Koh Phi Phi Le, Krabi, Thailand, October 2011
PAPERCLAY
A ring of gold and the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.
- The Couriers, Sylvia Plath
MORE LUCID, LESS FUTILE
What matter? Why, it will not hurt at all,
Our youth is supple, and the world is sand.
- Three Rompers, Wilfred Owen
THOSE DAYS
in the dream i stood at the top of the chilly church tower looking down upon twisted domes and the sad cypress while someone chanted a melody which went on forever, insistently iambic – the night wind swirls in-the sky and sings – pablo neruda.
art history left me with an inordinate suspicion of cypress trees (van gogh) and all postmodern art (duchamp, mostly) but the church tower used to be the bane of my careless mind – in expurgating all i knew about the eleven stars, the horizon, brushstrokes et al onto examination sheets i would invariably leave this “compositionally essential” building out everytime, as if through subconscious force of habit. i went through academia largely in a narcopletic stupor, allowing habit to propel me from classes through mistakes to graduation.
it feels scary to be evaluating such a huge part of your life in a general, hazy retrospect. with adulthood it seems comes the cheery acknowledgement that the entity “those days” exist, and slowly the dreadful acceptance that “those days”, of the infinitely carefree and fresh lifestyles you would define yourself by, become increasingly nebulous, like waking from dreams.
1918
You don’t need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, simply wait. Don’t even wait. Be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
~ Franz Kafka
i return perpetually to this paragraph when i am helpless and frustrated (thankfully rarely) ; it is so luminiscent.
