I want to know where home is.

Photograph Courtesy Henri Cartier Bresson

INDIA. Punjab. Kurukshetra. A refugee camp for 300.000 people. Refugees exercising in the camp to drive away lethargy and despair. Autumn 1947.

Fitzcarraldo
Even Dwarfs Started Small
"When you sit three feet away from me you see something eccentric, do you?"


Werner Herzog

Ghost in a shell

London Calls

My sister is in London studying Media Management.This is one of the many pictures from her album.

A friend of mine did a sketch of me while we were in class.I couldn't help putting it up here.I especially like that horse on the side.

Come, come, whoever you are.

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn't matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.




Masnavi Book I, 599-607
Rumi

taste the wine!

until the juice ferments a while in a cask
it isn't wine.

There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds.
Don't think all ecstasies are the same.

Jesus was lost in his love for God,
his donkey was drunk with barley.

every object, every being
is a jar full of delight.

be a connoisseur
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high,
judge like a king ad choose the purest,
the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about 'what's needed.'

drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it has been untied,

and is just ambling about.





Mathnawi IV, 2683-96
The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks

will we ever kill the bug?

God help me.
I could cry for want of one of these!

I thrust my hands into a swarm of mosquitoes without catching a single one.And yet the air is filled with the hum of a thousand voices.

The Sound of Painting

Painters have always been intrigued by music, its incorporeality, its sovereign independence of the visible and tangible, and its freedom from the obligation to imitate nature that for centuries was felt to be binding on European art. While poetry, too, despite its higher degree of abstraction, remained tied to the concrete and nameable, music was able to unfold in a free realm delimited only by the rules of tonal harmony derived from its intrinsic means.

Karen V. Maur

the girl she used to be.



As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

rilke

Stairway to heaven if you please.

A friend of mine helped me shelve my fear. I think am going to LOVE them.

jack of all and master of one,possibly.

the bug is out.Yes. I 've started seeing through that filter.

the old man and the sea.

am happy when I dance.
touch me.

Sunstone

I want to go on, to go beyond; I cannot;
the moment scatters itself in many things,
I have slept the dreams of the stone that never dreams
and deep among the dreams of years like stones
have heard the singing of my imprisoned blood,
with a premonition of light the sea sang,
and one by one the barriers give way,
all of the gates have fallen to decay,
the sun has forced an entrance through my forehead,
has opened my eyelids at last that were kept closed,
unfastened my being of its swaddling clothes,
has rooted me out of my self, and separated
me from my animal sleep centuries of stone
and the magic of reflections resurrects
willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever.

Excerpt from 'Sunstone'

Octavio Paz

its not easy to clothe oneself.

A thick brownish yellow substance settles in everyone's lungs-it comes from too much smoking and from history.A constriction around the chest,nausea that follows each meal.

to speak is to move words through silence.

The Hem

Hemingway.Photograph courtesy Robert Capa.
here's a beautiful story I found while reading hemingway.he says it all here in these lines.

A Sea Change

All right,"said the man."What about it?"
"No," said the girl,"I can't."
"You mean you won't."
"I can't,"said the girl."That's all that I mean."
"You mean that you won't."
"All right," said the girl."You have it your own way."
"I don't have it my own way.I wish to God I did."
"You did for a long time," said the girl.
It was early and there was no one in the cafe except the barman and these two who sat together at a table in the corner.It was the end of the summer and they were both tanned, so that they looked out of place in Paris.The girl wore a tweed suit, her skin was a smooth golden brown, her blond hair was cut short and grew beautifully away from her forehead.The man looked at her.

"I'll kill her,"he said.
"Please don't,"she said.She had very fine hands and the man looked at them.They were slim and brown and very beautiful.
"I will, I swear to God I will."
"It won't make you happy."
"Couldn't you have gotten into something else?Couldn't you have gotten into some other jam?"
"It seems not,"the girl said."What are you going to do about it?"
"I told you."
"No; I mean really."
"I don't know,"he said.She looked at him and put out her hand.
"Poor old Phil,"she said.He looked at her hands but he did not touch her hand with his.
"No, thanks,"he said.
"It doesn't do any good to say I'm sorry?"
"No."
"Nor to tell you how it is?"
"I'd rather not hear."
"I love you very much."
"Yes, this proves it."
"I'm sorry,"she said, "if you don't understand."
"I understand.That's the trouble.I understand."
"You do,"she said,"That makes it worse, of course."
"Sure,"he said,looking at her. "I'll understand all the time.All day and all night.Especially at night.I'll understand.You don't have to worry about that."
"I'm sorry,"she said.
"If it was a man-"
"Don't say that.It wouldn't be a man.You know that.Don't you trust me?"
"That's funny,"he said."Trust you.That's really funny."
"I'm sorry,"she said."That's all I seem to say.But when we do understand each other, there's no use to pretend we don't."
"No,"he said."I suppose not."
"I'll come back if you want me."
"No, I don't want you."
Then they did not say anything for a while.

"You don't believe I love you, do you?"the girl asked.
"Lets not talk rot,"he said.
"Don't you really believe I love you?"
:Why don't you prove it?"
"You didn't used to be that way.You never asked me to prove anything.That isn't polite."
"You're a funny girl."
"You're not.You're a fine man and it breaks my heart to go off and leave you-"
"You have to, of course."
"Yes," she said."I have to and you know it."
He did not say anything and she looked at him and put her hand out again.The barman was at the far end of the bar.His face was white and so was his jacket.He knew these two and thought them a handsome young couple.He had seen many handsome young couples break up and new couples form that were never so handsome long.He was not thinking about this,but about a horse.In half an hour,he could send across the street to find if the horse had won.
"Couldn't you just be good to me and let me go?"the girl asked.
"What do you think I'm going to do?"
Two people came into the door and went up to the bar.
"Yes sir,"the barman took the orders.
"You can't forgive me?When you know about it?"the girl asked.
"No."
"You don't think things we've had and done should make any difference in understanding?"
"Vice is a monster of such fearful mien,"the young man said bitterly,"that to be something or other needs but to be seen.Then we something, something, then embrace."He couldn't remember the words."I can't quote,"he said.
"Let's not say vice,"she said."That's not very polite."
"Perversion,"he said.
"James,"one of the clients addressed the barman,"you're looking very well."
"You're looking very well yourself,"the barman said.
"Old James,"the other client said."You're fatter,James."
"Its terrible,"the barman said,"the way I put it on."
"Don't neglect to insert the brandy, James,"the first client said.
"No, sir,"said the barman."Trust me."
The two at the bar looked over at the two at the table, then looked back at the barman again.Toward the barman was a comfortable direction.
"I'd like it better if you didn't use words like that,"the girl said."There's no necessity to use a word like that."
"What do you want me to call it?"
"You don't have to call it.You don't have to put any name to it."
"That's the name for it."
"No,"she said,"we've made up all sorts of things.You've known that.You've used it well enough."
"You don't have to say that again."
"Because that explains it to you."
"All right,"he said."All right."
"You mean all wrong.Its all wrong.But I'll come back.I told you I'd come back.I'll come back right away."
"No,you won't."
"I'll come back."
"No,you won't.Not to me."
"You'll see."
"Yes,"he said."Thats the hell of it.You probably will."
"Of course, I will."
"Go on then."
"Really?"She could not believe him,but her voice was happy.
"Go on,"his voice sounded strange to him.He was looking at her,at the way her mouth went and the curve of her cheekbones,at her eyes and at the way her hair grew on her forehead and at the edge of her ear and at her neck.
"Not really.Oh, you're too sweet,"she said."You're too good to me."
"And when you come back tell me all about it."His voice sounded very strange.He did not recognise it.She looked at him quickly.He was settled into something.
"You want me to go?"she asked seriously.
"Yes,"he said seriously."Right away."his voice was not the same, and his mouth was very dry."Now,"he said.
She stood up and went out quickly.She did not look back at him.He watched her go.He was not the same looking man as he had been before he had told her to go.He got up from the table, picked up the two checks and went over to the bar with them.
"I'm a different man,James,"he said to the barman."You'll see in me quite a different man."
"Yes,sir?"said James.

What I want is to own a pair of really fatastic red pumps.
What I want is to do a Marilyn Monroe, just the way she did.
I want to have a dress, a lovely flowing red one made of silk
I want the wind to blow my hair wild
A dash of that tantalizing red on my lips
A carefree wind romancing my look
Laughing like crazy,throwing my cares away to the wind
I want myself transfixed in a poster frame
doing all that Monroe did.
I want to then go up on the wall of my room

And then I want someone to spank some kid
for wanting to leave a trail of black dots
with a felt pen on my poster..

(Just like I was, by mum,for leaving that trail on my dad's favourite Monroe poster!)
lol!

Beauty is the reward of the unintended. Nothing ages more rapidly than art which strains towards immortality from the moment of inception. The most durable works grow out of the moment, are marked by it. And while they are linked to the moment, they are pledged to the future. There is no true work of art that is not primarily related to the present from which it arose; and none that is related only to the present."
Peter Ruedi

Would you care for a cup?

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you're away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don't know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea's names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it's any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.


----Carol Ann Duffy

"Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying."

Rilke

...everytime my voice gets stuck in my throat,all I wish to do is shout out LOUD.

Mr. Lawrence

...Not listen to the didactic statements of the author, but to the low, calling cries of the characters,as they wander in the dark woods of their destiny.

Dreamwork

It seems to me like this.Its not a terrible thing-I mean it may be terrible, but its not damaging, its not poisoning to do without something one really wants.
What is terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate.To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

- Doris Lessing

The Madman

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends
The lunatic, the lover and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman;the lover all as frantic,
See Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name...

A Midsummer Night's Dream

To do away with a particular silence

What would you do if I sang out of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key.


The Beatles

In Tangents

What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact.To help us along we create little fictions,highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience.The remembered event becomes a fiction,a structure made to accomodate certain feelings.This is obvious to me.If it were'nt for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create much less for the audience to grasp.Even film, the most literal of all art forms, is edited.


Kosinski

Wash the Blood off Your Feet

What could I have done, gone where?
My feet were bare
and every road was covered with thorns-
of ruined friendships, of loves left behind,
of eras of loyalty that finished, one by one.

Whereever I went in whatever direction,
my feet were soaked-
there was so much blood
that bystanders couldn't help asking,
What fashion is this, what new tradition?
For what unknown festival have you dyed your feet?

I said nothing but they went on asking
Why do you still complain of the utter famine of love?
You're doing it for nothing.
There's no chance for fidelity now.

So wash this blood off your feet, they said.
Let your feet heal.
Those roads now soft with blood, will harden again.
And a hundred new paths will break through their dried mud.
Keep your feet ready for those roads, they said.

And be careful, they said,take care of the heart.
It still has to break
open into a thousand different wounds.
It still has to know knife after knife after knife..

Faiz

Holding on

..when it gets cold
and it feels like the end
there's no place to go
you know I won't give in
no I won't give in

keep holding on
we'll make it through
just stay strong

there's nothing you could say
nothing you could do
there's no other way when it comes to the truth
so keep holding on
cause we'll make it through

this could all disappear
before the doors close
and it comes to an end
I will fight and defend

listen to me when I say
when I say I believe
nothing's going to change
nothing's going to change destiny
whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly
so keep holding on..

Hand in My Pocket

I'm broke but I'm happy
I'm poor but I'm kind
I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah
I'm high but I'm grounded
I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed
I'm lost but I'm hopeful

What it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving a high five

I feel drunk but I'm sober
I'm young and I'm underpaid
I'm tired but I'm working, yeah
I care but I'm restless
I'm here but I'm really gone

What it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be quite alright
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is flicking a cigarette

What it all comes down to
Is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving the peace sign

I'm free but I'm focused
I'm green but I'm wise
I'm hard but I'm friendly
I'm sad but I'm laughing
I'm brave but I'm chicken shit
I'm sick but I'm pretty

And what it all boils down to
Is that no one's really got it figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is playing the piano

What it all comes down to my friends
Is that everything's just fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is hailing a taxicab.

Alanis

That is.

Total object, complete with missing parts, instead of partial object.
Question of degree.

Ma Says...

Believe in yourself.
Set your standards high.
You deserve the best.
Always try for what you want,
and never settle for less.

No matter what you choose,
keep a winning attitude.
You can never lose.

Be all that you can be!

(On this day, the 1st of April,2008)

Suddenly the odds are more interesting than the evens.

I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me..

Memento

And you are waiting, expecting that one thing,
which infinitely enriches your life;
the mighty, tremendous,
the awakening of the stones,
depths, turned to you.
Dawning in the bookshelves
are volumes in gold and brown;
and you think of encompassed lands
of images, of the garments of
women lost again.

And suddenly you realise: that was it.
You rise to your feet and before you stands
a past year’s
fear and guise and prayer.

- Rilke

On the Edge of the Night

My room and this vastness,
awake over parroting land, -
are one. I am a string,
strung over rustling wide
resonances.

The things are violin bodies,
full of grumbling dark;
inside the wifes' weeping is dreaming,
inside the rancour of whole dynasties
is stirring in the sleep…
I shall
shake silverly: then
everything underneath me will live,
and what errs in the things,
will strive after the light,
which falls from my dancing tone,
around which heaven waves,
through narrow, yearning cracks,
into the old
chasms without
end…

Rilke

'a person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship'.

Rilke

Wasted Sunsets

The days are gone when the angels came to
stay,
And all the silent whispers would be blown
away
And lying in the corner a pair of high heeled
shoes,
Hanging on the wall, gold and silver, for the
blues,
One too many wasted sunsets
One too many for the road
And after dark the door is always open
Hoping someone else will show

Someone is waiting behind an unlocked door
Grey circles overhead empty on the floor
The cracks in the walls have grown too long
The slow hand is dragging on afraid to meet the dawn.

- Deep Purple

The Graveyard by the Sea

This quiet roof, where dove-sails
saunter by,
Between the pines, the tombs, throb
visibly.
Impartial noon patterns the sea in
flame --
That sea forever starting and
re-starting.
When thought has had its hour,
oh how rewarding
Are the long vistas of celestial calm!
What grace of light, what pure toil
goes to form
The manifold diamond of the elusive
foam!
What peace I feel begotten at that source!

When sunlight rests upon a profound sea,
Time's air is sparkling, dream is
certainty --
Pure artifice both of an eternal Cause.
Sure treasure, simple shrine to
intelligence, 
Palpable calm, visible reticence,
Proud-lidded water,
Eye wherein there wells
Under a film of fire such depth of sleep --
O silence! . . . Mansion in my soul,
you slope
Of gold, roof of a myriad golden tiles.
Temple of time, within a brief sigh
bounded, 
To this rare height inured I climb,
surrounded 
By the horizons of a sea-girt eye.
And, like my supreme offering to the
gods,
That peaceful coruscation only breeds
A loftier indifference on the sky.

Even as a fruit's absorbed in the
enjoying,
Even as within the mouth its body
dying
Changes into delight through
dissolution,
So to my melted soul the heavens
declare
All bounds transfigured into a
boundless air,
And I breathe now my future's emanation.

Beautiful heaven, true heaven,
look how I change!
After such arrogance, after so much
strange
Idleness -- strange, yet full of potency --
I am all open to these shining spaces;
Over the homes of the dead
my shadow passes,
Ghosting along -- a ghost subduing me.
My soul laid bare to your
midsummer fire,
O just, impartial light whom I admire,
Whose arms are merciless, you have I
stayed
And give back, pure, to your original
place.
Look at yourself . . . But to give light implies
No less a somber moiety of shade.
Oh, for myself alone, mine, deep
within
At the heart's quick, the poem's fount,
between
The void and its pure issue, I beseech
The intimations of my secret power.

O bitter, dark, and echoing reservoir

Speaking of depths always beyond
my reach.
But know you -- feigning prisoner of
the boughs,
Gulf which cats up their slender
prison-bars,
Secret which dazzles though mine
eyes are closed --
What body drags me to
its lingering end,
What mind draws it to this
bone-peopled ground?
A star broods there on all that I have lost.

Closed, hallowed, full of
insubstantial fire, 
Morsel of earth to heaven's light
given o'er --
This plot, ruled by its flambeaux,
pleases me --
A place all gold, stone, and dark
wood, where shudders
So much marble above so many
shadows:
And on my tombs, asleep, the faithful sea.

Keep off the idolaters, bright watch-dog,
while --
A solitary with the shepherd's smile --
I pasture long my sheep, my
mysteries,
My snow-white flock of undisturbed
graves!
Drive far away from here the careful
doves,
The vain daydreams, the angels'
questioning eyes!
Now present here, the future takes its time.

The brittle insect scrapes at the dry loam;
All is burnt up, used up,
drawn up in air
To some ineffably rarefied solution . . .
Life is enlarged,
drunk with annihilation,
And bitterness is sweet, and
the spirit clear.
The dead lie easy, hidden in earth
where they
Are warmed and have their mysteries
burnt away.
Motionless noon,
noon aloft in the blue
Broods on itself -- a self-sufficient theme.

O rounded dome and perfect diadem,
I am what's changing secretly in you.
I am the only medium for your fears.
My penitence, my doubts,
my baulked desires --
These are the flaws within your diamond pride . . . 
But in their heavy night,
cumbered with marble,
Under the roots of trees
a shadow people
Has slowly now come over to your side.
To an impervious nothingness
they're thinned,
For the red clay has swallowed
the white kind;
Into the flowers that gift of life has passed.

Where are the dead? -- their homely
turns of speech,
The personal grace, the soul informing each?
Grubs thread their way where tears
were once composed.
The bird-sharp cries of girls
whom love is teasing,
The eyes, the teeth,
the eyelids moistly closing,
The pretty breast that gambles
with the flame,
The crimson blood shining when lips
are yielded,
The last gift, and the fingers that
would shield it --
All go to earth, go back into the game.

And you, great soul, is there yet
hope in you
To find some dream without
the lying hue
That gold or wave offers
to fleshly eyes?
Will you be singing still when you're thin air?

All perishes. A thing of flesh and pore
Am I.
Divine impatience also dies.
Lean immortality, all crêpe and gold,
Laurelled consoler frightening to
behold,
Death is a womb, a mother's breast,
you feign
The fine illusion, oh the pious trick!
Who does not know them, and is not
made sick
That empty skull, that everlasting grin?

Ancestors deep down there,
O derelict heads
Whom such a weight of spaded earth
o'erspreads,
Who are the earth, in whom
our steps are lost,
The real flesh-eater, worm unanswerable
Is not for you that
sleep under the table:
Life is his meat, and I am still his host.
'Love,' shall we call him?
'Hatred of self,' maybe?
His secret tooth is so intimate with me
That any name would suit him well enough,
Enough that he can see,
will, daydream, touch --
My flesh delights him,
even upon my couch
I live but as a morsel of his life.
Zeno, Zeno, cruel philosopher Zeno,
Have you then pierced me
with your feathered arrow
That hums and flies,
yet does not fly! The sounding
Shaft gives me life, the arrow
kills. Oh, sun! --
Oh, what a tortoise-shadow to
outrun
My soul, Achilles' giant stride left standing!

No, no! Arise!
The future years unfold.
Shatter, O body, meditation's mould!
And, O my breast, drink in the wind's
reviving!
A freshness, exhalation of the sea,
Restores my soul . . . Salt-breathing potency!
Let's run at the waves and be hurled back
to living!
Yes, mighty sea with such wild frenzies gifted
(The panther skin and the rent chlamys), sifted
All over with sun-images that
glisten,
Creature supreme, drunk on your own
blue flesh,
Who in a tumult like the deepest hush
Bite at your sequin-glittering tail --
yes, listen!
The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks
in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves! Break up with your
rejoicing surges
This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.


Paul Valery .

There is always a rather sordid side to literature, a lurking deference to one's public.

(continued)..

When you talk, I wonder whether you lie or tell the truth.

I lie.And I tell the truth.But I don't have any reason to lie to you.Why?..

Tell me, do things like these happen to you often?

Not very often, but it happens.I have doubtful morals you know.

What do you call having doubtful morals?

Being doubtful about the morals of other people.

Persistence of Memory

...Listen to me.
Like you, I know what it is to forget.

No, you don't know what it is to forget.

Like you, I have a memory.I know what it is to forget.

No, you don't have a memory.

Like you I too have tried with all my might not to forget.
Like you, I forgot.Like you, I wanted to have an inconsolable memory,
a memory of shadows and stone.
For my part, I struggled with all my might, every day, against
the horror of no longer understanding at all the reason for
remembering.Like you, I forgot...

Why deny the obvious necessity for memory?...

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Am going to sing my song
now.
Eventhough I haven't the voice.

The Rustics

The Rustics who take their ease
in long squattings,
will hear boughs breaking
among the red rustlings.

-Rimbaud, Text of the letter to Paul Demeny, May 15,
1871.

Guile

Insipid heap of fallen stars,
Pile up in the corners.
You'll be extinguished in God,saddled
with ignoble cares.

Rimbaud

More than ever before, we roister,
As on to our ant heaps come
Tumbling the yellow heads,
On these extraordinary dawns.

Dance of the Hanged People

Hurray! the gay dancers whose bellies are gone!
You can cut capers on such a long stage!
Hop! never mind whether its fighting or dancing!
Maddened, they saw on their fiddles!

Oh the hard heels, no one's pumps are wearing out.
And nearly all have taken of their shirts of skin.
The rest is not embarrassing and can be seen without shame.
On each skull the snow places a white hat.

The crow acts as a plume for these cracked brains,
A scrap of flesh clings to each lean chin
You would say, to see them turning in their dark combats,
They were stiff knights clashing pasteboard armours.

Ho there, shake up those funeral braggarts,
Craftily telling with their great broken fingers
The beads of their loves on their pale vertebrae:
Hey the departed, this is no monastery here!

Oh! but see how from the middle of this Dance of Death
Springs into the red sky a great skeleton, mad,
Carried away by his own impetus, like a rearing horse,
And, feeling the rope tight again around his neck,

Clenches his knuckles on his thighbone with a crack
Uttering cries like mocking laughter,
And then like a mountback into his booth,
Skips back into the dance to the music of the bones!

Rimbaud

Lets mince

Character(before N):I have decided to do away with the angles.
Character(after C):What angles?
Character(before N):All possible angles.
Character(after C):And then?
Character(before N):You can have an angle.
Character(after C):There is no angle here.
Character(before N):Its like the same as before.You can always go to a flying saucer party if you're invited to one.You should.Irrespective of my accompanying you or not.
Character(after C): But I'd like to go together with you.
Character(before N):Am afraid that's not always going to be the case.

(after C) went to one.
(before N)was asked to come.
(before N) refused vehemently(for reasons unknown)and called on a friend to decide about dashing it.


So then?

Charlotte et son Jules

Charlotte gets out of her current lover's car(Gerard Blain) and goes up to her ex-lover's room(Jean-Paul Belmondo).He greets her with a display of just about every attitude a man can show towards a woman:wily, paternal, condescending, he soon turns to pleading.Charlotte, who hasn't uttered a word, says to him,"I forgot my toothbrush", and leaves.

Godard's best short film(1958)

The Night Must Fall

I'd often stand at the window
stand and stare at you.
It all seemed to warm me off,
the strange city, whose unconfiding landscape
gloomed as though I didn't exist.
The nearest thing didn't mind if I misunderstood them.
The street would thrust itself up to the lamp,
and I'd see it was strange.

A sympathisable room up there, revealed in the lamp light:
I'd begin to share, they'd notice and close the shutters.
I'd stand.
A child would cry, and I'd know the mothers in the houses,
what they availed,
and I'd know as well the inconsolable grounds of
infinite crying.
Or else a voice would sing, and what was expected
be just a little surpassed;
or an old man coughed below,
full of reproach, as if his body were in the right
against a gentler world.
Or else, when an hour was striking,
I'd begin to count too late and let it escape me.
As a strange little boy, when at last they invite him to join them,
cannot catch the ball, and is quite unable
to share the game the rest are so easily playing,
but stands and gazes- whither?
I'd stand and all at once
realise you were being friends with me, playing with me,grown up
Night, and I'd gaze at you.
While towers were raging, and while, with its hidden fate,
a city stood around me and undivinable mountains
camped against me and Strangeness, in narrowing circles,
hungrily prowled round my casual flares of perception:
then, lofty Night,
you were not ashamed to recognize me.
Your breathing went over me; your smile upon all that
spacious consequence passed into me.

Rilke

Ahem..

'Why dost thou shade thy lovely face?O why
Does that ecclipsing hand, so long, deny
The sunshine of thy soul-enliv'ning eye?'

Francis Quarles

Meaning the end..

There is in every art a struggle between techniques and artistry, the means and the end, the story to be told and the grammar and the words used in its telling.Technique can always be acquired, grace and ease of movement but rarely, the difference between dancing and acrobatics lies not so much in technique as in a state of mind.

The acrobat performs his steps in such a fashion as to underline the difficulty of a task.In his case the drama is implicit in the physical performance.That is the only idea behind his performance.His climax consists of a dazzling finish to whip up applause.There is relief in this climax that he has succeeded in overcoming his difficulties.

The street at night

a river
of columns of colour
trembling nervously
dilating
vanishing
an ephemera circling
spiralling...

To cope with it

'learning to see the beauty of one reality(water) and the truth of another(waterlessness).'

'I would perceive the extremity of the problem something like this.You can show reality directly or you can aestheticise it in a different mode or juxtapose the two.In all these modes, the context is lost.The challenge would be to see the area which is so nebulous where you don't know what to do.How to bring art and life together: what are its joineries? The main thing is not to show the fist by imagining that you can change the world.The true area of reality is your own insignificance, your own limitation, your despair which is real, your love for life.'

'The thrust of our creative work should be to see our impotency, to face it, and through that to confront those little truths through which one can make a gesture to reach out towards change.'

Chandralekha

Come on and save me
If you could save me
From the ranks of the freaks
Who suspect they could never love anyone.

Cigarettes and Red Wine

...and I'm the only one who knows
that Disneyland's about to close
I don't suppose you'd give it a shot
knowing all that you've got
are cigarettes and red wine.

just close your eyes, cause,
you never do know
and I'll be on the sidelines,
with my hands tied,
watching the show.

Well, it's always fun and games until
it's clear you haven't got the skill
in keeping the gag from going too far
So you're running 'round the parking lot
til every lightning bug is caught
punching some pinholes in the lid of a jar
while we wait in the car.

And tell me, would it kill you
would it really spoil everything
if you didn't blame yourself
do you know what I mean?

Mann

'I told him I didn't believe in the development of the mind'.
'I wanted to experience things.'

- Chandralekha

my love

"Poems are not . . . simply emotions . . . they are experiences. For the
sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things
. . . and know the gestures which small flowers make when they open in
the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown
neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you have long
seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained . . .;
to childhood illnesses . . . to mornings by the sea, to the sea
itself, to seas, to nights of travel . . . and it is still not enough."

Rilke

Entrance

Whovever you are: step out in to the evening
out of your living room, where everything is so known;
your house stands as the last thing before great space:
Whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their fatigue can just barely
free themselves from the worn-out thresholds,
very slowly, lift a single black tree
and place it against the sky, slender and alone.
With this you have made the world. And it is large
and like a word that is still ripening in silence.
And, just as your will grasps their meaning,
they in turn will let go, delicately, of your eyes . . .

- Rilke

Progress

And once again the depths of my life rush onward,
as if they were moving in wider channels now.
Things are becoming more close to me
and all images more thoroughly looked upon.
I feel more comfortable with that which is nameless,
With my senses, as with birds, I reach up
into the windy heavens out of the oak,
and in those pools broken off from the day,
my feeling, as if standing on fishes, descends.

- Rilke

It is only sound that remains

sound, sound, only sound,
the sound of the limpid wishes
of water to flow,
the sound of the falling of star light
on the wall of earth's femininity
the sound of the binding of meaning's sperm
and the expansion of the shared mind of love.
sound, sound, sound,
only sound remains.

- Farrokhzad

In Broken Images

He is quick, thinking in clear images.
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting his clear images.
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.
Trusting his images he assumes their relevance.
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact.
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses.
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.
He continues quick and dull in his clear images.
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding.
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

- Robert Graves

Come with me,
come to that star with me
that is centries away
from earth's concretion and futile scales,
and no one there
is afraid of light.

The Wind-Up Doll

More than this, yes
more than this one can stay silent.

With a fixed gaze
like that of the dead
one can stare for long hours
at the smoke rising from a cigarette
at the shape of a cup
at a faded flower on the rug
at a fading slogan on the wall.

One can draw back the drapes
with wrinkled fingers and watch
rain falling heavy in the alley
a child standing in a doorway
holding colourful kites
a rickety cart leaving the deserted square
in a noisy rush

One can stand motionless
by the drapes-blind, deaf.

One can cry out
with a voice quite false,quite remote
"I love...'
in a man's domineering arms
one can be a healthy, beautiful female.

With a body like a leather tablecloth
with two large and hard breasts,
in bed with a drunk, a madman, a tramp
one can stain the innocence of love.

One can degrade with guile
all the deep mysteries
one can keep on figuring out crossword puzzles
happily discover the inane answers
inane answers, yes-of five or six letters.

With bent head, one can
kneel a lifetime before the cold gilded grill of a tomb
one can find God in nameless grave
one can trade one's faith for a worthless coin
one can mould in the corner of a mosque
like an ancient reciter of pilgrim's prayers.

One can be constant, like zero
whether adding, subtracting, or multiplying.
One can think of your-even your-eyes
in their cocoo of anger
as lustless holes in a time-worn shoe
one can dry up in one's basin, like water.

With shame one can hide the beauty of a moment's togetherness
at the bottom of a chest
like an old, funny looking snapshot,
in a day's empty frame one can display
the picture of an execution, a crucifixion, or a martyrdom,
One can cover the crake in the wall with a mask
one can cope with images more hollow than these.

One can be like a wind-up doll
and look at the world with eyes of glass,
one can lie for years in lace and tinsel
a body stuffed with straw
inside a felt-lined box,
at every lustful touch
for no reason at all
one can give out a cry
"Ah, so happy am I!"

- Farrokhzad

Window

One window is sufficient
One window for beholding
One window for hearing
One window
resembling a well's ring
reaching the earth at the finiteness of its heart
and opening towards the expanse of this repetitive blue kindness
one window filing the small hands of loneliness
with nocturnal benevolence
of the fragrance of wondrous stars
and thereof,
one can summon the sun
to the alienation of geraniums.

One window will suffice me.

I come from the homeland of dolls
from beneath the shades of paper-trees
in the garden of a picture book
from the dry seasons of impotent experiences in friendship and love
in the soil-covered alleys of innocence.


When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice
and in the whole city
they were chopping up my heart's lanterns
when they would blindfold me
with the dark hankerchief of Law
and from my anxious temples of desire
foutains of blood would squirt out
when my life had become nothing
nothing
but the tic-tac of a clock,
I discovered
I must
must
must love,
insanely.

One window will suffice me
one window to the moment of awareness
observance
and silence.
Now,
the walnut sapling
has grown so tall that it can interpret the wall
by its youthful leaves.

Ask the mirror
the redeemer's name.
Isn't the shivering earth beneath your feet lonlier than you?
The prophets brought the mission of destruction to our century
aren't these consecutive explosions
and poisonous clouds
the reverbration of the sacred verses?

Dreams always plunge down from their naive height
and die.
I smell the four petal clover
which has grown on the tomb of archaic meanings.

Wasn't the woman
buried in the shroud of anticipation and innocence,
my youth?

Will I step up the stairs of curiosity
to greet the good God who strolls on the rooftops?

I feel that 'time' has passed
I feel that 'moment' is my share of history's pages
I feel that 'desk' is a feigned distance
between my tresses
and the hands of this sad stranger.

Talk to me
I am in the window's refuge
I have a relationship with the Sun.

-Farrokhzad(excerpts)

My Lot..

..my lot is
a sky which is taken away at the drop of a curtain
my lot is going down a flight of disused stairs
a regain something amid putrefation and nostalgia
my lot is a sad promenade in the garden of memories
and dying in the grief of a voice which tells me
I love
your hands.

I will plant my hands in the garden
I willgrow I know I know I know
and swallows will lay eggs
in the hollow of my ink-stained hands.

I shall wear
a pair of twin cherries as ear-rings
and I shall put dahlia petals on my finger-nails
there is an alley
where the boys who were in love with me
still loiter with the same unkempt hair
thin necks and bony legs
and think of the innocent smiles of a little girl
who was blown away by the wind one night.

There is an alley
which my heart has stolen
from the streets of my childhood.

The journey of a form along the line of time
inseminating the line of time with the form
a form conscious of an image
coming back from a feast in a mirror

And it is in this way
that someone dies
and someone lives on.

- Farrokhzad

Another Birth

Life is perhaps
a long street through which a woman holding
a basket passes every day.


Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning.


Life is perhaps that enclosed moment
when my gaze destroys itself in the pupil of your eyes
and it is in the feeling
which I will put into the Moon's impression
and the Night's perception.


In a room as big as loneliness
my heart
which is as big as love
looks at the simple pretexts of its happiness
at the beautiful decay of flowers in the vase
at the sapling you planted in our garden
and the song of canaries
which sing to the size of a window.

- Farrokhad

'I believe its time for breakfast,'she added a moment later, 'would you be kind enough to attent to my needs...'
Thus it was that she began from the outset to torment him with her demanding vanity.
Refering to her four thorns she said, 'Let them come, those tigers with their claws!'

At the time, I was unable to understand anything.I should have based my judgements upon deeds and not words.She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me.I should never have run away from her.I should have guessed at the affection behind her poor little tricks.Flowers are so inconsistent.
But I was too young to know how to love her.

- The Prince

Image-thought

An artist needs both knowledge and the power of observation only so that he can tell from what he is abstaining, and to be sure that his abstention will not appear artificial or false.
For in the end it is important to confine yourself within a framework that will deepen your world, not impoverish it, help you to create it, excluding all pretentiousness and efforts to be original.
As far as possible all links with life have to be excluded with no loss of truthfulness, discarding only the superfluous trash that appears to be a sign of authenticity, of convincing argument.
For such arguments lie outside the parameters of image-thought, in an area where quantity can never be transmitted into quality.

His diary..

The attempt to present something attainable and specific in the guise of the ideal subverts common sense.
The ideal is unattainable and in its understanding of this phenomenon lies the greatness of human reason.



Never have a second arrow.If you rely on a second arrow you will be careless with the first.Everytime you must be convinced that you have only one chance and that you must hit your target with your one and only arrow.

-Tarkovsky

You think?!

Its Chicago 1912.You are watching the inexplicable battle between two men.Don't trouble yourself about the motives behind the conflict.Rather, get interested in the human stakes, judge with impartiality the methods of the combat and focus your attention on the finish.

Escape the necessities in order to reach an absolute and gratuitous liberty.

To Live Here

Show man the way back to his needs.
Needs which have a moral significance.
They are under pressure from their environment.
It constrains them to do harm to the most human and precious part of themselves.

Silence..

Silence has an identity, as a stretch of time being perforated by sound.

To create silence, create a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence, dialectical.

It is a form of speech, an element in dialogue.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and wither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

- Frost

For Ma

On islands adrift upon the waters, I breathe.I am in search of a share in the expansive sky, void of the swell of vile thoughts.

Refer with me, refer with me to the source of all being, to the sanctified centre of a single origin, to the moment I was created from you, refer with me, I am not complete without you.

- Forugh Farrokhzad

Into My Own

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if I still held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

- Frost

Sounding the Bell

"The intrepid Spaceman Spiff is stranded on a distant planet!..our hero ruefully acknowledges that this happens fairly frequently.."

- Calvin