The Garden III - Searching for the garden

- Where's the door?
If you know the way, show me.

The Gardener II - Eden and Chaos

- Is this abundance of chaos... is this your Eden?

- My search for it.

Dialogue from the movie A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman. 

Les mots I - Palabras como cavernas

Line the word caves
with panther skins,

widen them, hide-to and hide-fro,
sense-hither and sense-thither,

give them courtyards, chambers, drop doors
and wildnesses, parietal,

and listen for their second
and each time second and second
tone.

Paul Celan's Line the word caves, translated by Pierre Jorris

The Nightingale Doth Sing III - On the viewless wings of Poesy

Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! Tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays.

Fragments of Ode to a Nigthingale, by John Keats

Las Horas X - El bosque de relojes

El maestro Hora volvió a sonreír.

- No, querida niña. Yo sólo soy el administrador. Mi obligación es dar a cada hombre el tiempo que le está destinado.

- ¿No podrías organizarlo de tal manera -preguntó Momo-, que los ladrones de tiempo no pudieran robar más a los hombres?

- No, eso no puedo hacerlo -contestó el maestro Hora-, porque lo que los hombres hacen con su tiempo, tienen que decidirlo ellos mismos. También son ellos quienes han de defenderlo. Yo sólo puedo adjudicárselo.

Momo recorrió con la mirada la sala y preguntó:

- Para eso tienes tantos relojes, ¿no? ¿Uno para cada hombre?

- No, Momo -contestó el maestro Hora-. Esos relojes no son más que una afición mía. Sólo son reproducciones muy imperfectas de algo que todo hombre lleva en su pecho. Porque al igual que tienen ojos para ver la luz, oídos para oír los sonidos, tienen un corazón para percibir, con él, el tiempo. Y todo el tiempo que no se percibe con el corazón está tan perdido como los colores del arcoiris para un ciego o el canto de un pájaro para un sordo. Pero, por desgracia, hay corazones ciegos y sordos que no perciben nada, a pesar de latir.

- ¿Y si un día mi corazón dejara de latir? -preguntó Momo.

- Entonces -replicó el maestro Hora-, el tiempo se habrá acabado para ti, mi niña. También se podría decir que eres tú quien vuelve a través del tiempo, a través de todos tus días y noches, tus meses y años. Regresas a través de tu vida hasta llegar al gran portal de plata por el que una vez entraste. Por allí vuelves a salir.

- Y, ¿qué hay del otro lado?

- Entonces has llegado al lugar de donde procede la música que, muy bajito, ya has oído alguna vez. Pero entonces tú formas parte de ella, eres un sonido dentro de ella.

Miró, inquisitivo, a Momo.

- Pero eso no podrás entenderlo todavía, ¿verdad?

- Sí -contestó Momo-, creo que sí.

Recordó su camino a través de la calle de Jamás, en la que lo había vivido todo al revés, y preguntó:

- ¿Eres tú la muerte?

El maestro Hora sonrió y calló un rato antes de contestar:

- Si los hombres supiesen lo que es la muerte, ya no le tendrían miedo. Y si ya no le tuvieran miedo, nadie podría robarles, nunca más, su tiempo de vida.

- No hace falta más que decírselo - propuso Momo.

-¿Tu crees? -preguntó el maestro Hora-. Yo se los digo con cada hora que les adjudico. Pero creo que no quieren escucharlo. Prefieren creer a aquellos que les dan miedo. Eso también es un enigma.

Fragmento de Momo, de Michael Ende. 

Love & Freedom VII - Love & obedience

And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.


The Second Epistle of John, verse 6, Holy Bible.

The Gardener I - To hold your little fists like tender lotus-buds

Servant: Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!

Queen: The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why do you come at this late hour?

Servant: When you have finished with the others, that is my time. I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do. 

Queen: What can you expect when it is too late?

Servant: Make me the gardener of your flower garden.

Queen: What folly is this?

Servant: I will give up my other work. I throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do not send me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests. But make me the gardener of your flower garden.

Queen: What will your duties be?

Servant: The service of your idle days. I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning, where your feet will be greeted with praise at every step by the flowers eager for death. I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the saptaparna, where the early evening moon will struggle to kiss your skirt through the leaves. I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your bedside, and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron paste in wondrous designs.

Queen: What will you have for your reward?

Servant: To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender lotus-buds and slip flower chains over your wrists; to tinge the soles of your feet with the red juice of ashoka petals and kiss away the speck of dust that may chance to linger there.

Queen: Your prayers will be granted, my servant, you will be the gardener of my flower garden.

Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, Poem I.

Through the Looking Glass IV - L'image du passage

Lorsque la licorne s'observe dans le miroir, elle tourne son regard en direction du lion qui détourne les yeux comme s'il n'était pas (ou plus) concerné. Son reflet regarde en direction d'elle-même comme si elle occupait la place du lion. Autrement dit, le miroir correspond à l'image du passage d'un monde à l'autre, de la sphère lunaire à la sphère solaire, du monde de l'être ordinaire, voire humain, au monde de l'être spirituel. Traverser le miroir signifie se détourner des sens et se tourner vers le cœur pour donner à l'être tout son sens.

Imagen: La vista, tapiz de la serie La dama del Unicornio, Museo Cluny
Fragmento de La dame à la licorne. Le toucher et la vue. 

Through the Looking Glass III - Mirror stage indeed

After the initial identification with Atreyu, Bastian becomes deeply invested in his story, entering his mirror stage. Bastian’s actions through the middle part of the movie are mimetic: he cries when Atreyu mourns the loss of his horse in the Swamps of Sadness, he screams when Atreyu is frightened by the appearance of Morla the Ancient One, he eats at the same moment that Atreyu breaks his  march for lunch, and he taps into his own confidence to urge Atreyu on through a magical test of will. Bastian, in a sense, becomes the champion of Fantasia. At one point, when Atreyu looks into a magical mirror, he sees Bastian’s face – a clever inversion of the process by which Bastian looks into the “mirror” of the book and sees Atreyu. Mirror stage indeed!

It also becomes clearer through the progression of the journey what Bastian is fighting. The Nothing could be taken as the persistence of Bastian’s emptiness, his failure to find substitutions for his relationship with his mother which would allow him to become a part of the Symbolic. Bastian has a choice between being and nothingness, even as Fantasia does – he must become a “desiring being” (Coats, 21). The alternative is made clear by the only visible monster of the movie, the G’Mork, who identifies desires with the imagination and with hope. He claims that he helps the “force behind the Nothing” out of admiration for its philosophy: “ … people who have no hopes are easy to control. And whoever has the control has the power!” If Bastian doesn’t choose his own place in the Symbolic, larger forces (a society, perhaps) will do so for him, and, as we have already seen with his tormentors, they’ll consult their convenience and pleasure more than his well being when they do so.
The book, by contrast, becomes Bastian’s “phallic mother”, inundating him with empowering language that casts and reshapes him as a hero in Atreyu’s mold. Through reading, Bastian’s mother’s loss becomes repressed in his Real, not gone but no longer obsessing him. Bastian is enabled to look beyond grief for substitutes to cover his ‘lack’ with meaningful mentoring relationships: with Atreyu, with Falkor the Luck Dragon, with the scientist gnomes Engyhook and Urgl, with the Southern Oracle, and eventually with the Childlike Empress herself. These fantastical beings instruct Bastian through Atreyu in where to go on the stages of his quest, how to get there, and how to behave when he arrives.

Fragment from "The Neverending Story: an epic of the mirror stage and the advent of subjectivity," by Michael K. Johnson.
Illustration by Chuck Groenink.
Image from the movie The Neverending  Story.

Through the Looking Glass II - True self

- Next is the Magic Mirror Gate. Atreyu has to face his true self.
- So what? That won't be too hard for him.
- Oh, that's what everyone thinks! But kind people find out that they are cruel. Brave men discover that they are really cowards! Confronted by their true selves, most men run away, screaming!


Dialogue from the movie The Neverending Story.
Illustration: Atreyu and the Magic Mirror Gate by Moe Balinger.

The Nightingale Doth Sing II - Songs for the Emperor (or, your heart better than your crown)

- Little bird, your song has gone straight to my heart. I wish to reward you. You may have my golden slipper, to wear around your neck.

- Thank you, no. I have been rewarded enough. I have seen tears in the Emperor's eyes. For me, that is the richest treasure.

Dialogue from The Nightingale, Faerie Tale Theatre