Dwr Budr

nice cd cover # 23

2012-01-25T14:09:00.003+01:00

L-Vis 1990 - Neon Dreams

a steppenwolf in new york city moonlight

2011-12-08T15:35:00.005+01:00

"I had had a bad year this last year, and for a while it got very bad; I may as well admit that for the first time in my life I had come to understand there was suicide in me. (Murder I had known was there for a long time.) It was the worst of discoveries, this suicide. Murder, after all, has exhilaration within it. I do not mean it is a state to entertain; the tension which develops in your body makes you sicken over a period, and I had my fill of walking about with a chest full of hatred and a brain jammed to burst, but there is something manly about containing your rage, it is so difficult, it is like carrying a two-hundred-pound safe up a cast-iron hill. The exhilaration comes I suppose from possessing such strength. Besides, murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.

But there is little which is sexual about suicide. It is a lonely landscape with the pale light of a dream and something is calling to you, a voice on the wind. Certain nights I would go leaden with dread because I could hear the chamber music tuning up, tuning up and near to pitch. (Yes, murder sounds like a symphony in your head, and suicide is a pure quartet.) I was approaching my forty-fourth year, but for the first time I knew why some of my friends, and so many of the women I had thought I understood, could not bear to be alone at night."

- Norman Mailer, An American Dream

line of lyrics # 7

2011-11-12T20:49:00.000+01:00

I'm all on my own
I've kinda lost
my throne
I'm absent from the scene
I'm searchin' for
a way in life, I'm lookin' for
a theme

A plan or a scheme, a road to a better place

I'm splashin' water
on my face,
Wake up lazy bones, please just
take me home
I'm out of my comfort zone
the liquids wearin' off
Now I just

feel alone
Now I just
feel alone

I know we fuss and fight yeah
a little bit
I've had a couple drinks well
a little bit
I'm beggin' you
Just carry me
home

I know we fuss
and fight here
a little bit

I've had a couple drinks
well a little bit

I'm beggin' you
Just carry me

home

I'm all on
my own

(Ghostpoet - Cash and Carry Me Home)

nice cd cover # 22

2011-10-09T12:24:00.003+02:00

Max Richter - Memoryhouse

beautiful sense of displacement

2011-09-03T10:53:00.002+02:00

biking at night, fully in that one place, with its darkened stillwarm evening quiet, the old streets. listening to "Coney Island Low" at the same time, the gulls, the soft crash of surf, and being there just as much. and in this dual existence, at two times and on two places, happiness, as if twofold me in one silence.

nice cd cover # 21

2011-07-20T17:02:00.002+02:00

Clearlake - Amber

nice words # 17

2011-07-19T20:19:00.001+02:00

coniferous

late night long time hazy lingerings, and memories

2011-06-22T00:48:00.005+02:00

"We both developed a passion for cigarettes. Tobacco is difficult to find here, and terribly expensive when you do, but Sam had made a number of black market connections while compiling the research for his book, and he was often able to find packs of twenty for as low as one or one-and-a-half glots. I am talking about real, old-fashioned cigarettes, the kind that are produced in factories and come in colorful paper wrappers with cellophane on the outside. The ones Sam bought had been stolen from the various foreign charity ships that had docked here in the past, and the brand names were usually printed in languages we could not even read. We would smoke them after it got dark, lying in bed and looking out through the big, fan-shaped window, watching the sky and its agitations, the clouds drifting across the moon, the tiny stars, the blizzards that came pouring down from above. We would blow the smoke out of our mouths and watch it float across the room, casting shadows on the far wall that dispersed the moment they formed. There was a beautiful transience in all this, a sense of fate dragging us along with it into unknown corners of oblivion. We often talked about home then, summoning up as many memories as we could, bringing back the smallest, most specific images in a kind of languorous incantation--the maple trees along Miro Avenue in October, the Roman numeral clocks in the public school classrooms, the green dragon light fixture in the Chinese restaurant across from the university. We were able to share the flavor of these things, to relive the myriad incidentals of a world we had both known since childhood, and it helped to keep our spirits up, I think, helped to make us believe that some day we would be able to return to all that."

- Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

nice words # 16

2011-06-16T10:36:00.002+02:00

widdershins

nice cd cover # 20

2011-04-13T13:11:00.001+02:00

Junip - Fields

the skylight of rock

2011-03-31T18:04:00.003+02:00

"There's also a story that claims the city wasn't really destroyed at all. Instead, through a charm known only to the King, the city and its inhabitants were whisked away and replaced by phantoms of themselves, and it was only these phantoms that were burnt and slaughtered. The real city was shrunk very small and placed in a cave beneath the great heap of stones. Everything that was once there is there still, including the palaces and the gardens filled with trees and flowers; including the people, no bigger than ants, but going about their lives as before -- wearing their tiny clothes, giving their tiny banquets, telling their tiny stories, singing their tiny songs.

The King knows what's happened and it gives him nightmares, but the rest of them don't know. They don't know they've become so small. They don't know they're supposed to be dead. They don't even know they've been saved. To them the ceiling of rock looks like a sky: light comes in through a pinhole between the stones, and they think it's the sun."

- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

a series of sea pics # 2

2011-03-13T03:02:00.003+01:00

pic of paris # 1

2011-02-23T23:11:00.003+01:00

line of lyrics # 6

2011-02-20T23:51:00.004+01:00

But I love
the bones of you.
That I will

never escape.

And it's you
and it's

May

And we're sleeping
through the day

And I'm
five years ago

and three thousand
miles away

And I

can't move my arm
for fear

that you will wake

And I'm five years
ago
and three thousand
miles

away.

(Elbow - The Bones of You)

nice cd cover # 19

2011-01-30T16:15:00.005+01:00

Johan Johansson - And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees

the air had a bite

2011-01-16T15:11:00.003+01:00

"I was beyond the traffic noise, the intermittent stir of factories across the river. So at least in this they'd been correct, placing the graveyard here, a silence that had stood its ground. The air had a bite. I breathed deeply, remained in one spot, waiting to feel the peace that is supposed to descend upon the dead, waiting to see the light that hangs above the fields of the landscapist's lament.

I stood there, listening. The wind blew snow from the branches. Snow blew out of the woods in eddies and sweeping gusts. I raised my collar, put my gloves back on. When the air was still again, I walked among the stones, trying to read the names and dates, adjusting the flags to make them swing free. Then I stood and listened.

The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.

May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."

- Don Delillo, White Noise

an end, once more. a start, even more.

2010-12-31T20:20:00.002+01:00

happiness # 61:

no matter what has happened, no matter what happens -- i'm still here. i'm always here. it's the one thing i can be sure of - to be here, to be now - and all else fades into oblivion. no, forget that. all else comes into existence, in the best way possible.

sadness # 9:

no matter what has happened, no matter what happens -- i'll always still be here. even though i sometimes want to be nowhere. (but that is just a responsability i have to take up.)

song of the day:

Goldfrapp - Clowns

nice words # 16:

hymn

nice cd cover # 18:

Pink Floyd - Meddle

nice words # 15

2010-12-21T22:10:00.001+01:00

poplar

nothingness; infinity

2010-12-16T00:31:00.005+01:00

"He is twenty-eight years old, and to the best of his knowledge he has no ambitions. No burning ambitions, in any case, no clear idea of what building a plausible future might entail for him. He knows that he will not stay in Florida much longer, that the moment is coming when he will feel the need to move on again, but until that need ripens into a necessity to act, he is content to remain in the present and not look ahead. If he has accomplished anything in the seven and a half years since he quit college and struck out on his own, it is this ability to live in the present, to confine himself to the here and now, and although it might not be the most laudable accomplishment one can think of, it has required considerable discipline and self-control for him to achieve it. To have no plans, which is to say, to have no longings or hopes, to be satisfied with your lot, to accept what the world doles out to you from one sunrise to the next--in order to live like that you must want very little, as little as humanly possible."

- Paul Auster, Sunset Park

learning to fly (lesson five)

2010-11-28T16:34:00.004+01:00

"As I lay on the Tarmac, my leg twisted at a horribly inappropriate angle, I looked up at the sky and waited for the ambulance to collect me. Above was a thick, overcast Stratus just like the one today: low, grey, oppressive...

Not long after, my friend's father, Neville Hodgkinson, told me something that seemed pertinent. He practises the eastern religion of Raja Yoga, as taught by the Brahama Kumaris, an organisation established in Hyderabad in 1937. Neville told me that clouds have a symbolic role for some yogis: they stand for the times when the yogis lose track of their spiritual journey. They symbolise the distractions that come between the yogis and the 'Supreme Light' of God.

He didn't say what these distractions were, but given that the Brahama Kumari yogis are teetotal vegetarians who avoid garlic (which they consider inflames the carnal passions) and practise a strict vow of celibacy, a few possibilities came to mind. Anyway, these distractions occasionally become so profound and sustained that the yogis lose track of their spiritual path altogether. They call it a 'storm of Maya'. It is one in which illusory ways of thinking and feeling block out the Supreme Light altogether. At times like these, he said, the yogis remind themselves that, beyond the clouds, the Sun never stops shining.

This brought to mind the revelation I had in an aeroplane as a child: that for the pilot it was, without exception, always a sunny day at work. Not only that, but the view from his office window was one of constantly varied and beautiful cloudscapes. So what about the rest of us, stuck down here, terrestial in our jobs and distracted in our spiritual paths? On a bleak, grey February morning, it can sometimes be hard not to yearn for the limpidity of direct sunlight."

- Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter's Guide

partay

2010-11-23T17:18:00.005+01:00

well, it's my birthday. so many nice things to think about. just because i decided to think about them today. only happy thoughts.

if i can manage this today, then so i should every single other day out there. and maybe i will.

you're never too old to learn something. as long as i'm me, i'll be me. no matter what the age.

(ps: old pic, found it on my laptop)

nice words # 14

2010-11-09T18:00:00.001+01:00

meadow

there's more

2010-10-30T01:05:00.007+02:00

it's strange how much, lately, i've been living merely through the words of others here, in this self-created virtual wordworld. i did it because--because i don't know. because this is how things go. as much as i still dislike the word 'blog' simply for its sound and the way it looks in writing, all clumsy and unwieldily rounded, a stately, plump word that in no way appears to assume the shape of its possible contents. but i divert. i started out writing, some four years ago, all that was me (or perhaps still is me), placing a spot in the world that is suspended between two places, between the flatness of my laptop screen and the depth of the multiverse depicted on it; suspended between the insides of my head and the outsides of this non-existent place embodied by ones and zeros. once i wrote differently than i do now; once, i guess, i thought differently than i do now. even though i am still the same person.

i have not been away. nor has the urge to pour myself out into these white letters on a (probably bothersome) black background diminished in any way. i pretend to think that i was preoccupied, that other things got in the way, but ask me to name some of those and i will not get very far. in fact, i was struck by a thought yesterday, while reading an essay by Jonathan Franzen; struck in a way made me almost literally sit up and see my face in the mirror of a page. the text does not even address this (or at least not directly), but one train of thought lead to another in my tired, late-night mind and i suddenly realized how goddamn valuable time really is, and how many ways i often find to waste it, waste it in the way that too many of us waste water, or trees, or oil, thinking that as long as there's more coming in the next moment, there will be no end to the stream and the present will be true for all subsequent moments too. it was then i saw myself in my last moments in life, thinking how much i would give for just one more day, one more hour, one more minute. a second. to do something meaningful with. and i am tired of waiting for that moment to realize how precious a single minute really is; i am tired of waiting an awful lot of minutes. this is not to say that procrastination is all i ever indulge in - far from it - but i allow myself too many moments of lethargy, of meaningless time--not even meaningful in the sense of deliberately doing nothing. and i want that to stop.

i made a promise to myself. that i would make better use of my time. and today, i tried to do so. like everything, it is hard to succeed from the first time. but i know i gained a very large bag of minutes today, a bag i would have missed out on on many other days. i also know that this will not always be so easy -- after all, how cripple is the mind when the body is defunct. but not trying would be worse, and i am happy even with the attempt alone, and the actuality of mindset it brings with it.

all this to say that, however useless this post might be to you, whoever might be reading this, it is meaningful to me. because i took my minutes, looked them over, and turned them into moments--real moments. because i meant them. that my intent translated itself into a blog post is just one way of manifesting things, and i am happy to have done so. in the same sense that i am happy just to have this public refuge, have it even when i just write quote after quote from the various things i read and which strike me as having value; i am happy to come here every now and then - truly come here - and wallow for just another moment in the warmth of the dirty water.

P.S.

"Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society--to help solve our contemporary problems--seems to me a peculiarly American delusion. To write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them: Isn't this enough? Isn't it a lot?"

- Jonathan Franzen, "Why Bother", in How to Be Alone

life underground and within; autumn.

2010-09-30T12:29:00.005+02:00

"The week before, Jake and I had played in his grandparents' garden. I raked leaves into piles and he helped me bag the leaves. The leaves were dry and marvellously light. I added armloads to the red and brown and gold crushed in the plastic sack; Jake picked up a single leaf and made a cautious, thrilled deposit. At one point he put on his superhero frown and charged a hillock of leaves. Wading into its harmless fire, he courageously sprawled. ' 'Ook, 'ook!' he screamed as he rolled in the leaves. I looked, and looked, and looked. Fronds of his yellow hair curled out from the hood's fringe onto his cheeks. He wore his purple quilted jacket, and his thermal khakis with an inch of tartan turn-up, and his blue ankle boots with the zip, and the blue sweater with the white boat, and - I knew this because I had dressed him - his train-infested underpants, and the red T-shirt he liked to imagine was a Spiderman shirt, and Old Navy green socks with rubbery lettering on the soles. We gardened together. I demonstrated how to use a shovel. When I dug up the topsoil, I was taken aback: countless squirming creatures ate and moved and multiplied underfoot. The very ground we stood on was revealed as a kind of ocean, crowded and immeasurable and without light."

- Joseph O'Neill, Netherland

pound for pound

2010-09-14T12:37:00.002+02:00

"Ingram did an echocardiogram. Eric was on his back, with a skewed view of the monitor, and wasn't sure whether he was watching a computerized mapping of his heart or a picture of the thing itself. It throbbed forcefully on-screen. The image was only a foot away but the heart assumed another context, one of distance and immensity, beating in the blood plum raptures of a galaxy in formation. What mystery he glimpsed in this functional muscle. He felt the passion of the body, its adaptive drive over geological time, the poetry and chemistry of its origins in the dust of old exploding stars. How dwarfed he felt by his own heart. There it was and it awed him, to see his life beneath his breastbone in image-forming units, hammering on outside him."

- Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

nice cd cover # 17

2010-08-17T15:33:00.001+02:00

The National - Boxer

happiness # 60

2010-08-15T19:35:00.001+02:00

the feeling of uncooked linguine in my hands, soft and elegant

listen

2010-06-28T15:36:00.003+02:00

VIRGIL: I can't pray. It must be Tuesday, one of my godless days.

BEATRICE: Then let's talk about God again on Friday. Until then, think of this: perhaps God is silent so that He might hear us better.

(Silence.)

- Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

the veracity of what ends

2010-06-24T18:50:00.004+02:00

"The road crossed a dried slough where pipes of ice stood out of the frozen mud like formations in a cave. The remains of an old fire by the side of the road. Beyond that a long concrete causeway. A dead swamp. Dead trees standing out of the gray water trailing gray and relic hagmoss. The silky spills of ash against the curbing. He stood leaning on the gritty concrete rail. Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence."

- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

happiness # 59

2010-06-23T14:11:00.003+02:00

the smell of olives, pungent, oily, strong, under trees. even though i don't eat them.

biking home at night

2010-06-20T17:41:00.003+02:00

the truth reveals itself.

unbindings

2010-04-10T15:15:00.003+02:00

"Or how he was once found on the Well-Regarded Rabbi's front lawn, bound in white string, and said he tied one around his index finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum to heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end could remember only the string."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

nice cd cover # 16

2010-04-01T14:25:00.002+02:00

Pearl Jam - Yield

learning to fly (lesson four)

2010-03-29T00:14:00.005+02:00

winds opposing you on the way to will always be winds joining you on the way back

even if they don't.

a series of sea pics # 1

2010-02-21T03:26:00.004+01:00

ripple-skinned beach (because i felt like it)

message to myself

2010-02-14T20:22:00.000+01:00

i embrace
everything that passes;
i embrace
that everything passes.

nice words # 13

2010-02-11T15:30:00.001+01:00

subterranean

song of the day (oh yes)

2010-02-07T00:04:00.006+01:00

Air - All I Need

(To remember this. From the first downwards. Opening.

It must come.

It moves, finds its own place. All sadness, smiling into flow. Small stream of what is.

Moody tones of new sunlight. Moving past; desert-born winds. Opens its arm around who i was, some time, some other time, and now still. It tells me who i will become. As i remember, and find back, and find back. And never fight back.

It knows me. We tumble on. I do not mind the sand it brings.

What we became; i so remember. Like the first summer i ever saw. It would tell me how all others were but follow-ups, trying to be. As much as. The first. Painting a palimpsest of green-feet blue. All cataclysms of one root.

As i was once. A different same. And needed so. To find me in here. And did.

As i was once. Me. And did not know if this would ever change. And yet the song. We were there. Ready to listen to. With eyes closed. Ready to touch. With hands near. Only the music. Low-angled shadows. Windows shining in through unbreakable yellow. And how i hoped to find. How i hoped to find. And knew the time would come, and stay. As i was once.

As i am still.

Along the blur of long-past midday.

A slow-falling afternoon, a non-descript day. It could be any day, but it can only be this one. Suspended, i would say. Suspended in the windless streets, the neverblown rooms. Hanging in the foothill of heat; a night that will never come. The simple melancholy moves.

There's the repeat. But only to take along with it. The streams no day can bear. The streams no day can bare. I move my feet so. In the shallow waters that tell. That this is right.

That this is how it should be. And that.

It will stay with me.)

as night in loved one

2010-01-28T22:45:00.001+01:00

nice cd cover # 15

2010-01-25T14:26:00.003+01:00

Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye

nice words # 12

2010-01-21T13:56:00.000+01:00

decipher

my ny

2010-01-14T14:30:00.003+01:00

happiness # 58

2010-01-12T22:53:00.001+01:00

a mood light sonata

post 300

2010-01-10T02:31:00.002+01:00

We get only so few shots at happiness. So few, in fact, that it seems strange we can ever get happy at all. Still, so many seem to succeed. So many seem to fail. But what it all comes down to, is the possibility of the moment, and the courage, oh so often the courage, to step up and move in the way the world does.

There are times when we are thankful for what rain falls on us. There are times when wind cuts our face and we believe it is happening only to us. In either case, we thank or curse a God, or the absence of a God. And smile or cry, and move on.

We are such frail and fragile creatures, that it is almost impossible to believe we still feel the urge to cut each other short of breath. We need so much space, and at the same time curl up inside ourselves so deeply that we contradict the very essence of location and space with our own thoughts.

And all of us - all of us - want the same thing. To feel in a way we cannot describe with words. We can only point at by-products, at symptoms of this state of happiness, of the things that cause them, but never the feeling itself. This, one scholar might argue, is exactly one of the reasons why we should feel happy about it. Another scholar, one from a more so-called 'exact' science, would find fault in this argument, and see the lack of definition as a lack of consolidation, and replace it with a fear that it might all be one giant mistake by the universe, tricking us, luring us into unknown territory. Thing is, both scholars still want the same thing.

We get only so few shots at happiness. A smile from a random girl at the other side of the street. Helping an old man pick up his groceries for no reason but to help him. Deep, true sunlight seeping through eyelashes and into your head. All of them brief flickers, all of them volatile, staying only in memory, making us crave for more. But without these shots, all would be lost. The desolate world would become nothing but a haven for those who had abandoned all hope in the first place, and would now see their certainties - which are, in truth, fears - confirmed. Brief flickers, short dashes, glimpses, soft, tuneless winds on a mirror of water, are all we have. And they might still feel as enough. If one can see them.

Most of this will become apparent only through hindsight, that crack in time that always leaves the door open to see but the threshold too high to cross.

Only so few shots at happiness. And still we throw them away more often than not. That we keep our lies to ourselves is worse enough, but keeping our truths to ourselves is unbearable. We smile in silence in hope of salvation out of the other's mouth, as the other awaits for salvation as well. And thus we all wait, and end up waiting alone. To die, to sleep -- no more?

Why then, why two hands if we do not reach? Why thousands of words if we do not speak? Why knowing all what is going on inside ourselves, why feeling all that we feel, if we do not act like these indisputable verities? Why don't we ever burst open with all that has been there, and will be there, and has been there? Why don't we, if all that we have, are but a few shots of happiness?

this night, still

2010-01-07T18:11:00.005+01:00

and here it ends again. no, forget that. here it begins--

2009-12-31T14:14:00.006+01:00

happiness # 57:
over the past year i've written 13 happiness-posts. this means there was, on average, at least one thing every month to be happy about.
and i had a spare.

moreover, it's been a year since i last wrote a 'sadness'-post. which is nice.

sadness # 8:
all that passes

song of the day:
Eels - Fresh Feeling

nice words # 11:
cataclysm

nice cd cover #14:

Moby - Wait for Me (deluxe edition)

cell pics # 3

2009-12-26T12:01:00.004+01:00

happiness # 56 / nice words # 10

2009-12-10T20:11:00.002+01:00

lavender

they're of poor quality and that's why i like them (cell pics # 2)

2009-12-02T23:45:00.007+01:00

more than nought

2009-11-30T17:43:00.006+01:00

"There, under white, crinkled sheets, between the soft shadows of a gray day, under days and days of hopeless care, lies a nine-year old human fragment, breathing almost carelessly, separated of all toxic smog that now belongs only to the city outside. The rhythm of her small, heaving chest could lull me to sleep every time and again, a sleep that is safer than any depthless ocean. She is my prayer.

But the truth is here, as well. This is how she lies here. This is how I lie.

Slowly, almost doubtingly, I approach her and put my cold hand on her sleepwarm, slightly moist forehead. Small traces of rest detach themselves from her face, and with the inertia of broken light she opens her eyes. For a brief flicker she is suspended between this world and the one she came from, only to enter the here and now fully, and with that, she smiles at me.

She reaches out with frail arms and I find my spot between them, take her in my protection and as my arms are two question marks around a fading sun, I kiss her gently on her warm cheek, and her breath smells of dull roses, and for a brief, passing moment I am happy, truly happy."

- Butcherflies

oi

2009-11-28T02:50:00.004+01:00

"You memorized all that?"
"Another advantage of a marijuana-free life. You might want to try it."
"Uh... try what, again?"

- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

nice cd cover # 13

2009-11-25T19:13:00.003+01:00

Ludovico Einaudi - Nightbook

song of the day (or a great part of my life so far)

2009-11-22T17:34:00.003+01:00

Tchaikovsky - Arab Dance (from The Nutcracker)

(it sweeps. oh yes it sweeps.

i always saw black water, deep. cold. even as a child i saw. all of this.

thoughts moving like plants underwater. a gentle serenity. brushing feathertails. it must be night. in the water.

some creek. i was here as a child already. because it has been here for so long. to revisit. always a great unknown, always embracing and letting go of that one particular cassette, old by now, black with a yellow sticker and on it, black letters. black paper-cut people i did not know yet.

so enthralled. an intrigue so vague it would stay with me for years.

and then to see Fantasia. and see the. dark, black. cold. water. and to believe how i was not the only one to see this. shared minds and translucent fishes.

yes, this water. of such an ink-color you'd think you could stir it like hardened cream, but where would your hand go?

what must lie between the pebbles and the sand, which i cannot see.

it is a smooth rhythm, jagging on, never hurting, like a march into. somewhere. it invites, and dances. goes on. like the water.

sideways of reed.

and then the oboe. that one, long-drawn oboe. the central stained bird gliding over the surface, or under it, among. everything parts aside, and lets it slide through. the oboe.

gently.

serene.

it sweeps.)

as light

2009-11-14T00:37:00.003+01:00

oh, momentless

to roll up in curves
that what my body
aspires to be

for it is how I lie.

and
fleeting
in all directions

if only to remain
motionless

For in the field
do not think
about the field.

learning to fly (lesson three)

2009-11-03T17:37:00.003+01:00

True faith isn't true faith if it isn't tested every once in a while.

nice cd cover # 12

2009-10-27T14:15:00.003+01:00

Editors - In This Light and On This Evening

happiness # 55

2009-10-26T19:37:00.001+01:00

memory

and the soft, autumnal nostalgia

that ensues.

once more, in black and white

2009-10-19T12:31:00.015+02:00

Hotel Existence

2009-10-11T19:51:00.004+02:00

"When the wind blew on him, he would inevitably laugh and start cursing, making a great fuss about it as he shook his stick at the elements. Even in the winter, his preferred haunt was Riverside Park, and he spent many hours sitting there in silence, never dozing off as I expected he would, but just listening, trying to follow the things that were going on around him: the birds and squirrels rustling among the leaves and twigs, the wind fluttering through the branches, the sounds of traffic on the highway below. I began carrying a nature guide with me on these trips to the park so that I could look up the names of shrubs and flowers when he asked me what they were. I learned to identify dozens of plants in this way, examining leaves and bud formations with an interest and curiosity I had never felt for these things before. Once, when Effing was in a particularly receptive mood, I asked him why he didn't live in the country. It was still rather early at that point, I think, late November or the beginning of December, and I hadn't yet grown afraid of asking him questions. The park seemed to give him such pleasure, I said, it was a pity he couldn't be surrounded by nature all the time. He waited a long moment before answering me, so long that I began to think he hadn't heard the question. 'I've already done it,' he said at last. 'I've done it, and now it's all in my head. All alone in the middle of nowhere, living in the wilderness for months, for months and months... an entire lifetime. Once you've done that, boy, you never forget it. I don't need to go anywhere. The moment I start to think about it, I'm back. That's where I spend most of my time these days--back in the middle of nowhere.' "

- Paul Auster, Moon Palace

my spot

2009-09-27T02:18:00.010+02:00

i wrote about it here. thought about Loomings all over again. went closer to the water now. almost a year ago. and the silence.

and a golden beetle rested on my arm for about ten minutes. in the sunshine together.

standstill

2009-09-21T00:00:00.001+02:00

Nothing roots here; all is a glimpse
this serene April lasts so long
and still nothing grows but the heat
We must be living in a monolith

Take us over the obstinate river; we'll close
our eyes and make them look like coins.
We have brought monks in our intentions
to cast off their pride

Nothing grows here; even the houses
seem no longer houses. The passing
of time carries an ill-born child
And the glimpse is like a monolith

the man of the crowd

2009-09-15T13:24:00.003+02:00

"Even to a boy it was clear he was not happy with himself, more inclined that morning to see the shadows than the sunlight. In time I would realize that this was his gift as much as it was the burden that would destroy him. He heard the groan of life in common things that other men scarcely noticed--a tree bent in the wind, a floorboard creaking, a trodden stair, a door eased shut, a bedspring, a house at night. He heard the sigh of life in leaf rustle, wing flutter, the flicker of gaslights, in pulling on his trousers, dragging a brush through his hair. There were times too when a trickle of steam spoke to him, the rain tumbling off roof shingles, a trill of laughter, steam from a teakettle, the way Virginia sipped her soup.

In all this and more he also found the pleasures of life, small pleasures, strophes, moments when the ubiquitous groans and sighs became almost comic to him, a cosmic joke. But this surcease never prevailed and scarcely lingered. He heard the darkness of approaching night, the rasp of Virginia's breath, and soon he was attuned once more to life's chorus of protest, its murmured song of misery."

- Randall Silvis, On Night's Shore

happiness # 54

2009-09-09T12:19:00.002+02:00

a rainbow-colored kite

learning to fly (lesson two)

2009-08-28T22:32:00.003+02:00

never look down. because that is not where you want to go.

always look up. because that is where you want to go.

happiness # 53

2009-08-28T02:35:00.017+02:00

(quality is not fantastic because taken with my cellphone. this does not change the moment, though.)

a daywatch into night

2009-08-23T21:46:00.008+02:00

Distill Life

mad, monochrome road
lie resting under
last day's mirror slumber
never something to tell
lingering the day like silent
and somewhere a City.

such brown paper bags
swirl sullen question marks
on unseen air
unless a chariot
of winds and horses

wanting--
waiting for
rain
to willow and
ornament

and somewhere a City.

I once heard you there.
You whispered storm clouds.
Now. Distill, be still, still so
sorrows dimensionless
paste in photographs
for all the past to see

We give up the ghost
leaving long dead tracks
behind us; no griefs, no fears
nor eyes to feel

We need no roads
for when to stand
- stupefied, solitary -
only image, never daring
to beyond

then somewhere
a City

(picture by Lien Van der Maelen)

all in all

2009-08-14T01:18:00.005+02:00

i am here; this is where i am right now.

this is my life so far.

to think of it.

all those moments i remember. all those moments i do not remember right now. all those moments i cannot remember ever again, but will dream of, some time in some twilight night.

this, here, now, is my life so far. all twenty-six years of it.

i look back, and think. i look forward, and think.

i think i haven't done too bad so far.

this, i can realize. and smile.

things to come, things to be, things to pass. things i will remember, things i will wish never to remember, things i will feel and never feel again. happy moments, sad moments. moments in which i cry. moments in which i laugh. moments with bare feet. moments with shoes. moments which i will want never to have happened. moments i will never want to give back to life but rather keep them to relive, and relive.

this is my life so far. all twenty-six years of it.

this, i can realize. and smile.

more to come now.

sun of no religion

2009-07-07T18:43:00.002+02:00

wish # 1

2009-07-05T15:41:00.002+02:00

to be able, one day, to accurately describe the smell of rain on wood.

touch hands; i write. Elysian--think not.

2009-07-04T18:02:00.005+02:00

and so, a field. perhaps starless; perhaps clouds. i think a melody. and how to become. all is so very much--here. i want my naked feet. never to perturb. yes; they are here too. i am all on grass. all.

to gaze, to graze.

of no particular horizon. flowers as memories. i would love to. reach petals. if only i. yes. reach petals. for let it unfold. expand, illuminate, commemorate. such as is this life. somewhere a melody. and shine.

words of no order. but to meander, and to mean. enclose, unfold. old hands to open--all hands to open. and like swallows. so low, and drawn across. swift, bold lines. for truth. as on summer evenings.

let be, what think. let continue, what is. a pasture of no name.

a landscape to expand.

to find myself here. starless perhaps. but luminiscence. as if to transcend. i wish no. horizon. only these. feet. and feet. and to see. i see.

until all. field.

confine, inhale

2009-06-22T17:37:00.002+02:00

No one here to know; no one
here to see. I hide you

into me. For fragile is
beacon and siren
of valuable. I shall confine you

to no words. Simply an unnameable
room for you to run
small fingers over my back;
a palace that is glass

only to you and me.

line of lyrics # 5

2009-06-21T22:12:00.002+02:00

All this time I've loved you
and never known your face
All this time I've missed you
and searched this human race

Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm

- safe in your soul
bathed in your sighs -

(Lamb - Gorecki)

nice cd cover # 11

2009-06-18T02:31:00.001+02:00

Beth Orton - Daybreaker

poem of the day (weekend)

2009-06-16T00:22:00.002+02:00

632

The Brain - is wider than the Sky -
For - put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You - beside -

The Brain is deeper than the sea -
For - hold them - Blue to Blue -
The one the other will absorb -
As Sponges - Buckets - do -

The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As Syllable from Sound -

- Emily Dickinson

thus down

2009-06-14T16:47:00.005+02:00

Another Quiet

This is what I
hunger for: a cold place
of no gaze. Like an
open plain, under no moon
where I turn in circles
until I find that spot
in the eye of my spiral feet

to sit.

tide, and retide

2009-06-11T13:38:00.001+02:00

"I think the sea has thrown itself upon me and been answered, at least in part, and I believe I am a little changed—not essentially, but changed and transubstantiated as anyone is who has asked a question and been answered."

- Hart Crane, in a letter to Waldo Frank

a picture of me, some nine years ago

2009-06-10T01:21:00.001+02:00

happiness # 52

2009-06-08T10:37:00.004+02:00

a deep sleep. woke up. opened my window. opened my curtain.

lay down again, in order to absorb the first airs of day. but so much light?

in my entire room, a single small square of sunlight, exactly on my pillow. nowhere else.

a reserved spot.

oh, to feel this. as if warmth alone. as if face nothing more. to be highlighted, to lay in that tiny field of soft.

defined by sunlight.

Ondes Martenot

2009-06-07T23:55:00.001+02:00

And sing, and sing, and like icy oceans sing
like Odysseus in a waxen sleep not dream
the sounds of cerebral nowhere
- invisible palaces of wind -

nice cd cover # 10

2009-06-05T12:25:00.000+02:00

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast

perchance to dream

2009-06-04T12:10:00.004+02:00

"I now recognized them as familiar aspects of a dream life: that one moment you are here, and another you are there.

Very familiar. I could estimate I had spent perhaps a third of my life asleep, and a large proportion of that time must have been spent dreaming.

So: I knew dream life. In fact, in a way, I was actually comfortable with it. Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world--just no more confusing than any other.

(...)

Waking was the most reliable part of a dream, as built into dreams as death is to life.

You dream, you wake: you live, you die.

Somehow, it occured to me that if you die, you wake.

(...)

Waking is rising: You wake up, not down."

- Alex Garland, The Coma

happiness # 51

2009-05-31T13:12:00.004+02:00

this, here. as i am sitting here. here; now. yes, now.

silly sunglasses on my head. bubble blower next to me. clouds embracing with tiny-tall hands the so light sky. distant music; and i am here.

remembrances of Catcher in the Rye; reading it, warm April summertime.

yes it was.

parks in my head. some water. a stream.

Pink Floyd's Cluster One.

oh, my head loves to turn and spin. 'nomad soul' sounds so heavy. let's just call it a seabound soul then. but with body as shore, i love to embark, and return. fingers on skin; clouds on veiled cirrus blue.

long, slow notes. a small smile unexpected. a day on which to land, and fall like deeply red leaves. songs such as no radio plays.

like bubbles.

blow bubbles.

sure, none of this might make sense. all these things are just me, and perhaps even hermetic (i suddenly see the word 'hermit' in the word 'hermetic', for no apparent reason). but there is one single, universal principle that could account for any of you as well. this, here. here; now. yes, now.

and here.

happiness # 50

2009-05-29T01:57:00.001+02:00

every time i live through an intense moment of happiness, a bird flies through the sky.

or even more than one.

happiness # 49

2009-05-28T00:54:00.001+02:00

one red balloon.

message of the day

2009-05-26T15:29:00.001+02:00

(here i am. not waiting; still. arms as riverbeds. never to cross the water.)

line of lyrics # 4

2009-05-25T13:06:00.003+02:00

If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
for I've never known completeness

like being here

Wrapped in the warmth of you
loving every breath of you
Still my heart this moment

or it might burst

(Lamb - Gorecki)

poem of the day (Ghent, above the water)

2009-05-18T16:56:00.001+02:00

Serre d'ennui

Ô cet ennui bleu dans le coeur!
Avec la vision meilleure,
Dans le clair de lune qui pleure,
De mes rêves bleus de langueur!

Cet ennui bleu comme la serre,
Où l'on oit closes à travers
Les vitrages profonds et verts,
Couvertes de lune et de verre,

Les grandes végétations
Dont l'oubli nocturne s'allonge,
Immobilement comme un songe,
Sur les roses des passions;

Où de l'eau très lente s'élève,
En mélant la lune et le ciel
En un sanglot glaque éternel,
Monotonement comme un rêve.

- Maurice Maeterlinck

and now, in color

2009-05-12T12:58:00.002+02:00

line of lyrics # 3

2009-05-11T18:30:00.003+02:00

All that no one sees
you see
What's inside of me

Every nerve that hurts
you heal
Deep inside of me

You don't have to speak--
I feel.

(Björk - Joga)

revisited

2009-05-08T02:43:00.000+02:00

Remember

Those were the first true words
I had written about you. To stay

You were not here before. When my
hands looked for my face

You put your hands on me, looked
at me and I existed. How could you be so

right

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

To tell me I'm beautiful. It's all
I ever want to hear again. And again

From you

When my hands looked for your face
they felt thin air. Until

This was how you created me:
You were there. We are here

This is what you started; I am
what is begun. I breathe still

Breathe such deep thoughts

I look for a place in your
shadow, to stay

And I know that
things will be

okay

hold still, it's a windmill

2009-05-06T13:13:00.002+02:00

fall

2009-04-30T11:30:00.005+02:00

Disarm

Here: how I
hold my own arms
around me.

To lower them, and stand

Not with eyes closed nor
with words in air, to bring.
Not with anything but

my skin.

line of lyrics # 2

2009-04-29T12:37:00.001+02:00

Emotional landscapes
They puzzle me

Then the riddle gets solved
And you push me up to this

State of emergency
How beautiful to be

State of emergency
Is where I want to be

(Björk - Joga)

In Rainbows

2009-04-27T12:34:00.001+02:00

In Rainbows

yes, clouds

2009-04-24T22:11:00.002+02:00

(one which already appeared here, now slightly restyled)

and, clouds

2009-04-23T00:01:00.003+02:00

more, clouds

2009-04-22T03:00:00.002+02:00

again, clouds

2009-04-21T01:31:00.000+02:00

still, clouds

2009-04-19T15:59:00.002+02:00

where there was nought

2009-04-16T18:29:00.003+02:00

"V.

Lily is asleep now. I caress her hairs once more—something she does not allow me to do when she is awake, because it reminds her of how these hairs will fall out, blown away like dandelion seeds. I am not sure she understood much of the story I told her, but it does not matter. To her, the important thing is that the stories are there; that there are possibilities; that I can create things where first there was nought. That she can believe in this, and sleep.

I often think of the sound of her breathing. At night. It is so rhythmic that it could very well be a distant, innocent ocean embracing and releasing sand in warmth. Here is peace. Quiet. I want to spread myself out over the world as a blanket. Spread myself out over Lily and protect. Here, now; forever. She is so small.

I imagine a few rays of sun slicing through the thick chemical air outside, reaching her face, her hands. Here is warmth.

Embrace, and release."

- Butcherflies