martes, enero 25, 2005
jelp!!!!!!!!!!
lunes, enero 24, 2005
Bits & Pieces (Catching up)
1. Last night, I was reading in bed, as usual, before going to sleep. Suddenly, the lights all went out. Sometimes I'm afraid of the dark--monsters do live there--, but sometimes I just love to stare into blackness: black was chaos before creation, the unwritten canvas, the womb pregnant with possibility... the future.
2.
Laughter makes the world move:
A scrubbing bubble cycling through the cosmos
A little lost but full of secrets
Hurtling through the distance between our hearts.
3. Geography. The study of the earth. Surfaces and scars. A detailed mirror we hold up to the world. Knowing places by their names, lines, colors. Maps are almost magical, their fascination lying in the fact that they are really nothing like what we see should we happen to be standing in the middle of somewhere. Surprise and wonder: "Gee!"-"Oh!"-graphy. Marco-poloing our way through the world only to find out that the map, the travel guide, our minds were all wrong--the real geography is a certain smile, a friend who lives far away, the way light hugs a corner making it beautiful beyond belief. Distance. And most importantly, memory. The real dream-challenge is to fill up those gaps, substitute maps for stories.
1. Last night, I was reading in bed, as usual, before going to sleep. Suddenly, the lights all went out. Sometimes I'm afraid of the dark--monsters do live there--, but sometimes I just love to stare into blackness: black was chaos before creation, the unwritten canvas, the womb pregnant with possibility... the future.
2.
Laughter makes the world move:
A scrubbing bubble cycling through the cosmos
A little lost but full of secrets
Hurtling through the distance between our hearts.
3. Geography. The study of the earth. Surfaces and scars. A detailed mirror we hold up to the world. Knowing places by their names, lines, colors. Maps are almost magical, their fascination lying in the fact that they are really nothing like what we see should we happen to be standing in the middle of somewhere. Surprise and wonder: "Gee!"-"Oh!"-graphy. Marco-poloing our way through the world only to find out that the map, the travel guide, our minds were all wrong--the real geography is a certain smile, a friend who lives far away, the way light hugs a corner making it beautiful beyond belief. Distance. And most importantly, memory. The real dream-challenge is to fill up those gaps, substitute maps for stories.
miércoles, enero 05, 2005
from Gautier's preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin
There are two sorts of utility, and the meaning of the vocable is always a relative one. What is useful for one is not useful to another. You are a cobbler, I am a poet. It is useful to me to have my first verse rhyme with my second. A rhyming dictionary is of great utility to me; you do not want it to cobble an old pair fo boots, and it is only right to say that a shoe-knife would not be of great service to me in making an ode. To this you will object that a cobbler is far above a poet, and that people can do without the one better than without the other. Without affecting to disparage the illustrious profession of cobbler, which I honour equally with that of constitutional monarch, I humbly confess that I would rather have my shoe unstitched than my verse badly rhymed, and that I should be more willing to go without boots than without poems. Scarcely ever going out and walking more skillfully with my head than with my feet, I wear out fewer shoes than a virtuous Republican, who is always hastening from one minister to another in the hope of having some place flung to him.
I know that there are some who prefer mills to churches, and bread for the body to that for the soul. To such I have nothing to say. They deserve to be economists in this world and also in the next....
.... to prevent one's-self from dying is not living; and I don not see in what respect a town organized after the utilitarian fashion would be more agreeable to dwell in than the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise.
Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. You might suppress flowers, and the world would not suffer materially; yet who would wish that there were no more flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than roses...
There are two sorts of utility, and the meaning of the vocable is always a relative one. What is useful for one is not useful to another. You are a cobbler, I am a poet. It is useful to me to have my first verse rhyme with my second. A rhyming dictionary is of great utility to me; you do not want it to cobble an old pair fo boots, and it is only right to say that a shoe-knife would not be of great service to me in making an ode. To this you will object that a cobbler is far above a poet, and that people can do without the one better than without the other. Without affecting to disparage the illustrious profession of cobbler, which I honour equally with that of constitutional monarch, I humbly confess that I would rather have my shoe unstitched than my verse badly rhymed, and that I should be more willing to go without boots than without poems. Scarcely ever going out and walking more skillfully with my head than with my feet, I wear out fewer shoes than a virtuous Republican, who is always hastening from one minister to another in the hope of having some place flung to him.
I know that there are some who prefer mills to churches, and bread for the body to that for the soul. To such I have nothing to say. They deserve to be economists in this world and also in the next....
.... to prevent one's-self from dying is not living; and I don not see in what respect a town organized after the utilitarian fashion would be more agreeable to dwell in than the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise.
Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. You might suppress flowers, and the world would not suffer materially; yet who would wish that there were no more flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than roses...
domingo, enero 02, 2005
The old year has been put away
Score:
Regrets: Zero
Joy: All of it.
¡Gracias a todos!
Que tengan un GRAN 2005
Score:
Regrets: Zero
Joy: All of it.
¡Gracias a todos!
Que tengan un GRAN 2005
