my first intimation that I would go crazy came to me in High School. I lived across the street from the mysterious state psychiatric center as a youth. my brother and I would dare eachother to enter, upping the ante - until I...
Read More
-Wallace Stevens-
What should we be without the sexual myth,
The human revery or poem of death?
Castratos of moon-mash - Life consists
Of propositions about life. The human
Revery is a solitude in which
We compose these propositions, torn by dreams,
By the terrible incantations of defeats
And by the fear that defeats and dreams are one.
The whole...
Read More
a tanka thread and a quintain thread.
the west has sort of taken over the haiku but tanka is a much more powerful tradition in Japan - a tanka is 5 lines in 5-7-5-7-7 form
here are...
Read More
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.
And he realized that God spoke Crow -
Just existing was His revelation.
But what
Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?
And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?
Crow realized there were two Gods -
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.
Ah Jean Dubuffet
when you think of him
doing his military service in the Eiffel Toiwer
as a meteorologist
in 1922
you know how wonderful the 20th century
can be
and the gaited Iroquois on the girders
fierce and unflinching-footed
nude as they should be
slightly empty
like a Sonia Delaunay
there is...
Read More
Read More
All the while they were talking the new morality
Her eyes explored me.
And when I arose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue
Of a Japanese paper napkin
I have been re-reading Ezra Pound's stark verse - drawn I am to him because of his genius, because of his madness. I have had a very disorienting decade ... indeed, several brushes...
Read More
I like the laocal radio because of the appalling DJ's and the old dears that phone in to chat them up. It's just fabulous.
the Plaza fills with laughing children & lunch seekers, while I pass in and out of consciousness spread-eagled on the raised grassy median
contemplating the seasons of my life
this new season which has risen in my being...
Read More
The warmth in the societal acceptance of marriage--that does fade away as a sufficient motivation. It drives the wedding and even, to some extent, the birth of children, but after about 10 years it ceases to mean anything or drive any particular feelings. At least for me that was the case.
Hope you had a good weekend. I first typed "god weekend." Well, hope you had that too, I suppose.
I'm sending warm thoughts and rays of autumn sun your way.
in my semi-daily bike excursions along the Hudson Riverpath - intense visions of the lush swaying almost iridescent green of the trees and underbrush, swampy scents of pooling muddy tributaries, the rhythmic cicada concerto ringing in ear & bone
a deep sensuous experience imprinted on the...
Read More
feels as though I'm gradually lifting myself out of the morass of what has been a decades-long wasteland of backsliding and disgrace
Ha! know that feeling!
'Backsliding' is such a great word, I must learn how to use it...
I've been thinking, lately, of my life as inhabiting a kind of high, and rarified, but desperately arid plateau. If I can articulate this properly, I'll put it in my journal.
I'm sure you're right re. freedom of speech in Amerika: i.e. you're fine so long as you've got money behind you. Kinda depressing really. I'm afraid that is as astute as my political commentary is going to get tonight, halfway into a bottle of South African ros...
I'm feeling lighter & uplifted
the ten miles on my bike each morning - to class and back - has me riding a bubble of elation for the rest of the day...
Read More
Its been waaay too long but anyway...I'm not sure if I ever said thanks for commenting on my new set, so thanks! Glad you liked it
'Nopey
xoxo
a meeting place for amorous adolescents - families with young children cavorting on modern art that you can touch and clamber on top of - state workers catching lunch - young girls in black skirts on a school outing playing hopscotch in the sun
it is a mountainous barrier between lower Albany and upper Albany with its glass & marble skyscrapers projecting...
Read More
Your compliments are a balm to the bruised artist's soul.
*glow*
starisea's pacific rainforest risotto
8 oz fiddlehead ferns (roasted)
3 1/2 c chicken broth
4 T butter
6 baby shallots (chopped)
6-8 morels (chopped)
1 c arborio rice
1/4 c grated parmesan cheese
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Wash & trim ferns. Toss with 1 T olive oil and pinch of salt. Spread evenly on a cookie sheet and roast for 10 minutes, stirring after 5 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.
Pour broth into a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to low.
Meanwhile, melt butter in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallots and morels and cook, stirring often, until soft. Add rice and stir until opaque and well coated with butter.
Add 1/2 c of the broth and cook, stirring until absorbed. Continue to cook, adding remaining broth 1/2 c at a time, until rice is just tender to bite but not starchy tasting (This process will take aproximately 20 minutes); after each addition , stir constantly until broth is absorbed. Remove from heat and stir in cheese; let stand, uncovered, for 2 minutes. Top with roasted ferns and serve.
I am soooooo foodcentric lately, but I blame the amazing abundance of the Pacific Northwest summer. I can't escape the wonderful fooooooods!!
each rooted in the fertile soil of the spirit spreading outwards and up
the young Southasian woman swimming in the lane beside mine. delicate cocoa skin, coarse black hair spilling out from underneath the back of her swim cap. pushing herself through the...
Read More
On your points:
Re. five favorite friends being like cruel schoolgirls: Yes, and I'm not playing.
Re. Everything is Illuminated - didn't see the movie, partly cos I thought I might want to read the book (and now I do) and I hate reading the book after I've already seen the movie and know the story...
But 'screwball magical realism' would be a reasonable assessment of Extremely Loud too...
Re. your photo: is that a bear?
And have you seen Grizzly Man?
Rrwooaaarr! [why isn't there an SG smiley of a bear?]
Re. The Passenger: there is an article in the new issue of Sight & Sound, which just arrived in my letterbox, reassessing Antonioni's movie thirty years after its initial release. This is clearly a sign that I need to get around to seeing this movie. I like Jack Nicholson and Maria Sch(n?)eider anyway. I will try and check it out of the library one of these days, though I don't have too many free evenings what with all these sporting events...
Cheers ears!
Your words are always so elegantly eloquent.
I'm not used to using the new camera for taking self-portraits. It's got a completely different balance. So many blurry photos before your request was finally realized.
(Of course, I could have used the tripod if I wasn't so lazy.)
Tell me more about the modern marble art garden of the empire state plaza. It sounds very intriguing. I want to hear about it in remuemenage words of wonder.
PS~ Take apostleofsanta's advice and read some R.A. Wilson. He is one of my gurus! Excellent stuff about the "big questions" all wrapped up in a yummy layer of humor and irreverance.
Sunfeather does seem to cultivate misery to me, too. I hate to say that about him, and he would no doubt be mad about my saying so. He doesn't want advice or even reports of experience because it is as though I'm "managing" his depression, and he feels "beseiged" by my concerns. I have had mucho experience with alcoholics, including my own father, who drank himself to death by my age. Alcoholics have a personality set: charming but stubbornly refusing to solve their problems. They are like babies, wanting attention. I love Sunfeather to death, too--his charm is disarming--but he is lumped in my mind and almost heart with my inflated dope of a soul sucker ex bf.
Have you seen the old series Brideshead Revisted, by Evelyn Waugh. It is the damned truth about alcoholics. Right on. Worth renting if you do movies.
Be well.