Behemoth

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

all of this had gone so wrong so quickly –

no, it had taken years to come to this –

yet who could say any of them was guilty?

He knew no word could ever cure cancer –

yet saying nothing made him feel sickly,

he wished he could perk up his lovely miss

who today wore her best dress, so pretty.

He listened to the guy say he'd beat her

pretty bad, so much he became prickly –

but that plainly was his dad's fault, not his –

he'd tell them had his mouth not gone silty.

He hadn't meant it, and not one would hear –

he'd explain but he'd speak out too thickly,

he'd say he knew their marriage wasn't bliss

but the glass box he sat in went misty.

Why on earth would nobody tell him where

his stillborn son'd been buried? He really

wanted to hug him, and her, and to kiss –

tell them so they'd then see and feel pity.

 

Well-meant

For once in your nifty, pitiful life

stand up for yourself and not for others –

stop poking that damn wound with that damn knife –

focus on you, not on your friends' bothers.

You have helped, for sure, and will help again,

shoulder people up one step at a time,

but on the long run there's more loss than gain

because your friends do, yet you do not climb.

Look again in the mirror, darling dunce,

see the good this great, dumb guy could still do

look again in the mirror, and for once

let this guy help out, and let it be you.

 

To Hell with your carpe diem

"Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me."

Paulo Coelho, Brazilian lyricist and novelist (1947 - ), in The Zahir (2005)

 

Sur le fil

En équilibre sans l'être soi-même

toujours sur le fil, à scruter devant,

derrière, dessous, partout, contre le vent

et jamais serein, toujours en dilemme,

sur le fil, des crampes au cœur

à regarder les autres et leur bonheur.

Les deux extrémités du fil si loin –

on a passé tant de temps sans bouger

et sans dormir qu'on a pu voltiger

que la fin est le début est la fin.

On est resté ainsi longtemps, longtemps –

et puis, d'un bond, soudain, on suit le vent.

 

The lull between the squalls

In the aftermath of the cyclone squalls

time was clocked in by the church bells

plated in between sheets of silence.

The uncharted surplus of violence

had shocked most into mutism;

the rest preached apocalypticism

or inculcated words of redemption.

Flotsam was pillaged for consumption

when news of another hurricane

sent the hopes of many down the drain

and to some others straight to the gods.

Tomorrow would see who'd beat the odds.

 

suspended

that which never was
had been for a timeless time
the only present

Free Fall

I was doing research for a poem some time ago, reading a few articles on birds of prey, when I was reminded of the hawk's incredible mating behaviour. First it's interesting to know that male and female hawks tend to be monogamous, staying with the same partner their whole life. Then they'll build their nest before the mating season begins, occasionally improving it later on during the season. Once this is done, they will engage in the mating proper.

They will circle around one another, rise up in the air at the same time, higher and higher up until the male eventually flies much higher up and lunges at the female. Both will then fly back up to that same height, and then resume their courtship with the same pattern. They will repeat this circular dance until the male finally dives and latches onto the female to mate, free-falling down to the ground. It lasts just a handful of seconds.

Hawks like the red-tailed can dive after a prey to speeds of up to 120 miles per hour (193km/h), so even though they won't reach speeds like these when mating, and even though they will be so very high up that it's not a danger, they will nonetheless free-fall, quite fast at that. It's not too hard for us to imagine what it feels like to trust someone enough to let everything go. We will all profess that we have done this at least once in our lives. And oh, of course, hawks do not endanger themselves free-falling, so like us it's a measured danger we take every time we make love with our partner.

If only we were only talking about measured danger. It's very tempting to draw parallels between hawks and us: they tend to be monogamous and to have only one lifelong partner, to build their nest before having offspring, and making improvements to it during the course of raising their chicks. Somehow, somewhat like us in that idealised, old world version of our world.

Both hawks surrender their natural instinct to fly in order to mate. They cannot reproduce if they are not in free fall. What natural capacity do we surrender when we make love? It's not a question of spatiality for us, as we do not abandon our capacity to walk or move. It's more to do with being naked and defenceless. It's about closing our eyes, lying on or near that special someone. About sleeping soundly with them. It's about surrendering our faculty to think straight, to rationalise. That's our free fall.

Our measured danger, once we have chosen a partner with whom we've built a nest, is to put our trust in them by handing a part, or parts, of our judgement so we both appreciate the distance between the apex of the spiralling up and ground zero. We trust our guts in that free fall towards the unknown, latched onto someone who like us is hurtling down – who lets themselves hurtle down with us – with only the safe knowledge that we're in this together.

And perhaps, occasionally, that poetic feeling, when hugging someone this close to our heart of hearts, of a hauntingly real, timeless free fall.

 

Camus, Scott, Camus, Sales. Yet another misquote.

Today I read this quote:

"Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken."

Attributed to, among all, Albert Camus. I had to chuckle at this.

After a quick search, it appears this quote appeared in an episode of One Tree Hill, in this form:

"Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. But I wonder if there’s no breaking then there’s no healing, and if there’s no healing then there’s no learning. And if there’s no learning then there’s no struggle. But the struggle is a part of life. So must all hearts be broken?"

I dug deeper and found the French version:

"Heureux les coeurs qui peuvent plier car ils ne seront jamais brisés. Sont-ils si heureux que ça. Un coeur qui ne se brise pas ne peut pas guérir si on ne connait ni l'épreuve ni la guérisson on n'apprend rien et si l'on n'apprend rien on ne change pas. Mais les épreuves et les changements font partie de la vie. Tous les coeurs devraient-ils être brisés ?" 

It's funny how the Goodreads website attributes the French version to Albert Camus, but the English version first to Camus, but also to One Tree Hill (in the tags). Alternatively, I found many French websites referencing the series and quote together, and not linking it to Camus. There's more to it, but let me digress for a minute.

I know how many of you just don't care about the provenance of quote as long as it inspires and uplifts you. I've had this debate repeatedly here on this blog, during my literature classes at university and just about everywhere where books are involved. I get the 'being inspired' part, I really do. Otherwise quotes wouldn't be my post frequently used tag on the blog. But come on, you have to be intellectually honest, and whenever possible check who actually wrote the quote. Imagine you are a writer, and you come up with such a beautiful text that you share it with people. Then someone extracts a passage which they find absolutely amazing and share it with more people. You're happy, right? Your text and its message spread out like so many beautiful dandelion seeds in the summer breeze. Yet over time your quote gets misattributed to somebody more famous, because you're not famous, you're not even known. You'd be mad, and I'd say rightly so.

Back to our murky business. The person who came up with this is actually known, so please stop attributing it to Camus. He never wrote this and -- I could debate with specialists -- he never would have. It strikes me as too overtly biblical in tone, the which Camus wouldn't have done. This website probably nailed the source -- and the reason for the confusion -- for the quote. You can click on the link, but here's the entry:

"Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken."

Saint Francis de Sales.

Source/Notes: Variant translation: "Blessed are the hearts which bend, they never break." - The Beauties of Saint Francis de Sales, selected and translated from the writings of John Peter Camus (1829), p. 49. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Albert Camus.

I took the liberty to underline the names. We can see easily figure out why, after so many years, possible careless handling of names and a sloppy memory, the two people have been confused, as one fell into oblivion and the other remained up there in the pantheon of writers. And in our case it's even worse as John Peter Camus was only the translator, the real writer was Saint Francis de Sales (hence the biblical overtones). So it isn't just one person who fell into oblivion, but two.

I'll finish this rather long post (for what it's worth) by saying that of course Albert Camus isn't reaping any benefit from this. No pecuniary recompense is going to the Camus estate. My point is that more diversity in literature is always welcome, because people have a tendency to put literature into a small box in which only a handful of writers gave us a handful of memorable quotes and the rest is easily forgettable. As if, by the same token, a quote was more inspiring because Shakespeare or Camus had written than if it were a complete stranger. That's nonsense. There's power in all of us to say something true, timeless, unforgettable. Instagram and Reddit are rife with great, and as yet anonymous, talents. So look up, look around, and look sharp.

 

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
―Saint Francis de Sales
Read more at https://izquotes.com/author/saint-francis-de-sales

Variant translation: "Blessed are the hearts which bend, they never break" - The beauties of st. Francis de Sales, selected and translated from the writings of John Peter Camus (1829), p. 49. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Albert Camus.
Read more at https://izquotes.com/author/saint-francis-de-sales

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
―Saint Francis de Sales

Source/Notes:
Variant translation: "Blessed are the hearts which bend, they never break" - The beauties of st. Francis de Sales, selected and translated from the writings of John Peter Camus (1829), p. 49. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Albert Camus.

Read more at https://izquotes.com/author/saint-francis-de-sales

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
―Saint Francis de Sales

Source/Notes:
Variant translation: "Blessed are the hearts which bend, they never break" - The beauties of st. Francis de Sales, selected and translated from the writings of John Peter Camus (1829), p. 49. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Albert Camus.

Read more at https://izquotes.com/author/saint-francis-de-sales

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
―Saint Francis de Sales

Source/Notes:
Variant translation: "Blessed are the hearts which bend, they never break" - The beauties of st. Francis de Sales, selected and translated from the writings of John Peter Camus (1829), p. 49. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Albert Camus.

Read more at https://izquotes.com/author/saint-francis-de-sales

Because things pass

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, novelist, first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1892-1973)

I couldn't trace the quote back to the original. The best I could find was Wikiquote (I believe whippersnappers these days would say "lel" to this), which has: "as quoted in The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insiders Secrets from Hollywood's Top Writers (2001) by Karl Inglesias, p. 4. This has also appeared on the internet in several slightly paraphrased forms."

 

Nemesis Ex Machina

Its fiery, devilish eyes delved into mine. Not a flicker of fear, not even a frisson of war-frenzy. When out of the blue the beast landed on the window sill, time trembled on its talons and stood still. I was astonished out of my wits and beheld the behemoth, majestic, arrogant. It seemed impervious to the heat outside, caparisoned in feathers of steely pride. I was speared through by those yellow, beady eyes which decreed I was so insignificant I didn't exist. It lay there motionless, yet defiant.

The tension was so nerve-racking I could picture the howling of the wind, tumbleweeds rolling between us, and a dog barking in the distance. Time had been brought to a halt in an instant. And even though I didn't know for what purpose the colossal fiend had chosen my abode to reveal itself, but there was no doubt there was no way out of that confrontation. Warmongering was rustling its tenebrous plumage. I had to repulse the hordes of darkness.

I defied the stygian stench emanating from the demon and walked closer to the window, barring it entrance and affirming my determination to defend myself and my world it had come to destroy. Fuelled by willpower and survival instinct, I mustered a courage skaldic poets would have been proud to praise. I endeavoured to scare the brute off, executing ferocious dances of war, chanting imprecations and anathemas, cursing its offspring for generations upon generations. My arms and legs were as if possessed by the very god of war, but it seemed I only was in the grip of dread. The feral culver stood impassibly, gazing like a stoic stone idol of old.

I was left with no other choice. I had to take up arms. I quickly glanced around and there lay at my feet my camera's tripod. I raised it high above my head and with the loudest and most Viking scream I ever bellowed, and because the bugger didn't want to budge, I shoved the winged monstrosity off the edge. It nebulously flew across the street onto the opposite rooftop, and then turned around to face me, again. It had turned its appearance back to that of a normal pigeon but there, unfazed, it professed its archnemesisness. It told me in that ancient wordless language of warfare that the fight was only suspended, and that from now on I would have to watch the skies in fear.

But I have embraced my vikingness. I am ready.