Saturday 31 August 2013

Fragment #5



I am anaesthetised. I no longer look at women with envy nor lust. They just pass. I could be walking in a field of barley that my gaze wouldn't be any different. No longer any lump in the throat for I desired them so much or because I was completely crestfallen at being single. No longer any extra beating of the heart. I bored in them and out. Dreams of the only one, gone. There are thousands the like of us. Without being interchangeable on the short and long run, the medium part of our lives together are dragging days of boredom where we annul each other's impact. Before and after that, all hell breaks loose. Life deserves better than this, we ought to focus more. If this means to be alone, then I'll tread this path, occasionally looking back, but wall-clipping onwards, and through.
Too many defeated and crushed expectations to react. Too many seats between the woman I'd like to talk to - and who, perhaps, would like to talk to me. Too many times I have been rejected, I was stopped being spoken to. I can now stare unblinking through blood, and tears, whether of happiness or of pain. I can no longer cry thinking about my late mother. Dying children no longer move my heart. What a waste of sentiments. Stasis of the mind, equipoise of the feelings, for they lie at the abysmal pit of unconcernedness. It's already difficult for me to be concerned with myself. No one is for me, and I am for none but the windy moors of Ireland.
So many times I came close to dying, or to falling in love, succeeding but didn't sometimes I imagine what and who I would be now had all those things happened.
Best option ahead would be to burn my eyes and fingers to the steady whirlwinds of snow of Iceland and Finland. Delve into mythology more than I ever have. Devote my life to self-improvement so that I die a better, more accomplished person, useless to anyone, but better.
So many glances exchanged through the glasses of a metropolitan compartment. Glances which probably meant nothing, some of which were undoubtedly a blank stargaze I happened to cross the trajectory of. So many times I have been invited in someone else's life and later on we happened to dig up the misunderstanding which first brought us together. One does not build hope on those things, but one's idea of caring, interest and, well, some building blocks of self-esteem.
Not that I seem to have a choice or a say in this situation,

We are not meant to be happy. We are meant to hang together, to stick together come what may. To raise kids and give them enough love and values to make a sortie into the world of teeth and claws and start building something beautiful and worthwhile. The life of the worthy is one of toil and strain and tears. And of smiles and hugs and tears. And of hope and grievance. And of moving on and belief in oneself, in man and in whichever gives impetus to life.

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Opinion


"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

Monday 26 August 2013

The Book of Place


"Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live."

Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy (b. 1932)

Thursday 22 August 2013

Over pitfalls, over graves


"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."

Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Attention


"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Monday 19 August 2013

Nom nom nom


"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting."

Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

Sunday 18 August 2013

Fragment #133




Il parlait une de ces langues qu'on parle à quatre pattes comme une bête
Les éclairs entaillaient le ciel et aucun mot n'était compréhensible il n'y avait plus de sens car la terre à nos pieds étaient aussi sombres que les montagnes de nuages par-dessus nous et les roulements de tonnerre nous assourdissaient et laissaient des bourdonnements longtemps dans les tympans
 

Friday 16 August 2013

In action


"A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury."

John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

Thursday 15 August 2013

Fragment #78



Et la lune qui ne me quitte pas de son œil de marbre, frondé de nuages liserés d'argent. Elle veille sur ma veille sur un monde qui a perdu sa splendeur, son intérêt, sa saveur.
Il n'y a plus d'herbe, plus de temps, de mots.
Les lumières de la ville se sont éteintes. Les lampadaires grésillent encore, inertie de chaleur estivale.
Je suis fatigué. Tout comme les feuilles molles au fond du lit de la rivière, si basse cet été qu'on peut compter chaque pierre, qu'on voit les gardons frénétiques dans leur flaque se battre pour rejoindre le maigre courant.
J'ai donné la dernière once d'espoir. À bien y réfléchir, je n'en ai jamais réellement eu besoin. Maintenant que je suis sur le seuil de la nuit à attendre l'aube, je n'ai plus besoin de rien que le manteau des nuages. Il n'y a plus d'autre intérêt que le vol, le cheminement aérien avec les oiseaux entre les nappes de brume, les orages et les embruns. Rien de tel que de voir un éclair du dessus foudroyer le monde en bas.
Ce matin, j'ai ouvert les yeux sur le désert de ma vie, et je me suis mis en marche, une gourde d'eau à la ceinture et une poignée de dattes attrapées à la va-vite dans la poche. Ne reste plus qu'à se mouvoir à pas de loups sur les cordes du violon et à écouter le sable chanter.
L'envie de vomir passe avec l'émeute, et ce n'est pas vraiment du dégoût, mais de l'attente concentrée qui est devenue amère. On ne devrait jamais être amer. Il est bien navrant de pleurer de ces choses-là.
Je fais partie des gens laids.

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Moneymoneymoney


"It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy."

George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937)

Monday 12 August 2013

Q & A


"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."

Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer, Nobel laureate (1911-2006)

Sunday 11 August 2013

Fragment #33



“Have you been in bed with a woman before?”
“What a silly question is this?”
“By woman I mean one whom you have cherished,
One you have considered dying for.
If stolen from you,
you'd pursue the villain to the end of the earth,
to the end of time,
only to catch a glimpse of her faded beauty.
A woman so beautiful
she haunts your living dreams
and fraughts your sight with visions of her.”
My heart pinched. I had, once. It seemed centuries ago.
He asked what had happened.
“She walked away, one day.
She told me she needed space and time.
I'm toxic, apparently. What about you?”

Saturday 10 August 2013

Fragment #20



Trois traînées d'avion comme de longs voiles
de mariées sinuant entre les étoiles –
le bleu est si fin qu'on le croit insubstantiel –
ces trois grandes lames radiales –
un grand coup de griffes dans le ciel.

Friday 9 August 2013

Step down to step up

 
"There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher."

Henry van Dyke, poet (1852-1933)
 

Thursday 8 August 2013

Redoubtable


"Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue."

Robert King Merton, sociologist (1910-2003)

Fragment #4



Je n'étais pas là, ce n'était pas moi. J'étais hors de moi comme quand on combat on est hors de soi. On ne réfléchit plus, on hurle, on se jette sur un pauvre type et on lui plante un couteau dans le ventre, on regarde son sang et on ne voit rien. Ce n'est pas du sang, ce ne sont pas des entrailles, ni même un homme en train de mourir. Ce n'est que de la boue. De la boue. Je n'étais plus moi et c'était comme si on me volait mes souvenirs à l'instant même où ils naissaient.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Deliver us from evil


"We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us."

Robert Hayden, poet and educator (1913-1980)

Tuesday 6 August 2013

Live by the quote


"Bienveillant pour l'humanité en général, et terrible pour chaque individu."

"Benevolent towards humanity in general, and severe to each individual."


"Il faut aimer la nature et les hommes malgré la boue."

"One must love nature and man in spite of the mud."


Jules Renard, écrivain / writer (1864-1910) 

Monday 5 August 2013

Fragment #157



Les prés dévastés
gorgés de batailles
bleuissent au soleil.
La marée des nuages monte
cumulus de pétrole
obscurcissent le gravier laiteux.
Le berger n'a plus qu'à faire demi-tour,
lui qui n'a jamais su s'habituer
il écoute son propre cœur
comme pour la première et ultime fois
et s'en vient, triste,
fendant les cieux de sa houle.

Multisouled


"To know another language is to have a second soul."

Charlemagne, King of the Franks (742-814)

Sunday 4 August 2013

Fragment #2



Come the night,
moths banging on the ceiling light,
its heart beating in unison
its bosom
caving the crickets
and the only stars in the thickets
the fireflies

Saturday 3 August 2013

Extremisms


"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."

Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

Friday 2 August 2013

From Ω to Α


"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

Thursday 1 August 2013

Fragment #3



Capable de tout he was,
even batting the Russians' head
with his defunct rifle,
but standing on his mudhill,
like an ant incapable of sensing its way back,
his boots heavy with the rasputitsa,
he feels lassitude.
He knows he's going to die –
the Russians aren't known for their shilly-shalliness –
half-buried under a foot of mud,
that which the wind cakes on his uniform,
far from wife and home.
Darn mud.

Lichen

The blind woman next to me fidgeting in her seat visibly uneasy brushed my arm as if in need of help with her train ticket but she tricked ...