fog of time

"I ordered a seat for you, in the theatre,for next spring
And a message for you, for the summer after next...
As well as one storm, two flowers, three starry skies..."

I hold six pieces of clouds from five years later
(the clouds I ordered from three starry skies...)
Calmly and brilliantly, in the seat next to yours
With numerous raindrops which are not yet broken

I describe to you the storm, the storm
Frozen in the spines of a school of fish
(The storm I ordered from the darkest trench of the Pacific...)
And afterwards, two flowers, three starry skies...

Excerpts from Zheng Danyi's Fog of Time

Images by Wai Lin Tse, with thanks

Vuillard's yellow studio

Vuillard's studio, Château des Clayes . . .
The corner is hard to judge
where the paintings in the painting are pinned
on the yellow wall (the mise en abyme
will be the end of me)

in this gleaming Institute of Donors,
this imperial temple
raised from the muck and blood
of the stockyards, out of hog-squeal
and cost-efficient slaughter

at the end of the Millennium Park
where the towers crowd and crane
in an ogre's silver egg,
the concentration of capital
in a cunning device.

I stare with nostalgia, with homesickness
into Vuillard's yellow studio
and I know the place
absolutely, it is that humane
heaven of drapes and turpentine

where I shall at last lie down
on the lumpy mattress
with the stripy bedspread
below the little skylight —
my sweet, autarchic rest.

-Stephen Romer "Yellow Studio"

Image found here

get your dim sum on

Happy holidays! Our own slightly haphazard family tradition is to go out for dim sum on Christmas day. If, like me, you are not very good at telling a white turnip cake from a taro cake, you can order this very useful pocket guide by Kit Shan Li.

Photo by Annie Lee found here

this is to be my symphony

 
To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury and
refinement rather than fashion;

to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy,
not rich; to study hard, think
quietly, talk gently, act frankly;

to listen to stars and birds, to babes
and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely,

await occasions, hurry never. In a
word, to let the spiritual, unbidden
and unconscious, grow up through

the common. This is to be my symphony.

- William Henry Channing

Image found here

poems folded up like tired travelers

Poetry for me is an antidote to the poisons of everyday life. I often read it furtively, secretively. I use this space to think about it. Sometimes it's only a line. Tonight it's this, "I remember my poems folded up like tired travelers/ Then I fainted/ Then, no banquets... no cheers."

Image found here

the things you tame

The fox fell silent and stared at the little prince for a long while, "Please... tame me! he said.
"I'd like to," the little prince replied, "but I haven't much time. I have friends to find and so many things to learn."
"The only things you learn are the things you tame," said the fox."People haven't time to learn anything. They buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends. If you want a friend, tame me!"
"What do I have to do?" asked the little prince.
"You have to be very patient," the fox answered. "First, you'll sit down a little ways from me, over there, in the grass. I'll watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you won't say anything. Language is the source of misunderstandings. But day by day you'll be able to sit a little closer..."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince

Image found here

One Woman Orchestra

Whenever I want to cheer myself up I think about Zoë Keating. She is an incredibly talented cellist, and I love her scrappy style. When asked how she deals with rejection, she responds, "I get rejected all the time. I think I have some kind of bloody minded, self-preservation streak that makes me honestly believe that the person or group who rejected me is just ignorant and/or maybe didn’t get the right impression me…and then I forget about it and try again. I’d still be making music even if no one was paying attention." And here she is, making her music in the San Francisco airport. I would have stopped. I hope.

monsieur le loup

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge  by Nathalie Lete on Le Divan Fumoir Bohemien

while you've been away I've

dressed Tadzio in his peacock costume (twice)
broken the coffee carafe
dressed pirate dolls in smocks and hats
dirtied every teacup in the house
attended a puppet show performance of the Jabberwocky
slipped in the ice
watched a new Zhang Yimou film
missed you.


Image found here

I know a man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

-Robert Creeley "I Know a Man"

Image found here

lantern procession

Image found here

be for me like rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quite, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent--
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

-Robert Creeley "The Rain"

Image found here

the pilgrim

When I was a kid and couldn't sleep at night I would read The Pilgrim's Progress. I realize that admitting to this makes me sound like I must have been born in the 18th century. It just happened to be a book that we had around the house. Actually, I hated Christian but kept on reading the book hoping he would meet an interesting demise. Nobody had explained that The Pilgrim's Progress was an allegory, and Christian's simple, gullible character offended my youthful sense of bravery and honor.

I was, however, fascinated by the burden on Christian's back. He believed it came from his reading "the book in his hand." He obviously had no idea where the burden came from, and I would spend nights speculating on the exact material that it was made from. Was it a rock? I knew that it was held on with straps, and rolled down the hill when he was finally released from it.

It may have been a rock. Some nights I thought it might be a bundle of clothes. My most secret thought was that the burden was actually a small person who clung to his back. Probably a child like myself. A young girl or boy desperately holding onto this incompetent adult named Christian, waiting for him to realize that he or she was there.

Image via We Heart It

inside a family

A family, and a human being inside a family, puts together a picture of their past in voluntary and involuntary ways, carefully constructed, arbitrarily dictated. A mother remembers one particular summer gathering on a lawn, with iced lemonade in a jug, and everyone smiling - as she puts in the album the one photograph where everyone is smiling - and keeps the scowling faces of the unsuccessful snapshots hidden in a box. A child remembers one scramble over the Downs, or zigzag trot through the woods, out of many, many forgotten ones, and shapes his identity round it... and the memory changes when he is twelve, and fourteen, and twenty, and forty, and eighty, and perhaps never at any of those points represented precisely anything that ever happened.

- A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book

Image found here