It must be abstract It must change It must give pleasure

the real unreal: the unnameable: the howl: the ineffable: the iridescent: the void: the origin of change: the muddy centre before we breathed: the myth before the myth: the first idea in violet space: a passion felt, not understood: the anonymous colour of the universe: the savage plainness: the silence: the vulgate: the gibberish: the hermit in poet’s metaphors: the to and fro both at once: the alpha omega: the round and round like wine at a table: dark things without a double: the exactest point at which the thing is itself: the movable, the moment: the permanent impermanent: the indifferent eye: the big X: the dominant blank, the unapproachable: the cold and earliness and bright origin: the bodiless half: the clearing for outpouring: the single sleep: the intricate evasions: the senseless element: the coming on and coming forth: the final form: the clearness: the traversing shade: the rugged and luminous, chants in the dark: the and yet, and yet, and yet: the possible, possible, possible…



Yves Klein, Wallace Stevens

tonight

in the rain in black boots and a velvet blazer, lipstick and an umbrella, i accidentally walk down fairy-lights-bananajellybean-treestouchinthemiddle-st., of last week's adventures with the dragon boats and sea snake centipedes feeding into the pier and cheers carried straight to the tiny bones of our heightened ear, across above dark water to our open bodies, oh explorer love of mine.
we scale the water rocks, artificial in the harbour, little mountain goats clop cross chipped rocks
to bend at the knees and kiss by the shore.
we gaze cross the dark water. conspiracy.

this street is abandoned, we stand in the intersection. 'in ten years these will be million dollar condos.'

and my bed is full, i am tired and happy j'adore, and you are young and i ignore it -
you turn away from me in sleep.

'this happens every time'
communion, separation.
and our backs touch cold, both want different what the other will give. he will love the whole goddamn world, and i love the world that carries him in it. abdicate, and exile.

the street's changed now, it barely rains. chilled some, i march not dance, the tulips wilt heroically. there, that curb, where we laughed and enjoyed the evening and each other has no memory of our extravagance - it will exist without us evidence-less, thankfully. this street leads me home often.

i shall try and be more like the world, to feel such childish treads more lightly.
i shall try and emulate its self-evidence; wasn't i all before you?
i shall try and coax out its silence; i will become its silence.
i shall retreat back into the world's enduring indifference, and rename the streets as i walk through the new
and even my maps, quick-drawn, forget you in a stride.

betrayed by the noble trechery of art, that looks for fear when it is least afraid

But even if I love not him but the world,
and the wonder of the world in him, of him in the world,
and the wonder that he makes the world waken to me,
I shall never grow old in him,
I shall always be morning to him,
and I must walk and be gentle as the morning.
Without knowing it, like the wind,
that cannot see her face,
the serene humility of her exultation,
that having straightened the silk sea smooth, having noticed
that the comical ducks ignore her, that
the childish pleats of the shallows are set straight,
that everyone even the old, sleeps in innocence,
goes in nothing, naked, as I would be,
if I had her nakedness, her transparent body.
The bells garland my head. I could be happy,
just because today is Sunday. No, for more.

- Derek Walcott, Another Life: Chapter 14


- Michael Kenna, Silent World

Q: WHO ARE YOU EVEN TALKING TO ANYMORE?

∝: myself, nobody. a vacant pronoun, a flaccid 'you', the vaguest addressee...

there is nothing here to rail against, but such vast forces pinning me to the sea floor. new-slowed molten seeps out my mouth and nostrils, forming islands out of congealed primordial rage. the new rock faces maintain my dumbed look, unblinking.

in the old world, i could scream and fly and spit ash and never need land. in the old world, everything burned illuminated, unconsumed.
in the new world, i lay still enough to maybe grow an olive tree, for a dove to find when i am less inhospitable; when i lay still enough to leak out a mountain to populate, billions of quiet years from now.

exile

and that was the day everything was still the same

(aside)
Then poor Cordelia -
And yet not so, since I am sure my love's
More richer than my tongue.

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.

So young and so untender?

So young, my lord, and true.

privacy

currently not actively practicing the cornerstone wildcat philosophy of 'Getting What You Want by Doing What You Want'. likewise for 'Just Fucking Say It In a Non-Abstruse Way'.

more like, 'Not Doing What You Want So (Irrational) Others Get What They Want' which only breeds secret feelings to be hidden under imperceptibly subtle layers of DistractionAbstraction. as invasive as we are it's amazing how many things are Not Up for Discussion or Hidden In Plain Sight. weakness, no?

new strategy: build calibrated tunnels, at night, slowly, with discreet tools.
cave in the ground from below; action communicates.

(wait not chase)

the essential is to live for the return

Actually, as far as the eye can see, the Sahara offers nothing but uniform sand, or rather, for scarcity of dunes, a stony strand. There, one perpetually bathes in the conditions for sheer boredom. And yet the invisible divinities build up a net of directions, slopes and signs, a secret and living frame. No more uniformity. Everything takes up a definite position. Even one silence is unlike another silence.

There is a silence of peace, when the tribes are reconciled, when the evening once more brings its coolness, and its seems as if one had furled the sails and taken up moorings in a quiet harbour.

There is the silence of noon, when the sun suspends all thought and movement. There is a false silence when the north wind has dropped, and the appearance of insects, drawn away like pollen from the inner oasis, announces the eastern storm, carrier of sand. There is the silence of intrigue, when one knows that a distant tribe is brooding. There is the silence of mystery, when the Arabs join up in their intricate cabals. There is a tense silence when the messenger is slow to return. A sharp silence when, at night, you hold your breath to listen. A melancholic silence when you remember those you love.

Everything is polarised. Each star shows a real direction. They are all the Magi's stars. The all serve their own God. This one marks a distant well, difficult to reach. And the distance to that well weighs like a rampart. That one denotes the direction of a dried-up well. And the star itself looks dry. And the space between the star and the dried well does not lessen. The other star is the sign-post to the unknown oasis which nomads have praised in songs, but which dissent forbids you. And the sand between you and the oasis is a lawn in a fairy tale. That other one shows the direction of a white city of the South, which seems as delicious as a fruit to munch. Another points to the sea. Lastly this desert is magnetised from afar by two unreal poles: a childhood home, remaining alive in the memory. A friend we know nothing about except that he exists.

(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Letter to a Hostage)