A statue: (Reuters) April 1995.
an exceptionally fine: Trained as a biologist, Milford Fletcher worked for a number years in paleolithic caves in Spain and France, including the original one at Lascaux, which is now closed to the public, and is presently mapping the National Petroglyph Monument, in Albuquerque, NM., by means of a satellite locator device. All quotes in this paragraph are from notes that Dr. Fletcher prepared for me.
mutilated fingers: "Of some 300 hand prints in Gargas, over 200 have at least one digit mutilated." (Leroi-Gourhan,1986). Whether these fingers were intentionally severed, or were diseased remains speculation. One thinks also of the Yakuza, Japan's version of the Mafia, with their ritual of Yubitsume, the severing of top joint of the little finger as a gesture of loyalty. In Tokugawa society this mutation was employed by prostitutes as a sign of devotion to a special lover.
"the Great Black Cow: "When linked with the primigenial goddess Neith, the cow is a mother-symbol, representing the primal principal of humidity and endowed with a certain androgynous-or gynandrous, rather-characteristics." (Cirlot,1971). Cirlot also reminds us that in India the cow is "Vac, the idea of the world's creation out of sound..." (Ibid.) "It is not pictorial space, boxed in, but dynamic, always in flux, creating its own dimensions moment by moment. It has no fixed boundaries; it is indifferent to background. The eye focuses, pinpoints, abstracts, locating each object in physical space, against a background; the ear, however, favors sound from any direction. We hear equally well from right or left, front or back, above or below. If we lie down, it makes no difference, whereas in visual space the entire spectacle is altered." E. Carpenter and M. McLuhen, "Acostic Space." (Carpenter and McLuhen,1968). "The distinguishing mark of the space conception of primeval art is the complete independence and freedom of its vision...In our sense there is no above and no below, no clear distinction of separateness from an intermingling, and also, certainly, no rules of proportional size. Gigantic animals of the Magdalenian era stand alongside tiny deer from Aurignacian times, as, for example, on the dome of Lascaux. Violent juxtaposition in size as well as in time is accepted as a matter of course. All is within the continual present, the perpetual interflow of today, yesterday, and tomorrow." S. Giedion, "Space Conception in Prehistoric Art." (Carpenter and McLuhen, 1968). Thus, in a cave in southern France over 10,000 years ago a Great Black Cow miraculously began gestating "out of nothing, this world of art in which communication between individual minds begins." (Bataille,1955)
that rocky: H.D. Thoreau. "And Moses and Aaron, Nadav, Avihu and the seventy elders went up. And they saw the God of Israel and under His legs it was like a paving of sapphire and bright like the sky. And unto the nobles of the Israelites He did no damage, but they saw God and they ate and drank." Exod.24 (Boyarin,1990). Boyarin continues: "Normally one is not permitted to see God, and it is very dangerous to do so, which is why here the Torah makes explicit the fact that in this special moment the people were vouchsafed this vision without there being any danger." (Boyarin, Ibid.)
Ike Eastvold: President of Friends of the Albuquerque Petroglyphs. "Contemporary Zunis regard many of the pictographs and petroglyphs in the landscape surrounding the pueblo as meaningful signs from the past that were made by the ancestors. For example, one man told me that most Zunis believe the figures were drawn on the rocks during the time when the rocks were still soft—back in the time of the beginning, before the earth was hardened. He described the earth at that time as 'awitelin kabin, meaning 'raw earth.'" (Young,1980 )
Everett Ruess wrote: He was a talented teen-ager who trekked Southwest deserts, sending letters back home that contained his adventures and observations, and keeping a journal:
"I wandered through the Painted Desert and spent days serene and tempestuous in Canyon de Chelly, then traveled up Canyon del Muerto in the shadow of sheer, incurving cliffs, breathtakingly chiseled and gloriously colored. I passed the last Navajo encampments and stopped for a space in an abandoned hogan constructed of smooth clean-limbed cottonwood, with singing water at the door and sighing leaves overhead. Tall, gracefully arched trees screened the turquoise sky with a glistening pattern of dappled green; above and beyond were the gorgeous vermillion cliffs." (Rusho,1983)
Edward Abbey:
Hunter, brother, companion of our days:
that blessing which you hunted, hunted too
what you were seeking, this is what you found
(From, "A Sonnet for Everett Ruess." (Ibid.)
In 1934, camping in the Escalante River region of southern Utah, twenty-year old Everett disappeared. No trace of his remains was ever found. "It would be easy to make fun of Ruess, John Nichols wrote, "conjecturing that in the end he must have literally exploded, his slight body incapable of containing all the melodramatic sensations he tirelessly ladled into it. But I picture him simply expiring on the edge of a sandstone cliff, in the shadow of some high circling buzzard, convinced that he could never again return to civilization." (Ibid.)
blond: "The blonde resembles the stammerings of voluptuousness, the piracy of lips, the tremors of limpid waters. The blonde escapes whatever defines it, by a kind of whimsical way where I encounter flowers and seashells. It's a sort of reflection of the woman on stones, a paradoxical shadow of aerial caresses, a breath of the defeat of reason. What is blonder than moss? I have often imagined that I saw champagne on the ground in the forest. And chanterelles! And agaric mushrooms! Hares in flight! The quick of nails! The colour pink! The blood of plants! The eyes of does! Memory: memory is truly blonde." (Aragon,1970)
a slender woman: (Rilke,1982)
as in Derrida's: (Benedikt,1991
I have had: A. Pizarnik. From, "A Dream Where Silence is Made of Gold." The whole poem reads:
The dog of winter sinks its teeth into my smile. It was on the bridge. I was naked and wearing a hat with flowers, I was dragging my corpse, also naked, its hat made of dry leaves.
I have had many loves, I said, but the most beautiful was my love for mirrors
my love of mirrors: "Mirrors minimally are two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional space which reverse what they portray. They may be relatively reflective or opaque, may reveal or hide. They may be reflective of what is presently in front of them, or they may invite projection of that which is sought. Although giving only a partial picture of the outside, what is seem can be altered by shifting mirrors, or one's orientation to them. They may also allow looking at things which are otherwise inaccessible–such as one's own face. The resultant images imitate and mock the viewer's self and immediate situation. They are similar and different to, more or less then, what they purport to reflect." (Macdonald,1989)
implicit in the gap: (Sartiliot,1993)
For the instant: W. Witherup. From, "At the Cafe Intermezzo, On the Street of Recessive Genes." The poem continues:
This is why sex: this is why intercourse;
This is why fucking never satisfied
Because the moment you are doing it
Acting it out,
It is already memory.
Although the culture: "In just two years, 'he,' as Seatmates tend to call the sculpture, has been saluted by the art establishment and a porn palace, savaged in newspaper columns and a book, accidentally smashed on the pavement and lampooned in a beer commercial and on 'Saturday Night Live.' All that was a prelude to Labor Day, 1993, when a lightning art raid electrified a city accustomed to public-art causes célèbre. A street youth turned welder turned guerrilla artist who calls himself Subculture Joe had decided that if the giant were to 'symbolize the worker in all of us'–as his creator, Jonathan Borofsky, intended–he should be shackled with a suitable working accessory: an equally gigantic ball and chain." (Scigliano,1993)
they had no limbs: (Reichard,1974) "At times we are tempted to imagine that the vagus forms which float in our dreams may encounter in the realm of the Possible attractive forces, having power to fix their lineaments, and shape living beings, out of these creatures of our slumbers. The Unknown has power over these strange visions, and out of them composes monsters. Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod imagined only the Chimera: Providence has created this terrible creature of the sea." (Hugo,1900?)
kill by staring: "Every race of man shares the idea that the human eye penetrates and pierces, and this fundamental premise of the evil-eye superstition that the eye injures or alters reality." (Siebers,1983). "It seems I was in Tokyo after the great earthquake and around me were decomposing bodies heaped in piles, all of whom were looking right at me. I saw an eye sitting on the palm of a girl's hand. Suddenly it turned and leaped into the sky and then it came flying back towards me, so that, looking up, I could see a great bare eyeball, bigger than life, hovering over my head, staring point blank at me. I was powerless to move." (Hachiya,1955). "The dream of this Japanese doctor who was wounded in the world's first atomic bombing and who ministered to hundreds of victims must be counted one of the millennial visions of mankind." (Rhodes,1988)
site of passage: (Artaud,1958). "the soul is severed from the body before departing for the next world. Through illness or injury, ecstasy or dreaming, the tie to the body is loosened. Whether extracted by an angel or demon or departing of its own accord, the soul exists through the gateway of the mouth and sets out for the other world. (Zaleski,1987)
cause a horrific wound: (Dvorchak,1994)
There was an Old Man of the South
Who had an immoderate mouth;
But in swallowing a dish that was quite full of fish,
He was choked that Old Man of the South.
(E. Lear)
Imaginal Body:
(Avens,1982) For example: "Musing over places and images associated with
Hiroshima, it can be helpful to pay close attention to the sensual yet mindful
imagination of the body...the body has its own mind, it's own intelligent
imagination.
"Particular bodily sensations or images may now become apparent: where in the body
might they be placed? Bodily sensations contain and embody images--particularly difficult,
sensitive and painful ones resisted by the ego's mind. For instance I feel a nervous
tingling in my hands as I ponder the nuclear situation, then become aware of an urge to
dance and jump. I imagine myself doing so, or, if I choose to actually embody this urge, I
imagine myself as I dance and jump. In this movement of bodily imagination, I
notice the presence of an image. It is a picture drawn by a hibakusha of a victim
whose hands were badly burnt, so that the skin hangs in strips from the fingertips. I now
feel this image and its exquisite pain with and in my fingers, and yet, as I feel
it, it becomes distinguished from 'my' self. Now 'pictured,' it gains a separate place in
the soul while still very much present in the body." (Perlman,1988)
Li, Yu and I: "Visiting Yuan Chen with Li and Yu." From, J. Weishaus, "Five Spring Poems from Po Chu-I."
I think of Henry King's stilted
But desolated Exequy,
Of Yuan Chen's great poem
Unbearably pitiful;
Alone by the Spring river
More alone than I had ever
Imagined I would ever be...
(K. Rexroth. From, "King's River Canyon")
But which of Yuan Chen's poems is Rexroth referring to as "great"? I would guess, "Three Dreams at Chiang-ling. The poet's wife had died, and, for political reasons, he had been sent to a government post at Chiang-ling, leaving their only child, Fan-tzu, behind in the capital city of Ch'ang-an. One night, Yuan Chen dreamed of his wife:
When one dreams of another,
Are we both aware of it?
We're apart as darkness is from light
My dream soul exists only for you.
True nothing can be gained from dreams,
But without them how would I see you?
His wife chastises him. He "showed no interest in the family...took a poet (and) left things behind!...who's to care for the child?"
Grieved and startled; I am suddenly awake,
Sitting or sleeping it's as if I were mad;
The shadow of the moon has blackened half the bed
The sounds of insects drift across the gloom of the grass;
My senses come back to me slowly,
Though awakened, I am still distraught;
Alone as I picture your face
Tears come and never seem to end!
Life's final parting is already ours,
How could a single dream bring so many sorrows?
(W.H. Nienhauser, translator)
He hugged: W.H. Auden. From, "The Bard."
space has possibilities: "Much in the way that an acupuncturist seeks to eliminate obstacles to the flow of energy in his patient's body, the feng shui practitioner treats a troubled environment by removing impediments to its chi, usually addressing certain physical features, from a rock in a landscape to the door of a house. Should he decide, for example, that his clients are adversely influenced by their parlor's view of a graveyard or a used-car lot, he might suggest that they hide it behind an opaque screen that still lets in the light. If they tend to avoid a certain dark room or corner, they could make it more appealing with a lamp or plant. Similarly, the right-handed person can move his phone to the right side of his desk, so he doesn't have to twist to answer it, making life seem more difficult than it need be. The general feng shui idea is that if a setting doesn't make you feel welcome, tinker with it until it does." (Gallagher,1993)
tea: "Nobody seems quite sure when India began to drink tea, the accounts of early travelers are silent on the subject. It's true that Marco Polo says nothing about tea in China, either, but it seems likely that tea was unknown in India before the seventeenth century. Adam Olearius in Persia finds his hosts drinking 'tzai,' which he says they boil and drink bitter with fennel, aniseed, cloves and sugar. 'But the Indians only put it into seething water, and have for that purpose either Brass, or Earthen pots, very handsomely made, which are put to no other use.' These were 'Indians' in Persia... In those days tea wasn't grown in India, so it had to come from Canton and Tibet, too far to be cheap. It was a rich man's drink." (Goodwin,1991). "Along with zen and kung-fu, Bodhidharma (440-528?) reportedly also brought tea (from India) to China. To keep from falling asleep while meditating, he cut off his eyelids, and where they fell, tea bushes grew. Since then, tea has become the beverage of not only monks but everyone in the Orient." (Red Pine,1987) "Some say that Boddhidharma's (sic) eyelids made the poppy; some say the tea bush. Each was introduced as a medicine--tea was a stimulant, opium as a painkiller. The one induced wakefulness; the other drowsiness. Opium went up in smoke and tea went down the drain. Tea won devotees, but opium enslaved." (Goodwin,Ibid.)
snarling dogs: J. Weishaus, "All."
gentlemen's steep feet: "The philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste." (Okakura,1989)
to render reality: "The important thing is that they start out with what belongs to them, is in them, and not with that which belongs to others or with what others discovered....Let them not stop en route! A growing tree does not pose itself problems of tree-culture. A young artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work. To blossom forth a work of art must ignore, or rather forget all the rules." P. Picasso. (Parrot,1948)
a more liable gift: "The most important and delicate part of the tofu-making process is the curdling. Hot soy milk comes flooding out of the pulp extractor into a large wheeled vat. When the vat's full, the tofu maker takes up a paddle and starts to pull through the liquid. Then a pitcher of magnesium chloride (I'm sorry, it's called nigari so as not to scare off the customers), an extract of sea water, is poured quickly into the vat. Next comes the tricky part: the tofu maker must, without hesitation, perform a perfect, flowing, tai-chi-like yin-yang figure with the paddle. If this isn't performed correctly, the tofu comes out crumbly, or soft, or strangely reeking of livestock." (Kaitenbach,1994)
ego is place: "(The)Yolinga have two words for being born. One literally translated has the prosaic meaning 'come out head first', the other, dhawal-wuyangirr, is a compound made out of dhawal 'named place' and guyangirr (sic?) 'think of'.' Literally, then, the word means 'to think of a named place'. The concept directly associates the birth of the individual with ancestral creativity, and begins the process of positioning the subject within the landscape. Ancestral beings created the world through transforming themselves into named places, and each human life represents a continuation of that process." (Morphy,1995)
The evolutionary roots: (Von Frisch,1983) "The most usual purpose of building activities in animals is to make a home that will give protection. Such a home may be constructed for the building animal itself, for its progeny, for the family as a whole, or, by social cooperation, for large colonies as, for instance, in the case of the social insects. The enormous morphological differentiation of animals and the great differences in their needs and faculties are reflected in the great variety of the homes they build. But homes are not the only things they construct. Some animals are trappers that dig pitfalls or weave nets. The roads built by ants and termites, and the remarkable dams erected by beavers to regulate the water of streams to suit their needs are well known." (Ibid.)
Deleuze's nomadology: (Deleuze,1986)
They swore to wipe out the nomads, no thought for themselves,
five thousand in sable and brocade, gone to barbarian dust.
Pity them--these bones by the shores of the Uncertain River--
to those who dream in spring chambers, they are still men
(Ch'en Tao, "Song of Lung-hsi." B. Watson, translator.)
Architecture, Alchemy and Beer: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/weishaus/Writing/smith.htm
traditional medicines: Folk medicine "is usually not a random collection of beliefs and practices; rather, it constitutes a fairly well-organized and fairly consistent theory of medicine. The body of 'knowledge' on which it is based often includes ideas about the nature of man and his relationships with the natural, supernatural, and human environments. Folk medicine flourishes because it is a functional and integrated part of the whole culture, and because it enables members of cultural groups to meet their health needs, as they define them, in ways that are at least minimally acceptable." (Saunders,1954)
you keep wanting: (Estés,1993)
"free soul: "For when the body is sleeping the free-soul has more or less completely taken over the role of the ego-soul: it is sometimes in the shape of the free-soul that the sleeping individual has his dream-experiences." (Hultkrantz,1953) "In the early stages of OBE (out-of-body experience) activity, you seem to retain the form of your physical body--head, shoulders, arms, legs, and so on. As you become more familiar with this other state of being, you may become less humanoid in shape. It is similar to gelatin when taken out of the mold. For a short period it retains the form of the mold; then it begins to melt around the edges and finally it becomes a liquid or a blob. When this happens in OBE, it takes only a thought for you to become totally human again in shape and form." (Monroe,1994)
he has a vision: "But it is mankind itself, the very man Mallermé aspires to be: man everywhere dying from the disintegration of atoms or from the cooling-down of the sun and murmuring--at the thought of a society he had wished to construct: 'Believe me, it was to be beautiful.'" (Sartre,1988)
coffee grinder: "In the kitchen, I measured the beans in a disposable plastic scoop molded in New Jersey and spooned them into the grinder. The grinder was assembled in China from imported steel, aluminum, copper, and plastic parts. It was powered by electricity generated at the Ross Dam on the Skagit River. I dumped the coffee in a gold-plated mesh filter made in Switzerland of Russian ore. I put the filter into a plastic-and-steel drip coffee maker. I poured eight ounces of tap water into the appliance. The water came by pipe from the Cedar River on the west slope of the Cascade Mountains..." (Durning,1995)
That blue mountain: (H.D. Thoreau, Journal iii)
disruptive subsets: "How can a biological neural net learn a pattern like a face or a piece of music or the concept of God? It changes millions of synapses. Zoom in closer and that means it changes the release rates of neurotransmitters. Electrical spikes flow down the cable and right before they pour into a neuron they hit the synaptic junction. Here the electrical signal turns into a chemical or neurotransmitter signal. The chemical diffuses across a thin moat of brain juice and onto the surface of the neuron, where it changes the electrical state of the neuron. Release rates. Replenish rates. Bags of chemicals dumped into the brain juice." (Kosko,1993). "This view 'holds that our experience is not a matter of combining at one master site...all the separate components into one central perception. As strange as it may sound, there is no master site, no center of convergence.' Instead, many different sections--although massively interconnected-- do their work simultaneously in parallel." (Suplec,1994)
"No, the real is not cut up into regular patterns, it is sporadic, spaces and times with straits and passes...Therefore I assume there are fluctuating tatters; I am looking for the passage among these complicated cuttings. I believe, I see that the state of things consists of islands sown in archipelagoes on the noisy, poorly-understood disorder of the sea,...the emergence of sporadic rationalities that are not evidently nor easily linked. Passages exist, I know, I have drawn some of them in certain works using certain operators...But I cannot generalize, obstructions are manifest and counter-examples abound." (Serres,1980)
Bay trees: J. Weishaus, "Trees."
"despite all their efforts 'to express themselves,' they only manage to repeat a million times over the same expression, the same leaf. In the spring, when tired of restraining themselves and no longer able to hold out, they let loose a flood, a vomiting of green, and think they are humming a tuneful hymn, coming out of themselves, spreading out over all of nature, embracing it--they are still only producing in thousands of copies the same note, the same word, the same leaf. ("There is no way out for trees by means of trees." F. Ponge. From, "Fauna and Flora.")
came later to remain: (Eliade, 1958) "Who among the living is capable of having more than sentiment in an old temple? Yes, it is aesthetic, it is beautiful, but do you understand what an antique God means? How is it possible that they came to the conclusion that there was such a thing as Apollo or Ceres? Of course we can be sentimental about it, but it is very rarely really experienced. Old Wotan has now been resuscitated but what is Wotan to us? He was experienced once, but now it is only historical sentimentality. Our intellect, our discrimination, has killed all these things. When the Christian missionaries cut down the oaks of Wotan and destroyed the poles or sacred idols, it was their discriminating minds which said it was impossible for a divine presence to be present in such man-made figures, in such clumsy dirty idols smeared with blood or dirt; their mental knife cut them down and they were obliterated, they crumbled away. So here the old king is gone, he is obsolete, and that is done with the knife. That means that the idea of the Self is obliterated, sacrificed, and instead appears a man..." (Jung,1976)
"reminded me: (Leiris,1986) "Fred Astaire bare-headed in a tuxedo, Fred Astaire in Prince of Wales check and a boater, Fred Astaire in a bowler hat with an umbrella, Fred Astaire in a fedora without gloves, Fred Astaire in a double-breasted suit wearing gloves...there is a whole gallery of Astaires..." (Ibid.)
elegant skeletons: "One professional faster, Giovanni Bucci, became a sort of champion of the art in 1888 by fasting in Florence for one whole month 'under true scientific observation' He took up a position inside a huge barrel in a covered marketplace and received every day a number of visitors, with whom he engaged in long conversations and bandied jokes. Another artist of this kind was Claude Ambroise Seurat, styled 'the living skeleton,' who signed a contract according to which he had to appear in a show six times a day, crawling on his arms and legs around a stage while allowing spectators to seize him now and then by his waist to get the feel of his extreme emaciation." (Grandleman,1991)
Chaplin is not: (Duras,1990)
inspired cripple: "Fulgentius, in his discussion of Achilles' life (Mitologiarum, II, 7), mentions a belief among doctors which he says goes back to the time of Orpheus: that veins ran from the kidneys and genitals, through the thigh, to the heel. Aristotle quotes the similar belief of Polybus (sic): "There are four parts of veins. The first extends from the back of the head...until it reaches the loins and passes on to the legs...to the outer side of the ankles and on to the feet. Another pair...goes on inside along the backbone, past the muscles of the loins, on to the testicles, and onwards to the thighs...to the inside of the ankles and to the feet. This concept of anatomy helps to explain why foot wounds are so quickly fatal in mythology--not only to Achilles, but to Pholus, Diarmuid, Paris--who dies not from his head wound but a heal wound, and Talos--whose vein structure resembles that described by the early physiologists: "He had a single vein extending from his neck to his ankles. (Apollodorus, I ix, 26, Frazer's translation). It also explains also explains why the myths contain so many leg wounds. They are the rationalized remains, in sophisticated stories, of more primitive rituals, of live sacrifices that involves the genital organs or legs..." (Hays,1971)
In his void: "Desperate as he was, he thought: lost is lost. But he could not help turning around once more in his longing for the Good. How terribly embittered he had become against the very longing, a longing that reveals that, just as a man in all his defience has not power enough wholly to loose himself from the God, because it is the stronger, so he has not even the power wholly to will it." (Kierkegaard,1956)
not in the portentous: G. Davenport, "The Geography of Imagination" (Davenport,1981).
May the divine vidyadharas think of me
and with great love lead me on the path
When through intense tendencies I wander in samsara
on the luminous light-path of the innate wisdom
may vidyadharas and warriors go before me,
their consorts the dakinis behind me;
help me to cross the bardo's dangerous pathway
and bring me to the Pure Realm of Space.
(Fremantle, 1975)
what Perseus: (Napier,1986)
before the sight: From, "Quetzalcoatl's Hero Journey." In, (Markman & Markman,1992).
sorting through the midden: The fine spiritual endeavors, as when Leslie Silko talks about how "cobs and husks, the rinds and stalks and animal bones were not regarded by the ancient (Pueblo) people as filth or garbage. The remains were merely resting at a midpoint in the journey back to dust....because for the ancient people all these things have spirit and being." L.M. Silko, "Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination." (Halpern,1987) These fine sensibilities make no sense to the coarse world of Western civilization, where today neighbors slam doors, rock music blasts out an open door, car horns, sirens, beer cans and other waste float on a skummy lake, along with floating ducks coming into heat quacking, and expectant fishing lines. Here there's a stridency of Christianity, the belief in an the straight lines of an ancient book, not the circle, or spiral, of life and death.
marvels: R. Smithson,"A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art." (Holt,1979).
the soul of an individual: (Paulson,1964)
Saif-Baba asks some animals why it is that "a mere cat and a tiny sparrow can tell me things which I, with the miraculous benefits which I have received, cannot see?" "That is simple," they both said together. "It is that you have become so accustomed to looking at things in only one way that your shortcomings are visible even to the most ordinary mind." This worried Saif-Baba. "So I could have found the Door of the Third Piece of Advice long ago, if I had been properly attuned to it?" he asked. "Yes," said the dog, joining the discussion. "The door has opened a dozen times in the past years, but you did not see it. We did, but because we are animals, we could not tell you." "Then how can you tell me now?" "You can understand our speech because you yourself have lately become more human. But you have only one more chance, for age is overcoming you." (Shah,1967)
cars hang corners: J. Weishaus, "Barn."
In a recent interview: "So let's see: Joel-Peter Witkin goes to Budapest and finds an asylum which houses profoundly disturbed people to whom he cannot speak. He dresses them up in costumes and takes their pictures, one of which is published in Santa Fe and New York. He actually spent two weeks-two whole weeks--in Budapest gaining the insight that we are to see in his pictures...." (Lawrence,1993)
Coney Island: "People probably enjoyed Coney for a number of reasons. First, the experience of the rides and the bustling midway was structured, fast-paced and extroverted. It allowed ordinary people to escape into a fantasy land. Second, the atmosphere was sensuous and sensual. The crowds, the bands, the lights, the food and drink were seductive in themselves; the rides and amusements also offered the promise of sanitized sex. Air jets in the funhouses lifted girls' skirts, couples were squeezed together by the force of the rides, and the promise of the sign by the roller coaster that, 'she will throw her arms around your neck,' was not lost on the crowd....Fourth and finally, Coney's technological wonders allowed people to participate vicariously in the myth of progress, and to us technology for escape--as a contrast to their common experience of growing constraints and frustrations imposed upon daily life by the engine of technical change." (Snow,1975)
A boy named Willie: (Kazin,1994)
white, of course: "Here one might be so dazzled by the new brilliance of mind as to take white literally, as if white meant only and literally one thing--whiteness--thereby forgetting the multiplicity which made the whiteness possible. The multiplicity must already have been built into the mind as the vibrations, shadings and subtleties that are not only there in things but are there in the eyes of the mind by which things are seen as images. It is as if we enter the world without preconceptions, startled by the phenomena where everything is given and nothing taken for granted. To experience in this manner is to recover innocence--hence the brilliant white lustre." (Hillman,1981)
white soul: (Edinger,1985)
the zoo: Zoos 'appeared only after the domestication of humanity. There is no evidence of desire by any hunter-gatherer culture or primitive, agriculturally based society to collect numbers of wild animals for display. But the moment civilizations, wealthy royalty, and cities appear in history, zoos also appear." (Luoma,1987). To demonstrate their power over the world, the Romans staged "games" in which they slaughtered thousands of animals. For much the same reason, most all rulers kept large collections of animals, destroying them at will. "The Roman games no longer exist, though bullfights and rodeos (and circuses) follow in their tradition. Nowadays the power of our leaders is amply demonstrated by their command of nuclear weapons. Yet we still have zoos. Why?" (
Old Town: "The first Spanish settlement near modern Albuquerque was a farm, ranch and orchard built by Diego de Trujillo on the site of Old Town in 1632. He named his small estate El Paraje de las Huertas (Place of the Gardens)." On August 10, 1680, many of the Pueblos revolted against the cruelty of the Spanish missionaries and colonists, kicking them back to Mexico. Twelve years later they returned.
"Early in 1706 acting Governor Cuervo decided to found an administrative center in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. He was drawn to an area...near the present site of Old Town." Ten soldiers were stationed in the area, handing out grants of land to the settlers. "On April 23, 1706, acting Governor Cuervo notified the king and Viceroy that he had founded the Villa de San Francisco de Alburquerque:
I, Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdéz, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Governor and Captain General of this Kingdom and the province of New Mexico...certify to His Majesty (whom my God guard for many years), to his Viceroys, Presidents, Governors and other Officials: That I have founded a Villa on the margin and meadows of the River of the North in a place of good fields, waters, pastures, and timber, distant from this villa of Santa Fe about twenty-two leagues, giving to it as Parton the most glorious Apostle of the Indies San Francisco Xavier, calling it and naming it the Villa of Alburquerque.
(The Albuquerque Museum,1990)
Coyote: (Snyder,1978)
the shock of his life: Mokuyi-Kinasi, or Wolf Head, was "a medicine man of the Blackfoot nation. He was one of the most celebrated medicine men of the northeastern plains. He was feared and venerated because he was thought to possess the power of thunder. His initiation, triggered by a profound spiritual experience, took place during his early years when he was on a journey with three friends. As they were crossing the flat, treeless prairie, a storm broke over them with tremendous force. Lightning shot down from heaven and struck all around them. They took shelter in a nearby thicket, cowering in the underbrush. The next thing Wolk Head remembers was red and blue lightning bolts that bathed the scene in gleaming light. Hours later, he awoke from a strange dream. He jumped up and in his distress began running around in circles. He was bleeding all over, and his whole body hurt. Looking down at his body, he saw that he was stark naked. The lightning had hit them; one of his companions was dead....After this near-dead experience, Wolf Head developed extraordinary abilities in the truest sense of the word." (Kalweit,1992)
the hanged man: Addressing the Tarot card, The Hanged Man "hangs suspended upside down from a cross of living wood. Arms folded behind his back, forming a living cross with his unfettered leg, his head hangs down in a bright cloud of deep entrancement. He is in a position of reversal of mind, paying off old debts as he surrenders to the redemption of absorption in matters both spiritual and occult. This card in the upright position suggests the reversal of a man's way of life. It is during this prophetic pause, that he suspends decisions, as he verges on yielding completely to personal consciousness. Reversed, the card implies false prophecy, arrogance and resistance to spiritual influences...."Spiritual absorption and surrender to occult/unconscious concerns have led me to write this book, seeking knowledge of the patterns and powers that shape our lives. Risking that my Hanged Man will come up in reversed position, I will struggle with my arrogant temptation to false prophecy. Only in this way may I learn whether I am headed for Redemption or just 'hung up.'" (Kopp,1974)
Still it is: (J. Grahn. From, "Spider")
If we knew the point
where something is going to break,
where the thread of kisses will be cut,
where a look will no longer meet another,
where the heart will leap toward another place
we could put another point on that point
or at least go with it to its breaking.
(R. Juarroz. From, "Fourth Vertical Poetry (1969)."
I have assembled: (Ou-yang Hsiu [1007-1072]) "He would take only those books he needed to teach from, the poetry, the criticism, small reference books...and when he made a gap in the shelves he would push other books into the gap so that nothing looked disarranged." (Shapiro,1990)
Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens
Their bite is worse than a horse's--
They chop a half-moon clean out
They eat cinders, dead cats.
(T. Hughes. From, "View of a Pig.")
A few years later, a former neighbor told me that the landlord had had a heart attack, and a valve from the heart of a pig replaced his.
the impression: (Thévoz,1994)