Tuesday, September 30, 2008

nice cd cover # 7


Radiohead - In Rainbows

Sunday, September 28, 2008

it's long and beautiful and worth it (parts of this reminded me of my post 'Planets, Oceans', too)

"But I have seen the City do an unbelievable sky. Redcaps and dining-car attendants who wouldn't think of moving out of the City sometimes go on at great length about country skies they have seen from the windows of trains. But there is nothing to beat what the City can make of a nightsky. It can empty itself of surface, and more like the ocean than the ocean itself, go deep, starless. Close up on the tops of buildings, near, nearer than the cap you are wearing, such a citysky presses and retreats, presses and retreats, making me think of the free but illegal love of sweethearts before they are discovered. Looking at it, this nightsky booming over a glittering city, it's possible for me to avoid dreaming of what I know is in the ocean, and the bays and tributaries it feeds: the two-seat aeroplanes, nose down in the muck, pilot and passenger staring at schools of passing bluefish; money, soaked and salty in canvas bags, or waving their edges gently from metal bands made to hold them forever. They are down there, along with yellow flowers that eat water beetles and eggs floating away from thrashing fins; along with the children who made a mistake in the parents they chose; along with slabs of Carrara pried from unfashionable buildings. There are bottles too, made of glass beautiful enough to rival stars I cannot see above me because the citysky has hidden them. Otherwise, if it wanted to, it could show me stars cut from the lamé gowns of chorus girls, or mirrored in the eyes of sweethearts furtive and happy under the pressure of a deep, touchable sky.

But that's not all a citycape can do. It can go purple and keep an orange heart so the clothes of the people on the streets glow like dance-hall costumes. I have seen women stir shirts into boiled starch or put the tiniest stitches into their hose while a girl straightens the hair of her sister at the stove, and all the while heaven, unnoticed and as beautiful as an Iroquois, drifts past their windows. As well as the windows where sweethearts, free and illegal, tell each other things."


- Toni Morrison, Jazz

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

song of the day (obscured by clouds)

Ludovico Einaudi - Fly


(it's dark here. shun light.

just a few rhythmic piano notes. they’re in minor.

they get company. but these newer notes only emphasize. they do nothing but sculpt the negative space around this stretched-out, claustrophopic solitude. they repeat themselves. vicious and tender.

we hope light. and somewhere, light is breathing. telling us we’re there. telling us we're here. we’re not forgotten. here, in the darkness. where we shun ourselves. where we must be winter.

but no note rises. they fall, all of them. fall, and disappear. until nothing is left. and that empty residue embraces us.

just a brief flicker of hope again. there is an echo? there is an echo.

a repeat. a rhythm.

how can we think of the sky when all we see is this? when all we see is a room within a room within a room?

i hide between these notes, look for a place, a niche, where i cannot be found by myself any more. but the notes disappear. they fall. fall and disappear.

somewhere, someone is screaming. muffled voices. how i wish to be inside my head. how i am inside my head. everything becomes an echo. everything becomes momentum. but there is no beginning. only the echo. only the momentum.

only the scream now; only.

and i think. hope. yes, these are notes in minor. but we’re not forgotten.)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

happiness # 39

hot air balloons against an evening sky.

it's true



Forget


These will be the first true words
I have written about you. Stay

I was not here before. When my
hands looked for my face

You put your hand on me, looked
at me like I existed. How could you be


wrong


You spoke to me like I could
hear, understand. Why

Tell me I'm beautiful. It's all
I ever want to hear again. From you


From you


When my hands looked for my face
they felt thin air. Cold

This is how you created me:
You were here. I am here

This is what you started; I am
what was begun. I breathe now


You gave me such deep thoughts


I look for a place in your
shadow, to rest

And I think that maybe
things might be


okay

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Monday, September 15, 2008

be loved. please. be loved.

"Resolve, he thought. That was all it took, and no motherless gal was going to break it up. No lazy, stray pup of a woman could turn him around, make him doubt himself, wonder, plead or confess. Convinced of it, that he could do it, he threw his arm around Sethe's shoulders and squeezed. She let her head touch his chest, and since the moment was valuable to both of them, they stopped and stood that way--not breathing, not even caring if a passerby passed them by. The winter light was low. Sethe closed her eyes. Paul D looked at the black trees lining the roadside, their defending arms raised against attack. Softly, suddenly, it began to snow, like a present come down from the sky. Sethe opened her eyes to it and said, 'Mercy.' And it seemed to Paul D that it was--a little mercy--something given to them on purpose to mark what they were feeling so they would remember it later on when they needed to.

Down came the dry flakes, fat enough and heavy enough to crash like nickels on stone. It always surprised him, how quiet it was. Not like rain, but like a secret."


- Toni Morrison, Beloved

happiness # 38

i've said it before, but i'll say it again.

pure, undistilled moonlight. like bathing in a halo of ice. how wonderful is it that there can be shadows at night, drawn by that second-hand, but not at all inferior sunlight meekly thrown upon us by our closest neighbor? and why does the moon always seem to be weeping, even when she is so beautiful? so many questions. please leave them unanswered.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

at night, i am king


(and the night shall be my queen)

happiness # 38

riding my bike over suburban, dried, fallen leaves. they crunch so satisfyingly.

Monday, September 08, 2008

i am the rain

It was a rain that never stopped
it flung itself blindly
against moaning cold windows
building a wall of water
like a moat upright

I saw how the water on the windows
fell on me, too
as a streetlight shone and threw
ghostly drops on my skin
they were like eyes
while I listened to the drums
on the glass, wanting to get in
wanting to escape the night

I could not let them enter
those drums
They were too loud for me,
too scary. I built a hole,
a cave
in my bed and held
my breath and my knees
as the rain fell like hail
on the cold hard moaning glass
in my bed

Sunday, September 07, 2008

happiness # 37

today an old man (he must been around eighty) smiled at me for no apparent reason. i smiled back and thought about how i ought to write this down as happiness # 37 on my blog.


but five minutes later, i met him again and we laughed out loud.

let's change. let's cry for no reason. let's do because we want to do. let's never stand still again, unless it changes us.

"Me, man alive, I am a very curious assembly of incongruous parts. My yea! of today is oddly different from my yea! of yesterday. My tears of tomorrow will have nothing to do with my tears of a year ago. If the one I love remains unchanged and unchanging, I shall cease to love her. It is only because she changes and startles me into change and defies my inertia, and is herself staggered in her inertia by my changing, that I can continue to love her. If she stayed put, I might as well love the pepper-pot."

- D. H. Lawrence, Why the Novel Matters

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

happiness # 36

i came home at around a quarter past midnight. heard a familiar sound. it was a neighborhood cat i befriended some time ago, trying to draw my attention. i sat down on the pavement. we played for a quarter of an hour, or longer. together in the night. sometimes distracted by cars passing, then playing again. i wish i could purr like her. then i stood up. she walked with me. then we said goodbye. i think we like each other.

Monday, September 01, 2008

poem of the day


The Negro Speaks of Rivers



I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its
muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


- Langston Hughes


(you might need some context. if so: look it up.)