.003+03:00

Tu t'en vas sans moi, ma vie.
Tu roules.
Et moi j'attends encore de faire un pas.
Tu portes ailleurs la bataille.
Tu me désertes ainsi.
Je ne t'ai jamais suivie.
Je ne vois pas clair dans tes offres.
Le petit peu que je veux,
jamais tu ne l'apportes.
A cause de ce manque, j'aspire à tant.
A tant de choses, à presque l'infini...
A cause de ce peu qui manque,
que jamais tu n'apportes.

Henri Michaux, Ma vie

You're going some place without me, my life.
You're rolling away.
And I'm still waiting to make my move.
You've taken the battle somewhere
Abandoning me on the way.
I never followed, I stay.
Where you are leading me,
I can't plainly see.
The very little that I want,
you never bring to me.
Because of this emptiness, I want
So many things, almost the infinite ...
Because of this emptiness,
that you never fill.

My life

rain in the summer garden

2011-08-06T00:46:00.005+03:00

dawn, as viewed from my Berlin attic window on the 24th of july, at about 6 o'clock in the morning, more precisely 5.39, after a long sleepless night

2011-08-01T00:44:00.009+03:00

as an exception, two personal notes:

1. i couldn't sleep and at about 5 in the morning i decided to stand up and go make some tea and read. i sat on the sofa, the tea bowl was hot and soothing, as it always is. the book was about memory and history, and it was everything but soothing. i thought of Benjamin's angel of history: This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.

then at some point, as if summoned by an unheard voice, i looked up to the window and saw the sun rising through the blue curtain. with the suddenness of that which others might call "revelation"

[if only i knew the meaning of such words and how they are supposed to be used - yet they are useless anyway, since grace only dwells in the living fabric of being]

the world fell off me: the terror of history, my long sleepless nights, my past, my life, time itself. myself, too. i simply was, then, light and whole, until nothing was, any longer.

[some of you might argue that i wasn't whole until i reached toward the camera and took this photograph, and they might have a point there :-)]

2. while discussing with Michael about the possibility of publishing our collaborative project, The Beautiful Foolishness of Things, i said at some point, inspired by the long and challenging comments i had received on my post with the curtain flowing in the wind, which some of you might remember: i wish i would write a book about just that, the wind in the curtains, in literature and arts, instead of writing the one i have to write now (accidentally, and very much against my nature, about the Angel of History).

Michael was enthusiastic about the idea and soon set up a blog which was intended as an archive where we would gather all the related information we would come across, in time, for this future (very improbable) book that i might write someday. while i am only interested in curtains&windows, more precisely in this particular moment of the wind blowing in the curtains, Michael's interest is wider and he intends to document everything related to windows in both European and Asian cultures, particularly Japan. i thought i would let you know about this archive-blog, Towards a Future Tome, so that you may give it a thought, whenever you find something of interest, please let us now. who knows, i _might_ even write that book someday, though this would mean to bring to a stop the endless movement of unfolding-into-an-open-future which lies in that toward, and that would be such a pity, wouldn't it ? ...

..

romantic palimpsest, revisited

2011-07-18T02:38:00.008+03:00

you said:

"one may ask all the questions, but one should not"

i don't even think you knew then
about my love for grammar, the awe-struck trembling
in front of the countless doors hidden in modal verbs,
opened and slammed in my face
every minute.

now, when the summer light has lost its gentleness,
when it cuts through the curve of my thigh as ruthlessly
as an indicative,
i ask:

why did you say i was beautiful?

why did you say my hair smelled like red moss
under cedar trees?

why did you say you wanted us to look at each other
the same way as then, as long as we lived?
(i smiled, amused at this image,
coming from one like you, with your deep disdain for romantic
pose and sentimentalism, we were both, damn it, too old
for rose and myrrh -
but too young to know how to look at a face hiding a face
and another face and yet another face,
an endless labyrinth of deception.
i believed it, though, there was something hard and warm
and true in there
like the heaviness of your touch upon me,
beyond modal verbs,
a kiss like a bird in a mouth
who hadn't yet learned to tell the poem
about kiss and mouth).

why did you say you wanted me to have all the books
you had ever read?

now, inside the walls of this living library
i, the captive, am free to run from modal verb to modal verb
waiting in vain for a flutter of page to hurt my blood,
for light to break your absence
like bread upon my skin, yet again.

..

the frying pan

2011-07-13T02:34:00.004+03:00

(you can change to 720p and watch in HD, if you like - which i recommend anyway. i didn't take it with me so i can't upload it now to my main Exposure Room site, this you tube version will have to do. i somehow was in the mood to post it tonight)

simply amazed

2011-07-05T01:33:00.009+03:00

there are gods in everything, i've heard.
i imagine them locked up in their underworlds,
some of them good-natured and big-bellied,
some slumbering away blindly like moles but mostly
vengeful gods, myriads of them, jealous of
everything they cannot see or hear or touch.

jealous of this bed of smooth warm wood
and the rugged carpet on the floor
with something like purple stars on it.

jealous of these sheets with their clean smell
and big, luminous flowers, as a field upon which
death would come like a soft breeze, and smiling.

jealous of this girl's standing naked
and in love in front of the mirror,
oblivious of them and her own beauty,
simply amazed that this can be.

jealous of this small chair,
still wet with the afternoon's rain pouring in
through the open window,
on which a body once sat until dawn,
its shoulders bent, the night like a raven
upon its back, wishing for another body to come
and take it in its arms.

but most of all, jealous of this sudden gust of wind
making the moonlit curtain swirl about the room
like a soul in search of another soul
to flood it with its light.

elegy for beyond the last poppies

2011-07-01T22:45:00.001+03:00

elegy for the last poppies

2011-06-26T23:06:00.005+03:00

Sage – wie ich bin?
Überall wollen Blumen aus mir.

Else Lasker-Schüler

tell me - what am i?

everywhere, flowers want to burst from me.

more of cats and balls

2011-06-17T00:17:00.008+03:00

Working on the last post, I thought I needed a photo which would mirror that last line, for some reason the image of that ball was very appealing to me. So I took my camera and went to my mother's, who was ready to mock me: "You don't really believe the dark one will comply?"

And indeed, the dark one didn't.

I took out all my mother's balls of yarn, I tossed them about, rolled them, dangled them in front of her, called her in all tongues and voices, threatened, begged. Unmoved in her otherworldly sovereignty, without even a look of mercy (disdain would have been sweeter), she kept ignoring me, bathed in her luxurious black languor like a haughty queen whom a writer of a different age would have called Salammbô.

And now I am forced to wonder, yet again, why it is that cats hold this strange power over us, such a mythical mix of fascination and fear. And I remember a certain poet obsessed with the dangerous perfume floating about her body, praying, Come, my fine cat, against my loving heart. Sheathe your sharp claws, and settle. I remember Bastet and also a certain Bysshe, the black cat whose owner, a somewhat demonic figure himself, had recently written to me how possessed he was by this dark love. And I remember Kuroneko, a classic Japanese horror film of the sixties, which shows, in scenes of breathtaking beauty and eroticism despite their inherent violence, two women returning, as evil spirits in the shape of black cats, to avenge their cruel death at the hands of samurai. Or Tanizaki's novel A Cat, a Man and Two Women, in which a man is so in love with his cat, Lily, that he ends up choosing her over the two women in his life, his former and new wife, both sickly jealous of the cat, more than of each other.

(Why is it that men are typically subjects of such depictions? What makes them frailer and more easily prey to feline fascination? Or is this just another myth?)

And as I couldn't find the thread leading out of this ball of tangled thoughts and memories, I decided to make a post about it and dedicate it to all the cat-lovers among the Bridge-lovers, some of whom I already know.

the bench that should have been

2011-06-11T21:35:00.009+03:00

i remember us on the bench that has never been,
the light playing on our shoulders and
what would have been our face, had we really existed.
i turn to you,
my breath tearing through you like a whip,
a silver snake in the dark.

i don't speak.
my words echo thus, but not in your mind:
on your trembling hands, your bending knees,
in your throat.

you haven't come. to what purpose disturb the dust
on a bench that has never been, i do not know.
other voices inhabit me
that you will never know, either.

i turn to you and light my cigarette
only because i know you love this burning
and mourning of ashes, this beauty of mine now,
behind the veil of flesh.
i blow the smoke, gently, into what
would have been your wound, had you been there,
my cry, that we can bear only so much paleness.

i remember the moment that should have been,
had the future been your cat's ball of speckled yarn,
my poem.

the bench that was

2011-06-10T00:46:00.004+03:00

We remained in the station on a wooden bench. We spent the night, and I left before him. Even now I find it really astonishing and very moving. It was a kind of madness, idiocy, to travel from Munich to the Jura to pass a few hours of the night with me. It was utterly inhuman to sit next to a being whom you sense desires you so much and not even to have been touched. Above all, I thought, I must be very careful with everything I say to him because he understands things in quite an alarming way, in an absolute way.

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia remembering Duchamp,
in Calvin Tomkins's Duchamp: A Biography

..

last petals (2)

2011-06-02T23:59:00.007+03:00

View on ExposureRoom for HD

Note: This is the second in a series of intimate videos in which i intend to express my personal aesthetic views, while questioning myself and how i see the world. You can watch the first of the series, seeing, here ( i posted it a while ago).

last petals

2011-05-30T01:37:00.006+03:00

you know what the Japanese say.
the flower turns people's blood crazy.
you said, too, the cherry blossoms were like butterflies
on my skin, making your blood crazy.

a darker flower grows within me now.
you left before it caught you beneath my ribs,
before it turned me into that butterfly,
that you'd kill someday, in your sleep.

note:

In the Japanese tradition, cherry blossoms are linked both to renewal and death, life joy and madness. And of course, ephemerality. It is said that one who enters a forest of blossoming cherry trees will go mad, because of their unbearable beauty.

this harsh, fiery spring

2011-05-24T00:20:00.006+03:00

i walk through the fields of spring

in search of myself.
i carry:
the luxurious maps of being,
drawn with meticulous exactness.
a mirror, to make sure i never forget
whom exactly i look for.
a rope to jump, in case i find myself
a child again, flooded with the joy of living.
a handful of seeds to scatter, from time to time
(though more out of boredom, really,
than eagerness to become).

i make lists. i am very precise,
the same precision i use to extract dreams
out of my warm blood. for example,
what it is that stands between me and myself:
these fields, the line of burning, when
they meet the sky. this sunlit wound of waiting.
this freshly cut grass, this bird's wing.
my shadow, when you left.
the dazzling music of each step.
this endless fluttering back and forth,
again and again.

or rather this thought here, now.
the belief that i am still
- and gloriously - alive,
piercing through the heart
of this harsh, fiery spring.

this sullen spring

2011-05-21T23:25:00.010+03:00

i walk under the trees of spring
looking for you.
my shadow grows thinner.
suddenly, i can't call the shadow
shadow any longer
i can't call the evening evening.
oh, may that not happen with you, too
- i know it does, already -
i turn around and i see myself over there
running in circles
cutting the air with pale little arms,
while i thought myself here,
both feet firmly plunged
into this sullen spring.

mutilated by a dream

2011-05-14T02:31:00.005+03:00

I injured a butterfly
in a dream.
And now I don't know what to do
to keep from dreaming about it again.

Another butterfly
came close to me while I was awake:
it was the same butterfly.

Perhaps a pact
between dreaming and waking will keep me
from recognizing
any other butterfly in the future.

Or mutilated by a dream now
I can only see
that single butterfly.

Roberto Juarroz
tr. Mary Crow

Lastimé una mariposa
durante un sueño.
Y no sé ahora cómo hacer
para no soñarla de nuevo.

Otra mariposa
se me acercó despierto:
era la misma mariposa.

Tal vez un pacto
entre el sueño y la vigilia
me impida en adelante
reconocer otra.

O mutilado por un sueño
ya sólo puedo ver
esa única mariposa.

...

2011-04-29T21:18:00.002+03:00

View on ExposureRoom
for HD

my little fish called Bashō

2011-04-24T00:57:00.009+03:00

To be a fish !

So utterly without misgiving
To be a fish
In the waters.

Loveless, and so lively!
Born before God was love,
Or life knew loving.
Beautifully beforehand with it all.

And I said to my heart, there are limits
To you, my heart;
And to the one God.
Fish are beyond me.

Fishes,
With their gold, red eyes, and green-pure gleam, and
under-gold.
And their pre-world loneliness,
And more-than-lovelessness.

from: D.H. Lawrence (Fish)

some say that i am unaware
that i possess no more than
the limited attention span
necessary for the restricted
round of my world

i concede this may be true
yet the walls of my domain
are no less transparent than yours
and the confines of mine
are more visible
inhabitants of strictured spheres

but i whose dominion
is a mere fin span -
with each turn of the bowl
katsū!
and there the world renewed

swiss (bashō as a fish)

..

if i could give you spring...

2011-04-14T00:00:00.000+03:00

the quivering apple, split open by the changing light

2011-04-11T00:43:00.005+03:00

pondering these days:

There is no nonsense about a still life, a solitary object. You can keep looking at it.
It gives you a chance to really be there to find out how deep you can go.

William Segal

..

... and shatter me with Dawn

2011-04-04T01:32:00.006+03:00

At last, to be identified!
At last, the lamps upon thy side
The rest of Life to see!

Past Midnight! Past the Morning Star!
Past Sunrise!
Ah, What leagues there were
Between our feet, and Day!

Behind Me—dips Eternity—
Before Me—Immortality—
Myself—the Term between—
Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,
Dissolving into Dawn away,
Before the West begin—

Not knowing when the Dawn will come,
I open every Door,
Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,
Or Billows, like a Shore—

The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

poems by Emily Dickinson

..

spring

2011-03-29T02:08:00.007+03:00

the austerity of beginnings

the luxuriousness of beginnings

..

twilight on the red bridge

2011-03-25T19:16:00.007+02:00

...

2011-03-17T18:35:00.006+02:00

photos taken on the beaches of Sendai and Oshima, a small island on the Sanriku coast
(summer 2006)

Yasushi Yoshida, Lullaby for Rainsongs

..

...

2011-03-11T23:46:00.003+02:00

View on ExposureRoom for HD

It depends only on the weakness of our organs that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world.
All Fabulous Tales are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere.

Novalis

..

no sign of spring, but in our dreams

2011-03-07T19:24:00.004+02:00

Fresh morning snow in front of the shrine.
The trees! Are they white with peach blossoms
Or white with snow?
The children and I joyfully throw snowballs.

Ryōkan

the patinoire in front of the Hôtel de Ville

2011-02-28T23:33:00.007+02:00

the fan dancer

2011-02-22T01:57:00.006+02:00

i remember you in the summer room
filled with sun and ripe cherries.
the dark purple of cherries around your nails, like blood.
i remember you dancing for me in the summer afternoon,
your dress pierced with seeds of light.
the fan moved like a bird in your hand.
you looked at me and something like a bird
moved within my heart as well.
but it was when you hid your face, oh
that darkness pierced me,
as it pierces your dress when you take it off,
as it pierces the air longing for your hand
to pick up the fan again.

..

the kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville

2011-02-18T00:51:00.007+02:00

They kiss, oh, they kiss, they kiss,
the young on the streets, in the bistros, on parapets
they kiss and kiss as if they were themselves
just endings
of the kiss
they kiss, oh, they kiss in the racing cars,
in the metro stations, in theaters,
in buses, they kiss with desperation,
with violence, as if,
at the end of the kiss, at the conclusion of the kiss, after the kiss,
the only thing to follow would be prescribed old age, and death.
they kiss, oh, they kiss, the thin young people
in love. So thin, as if
they were ignoring the existence of bread in this world.
so in love, as if, as if
they were ignoring the existence of world itself.
they kiss, oh, they kiss as if they were
in the dark, in the safest darkness
as if nobody saw them, as if
the sun would rise
shining
only after
their mouths, broken by the kiss and bleeding
would only be able to kiss
with their teeth.

Nichita Stănescu
The young, tr. by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

note:
if you want to see and hear it in Romanian, go to the translator's page and listen to the song there (included also a very interesting note on translation problems)

..

beyond the edge of time

2011-02-12T23:57:00.002+02:00

self-portraits with snow and mirror

2011-02-03T00:44:00.014+02:00

looking into the mirror
until one becomes another
at the window gazing

white pure white
the snow has fallen
silver hidden within silver
self nestled into self

note:
after Akahito's poem:

Coming out
from Tago's nestled cove
i gaze:
white, pure white,
the snow has fallen
on Fuji's lofty peak.

..

who would know, who (in homage to Ono no Komachi)

2011-01-28T00:17:00.008+02:00

waiting for you all night.
two moons lit up my skin,
my dry rose blossomed anew.
only you didn't come.
towards dawn, a big blue bird
flew home and crushed, its chest open,
against my window.
who would know, who
that i was the bird
and you were the temple in which,
suddenly, all flutter had ceased.

in the last hour of the sun, walking past the water of stillness

2011-01-24T23:50:00.008+02:00

unbearable fullness

2011-01-16T01:58:00.008+02:00

that night, before leaving, i stood in front of the window for a long time,
staring into the night, or what should have been the night.

yet life was still there, unbearably full, clinging to me like algae to a dead body.

the quiet, slow and steady distortion of memory

2011-01-12T00:28:00.004+02:00

The broken mirror will not again reflect;
Fallen flowers will hardly rise up to the branch.

from Zenrinkushu (1429-1504)

more about dreams, snow and cats

2011-01-06T01:27:00.006+02:00

At noon, it began to snow, and we stopped
on the window-sill, and looked out, dreaming
of a walk by the lake with her, seeing
her face, intent, when she listened, pursing her lips,
and then turning towards us her white face
like a flower of ice in the upturned collar
of her loose raincoat. Snow in her hair,
(and we, dreaming of alcohol-algae hung loosely in her
locks), and walking with her by the lake.

And later, someone came
and asked us something. We went to the bar,
and played with the long-legged glass
on the counter. And when we remembered
and looked out of the window — it didn't snow anymore.

And then, last night, I descended
to the bar in the hall, but down there
I was stopped as I had just reached out my hand
toward the bottle, by the moon's icy gaze.
It summoned me to the window — and there,
I saw, just under the terrace's French window,
the cat Theobald crouching, ready to spring
toward some indistinct shadow by the shore.

Then, that shadow moved, and I saw it was
a girl in a loose mackintosh, walking
as in a daze, by the moonlit lake
— I saw her shivering — she was alone —
and, absent-minded, tried to fold her raincoat
up, around her neck. The cat was watching her. So was I.

Mircea Ivănescu

La amiază, a început să ningă, şi ne-am oprit
pe pervazul ferestrei, privind afară, visînd
că ne plimbăm lîngă lac, cu ea, şi-i vedeam
faţa, atentă, cînd asculta, muşcîndu-şi buzele strînse,
şi apoi întorcîndu-şi spre noi faţa albă
ca o floare de gheaţă în gulerul înălţat
al hainei de ploaie largi. Zăpada în părul ei
(şi noi, visînd alge de alcool atîrnînd destrămate
în buclele ei), şi plimbîndu-ne împreună cu ea
pe malul lacului. Mai tîrziu, a venit cineva
să ne întrebe nu mai ştim ce. Am coborît
şi ne-am jucat un timp cu paharul cu piciorul înalt
pe tăblia lucioasă. Cînd ne-am amintit mai tîrziu
şi am privit pe fereastră — nu mai ningea.
Şi apoi, astă-noapte, am coborît
către barul din hall. însă acolo
m-a oprit locului, tocmai cînd întindeam mîna
spre sticlă, privirea de gheaţă a lunii
— şi m-a tras la fereastră. — Acolo
l-am văzut, chiar sub uşile de sticlă ale terasei,
pe motanul Theobald, chircit, gata să sară
spre o umbră nelămurită, pe mal.
Apoi, umbra s-a mişcat, şi-am văzut că era
o fată într-o haină de ploaie prea largă, mergînd
ca-ntr-un vis pe lîngă lacul bătut de lună
— o vedeam înfiorîndu-se — era singură —
şi, absentă, încerca să-şi încheie haina de ploaie,
sus, la gît. Pisica o pîndea. Şi eu.

(the English version belongs to the poet himself)

..

moving through dreams

2011-01-02T00:40:00.003+02:00

the city is still celebrating.
a maze of lights, faint odour and whisper,
the languid body of human desire.
only i, like a cat who's become one
with the music of her prey,
move through dreams, eyes wide-open,
oblivious of my claws, my smooth arched back.

oh, the stillness of the snowed-in garden.

silent dance

2010-12-30T01:16:00.005+02:00

We rarely hear the inward music,
but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.

Rumi

..

december roses

2010-12-21T14:24:00.001+02:00

A few December roses, still,
Roses, real roses, with little fragrance,
All petals, heavy, satiny petals.
It was important not to stop talking. For
The poem was still the poem, for
You couldn't do anything else
With your body.

Henri Deluy, from Carnal Love
tr. Guy Bennett

december chrysanthemums

2010-12-20T02:10:00.004+02:00

The chrysanthemums
were yellow or white
until the frost.

Godō's death poem (1801)

Note on a note:

"Ladies moistened a bit of chrysanthemum-patterned brocade with dew from chrysanthemum flowers, rubbed their cheeks with it to smooth the wrinkles of age (since chrysanthemum dew conferred immortal youth), and composed poems lamenting the sorrows of growing old", says Royall Tyler in his notes on The Tale of Genji (which he translated into English).

(i am still searching for a chrysanthemum-patterned brocade to photograph it for the Bridge, against snow and delicate fingers, like faded petals themselves)

..

first snow, today

2010-12-16T11:49:00.002+02:00

...happiness ... might be just such a matter of the fleeting instant.

Shingo, in Kawabata's Sound of the Mountain

..

in the stale grandeur of annihilation

2010-12-14T00:22:00.002+02:00

Weaker and weaker, the sunlight falls
In the afternoon. The proud and the strong
Have departed.

Those that are left are the unaccomplished,
The finally human,
Natives of a dwindled sphere.

Their indigence is an indigence
That is an indigence of the light,
A stellar pallor that hangs on the threads.

Little by little, the poverty
Of autumnal space becomes
A look, a few words spoken.

Each person completely touches us
With what he is and as he is,
In the stale grandeur of annihilation.

Wallace Stevens (Lebensweisheitspielerei)

.
.

it happens when...

2010-12-08T22:40:00.008+02:00

the butterfly dies slowly.

the first death has always been there, from the beginning, carried within, unknown, as another self.

about the second death, maybe the third one as well, there isn't really much to tell. imagine: one day, almost unawares, you walk past a flower, not very different from others on the same meadow, you brush one petal, you go away. it is only later that you realize that this short moment, perhaps only a few seconds in a butterfly's time, contains the essence of your life, of everything you have longed for. you go back, in vain, you keep searching for something to fill the shape of this death. you are ready to admit it, or you refuse to. it doesn't matter much, in the end.
(there are some who argue: the more such deaths gather within, the richer one's life. hence a scarred meadow would still be preferable, though whoever is to bring clarity in such matters? and most importantly, why aim at clarity after all?)

the fourth death is the one which is really unavoidable. it may seem paradoxical, perhaps it is indeed so. in the end, it doesn't matter much, either. it happens when, instead of the silence which should drape, in gray and self-effacing grace, the loss of each wing, the poem is spoken, pinning the butterfly to itself, forever.

right now, i am the executioner.
(is my picture a lesser crime?)

.
.

sunset under the floating bridge (in homage to my adored Monet)

2010-12-01T19:37:00.023+02:00

crossing this blue bridge of dreams,
my heart still untamed,
my hair still the bloodied reeds
which used to chain down time.
stopping. such stillness, suddenly
in this body heavy with countless autumns.
leaping. rings in the water neither reveal
nor hide anything. for a while,
until the world gets busy again,
as it never fails to do.
in this body of mine as well, though
i ask: whose body, now?

drowning within the setting sun.

to become the leaf, then

2010-11-28T01:08:00.002+02:00

View on ExposureRoom

for high definition

.
.

two stories from other lives

2010-11-23T23:27:00.015+02:00

J’ai deux histoires à te raconter.
Je sais que tu ne tarderas pas
à me tuer dans l’invisible.
Shéhérazade du geste révolu,
vaincue mais souriante.

Ecoute donc bien ce que j’ai à te dire.

Première histoire

C’était à l’époque des cours de jade. Parmi ceux qui s’attardaient dans le jardin presque désert, il y en eut un qui énonça tout d’un coup cette vérité :

En abandonnant les branches, les dernières feuilles deviennent les derniers pétales.
La mémoire caresse la mémoire.

La limpidité, voire la transparence de ce principe était telle que même la clarté des yeux des jeunes filles s’en troubla.
Jusqu’au jour où l’une d’entre elles se leva brusquement, dans le même jardin frappé par l’odeur du chrysanthème, déchira ses vêtements, défit ses longs cheveux noirs, proclama:

Les dernières feuilles, tout comme les premières feuilles, n’existent pas.
Les derniers pétales, tout comme les premiers pétales, n’existent pas.
La mémoire invente la mémoire.

Puis elle se donna la mort avec un petit couteau de nacre.
Les oiseaux de l’abandon descendirent alors en elle,
leurs grandes ailes déployées, immobiles,
le temps d’un instant.

Deuxième histoire

C’était à l’époque des grottes insouciantes. Assis devant leurs os et leurs coquilles, il en était qui, un soir, tentèrent l’aventure silencieuse de l’onde se refermant sur elle-même. Donner une forme à ce qui, au fond, remplissait depuis toujours chaque os et chaque coquille : le néant. Cependant, aucun bras ne bougeait.

Jusqu’au moment où une jeune fille se leva d’un bond et se mit à danser, les longues manches de sa robe envahissant l’espace. Hésitante, une main traça la silhouette de cette danseuse au corps blanc, aux seins nus, enveloppée dans ses brocarts comme dans un autre soi, plus léger. Elle dansait, somptueusement éloignée de la vie. Ses manches pourpres, déjà mêlées aux branches noires des arbres. Un autre trait de pinceau vint alors ajouter un petit bois à côté de la figure qui palpitait.

Ils pressentaient toutefois que cela demeurait bien loin de la forme parfaite du néant, puisque la fille dansait encore. Même si elle n’était déjà plus la fille.

Une main, soudainement, osa effacer le bois et mit à sa place le feu. Lorsque les dernières flammes s’éteignirent, de cet air encore mouvementé qui avait accueili jusque-là le corps de la danseuse, jaillit le temps écrasé.

J’ai une seule chose à demander, moi qui ai si peu à offrir. Dont les cheveux sont lourds de si peu de réalité. Moi qui n’ai pas de couteau de nacre, moi qui ne sait pas danser.

Ne couvre pas ton visage. Sois l’arbre noir, sois le feu.
Accepte.

Mon souffle, qui se précipite en toi.

Et du rêve encore tremblant qui aura, le temps d’un instant, accueilli ma forme inachevée, se lèvera peut-être, un jour, l’au-delà de la grâce.

Note: l’idéogramme 無 (non-existence, vide, rien, non, cesser d'exister) provient des anciens dessins tracés sur des os et des coquilles, qui représentaient à l’origine une figure en train de danser, se cachant derrière les longues manches de sa robe, à laquelle on a ajouté dans un premier temps l'élément 林, „forêt” (pour marquer l’idée de l’égarement, la disparition dans la forêt?). Il y a eu une forme intermèdiaire, les branches des arbres étant devenues les manches volantes de la danseuse. Cependant, la forêt a fini par être remplacée avec 火、灬, „le feu”. Les chercheurs développent encore les théories les plus compliquées pour retrouver le lien entre arbres, danse, feu, ne plus exister.

I have two stories to tell you.
I know it won’t be long until you kill me
in the invisible.
Scheherazade of the obsolete gesture,
defeated by dawn, smiling however,
turning still.

Hear me out, then, listen to what i have to tell you.

First story

It was at the time of the jade courts. Some, lingering in the garden, now almost empty. With the sudden glow of revelation, one uttered this truth:

Falling, the last leaves turn into the last petals.
Memory caresses memory.

The clarity, one could almost say the transparency of this eternal principle was such that even the clarity of the young girls’ eyes clouded.

Until the day one of them stood up with a sudden burst of grace, in the same garden where the scent of chrysanthemums was still floating, tore off her robes, let down her long dark hair, spoke thus:

The last leaves don’t exist, and neither do the first leaves.
The last petals don’t exist, and neither do the first petals.
Memory invents memory.

Then she took her life with a small mother-of-pearl dagger.
The birds of abandon fluttered down into her,
their crimson wings open and motionless.
The time of an instant.

Second story

It was at the time of the carefree caves. Crouching down in front of their bones and shells, some who wished for the silent adventure of the wave falling back unto itself. Who struggled to give shape to what had, in fact, always filled each bone and each shell: the non-existent. Yet no arm moved.

Until a young girl leapt forward, with the sudden fever of truth, and started dancing. Her long sleeves afloat, swallowing space. A hand fumbled to trace the silhouette of this dancer, her body moon white, her breasts bare, enfolded in her brocades as if in another self, a lighter one. She was dancing, sumptuously driven away from life. Her crimson sleeves swirling through the black branches, already one with the forest. Another brush stroke then added a small woods next to the trembling figure.

However they all sensed this still remained far away from the perfect shape of nothingness. As the girl’s dance hadn’t stopped. Even if she had already ceased to be that girl. A hand dared to erase the woods and drew a fire instead.

When the last flames burnt out, from this vibrating air which had until then enclosed the dancer’s body, gushed forth the vanquished time.

Only one thing i ask, i who has so little to offer. Who hides so little reality in her hair. I without a mother-of-pearl dagger, I who cannot dance.

Don’t cover your face. Be the black tree, be the fire.

Accept.

My breath, precipitated in you.

And from the dream, still trembling, which will have, for a moment, contained my unfinished form: another dawn will sometime rise, perhaps, its clarity unsurpassed.

Note: the ideogram 無 (nothingness, no, non-existence, void, cease to be) was originally at the time of the drawings on bones and shells, a dancing figure with long, concealing sleeves. The element "woods" 林, was later added (to express the idea of disappearing into a forest?). There existed an intermediate form in which the tasseled sleeves look very similar to trees. In the end, the woods was replaced with 火、灬, „fire”. Scholars still evolve complicated theories linking trees, dance, fire and cease to exist.

lovers are always the victims of torches and chance (even - or especially those on a Paris bridge)

2010-11-16T01:26:00.011+02:00

In the back of your car
Where the light from the stars
Caught our eyes in a moment of blue
It was then that I knew
All my feelings were true
And what lovers like us have to do

I looked at the time
And the time ran so fast
Like an arrow that flies to the heart
And I thought that a lifetime
Would not be enough time
To delight in this pleasure so dark

Lovers are mortal
Their hearts are the size of night clouds
Lovers are mortal
Their actions are jealous and proud
Lovers are losers
And who knows the bruises they bear
For lovers are mortal
As frail as the breath that they share

In the shadows of doorways
Where lovers are always
The victims of torches and chance
I would hold you so near
'til the scent of your hair
Sent me reeling my mind in a trance

Oh I still can recall
The soft music of rain falling
Silver and cool in the night
And it washed through our love
Like a river in flood
Like an ocean of tears shining bright

And I like to believe
That the memories we weave
Are the bittersweet echoes of dreams
In the evening their call strays
From yesterdays hallways
Like the faraway chimes on the breeze

Lovers are mortal
Their hearts are the size of night clouds
Lovers are mortal
Their actions are jealous and proud
Lovers are losers
And who knows the bruises they bear
For lovers are mortal
As frail as the breath that they share

the dawning of the sense of time

2010-11-10T00:26:00.006+02:00

i know, people usually think that the moment a child learns to say 'I' for the first time is the end of the magical childhood, the pivotal moment of becoming an individual, entering a realm in which the 'I' will forever face the other and be hunted by the wound of this rift, this scissure. and yet i have always wondered: perhaps children stay children until they come to understand autumn's longing and nostalgia, until the sweet-bitter melancholy of october starts to tinge their unsuspecting world, outside of time and its golden flow.

and then i found the confirmation of my suspicions in Nabokov's Speak, Memory:

...the beginning of reflexive consciousness in the brain of our remotest ancestor must surely have coincided with the dawning of the sense of time.

Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison. In probing my childhood (which is the next best to probing one’s eternity) I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory a slippery hold.

.
.

become the lamp

2010-11-05T00:46:00.004+02:00

Why be human if being human
is so difficult? Become the lamp
by the roadside that quietly sheds
its light on man.
Be as it is, for as it is
he will always have a human face.
Be good to him, this man,
and impartial like a lamp
that quietly illuminates the faces
of drunkards, vagabonds and students
along the solitary road.

Be a lamp
if you can't be human,
for being human is difficult.
A human has just two hands
but he should help thousands.
So be a lamp by the roadside
shining on a thousand happy faces,
shining for the lonely, the aimless.
Be a lamp with a single light,
man in a magic square
signaling with a green arm.
Be a lamp, a lamp,
a lamp.

Srecko Kosovel

.
.

the sound of the autumn mountain

2010-11-02T01:11:00.003+02:00

.
.

late autumn garden (2)

2010-10-29T00:58:00.002+03:00

not enough tears
to sing the countless
deaths within

.
.

ivy-bound (12 art nouveau selves in high and low)

2010-10-21T01:57:00.008+03:00

.
.

divination in the late autumn garden

2010-10-12T01:16:00.011+03:00

the ancients used to draw 卜 and 口
a crack in a tortoise shell and a mouth
told of the future hidden
in the bones of the translucent dead.

the cracks in my waters, the mouth of time lost
the bones of time found
they reveal everything except your silence.

the wind blows and scatters my roses
a handful of petals
upon my waters, upon your silence.

note:

占, pictograph made of the two radicals 卜 (cracks in the tortoise shells used for divination) and 口 (mouth, to say), means "to tell someone's fortune, to predict, to divine".

.
.

for the one in love

2010-10-06T20:07:00.013+03:00

I am far, far beyond that island of days where once, it seems, I watched a flower grow, and counted the step of the sun, and fed, if my memory serves, the smiling animal at his appointed hour. I am shot with wounds which have eyes that see a world all sorrow, always to be, panoramic and unhealable, and mouths that hang unspeakable in the sky of blood.

How can i find bird-relief in the nest-building of day-to-day? Necessity supplies no velvet wing with which to escape. I am indeed and mortally pierced with the seeds of love.

from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

by Elizabeth Smart

.
.

like a drifting cloud

2010-10-03T00:35:00.006+03:00

If someone asks
My abode
I reply:
“The east edge of
The Milky Way.”

Like a drifting cloud,
Bound by nothing:
I just let go
Giving myself up
To the whim of the wind

Ryokan

Wenn jemand
nach meinem Wohnsitz fragt,
Antworte ich:
„Am östlichen Rand
Der Milchstraße“.

Gleich einer ziehenden Wolke,
Durch nichts gebunden:
Ich lasse einfach los,
Gebe mich
In die Launen des Windes.

(für Renée)

.
.

how much

2010-09-28T01:32:00.005+03:00

How much I desire!
Inside my little satchel,
the moon, and flowers

Bashō
(tr. Sam Hamill)

.
.

unknowable

2010-09-17T00:28:00.007+03:00

No, the human heart
Is unknowable.
But in my birthplace
The flowers still smell
The same as always.

Ki No Tsurayuki
(tr. Kenneth Rexroth)

.
.

autumn palimpsest

2010-09-09T23:25:00.006+03:00

why do you keep re-writing
the faces of what has already been,
layer upon layer of feverish scribble?
the past cannot be altered,
the stranger said, his amber voice
stern.

i stood there broken,
the quiet of the dead for my only flame.
oh if the sky could know of the loneliness
of its blue.

outside, the tree was gently falling
into autumn, unaware that it did so,
and why.

and how hard i wished for the time of the tree,
how hard.

.
.

grief (1)

2010-09-06T01:15:00.001+03:00

.
.

on the last day of summer, the siren songs

2010-08-31T00:00:00.001+03:00

.
.

my glorious feast

2010-08-27T00:33:00.006+03:00

you tell me that the leaves of the sycamore are starting to curl
at the edges
and the purple of the thistles deepens like expensive silk.
with a swift gesture that takes possession of your needless
melancholy
(your pale longing, uncalled-for in the turmoil of my blood)
i brush away this early autumn from yet another year of waiting
what do i care, i have my poppies, wounds breaking open
on my skin of delight, their flames hidden
behind the veil of my hair (otherwise
you would have gone blind by now, my gentle love).
i am the exalted gardener of a poison you'll never know,
blessed be my pity.
soon, very soon, they will open their hungry mouths to devour me.
and you will climb your sycamore, trembling
for a glimpse of the holy, still unable to see
the face of the god in my exacting arts of destruction
when like the old queen of Carthage i glow
towards my erasure, my glorious feast,
alone.

.
.

...

2010-08-23T00:43:00.006+03:00

what do i know about you? tell me, what can one know about the other?

between the impenetrable and the unattainable, i lay down my arms - even memory escapes me.

.
.

i have always wondered whether, when taking a photograph, it is i who absorbs the soul of the landscape or the landscape absorbs mine

2010-08-20T00:41:00.007+03:00

.
.

the radiance of now

2010-08-15T23:32:00.003+03:00

morning joy

2010-08-12T00:39:00.003+03:00

.
.

the melancholy diary of hotel rooms (Paris)

2010-08-05T01:03:00.005+03:00

'He wrote me: I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst?'

... a melancholy whose color I can give you by copying a few lines from Samura Koichi: “Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound... disembodied.”

(excerpts from Chris Marker's Sans Soleil)

don't bind my flowers with your tedious geometries

2010-07-28T20:28:00.004+03:00

.
.

tinged with blood

2010-07-19T22:55:00.003+03:00

Under the plane trees,
young women are passing by,
upon their eyelids
is a colour tinged with blood.
Summer has surely arrived.

Kenkichi Nakamura

.
.

and if i...

2010-07-11T22:59:00.012+03:00

none of the roads i knew led to him.
the doors wouldn't open,
they didn't seem to be closed, either.

one of the old masters said:
'To learn bamboo painting,
take a branch of bamboo
and let its shadow fall upon a white wall
on a moonlit night,
then the true shape of the bamboo will emerge.'

and if i took one of his gestures -
those gestures detached of whatever
they were supposed to hold,
for which i was unable to find a name -
and let its shadow fall upon the white skin
of my moonlit night,
would then, oh master Kuo Hsi,
the true shape of his absence emerge?

a jar

2010-07-10T01:08:00.002+03:00

A Jar
I want to love a jar.
Today—oh!
O jar, that arises in the calmness of my heart!

You have nothing in you.
Your emptiness!

O jar, my heart
strangely trembles
calling you, “My jar.”

Jūkichi Yagi
(1925)
Tr. William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura

Note:
i had thought 'my jar' in the last line to be suspicious as soon as i saw this translation, and sure enough, going back to the Japanese original confirmed it: there is no 'my' in Japanese, a language which practically never uses pronouns (some linguists argue there are no pronouns in Japanese, at least not what we call 'pronoun' in Indo-European languages) and which values most the qualities of ambiguity/indirectness/indetermination/vagueness.

and if roses are not enough

2010-07-05T22:13:00.002+03:00

...

2010-07-01T01:42:00.004+03:00

i cannot set the sky ablaze for you.
i am neither the sun of poetry nor its mystery
(as for centuries many have claimed).
but i can set my roses ablaze for you
and the word 'roses'
and the silence of its burning
once more
until the emptiness is filled
with all the roses that have ever been
and all the roses that might ever be.
(no emptiness can ever contain the roses
that should have been -
only my body, ablaze).

storm gathering upon the lonely shores of our lives

2010-06-29T00:21:00.002+03:00

.
.

dark poppies grow in me

2010-06-24T00:43:00.002+03:00

First Snow

2010-06-17T12:48:00.003+03:00

View on ExposureRoom

(for High Definition)

the kiss

2010-06-15T00:19:00.002+03:00

.
.

the threshold on which

2010-06-11T23:40:00.004+03:00

they had led me to believe
there existed so-called soul-revealing gestures
(ah the delightful lullabies passed on
from one mouth to another)
i don't remember when i started to suspect
- it must have been later on, after you had already left -
(see, how wise i am now, you would be proud)
that nothing was mirrored there except
the threshold on which
each self attempting to become
was quickly butchered and made
into a luxurious memory

(it was then that i started to learn
how to move through greys
with apparent easiness)

and a lilac bonus: her lilac mornings

2010-06-02T23:45:00.004+03:00

(thank you for your patience, i know it is a long series: not only because such mornings seem to be without end, but also because i will be away for a couple of days and i wanted to leave the Bridge crowded with her lilac-fragrant visions - before summer settles in, recklessly)

chrysopoeia

2010-05-28T00:36:00.004+03:00

the blooming forest (yellow-lilac series)

2010-05-24T15:01:00.004+03:00

one day the only darkness we’ve ever known finds light

this is the improbable lace of new leaves
where the light breaks from their edges
and scatters among branches

this is a world inside us, but not only inside us

the “not only” is the glint and glimmer of the clarifying forest
during a morning and an afternoon

when the busy, subtle hands of the wind
are touching thousands of little bright blossoms into place.

The Blooming Forest
by James Owens

the girl with the blue blouse

2010-05-22T14:25:00.002+03:00

the girl with the blue blouse
she has bird-like hands
rustling through the air
as she puts down the basket
with my past days and nights
my joys and sorrows to come

the garden a flurry

2010-05-20T02:04:00.003+03:00

gusting winds
the garden a flurry
of white blossoms
yet I the one blown away

Fujiwara no Kintsune
(thanking mt for re-working this translation with me)

not even

2010-05-17T20:22:00.008+03:00

Soit blessure, soit bonheur, il me prend parfois l'envie de m'abîmer...
c'est qu'il n'y a plus de place pour moi nulle part, même pas dans la mort.

Roland Barthes
(Fragments d'un discours amoureux)

Be it wound or happiness, sometimes i long to sink into an abyss...
It is because there is no longer any place for me anywhere, not even in death.

Barthes (Fragments of a Lover's Discourse)