If music be the food of force, play on!

"The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with."

Bruce Springsteen, musician (b. 1949)

Viens dans la brume

Viens dans la brume

Jouer avec nous

perdre pied

avec

la réalité

le monde est morne et triste

sauf dans la brume

dans la brume

tout en subtilités

en nuances sincères

et nous jouons

sans cesse

à cache-cache

mais aussi à colin-maillard

et à mourir

c'est drôle

de jouer à mourir dans la brume

nous ne savons pas si c'est vrai

si c'est faux

et nous jouons

du matin jusqu'au matin

alors viens dans la brume

jouer avec nous

Loss and gain

I am giving up this world, for another.
That which was sensuous and calm
Is now hectic and
all the senses are in the mind's eye
catatonic yet hyperactive
brimming with life and teeming with death
life after life after life
unending and ever-different
tranquil, fishing in a clear stream,
raging in the midst of battle,
horn blowing and shattered shields across the plains.
Never was such a place trodden by a live man.
I am not giving up this world because it is stale, bland and colourless, no.
I am rather joining this other, ethereal one,
because life there has a meaning, and an end, as clear-cut
as a flawless ruby and as vaporous as the mist,
because brotherhood makes us braver, and more content.
Life there makes such a sense that it would be foolish not to delve into its most obscure and its brightest depths. Utterly foolish.
There, human dimensions scale down to Nature:
we rise in its abyss and descend in its heights.
The balance between this life, this death, on the edge of a knife
yet each is well worth the effort, the commitment, the sacrifice.
I am giving up this world because I have no other choice:
Life is too much about loss and gain not to live up to it.

And back again

"We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings -- many of them not so much."

John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)

The voice of the necessary

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

Hans Hofmann, painter (1880-1966)

King of my castle

"I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself."

Pietro Aretino, satirist and dramatist (1492-1556)

Loyalties

"It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time."

Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983) 

Fish-it

“Academics like to eat shit, and in a pinch, they don’t care whose shit they eat.”

Stanley Fish (1938 - )


Many thanks to Seb for this one!

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.

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)