In Depths

 

"Creativity -- like human life itself -- begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary."

in The Artist's Way (1992), by Julia Cameron, artist, author, teacher, filmmaker, composer, and journalist (1948-)

 

At the spectrum's ends

 

"A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself."

in Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003), by Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017), Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist, essayist and geologist.

Incidentally, I met the man when he came to my town for a lecture and to introduce this book which was just out. Fascinating person(ality) and thinking process (you could almost see the cogs spinning in his brain).

 

This heart

 
This heart of mine
isn’t mine

It’s been used
I can tell
it was broken, once
but it’ll be
nonetheless
the best ever

I was given it
by a stranger
who wasn’t heartless
when they passed it away

I thank them
with their whole heart
and take it to soul
to make them proud

this heart of theirs
I’ll make it mine

 

Arranging flowers

You’re arranging flowers

the same way each day

getting lost in the art

– you always ask me because

you always forget it’s ikebana

– but you remember the legend

of the tamatebako

I made for you, 

and keep it on the shelf

with your favourite books

on the verandah

your hunched silhouette

– the chaos of time within

briefly made visible

in the slowness of your gait –

you seem inert almost

but you are bustling:

vivid hands dusting leaves

nails nipping dead buds

and withered petals

surgically so

whispering to each plant

telling them they’re home

the water holding in the plates

only thanks to surface tension

is somehow like you

– come to think of it,

you’re the plate

and the plant –

briefly you look outside

hand like a visor

the rising sun flooding

the warming room –

the clouds seems to be pushed

by an invisible hand

– it’s the tide, you say,

it pushes the rain inland –

I know at this moment

a memory is being made

– I relished it then –

– fondly recall it now –

sitting in the empty verandah,

the flowers and plants

withered in dry, flaky plates

and cracked, ashen soil.

One long walk across

 

Fuel to the fire

 
"You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel."

Haruki Murakami, After Dark (2004)

 

La agudeza para recordarse

 
“When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.”

Baltasar Gracián, Spanish Jesuit and Baroque prose writer and philosopher, (1601-1658), Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia (The Art of Worldly Wisdom) (1647)

 

De la dignité dans l'indignation

 
"La vie garde un prix tant qu'on en accorde à celle des autres, à travers l'amour, l'amitié, l'indignation, la compassion."

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion."

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), La vieillesse (1970)

 

Norrsken i fjällen

 
The moon glazes
snowdunes silver
streaks the fjäll
with argent strands
only as we think
auroras commence
burning the sky
the hoary threads
bind us to the glacier
slowly combust us
until only remains
tar-like scorched marks
and haphazard footsteps
in the refreezing snow

 

Calendars

 
Calendars measure time
differently from clocks:
they are a record of
our perception of events,
like town square statues
suffering rainshowers,
winterstorms and heatwaves
and the annual
deposition of wreaths.

Yet they can be
like clocks
when they tick
year in, year out
acknowledged
unfailingly —
until we’re no longer
conscious of the time
passing at the
back of our mind.