The Nightingale Doth Sing VI - Blanks (versión censurada)

One day it will happen
One day it will all come true
One day when you're ready
One day when you're up to it.
I can feel it.
-Björk, One day

...even now, as the slugs begin their sluggish
withdrawal - each complete in love and lust;
each mother and father to what they've made
together; each alone, content, and free.
-Conversation with Slugs and Sarah, Jennifer Chang

I had a dream.
We were ourselves. We were not ourselves.
We inhabited our bodies.
They were possessed. By ancient eyes:

I am here. You are here.
Your lips steal an ancient longing from my lips.
Your mouth speaks of old yearnings to my mouth.
Your tongue feeds that never forgotten thirst on my neck.
Your hands press long kept desires unto my body.

I open up.
I let you summon me.
I let you shape me
into who I want to be:

Flesh that feels your flesh
Flesh that feeds on your flesh
Flesh that nests your flesh

I have you. You have me.
I hold you. You hold me.

We remember.
We wonder about a past
that could've been a mutual future.
Yet we prefer the now.
The many pleasures of the now.


When I woke up the first time
I knew you were still there
So I smiled before I opened my eyes:

You tuck me in
Before you leave.
Before you leave
I reassure you:
You are free.

The second time I woke up
I had new memories of you.
To fill in the blanks.

The Garden IV - Rosas como estrellas

¿Que es esto? ¡Prodigio! Mis manos florecen.

Rosas, rosas, rosas a mis dedos crecen.

Mi amante besóme las manos, y en ellas,

¡oh gracia! brotaron rosas como estrellas.

Y voy por la senda voceando el encanto

y de dicha alterno sonrisa con llanto

y bajo el milagro de mi encantamiento

se aroman de rosas las alas del viento.

Fragmento de El dulce milagro de  Juana de Ibarbourou

Les mots V - A painter using his stroke

Words 

     after all

are syllables just

and you put them

     in their place

     notes

     sounds

a painter using his stroke

     so the spot

where the article

     an umbrella

     a knife

we could find

     in its most intricate

     hiding

slashed as it was with color

     called “being”

     or even “it”

Passage, by Barbara Guest

Through the looking glass VI - Su propia imagen

No hubiera podido decir si había pasado mucho tiempo o poco, cuando la Hija de la Luna le tapó los ojos con la mano.

- ¿Por qué me has hecho esperar tanto? - oyó que le preguntaba -. ¿Por qué me has obligado a ir al Viejo de la Montaña Errante? ¿Por qué no viniste cuando te llamé?

Bastián tragó saliva.

- Porque... - pudo decir abochornado -, creí que... por muchas razones, también por miedo... Pero en realidad me daba vergüenza, Hija de la Luna.

Ella le retiró la mano y lo miró soprendida.

- ¿Vergüenza? ¿De qué?

- Bueno - titubeó Bastián-, sin duda esperabas a alguien digno de ti.

- ¿Y tu? - preguntó ella-. ¿No eres digno de mí?

- Quiero decir - tartamudeó Bastián, notando que enrojecía-, quiero decir alguien valiente y fuerte y bien parecido... un príncipe o algo así... En cualquier caso, no alguien como yo.

Había bajado la vista y oyó cómo ella se reía de nuevo de aquella forma suave y cantarina.

- Ya ves- dijo él-: también ahora te ríes de mí.

Hubo un silencio muy largo, y cuando Bastián se decidió por fin a levantar los ojos, vio que ella se había inclinado hacia él, acercándosele mucho. Tenía el rostro serio.

- Quiero enseñarte algo, Bastián - dijo-. ¡Mírame a los ojos!

Bastián lo hizo, aunque el corazón le latía y se sentía un poco mareado.

Y entonces vio en el espejo de oro de los ojos de ella, al principio pequeña aún y como muy lejana, una figura que poco a poco se fue haciendo mayor y cada vez más clara. Era un chico, aproximadamente de su edad, pero delgado y de maravillosa hermosura. Tenía el porte gallardo y apuesto, y el rostro noble y varonil. Parecía un joven príncipe. Lo más hermoso del joven eran sus manos, que parecían finas y distinguidas pero, sin embargo, insólitamente vigorosas.

Pasmado y lleno de admiración, Bastián contempló aquella imagen. No se cansaba de mirarla. Estaba a punto de preguntar quién era aquel hermoso hijo de rey, cuando lo sacudió como un rayo la idea de que era él mismo.

¡Era su propia imagen, reflejada en los ojos dorados de la Hija de la Luna!


Fragmento de La historia interminable, de Michael Ende.

Les mots IV - Let it be unnamed (Love & Freedom X)

Let it remain unnamed

Let it not know
the boundaries
of words
(There are no territories.

No walls.)

Let it be disdainful
of anything serving the purpose
of adverbs and adjectives
(they're nothing but preconceived ideas)

Let it be cautious
of Safe and Sane
and Must

Let it not know

the meaning of Power

the meaning of Pride

the meaning of Gain

Let it forge for itself another name
One far more legitimate,
far less misused, than Love

The Gardener V - Humble and grateful

I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. 

Reginald Farrer, In a Yorkshire Garden, 1909

The Nightingale Doth Sing V - That certain night

I may be right, I may be wrong,

But I'm perfectly willing to swear

That when you turned and smiled at me,

A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

When dawn came stealing up, all gold and blue

To interrupt our rendez-vous,

I still remember how you smiled and said,

"Was that a dream? Or was it true?"

Lyrics to A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

The Gardener IV - Heaven shall be here

- And what protection can the gardener afford this rose from the harsh elements of change?

- Under nature's eye all roses may bloom, althoug the elements may treat us cruely. Patience, care, and a little warmth from the sun are our best hope, your majesty.

Dialogue from the movie A little chaos.

Les Mots III - Un altro paradiso

And solitude, a wild solitude
’s reveald
- Childhood's Retreat, Robert Duncan

The word solitude
speaks of paradise:

Vast
calm lakes
filled with reflections
undisturbed

Winds dancing with leaves
free
and storms wild

Moonlight and sunlight
alter nothing
but the color of light

The word solitude
speaks of peace
It speaks of happiness

Love & Freedom IX - Thus duty does make cowards of us all

To wed, or not to wed; that is the question;

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The bills and house rent of a wedded fortune,

Or to say “nit” when she proposes,

And by declining save her. To wed; to smoke

No more; And have a wife at home to mend

The holes in socks and shirts

And underwear and so forth. ’Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To wed for life;

To wed; perchance to fight; ay, there’s the rub;

For in that married life what fights may come,

When we have honeymooning ceased

Must give us pause; there’s the respect

That makes the joy of single life.

For who would bear her mother’s scornful tongue,

Canned goods for tea, the dying furnace fire;

The pangs of sleepless nights when baby cries;

The pain of barking shins upon a chair and

Closing waists that button down the back,

When he himself might all these troubles shirk

With a bare refusal? Who would bundles bear,

And grunt and sweat under a shopping load?

Who would samples match; buy rats for hair,

Cart cheese and crackers home to serve at night 

For lunch to feed your friends; play pedro

After tea; sing rag time songs, amusing

Friendly neighbors. Buy garden tools

To lend unto the same. Stay home at nights

In smoking coat and slippers and slink to bed

At ten o’clock to save the light bills?

Thus duty does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of matrimony

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of chores;

And thus the gloss of marriage fades away,

And loses its attraction.

Almost Edgar Albert Guest's The Bachelor's Soliloquy.

Stars aren't always fixed

Story let me die

Get to the garden and leave your body outside

Story let me live

Stars aren't always known nor fixed for all children

(Who'll leave us better told?

Would have to say our names like they've never been before

Like the oldest book that gets new life with a new title

Rush right past the words to the symbol)

A little bit of almost New Myth, by Lia Ices

The androgynous self I - Incandescent and undivided

And I went on amateurishly to sketck a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man's brain, the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman's brain, the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all its faculties.

He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.

Fragment from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

Orpheus's doubt

There's something about Orpheus' descent to Hades I'd never quite understood. Actually, it doesn't really have to do with his descent but rather with his and Eurydice's ascent back to life. It all seemed pretty simple, didn't it? All he had to do was walk out. Walk out, and not look back. That was it. He is unable to accomplish that, though, we all know that, and Eurydice remains in death while Orpheo is expelled from Hades.

Yet, why was it so important that he didn't turn back? Why did Hades asked that of him? What could be so troublesome and tragic about it? I'd never quite understood that, until recently. I'd never quite understood something that perhaps ain't as simple as walking: doubt. And the potential harm doubt contains which, when released, when enacted, or reenacted, might take the shape of a bomb, and expand in destruction around it. In destruction of what was already achieved, and of the possibilities that were potentially kept within that.

In Monteverdi's aria, Eurydice sings, right after Orfeo has given in to doubt and turned around: Ah, vista troppo dolce e troppo amara! Cosí, per troppo amor dunque mi perdi? Something like Oh, too sweet and too sour a vision! Is it thus that, because of too much love, you lose me? And here lies the other conundrum that puzzled me: how can love, too much love, be a cause of loss?

While Orfeo walks, in Monteverdi's opera, he first congratulates himself and his lyre for being able to move every heart in the underworld and gain Eurydice back, and then begins to savour the sweet company of his beloved which is so near at hand. But he then begins to doubt the gods, he thinks they might've played a cruel joke on him, he begins to think that maybe Eurydice isn't really following him, or that maybe the furies will try to steal her away from him. He begins to doubt, and doubt allows fear in. Both doubt and fear are fed by that very same and immense love, which in conjunction give birth to the ghost of loss. Orpheus hears a noise, and his fear is aroused. Lastly, fear causes him to break his promise to Hades and turn around, already convinced and scared that someone might be taking Eurydice away from him. But, alas! It is no one but himself who causes this loss. It is his doubt, followed by his fear, who inflict in himself the great pain of loss.

Trust, on the other hand, would've come in handy.

Y, disculparán sus mercedes el somewhat tacky clip y el súper tacky fondo musical, però, Christoffer Boe tuvo a bien retomar el mito hacia el final de su film Reconstruction. Sírvanse ustedes ir al minuto 2:30.

Through the looking glass V - Espejos

Jugamos que tu eras yo era tu
tomaba tu cuerpo y soñé

que era a mi a quien tomaba

Los árboles nos ven dormir

a través de la ventana

Creo llorar:

Tu llanto moja mi cara

(Lo ángeles nos ven dormir

a través de la ventana)

Letra de Espejo, de Santa Sabina, escrita por Adriana Enciso