bhikku

2011-08-23T15:13:07Z

I said to a gypsy girl
I want to be a gypsy
and have you. Can you eat bitter herbs with no salt for an evening meal she said to me, And then lie down? I can, I said to her. Can you lie down she said without weeping with cold on the frozen mud? I can, I said to her. And on that mud she said to me can you set fire to my body and burn it up to ash? And that too if I can, I said to her. Can you throw my ashes into your wine she said to me and get yourself so drunk you forget me? No, I cannot do that, I said to her. You will not make a gypsy, she told me. - Georgis Pavlopoulos, trans. Peter Levi

2011-08-19T16:33:40Z

The full moon glided behind a black cloud / and what then? / and who cared? -

To analyse the pleasures received from Gates, in corners of Fields, at twilight /

Insects by their smallness, the Mammoth by its hugeness, terrible.

- ibid., 1803

2011-08-16T15:12:04Z

better to do nothing
than nothings

Dec. 6 1803. - Adam travelling in his old age - came to a set of the descendants of Cain, ignorant of the origin of the world; & treating him as a Madman killed him. A sort of Dream, which I had this Night.

- ibid.

2011-08-15T14:36:34Z

He knew not what to do - Something, he felt, must be done - he rose, drew his writing-desk suddenly before him - sate down, took the pen - & found that he knew not what to do.

one of those thoughtful men whose plate of pudding often swims before their eyes while they are eating

Mind, shipwrecked by storms of doubt, now mastless, rudderless, shattered, - pulling in the dead swell of a dark and windless Sea.

He is always doing
something else

- ibid, 1800

2011-08-14T18:02:52Z

You would smile to see my eye rolling up to the ceiling in a Lyric fury, and on my knee a Diaper pinned, to warm

- ibid, 1797

2011-08-13T09:36:25Z

Very fond of Vegetables, particularly Bacon & Peas. Bacon & Broad Beans. -

In a distempered dream things & forms in themselves common & harmless inflict a terror of anguish.-

Doing nothing ends in being nothing.-

- ibid, 1794-7

2011-08-12T06:21:50Z

We all look up to the blue Sky for comfort, but nothing appears there - nothing comforts nothing answers us - & so we die -

- Coleridge, Notebooks 1815

hoc erat in votis*

2011-06-19T18:18:51Z

This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh, not so very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an abandoned, barren, sun scorched bit of land, favored by thistles and by wasps and bees. Here, without fear of being troubled by passers by, I could consult the Ammophila and the Sphex, and engage in that difficult conversation whose questions and answers have experiment for their language; here, without distant expeditions that take up my time, without tiring rambles that strain my nerves, I could contrive my plans of attack, lay my ambushes and watch their effects at every hour of the day. Hoc erat in votis. Yes, this was my wish, my dream, always cherished, always vanishing into the mists of the future. - Fabre, The Life of the Fly

* he's echoing Horace, Satire II.vi, but Fabre's ideas of an earthly paradise are rather different from Horace's and much closer to mine.

2011-05-28T07:16:12Z

If a Sparrow come before my Window, I take part in its existence, and pick about the Gravel - Keats, letter to Benjamin Bailey, 1817

2011-05-22T09:20:09Z

Charon The conductor’s hands were black with money: Hold on to your ticket, he said, the inspector’s Mind is black with suspicion, and hold on to That dissolving map. We moved through London, We could see the pigeons through the glass but failed To hear their rumours of wars, we could see The lost dog barking but never knew That his bark was as shrill as a cock crowing, We just jogged on, at each request Stop there was a crowd of aggressively vacant Faces, we just jogged on, eternity Gave itself airs in revolving lights And then we came to the Thames and all The bridges were down, the further shore Was lost in fog, so we asked the conductor What we should do. He said: Take the ferry Faute de mieux. We flicked the flashlight And there was the ferryman just as Virgil And Dante had seen him. He looked at us coldly And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar Were black with obols and varicose veins Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly: If you want to die you will have to pay for it. - Louis MacNeice

2011-03-25T14:33:37Z

Paul Nash, Landscape of the Moon's Last Phase

Came across this perfectly-formed single-subject website, how life should be like this more often.

this morning upon waking

2011-03-02T20:13:34Z

This morning upon waking
I had but one thought in my head:

That in a hundred years the wind will lift my dust And join it in marriage with yours.

O Death, now I fear you no more!

- Anon., Persian 12th cent.

aile de raie

2011-02-25T11:02:01Z

In Boulogne.

2011-02-22T10:50:04Z

Temples! and towns! and towers! and woods!
And hills! and vales! and fields! and floods!
Crowding before me, edg'd around
With naked wilds and barren ground.

from The Country Walk, John Dyer

Says I to myself, this might be the motto for this journal.

2011-02-21T11:44:06Z

Ga head, Ghana, British Museum