True Love IV - Safe

When someone loves you, they say your name in a different way. You know your name is safe in their mouth

Child's answer to the question "What does love mean?" shared by Tara Brach.

Preacher in the Grey Cap y la cuarta dimensión

¿Qué es la meditación? Fue lo primero que dijo después de que me pidió permiso para sentarse en mi mesa -tan llena de mí-, sacándome del éxtasis creativo en el que me encontraba sumida.

En medio de la confusión sobre las intenciones de ese desconocido, I thought that the question could be addressed through an array of answers, a very wide color spectrum: but No, he said, No, la meditación es, y grábatelo bien: and then something I should remember very clearly and do but not in words: the journey through the self to some absolute truth which, in my opinion, is both absolute & absolutely relative: so many truths to learn, so many guises and shapes and sounds that make up an infinite number of different melodies through which that one truth manifests itself.

Being an absolute relativist myself, and having been trained in post-modern philosophical thought, I felt very uncomfortable with the word Truth, con su mayúscula tan imperativa. Still, I have never quite grasped that stuff about the 4th and 5th and 9th and etc. dimensions, something he did not promise to explain but kept talking about as though I understood it all: Reality is the fourth dimension. Piensa, repiensa, reflexiona, y... actúa? or another couple more non-negotiable instructions, which I unfortunately forgot rather soon, la sobreintelectualización being uno de los males de los cuales intento deshacerme en los últimos tiempos.

I do believe, though, he was right about something: Love is not a word, it is a fact. Factum, non verbum, haciendo gala de su erudición. Elaborando al respecto: Love is not love which makes a sound that does not reverberate. Anzi, Love is not a sound: it is an act. Como diría ese sabio y afamado cantante, El amor, amigues míes, es verbo, no sustantivo. Maybe, if I am misinterpreting correctly, the fourth dimension could be the dimension of the Reality of Love.

Aprende a amarte para que puedas amarnos: de todas las cosas que me ordenó que me aprendiera de memoria, ésta es la única que recuerdo con absoluta claridad.

Whatever is not there (We are glass house)

Your body 

Hurts me as the world hurts God

- "Fever 103'", Ariel, by Silvia Plath

For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers,

green roses, chrysanthemums, lilies: retrophilia,

philocaly, philomath, sarcophilous—all this love,

of the past, of beauty, of knowledge, of flesh; this is

catalogue and counter: philalethist, negrophile, neophile.

A man walks down the street, taps Newport

out against a brick wall and stares at me. Love

that: lygophilia, lithophilous. Be amongst stones,

amongst darkness. We are glass house. Philopornist,

philotechnical. Why not worship the demimonde?

Love that—a corner room, whatever is not there,

all the clutter you keep secret. Palaeophile,

ornithophilous: I, antiquarian, pollinated by birds.

All this a way to dream green rose petals on the bed you love;

petrophilous, stigmatophilia: live near rocks, tattoo hurt;

for me topophilia: what place do I love? All these words

for... love? (for me?), all these ways to demand belief

in symphily, to beguile and say let us (not) live near each other.

A personal stand on Reginald Dwayne Betts' "For you: antophilus, lover of flowers".

Love & Freedom I

Love is won when we're bound and still are free

Ever new songs

If our heart be not meant for love

Then why at dawn do you fill the skies

With ever new songs, ever new songs

If our heart be not meant for love?

Why this garland of fainting stars

Why those brilliant beds of flowers

Why does the breeze from the southern seas

Whisper secret words from ear to ear

If our heart be not meant for love?

Why, with longing so intense,

Does the sky gaze into my eyes

If our heart be not meant for love?

Why does my heart ever, ever restless wander in its madness

Launching its bark on the great ocean

Of which no one knows the other shore?

Jodi Prem Dile Na Prane, Rabindra Sangeet sung by Lopamudra Mitra

Known unnamed

There has to be a kind of speech

beyond naming, or even praise,  

a discipline                                  

that locates light and lets it go.   

- "Observer", by Nate Klug

It is not lust
(or at least not yet)
which only makes it more beautiful
and more confusing

It is your hand caressing
the cloth that keeps my arm
your face seeking closeness to mine
closeness alone

your hand resting on my bare skin
your whole body resting
beside my uninterrupted nakedness
just resting

even when I feel you awakening next to me
your hand rests
and remains
and keeps the stillness

No error of method: an invisibly unstable world

Not seeing me, not even looking,
K. on her silver cruiser charms her way

through the last long moment
of the changing light:

a rolled-up yoga mat in her basket
wobbling like a wild tiller as she pedals.

It feels illicit and somewhat right
to stand accross the intersection

without shouting
her name, or even waving.

According to the internet
tutorial, the fact that photons

turn into tiny loyal billiard balls
as soon as we start watching suggests

no error of method
or measurement, but rather,

as fas as anyone can tall,
an invisibly unstable world,

a shaking everywhere
that seeing must pin down and fix.

So, that morning I stumbled on you
out, alone, bending through

the traffic at Orange and Edwards Streets:
a someone else then

whom I, alone,
can never otherwise see-

there has to be a kind of speech
beyond naming, or even praise,

a discipline
that locates light and lets it go.

"Observer", by Nate Klug


(Corolario para Known unnamed)

True Love II - Quien te quiere bien, te hará sufrir

(o, de la legitimación de la violencia)

Falling madly (and therefore obsessively) in love with Edna

St. Vincent Millay... isn't she the most perfect Orlando in this picture? 

and so renascently romantic in this one...she would touch a hundred flowers 

and not pick one, 

and watch the wind bow down the grass

and the grass rise

with quiet eyes

and here perhaps thinking: we talk of taxes, and I call you friend; 

well, such you are, but well enough we know

how thick about us root, how rankly grow

those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,

that flourish through neglect, and soon must send

perfume so sweet upon us and overthrow

our steady senses

then perhaps in her mind beginning to seek Her, her other sister, 

her other soul: Grave Silence, lovelier 

than the three loveliest maidens,

whom evermore she follows wistfully, 

wandering Heaven and Earth

and Hell and the four seasons through.

and finally... before ever sweeping floors

or making dishes done,

she shall always be found

a-sunning in the sun!

Interested? Her bio and a few poems here, and a good collection of her work in digital format here.

Variación primera: "Afternoon on a Hill",  de Renascence

Variación segunda: Sonnet I, en Second April

Variación tercera: "Ode to Silence", also in Second April

Variación cuarta: "Portrait by a Neighbor", from A Few Figs from Thistles

Jewels and flowers

You were afraid of the god
sitting there among his jewels
and flowers and precious fabrics
all brightly colored
looking you straight in the eye
from the fake sky
of painted clouds

The god of fortune.
You were afraid of the god of good fortune.


But you also sang songs

(and claimed your right to freeedom
asking if I'd join you)

The Wrong Pronouns

You made me cry in cruel stations,

So I missed many trains. You married others

In plausible buildings. The subsequent son

Became my boss. You promised me nothing

But blamed me for doubting when who wouldn’t.

If  I knew how to please you — who have found

Out my faults. In dreams I’m wild with guilt. Have pity

Kill it. Then, when I’ve lost all hope,

Kiss me again, your mouth so open — 

I’d give anything for one more night — 

That I go without thought. Don’t bite. No,

Mark me. My husband already knows

Exactly what owns me.

Gwyneth Lewis, Fooled Me for Years with the Wrong Pronuns

Et en plus...

All'urgenza che preme io rispondo con il tuo nome

Riconoscersi e danzarsi
spendendo il tempo che naviga in contro
All'urgenza che preme
io rispondo con il tuo nome

Sempre con il tuo nome

je ne se rien de l'amour

mais je suis qu'il n'aime pas hésite

(ouvre ta bouche et place mon nom dedans
laisse-le là sur la langue)




(words, both written and sung: Rupa and the April Fishes': C'est moi et Maintenant)

What blame to us if the heart live on (or a kitten in the wilderness, or, we can still love the world)

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step, and know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, and all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

And through all sound of gaiety and quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”.

Music for mermaids (ou à la recherche du J. A. P. perdu)

                                                                                       There was nothing in our hands

                                                                                       no history      

                                                                                       no waiting, no memory

                                                                                       no fate

                                                                                       there was only one moment

                                                                                       only one moment

                                                                                       our hearts were on fire

                                                                                       and it burned in our bones.

                                                                                          -Our Hearts, Firehorse

An indeed there was no time
to wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?"
There was time to turn back and ascend the stair,
Time to disturb the universe
with a hundred visions and decisions
that no revisions could reverse.
Time for you and time for me.

For either of us could be Hamlet,
and we've both had our prophet.
We did not let the moment of our greatness flicker,
we just bit off the matter with a smile,
we squeezed the universe into a ball
and rolled it towards some overwhelming question,
We each said: "I have been Lazarus, come from the dead,
I could tell you all, but I shall not tell you all."

And it was worth it, after all, it was worth while
when, settling a pillow by each other's head
we did not need to say: "That is what I mean,
indeed, that is it".

And in short, we were not afraid.

Whom had he loved, what had he loved, he asked himself in a tumult of emotion, until now?

He had indeed just brought his feet together about six in the evening of the seventh of January at the finish of some such quadrille or minuet when he beheld, coming from the pavilion of the Muscovite Embassy, a figure, which, whether boy's or woman's, for the loose tunic and trousers of the Russian fashion served to disguise the sex, filled him with the highest curiosity. The person, whatever the name or sex, was about middle height, very slenderly fashioned, dressed entirely in oyster-coloured velvet, trimmed with some unfamiliar greenish-coloured fur. But these details were obscured by the extraordinary seductiveness which issued from the whole person.  Images, metaphors of the most extreme and extravagant twined and twisted in his mind.    He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds;  he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together. 

Virgina Woolf's, Tilda Swinton's and Sally Potter's Orlando

A word which is not

                                                                              ...the whole room swells

                                                                              with the scent of cinnamon & desire.

                                                                              How imprecise the smell of desire.

                                                                              -Mathew Nienow, "Ode to the Belt Sander 

                                                                               & This Cocobolo Sapwood"

To forge a word
                           which is not
to make it out of someone else's breath
to open up and give it a home
                                                 inside
to keep it unspoken among blankets
where there is no room for fear of pleasure
no room for thought

If anything, it would have to be the name of a scent
                                                                                  and of its alchemy
lavender turning into something incandescent and sharp
like cinnammon
                         or crimson red

or a thousand different glasses reflecting one same flame

A form of compassionate love

Have you heard the Taoist tale of the Taming of the Harp?

Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lung Men (the Dragon Gorge of Honan) stood a Kiri Tree, a veritable king of the forest. It reared its head to talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver dragon that slept beneath. And it came to pass that a mighty wizard made of this tree a wondroues harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest musicians. For long the instrument was treasured by the Emperor of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings. In response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they fain would sing. The harp refused to recognise a master.

At last came Pai Ya, the prince of harpists. With tender hand he carressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an unruly horse, and softly touched the chords. He sang of nature and the seasons, of high mountains and flowing waters, and all the memories of the tree awoke! Once more the sweet breath of string played amidst the branches. The young cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the budding flowers. Anon were heard the dreamy voices of summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain, the wail of the cuckoo. Hark! a tiger roars, - the valley answers again. It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and through the snow-filled air swirl flocks of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with fierce delight.

Then Pai Ya changed the key and sang of love. The forest swayed like an ardent swain deep lost in thought. On high, like a haughty maiden, swept a cloud bright and fair; but passing, trailed long shadows on the ground, black like despair. Again the mode was changed; Pai Ya sang of war, of clashing steel and trampling steeds. And in the harp arose the tempest of Lung Men, the dragon rode the lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through the hills. In ecstasy the Celestial monarch asked Pai Ya wherein lay the secret of his victory. "Sire," he replied, "others have failed because they sang but of themselves. I left the harp to choose its theme, and knew not truly whether the harp had been Pai Ya or Pai Ya were the harp."

(or, how not to sing merely of oneself)

From The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura

After a while

I wonder... after a while, does love remain love, or does it become a circumstance?