Quote (thanks to Marilyn)

"The mystery of Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

Usually attributed to Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), but untraceable. Found in Conquest of Illusion (1928) by J.J. Van Der Leeuw, pp. 11 and 89.

Funny thing is, Kierkegaard was a Protestant theologian and writer, Van Der Leeuw was a Liberal Catholic Church priest and writer. To attribute the quote to the former while it is the latter who in all probability wrote it is one of those delicacies Irony sends us sometimes. The main problem lies in the exegesis, whichever Church one belongs to.

So long as they are just bandying words at each other and not brandishing swords, I'm fine.

All things considered, Kierkegaard may well have said it.

Quote bis repetitae

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Quote

 
"Man versteht nur , was man auch seiner Großmutter erklären könne."

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your
grandmother."

"Nous ne comprenons que ce que nous pouvons aussi expliquer à notre grand-mère."

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) 

Near-Life Experience

Yesterday I died. Stupid car accident.

I was driving home late in the tired night,

And all of a sudden lurches this...rodent.

– Both he and I saw the Tunnel, and the Light.

The apple tree around which my Volvo coiled

Stood its ground and sent me spinning in the dark,

My flight the headlights like fireworks tailed,

Glass and metal etching my body like birthmarks.

Pronounced rightfully dead on the tragic scene

I was sent to join the other daily, cold sleepers.

Next morning all I know was the scalpel biting my skin

Pulled me out of death a bit bonkers.

Then I did what everybody would have done:

I fled. I fled to catch up with my life –

I ran to rejoice with my parents and my wife,

I wanted to hug her and tell her I was ready for a son.

I found her in bed with my dad.

My mum had drained all my accounts.

Overnight I lost everything I had.

All my friends' numbers lead to busy sounds.

So I did what you'd do were you in my shoes:

My favourite clothes on my back I hit the road,

drove all the way down until no more could I cruise –

There the only thing left to do was to carouse,

There doze, there shag, there brag, there drowse

Until my complexion became that of a toad.

The entire continent I strutted like a bohemian

In a comatose state, half-baked in dreams,

For months, until a doctor said my absinthian

Ways would my life in the coming week claim.

All I did was on the whole very simple:

I went back to my house and burnt it to rubble –

Cooking the two cuckoos in the process – bled my mum white –

Then I drove to the cliffs of C__ overlooking the ocean,

Had my last sandwich, took the last picture of the last ray of light,

Then toppled all this, the car and me down to oblivion.

 

Hiatus

Le gouffre du monde s’effilochant en fils

Si fins que sa vaste béance ne s’affile

Que siècle après siècle, filin après filin,

Scalpelant au fur les mystères aquilins,

Ne laissant à l’obscur su du vide spectral

Que l’empreinte d’un mot qui n’a plus de rival.

 

Manu Trepalium

Les ongles soudain trop longs trop ronds devenus

De ne pas avoir à gratter la terre nue ;

Les ongles endurcis par l’inactivité,

Les doigts toujours tendus vers la réalité.

Les ongles soudain trop fins trop blancs devenus

De ne pas avoir à bêcher la terre nue ;

Les rognures affinés par l’inactivité.

Les ongles incassés aux noirs rebords râpeux

Des sombres congères de la réalité.

Les ongles diaphanes parce que l’on ne peut.

De tels ongles à mesure que l’homme se fait vieux

Sont-ils à trouver sur les mains lestes de Dieu.

The animals are leaving the country

 

Torn in between this sun and the next, chased away by undreams – birds chirping in the pit of the stomach – it shouldn't be this hard to do, should it? Yet I hesitate. Here or there.

The pholcid lady in front of me is cutting napkins with a large butcher's knife. Looks like she is cutting through the white flesh of a fish – right under the glare of a tiger's head. Purposely.

Both the banyan and the jack trees still accommodate the occasional squirrel, yet we find this to be a negligible piece of news – to be discarded with an irritated wave of the hand, and the curtest 'tut'.

Today, I feel like the ripples on the water. Crumpled like pieces of parchment no hand can explain but absolute silence and the lucid ignorance of tomorrow. Beckoning the palm of a lover's hand.

Hidden by the leg of the chair the gecko bids its time, eyes flashing like monsoon thunder on the passing desert of the capital city, its texture that of sandpaper. Resolution akin to breathing.

There e'er is an action to be performed by someone, someplace. Some dirty deed awaiting the fated hand. Some ushered, antish, charitable act none but God will hear of, or acknowledge.

Cumbersome wish for perennity. Awkward moments no turtle can dispel. We humans are like the cord of a guitar ready to snap mid-song. We detest that outlandish twang of death.

The potentiality in each and every man to remain or to go forth, to discover the terra firma as much as the pot-bellied, dwelling man; yet here I am. Marmoreal despite the pervading dampness. Chitchatting with the migratory cardinal-clad heron.

Seeking peace also in-between the stars, where an exacerbated Darkness prevails. Where wolves' howls unremarkably linger, like the fragrance of a long-lost someone.

In the imminent cacophony of terrible times to come, one thing only remains to be done. We all know our duty when the last minute strikes. Some may so desire as to glance at the wilting orchid.

We should know better, when all the animals have fled the country, than to hide in our frail selves of brick and mortar. We can no longer translate the instinct we have blunted into numbness. Much to our pain.

In the wake of the catastrophe, the pondering remnant of futile civilisations will have to chance upon the abode of the animals. And, perhaps, will open their hearts and herein find contentment.

Though the memorable part of all this is just the word resting at the tip of of the tongue, which the fugacious butterfly sends to utter oblivion – or reveals.

 

Skiamachy

Millions of drowning stars hissing like mad

in the obsidian pupil of the night

kaleidoscoping the fell obscurity

mirrored in the fragmented darknesses

shade upon shade upon shade upon shade

painful spangles tinged with evanescence.

That all-encompassing pitch-dark amulet

immobile and marmoreal and above all there,

smothers me like a catafalque of black stone

but what would become of me without it?

Without its oceans of moaning cinders?

Let its shadows curtain the earth I tread.

Seeing the broken skies flicker and fall

behind the undying blackness of that horizon

no one knows how to answer that call

whispered at the exact dead of night

by an eye burning with thousands of lights

in the polished tranquillity of destruction.

 

Ten Seconds of Life / Dix Secondes de Vie

 

Not for the Faint-Hearted (really, I mean it) / Âmes sensibles s'abstenir (Je rigole pas)

Hong Kong by Night