Painting by Magdalena Ramos Mullane

I was lucky to be able to purchase Maggie's painting. I had admired Maggie's writing and art from the time she was in the eight grade. She was never my student.

Love is so strange

Every time he looked at her he scowled. She finally had enough and asked him what was his problem. He said, “You’re so beautiful. I can’t help myself.” She didn’t understand. “But your face is so ugly when you look at me?” He didn’t understand and, of course, all the while he was scowling and making himself look ugly. Finally, she asked, “Can you smile?” and he answered, “I thought I was.” “No, a smile looks like this,” and she smiled for him. He scowled. Then, for some reason, she kissed him. When people see the two of them together now, hand in hand, he scowling and she smiling, they wonder aloud, “What an odd couple!" Love is so strange.

The End of the Journey: A Conversation with Neil Longenbaugh

Neil Longenbaugh: Socrates knows he is wiser than the common man because he does not profess to know what he does not. This creates a few problems for me. How can Socrates know for sure that he doesn’t know something? I think the only thing he can be certain of is that he knows nothing for certain, and if this is true then how can someone be wiser than another person if both know equally nothing? This idea is a paradox that can’t be clearly answered unless Socrates is claiming that the craftsman and poets claim to know something and he nothing.

Mr. Himwich: Problem is that the craftsmen and especially those muse-inspired poets think that they do in fact know – but, of course, they don’t, as is revealed under Socratic questioning. You do touch on a difficult issue: Does knowledge require that we know that we know and perhaps even to be able to articulate what we know and be able to teach it to someone else. Absent this kind of knowledge we might categorize our “knowledge” as belief, hypothesis, intuition, educated guess, etc.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I think that knowing something for certain is an impossibility. We can know that we can think, and articulate this to other people, but we cannot know that we know something as it truly is. I agree that we can classify our knowledge as hypothesis, intuition, etc… What is truth though? If it is impossible to know for certain then can we find truth in our educated guesses and such?

Mr. Himwich: So much depends on what one means by "truth," as you well know. For me, the truth is paradoxically the very activity of a mind that searches for understanding. This activity of mind is the very truth it searches for. It is always thus, e.g. we create the very world that we seek to understand as if it were separate from us. The truth is as close as thought itself. I know this will sound mystical or worse -- plain nonsense. What is your idea of truth?

Mr. Longenbaugh: I feel that truth is something sought after. I think that there are elements that we must find within ourselves, but I think that the physical world also contains truth. I think one can find a balance between retrospection and examining the world they live in for truth. I think that truth is perhaps what you do not know, even if what you think is the truth is not really how it is. Since you believe truth to be activity of mind, do you believe that everything we perceive and experience is some sort of dream or separate experience or reality based on your mind’s bias towards the world?

Mr. Himwich: I think your understanding of truth is sound. I must admit that mine is a work in progress. When I say 'activity of the mind', I mean just that: not the products of that activity, just the pure activity itself. That activity is the existential answer to the mind/body question (how the brain and consciousness relate). If we thereby solve the mind/body question, then we will also solve the mind's relationship to the external world. I know this sounds weird. Truth for me is not this and that bit of knowledge or even the collection of such bits into a whole. It is what actually happens. Again, not what physics tells us about the nature of the universe, but the universe itself as it happens. If we could understand our own activity (our own happening), then we could understand everything else. We are part of the happening of things. Again, I admit I am exploring ideas here. Let me try one more time: we are already what we seek to understand. In our very attempt to understand what we already are is the Truth. (I am laughing at myself. Feel free to laugh at me as well.)

Mr. Longenbaugh: I can accept your argument (for lack of a better word), but it does bring about a few more questions. These examples seem to be contradictory or perhaps by the nature of the activity itself they aren’t. Take someone who is in a coma for example or a dream that persists indefinitely, is their understanding subconscious because dreams to me seem to be more of a ride than activity. Should we try to understand these, knowing we can’t control them, or should we try to learn to control them? What about out of body experiences while awake? (I won’t give any examples) These provide a little trouble for me and I’m sure for you too. I think that I can understand what I believe to be awake reality and activity.

Mr. Himwich: This is becoming more about my wayward ideas than yours (not to say yours are wayward). But I am happy to continue. It seems to me that the Truth only appears when we are actively in search for it, but it remains paradoxically and necessarily elusive. The search and Truth are like the sun and the moon, the moon’s reflected light derives from the sunlike mind. (I am expressing ideas here I have never expressed before.) What we want to understand is not the moon itself but the light that illuminates it, yet we fail to recognize the source of the light comes from our own consciousness. This little analogy must be read allegorically.

Mr. Longenbaugh: That is a good analogy. This raises an interesting question. Is the moon necessary? Can we simply look straight into the sun and try and find Truth? I think that before we can journey to the sun, we must first understand the moon, or start searching. It seems maybe that the moon is more tangible than the sun. We can travel, and search for what the moon and its light mean, but I don’t think its ever possible to make it to the sun. In the context of this analogy, we can keep getting closer to the sun or Truth, but the closer we are, the hotter it is. This slows us down and eventually burns us before we can ever get there.

Mr. Himwich: I think that consciousness, before it is consciousness of something, is nonexistent, or rather exists as a potentiality only. This goes back to that question in class: if you stop thinking, i.e. stop being conscious, do you cease to exist. That is a very live question. I would hasten to add that in the mystic traditions, especially with respect to meditation practice, there is a possible turning away from the object to consciousness itself. The reported experience is the usual wonderful mystic nonsense (of which I have a great share): a sense of unity with all things and then joy.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I’m turned toward thinking that consciousness is existence. And going away from this consciousness I think is a good thing, because I’m not sure even if there is necessarily one direction that you must head. Turning away could very well be just as real as going in the “normal” direction if we have to call it that. I can’t say I’ve experienced many of these traditions but I have a basic understanding. Do you believe that there is a certain direction, or is there a possibility or two, even an infinite amount of suns, or levels of consciousness?

Mr. Himwich: I am thunderstruck by your statement that consciousness is existence. I have made that very same statement on another occasion. First, there are some esoteric eastern philosophies that do in fact speak of levels, e.g. personal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, in which one experiences the loss of the self that the personal consciousness has constructed. I hardly know what to say about such things. I would rather discuss this "turning away" that you speak of. Speaking for myself, the "turning away" is the journey that, through experience, leads back to the sun. This means that only by going away from the sun can we ever really know it as the source of our being. Thus, the journey, as in epic journeys, always leads through the Underworld where there is little or no light at all. That may sound poetic, but it involves real suffering. Is such a journey the good? Yes, but I speak only for myself here.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I think that 'the turning away' is a perspective. If you turn away from the sun, you can see how far you have come and what you have experienced. I think it can help you appreciate the sun more. I am concerned whether it is possible to turn away and never go back? Hopefully, death doesn’t bring this but I think that a loss of consciousness means that there is no more journey.

Mr. Himwich: Just to sum up: There is both an objective and subjective aspect to this: reality is and is not what we are aware of: there must be something that is apart from consciousness itself and yet that there is anything at all, existence itself, is due to consciousness. This is why we both search for truth/reality as something external to our consciousness and why we keep returning to consciousness as the ground of being. It is the paradox upon which the journey hinges. The journey is the effort to return to oneself. It gives meaning to our life, precisely because we never arrive.

Maria Metzger: Photo 1-3

The Boy Who Flipped My Mind

for Caulder

It always scared me when he did his flips. What, I thought, if he should misjudge the landing or slip on take-off and break not just an arm or a leg but his head, already balanced precariously on his shoulders. A mere shrug, it seemed, and he would be unrecognizable. I decided it was best not to mention my concern. Then what I feared most happened, but he was smiling, asking me who I was. It had been fun.

For the life of me

Yesterday before school I watched the sun rise over the trees but for the life of me I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do next.

The trees

I can’t remember

Yes! It was

The sun

Life

Above . . .

Come the revolution

At night you could hear the wolves cry or was it my own voice coming from afar, searching out like a comet in the night a nesting place where all would end, burning out, and begin again come the revolution and the downfall of the sky and all that keeps us from knowing who we are or what we're doing, always returning like birds in spring, hunting seeds and love and laying up treasure against the day when the revolution comes and we are what we have always been and will be again but this last time riding on the backs of storms and galaxies, spinning spun and spent all at once.

The Woman Whose Lovers All Had Green Eyes

The Woman Whose Lovers All Had Green Eyes -- or so she told me, though when I looked, my eyes were as blue as the sky, just like hers. She said that’s because I’d had other lovers too. That was hard to figure, but then I remembered my first love and her eyes were as blue as the moon, though she said I’d mistaken her for someone else. Maybe so. Maybe I was thinking of you. It’s hard to know. There’ve been so many.

Song for Richard

You spoke the only true word I know
And that word became an open wound
They cleaned with lye, not knowing
Your pain, your tears were like wine
That would save their shining souls.

Pick up the rifle, son
No you said
That’s no SIR, son
Pick up the damn gun!
No you said.

They called the captain
They called the priest
They called the doctor
Are you crazy, son?

No no no

Come with us!
You walked away.

I see you now forty years later
alone on that far thundering shore
“I will not fight your fucking war!”
You are carving a face out of driftwood
the face behind the face of everyone I meet
I have it still and think of you.

You came back. True to your word.
And they sent you to Leavenworth
Where your bruises became sores
Your sores gaping wounds
Your screams the blessing
That saves our sorry souls.

Once begun

Across the lake the sun falls

Water rises to the night

The moon divides

Lets loose a silent keening

Human bird and spark

And then there’s naught

But clap and clatter

Of constellations:

Your story once begun

For my students (2019 - 2020)

For Yoshi

Here an old man on his crane-like legs unfurls his wings and tucks

his head into the clouds

Here a young man who does not know he has wings begins to flutter

like a leaf in the wind

*****

For Mateo

Here the seasons wait in line to fall upon the land

Here a young boy already old and bent in two spins the wheel

Here Mateo, young in winter, dreams of hunting

*****

That Bird

When I came to school today, I did not come alone. There was a bear with me. No one seemed to notice except for one young girl whose eyes were filled with the glory of the morning and whose red hair played in the light air. She gave me a look, laughed, and asked who my friend was. "What do you mean?" I replied. She laughed again and said "you can't fool me" and flew up into a tree. Later, walking from one building to another, I heard a bird call, and there she was walking beside me. Cautious, I asked, "Who are you?" She seemed surprised I didn’t know. She said she was my student and had been with me from the beginning. This time when she flew away, I growled annoyance and padded on hand and foot to my next class.

II.

So, I thought I was alone on that beach when a sudden gust of wind blew my old tattered hat away. It was like the hat had wings or was some sort of kite, diving and lifting over the sea, but having no string attached, it disappeared over the water and surely landed wherever it is that kites go once they are set free. But then there was this bird call. I turned around and there, where there had been not one solitary person for months, was a girl wearing my hat. She laughed at my surprise, handed me my hat, and flew happily off. I knew then I was not alone.

Leonora's Photography: 31-35

© Leonora; all rights reserved

L'étang aux lotus (The lotus pond)

youtu.be/d2bdn2RIsVY (Schumann - Romance for oboe & piano-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Entre les lignes

© Leonora; all rights reserved

The Feast

..."It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible."

Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet (1875-1926) in "Letters Of Rainer Maria Rilke"

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Mosaïque

"Le monde entier est une mosaïque, le monde entier est une mosaïque de croyances, de langues, de communautés différentes, et la question n’est pas de savoir si on peut les faire vivre ensemble, la question c’est de savoir comment on va les faire vivre ensemble, parce qu’on n’a pas le choix."

Amin Maalouf, écrivain français né au Liban en 1949.

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Watching you

"What’s that mean—been seen? Who’s been seein’ me?"

(In "Milkman", by Anna Burns)

youtu.be/MBR4cn2flRU (Shostakovich- Cello Concerto Nº1-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Les murs parlent

"(..)

Il me souvient de chansons qui m'émurent
Il me souvient des signes à la craie
Qu'on découvrait au matin sur les murs
Sans en pouvoir déchiffrer les secrets

Qui peut dire où la mémoire commence
Qui peut dire où le temps présent finit
Où le passé rejoindra la romance
Où le malheur n'est qu'un papier jauni (..)"

Louis Aragon, poète français (1897-1982) in "Les yeux d'Elsa"

See more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/.

Ber's Photography: 246-250

Dividing the night

If you were here

All aflame in the evening light,

If it had been you running

through my fingers

like long summer grass

If it had been you curling

Like a wave upon the shore

So much like my own heart

Beating for night to come

And you close upon me

Your eyes dividing night

To hide away the tears,

There would be no sound

Or silence, no hour,

just you and all delight.

Leonora's Photography: 26-30

L’importance du jaune
*
"Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,--
Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover's words."

--Emily Dickinson

Together

"AS late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd:
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd:
Soft voices had they, with that tender plea
Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell'd."

--John Keats

The old tree

♫♪

youtu.be/PocYOusrw1I
(Lilium - Sleeping Inside-)

A fleur d'eau
♫♪
youtu.be/hTe9wYTWd4M
(Lauth Quartet - Pastels-)

Fields of Gold

*
♫♪
youtu.be/e7wjbNpw2Xk
(Fourplay - Fields Of Gold-)

You can find more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/.

Two fingers or three

(boy girl, sitting on a bench in lamplight)

There's something else bothering you, isn’t there?

No, I’m fine.

No you’re not.

I tell you I am fine.

I’ll believe that when you can tell me how many fingers I am holding up.

Two.

No, I was holding up three.

No you weren’t.

Yes I was. Try again. How many fingers?

Two!

No, three again. Something's not right.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.

Maybe not, but I know there’s something bothering you.

You’re right! YOU are bothering me.

I knew there was something.

I hate how you always think you know.

Like now?

Exactly! I'm leaving.

Then leave.

I can’t.

Why not?

Because I don’t know where to go.

Home?

No.

Why not?

I can’t tell you.

Well, you can come home with me.

Thank you.

Two fingers or three?

Just drop it.

What?

You got what you wanted, right?

What's that?

Me.

Ber's Photography: 251-255

Maria Metzger: José

Maria was inspired to draw this from her reading of Oliver Sacks' "The Autist Artist".

Turn the page

Turn the page and you will find
The emptiness you have been searching for:
A blank page is waiting for you,
Alone now for the last time,
Yearning for all that is not there,
Each word you write so full of life
You'll never want to turn the page again.
The sun will spin and the moon will weave
Itself into the mystery of the night
Where now you find yourself
As you truly are: not really there at all.
Let the land flourish and be whole,
Let the thunder bring you home.

Leonora's Photography 21-25

S'envelopper dans la lumière d'un jour d'été
♫♪ youtu.be/7v8zxoEoA_Q (Vivaldi -Sonata in D Minor 'La Follia'-)

Fils conducteurs

Technologie et tradition

Taipei 101 in Taiwan

Rich with symbolism and tradition, Taipei's iconic landmark is a standing monument to ancient feng shui traditions and modern architecture.

Construction on the Taipei 101 tower began in 1999 after two years of planning; work concluded in 2004

The Taipei 101 tower had to be constructed with more than just beauty and symbolism in mind; Taiwan is regularly subjected to powerful typhoons and regional earthquakes. According to the designers, the tower can withstand winds of up to 134 miles per hour and the strongest earthquakes on modern record.

Le langage des fleurs

*
"Orchidée du soir
Cachant dans son parfum
Le blanc de sa fleur."
Yosa Buson, poète japonais (1716-1783)

An evening orchid
Hidden in its scent
The flower’s whiteness

夜の蘭
香にかくれてや
花白し

yoru no ran ka ni kakurete ya hana shiroshi

Dendrobium

"La fleur n'en finissait pas de se préparer à être belle, à l'abri de sa chambre verte. Elle choisissait avec soin ses couleurs. Elle s'habillait lentement, elle ajustait un à un ses pétales. Elle ne voulait pas sortir toute fripée comme les coquelicots. Elle ne voulait apparaître que dans le plein rayonnement de sa beauté."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, écrivain français (1900-1944) in "Le Petit Prince".

You can find more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/.

A stray

She was moving beyond the sound of his voice, coming ever closer until she passed so close he could have reached out and touched her. It was not a dream; he was not asleep, “She is real, I saw her,” he would tell his father who did not laugh or argue or cry, at least not until the boy had calmed down and could see things as they are: it had been a dog, just a stray dog except this one was scarred and limping, though proud in the lift of its head and radiant in the storm. He too had seen her; she was moving on to some other place and time.

Staying awake

In the resonant silence was the multiform totem of all his past lives as a boy who yelped and snarled amd scampered like so many wild animals and then as a youth who learned to shape his words to fit the hearing of others as fearful of him as they were of themselves and then as a father of three children, toothless furies, all of whom would run away to some neverland, though he could still see the conscientious discontent in the downward slant of their eyes that would suddenly look up and straight through you like glass, and now there was no one but himself and his memories, no wife rooted to this earth, no kin to whom to be kind or kind to him, lying awake in the darkness perhaps for the last time or maybe not, but still good practice for staying awake when his whole world would go away, a ritual he had begun as a child when he first felt the wind outside his window cutting through him like grass and the leaves just out of reach fluttering in the early light, he listening now also to the hum and roll of his breathing, feeling blindly for the iron thread that sews together all beginnings and endings, his chest heaving like the hills and mountains that roll and swell and fall as surely as any ocean, though it was also true his body had always been alien to him and, if possible, more so now that it was but a shelter that was collapsing about a stranger who would soon enough depart, leaving no one nowhere and nothing to hand on to another except that which, being all in all, is nothing but a hope and a prayer to the living.

Ber: Picture of the Day -- 241-245

"Dialogue entre deux corsaires" par Roger Vailland

Dialogue entre deux corsaires

Premier Corsaire:

Tes belles victuailles feront éternellement ma tristesse.

Pourtant, si tu les cueilles, tes épines tomberont.

Deuxième Corsaire :

Mes épines sont plus belles que les tiennes,

Dans la terre elles grandiront comme des tours,

Elles blanchiront comme des jeunes filles,

Elles descendront comme des paravents.

Premier Corsaire:

Pare le vent!

Vente tes pas!

Vent à bois,

Le vent déguingande sur les toits.

Deuxième Corsaire :

Bois le vent !

Cueille la brise !

Brise le ris,

La tempête gourgandine la voile.

Premier Corsaire:

Ma voile est plus belle que la tienne,

Elle serre la certitude dans ses bras noirs,

Elle flatte la cuisse du ciel,

Elle casse-gachète la pelure de l’ombre.

Deuxième Corsaire :

L’ombre se perd, l’ombre se crée,

Le nombre est l’ombre,

L’ombre est le nombre

Et le monde est le nombre de l’ombre.

Premier Corsaire:

Braconne la ramure sans croix,

Croise la plaie et rame dans les lances,

Crique le blâme et saigne la camaille,

Ton oriflamme est sans balance !

Deuxième Corsaire :

Le crois-tu, protecteur des Anneaux,

Contempteur du mercure et du plomb,

Rival des germes et des coraux,

Vainqueur de la conjuration des roses du Vent?

Ma gâchette est plus camuse qu’on ne le pense.

Premier Corsaire:

Panse-la!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

English translation

A dialogue between two corsairs

First Corsair:

Your fine victuals will make me sad forever

However, if you pick them, your thorns will fall off.

Second Corsair:

My thorns are better than yours.

Once in the soil they will grow like towers,

They will turn pale like young women,

And drop like folding screens.

First Corsair:

Parry the wind!

Get the wind in your steps!

Wind for wood,

The wind tumbles on the wood.

Second Corsair:

Drink the wind!

Catch the breeze!

Reefing time,

The sail gets flirty in the storm.

First Corsair:

My sail is better than yours,

It holds certitude tightly in its black arms,

It cajoles the sky’s thigh,

It splits the skin of the shadow.

Second Corsair:

The shadow is lost, the shadow is created,

The number is the shadow,

The shadow is the number,

And the world is the number of the shadow.

First Corsair:

Poach the deer without a cross,

Cross the wound and paddle among the spears,

The blame might crack and the rascals bleed,

But your banner is partisan!

Second Corsair:

Do you believe it, protector of the Rings,

Despiser of mercury and lead,

Rival of germs and corals,

Victor of the compass rose conspiracy?

My gun trigger is blunter than one thinks.

First Corsair:

Bandage-it!

"Dialogue entre deux corsaires" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933
Background: Transition: A Quarter ly Review
Collection of Leonora's translations from Transition: Leonora's Translations from Transition

Leonora's Photography: 16-20

Sunrise

*

"Notre terre éblouie du rayon qui la dore,
Nage plus mollement dans l'élastique éther,
Comme un léger nuage enlevé par l'aurore
Plane avec majesté sur les vagues de l'air."

Lamartine, poète français (1790-1869), in "Harmonies poétiques"

Tea Time

L'arbre pointilliste

Tale of lilac and lime

(au bord de la Loire)

"Douceur,
Je dis: douceur.

Je dis: douceur des mots
Quand tu rentres le soir du travail harassant
Et que des mots t'accueillent
Qui te donnent du temps.

Car on tue dans le monde
Et tout massacre nous vieillit.

Je dis: douceur,
Pensant aussi
A des feuilles en voie de sortir du bourgeon,
A des cieux, à de l'eau dans les journées d'été,
A des poignées de main.

Je dis: douceur, pensant aux heures d'amitié,
A des moments qui disent
Le temps de la douceur venant pour de bon,

Cet air tout neuf,
Qui pour durer s'installera."

Eugène Guillevic, poète breton (1907-1997)in "Terre à bonheur"

You can find more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/

Fuck you I love you

Fuck you I love you is pretty

Much the same as the golden strands

Of your hair falling from the sky

Like petals and your lips a bitter

Chocolate and the children dressed up

In grown-up clothes, high heels and

Cowboy boots to begin their journey

To the dark and lovely Afterlife.

Fuck you I love you! All the prying

Eyes of heaven are not as blue as

Yours so lovely in that shade of black

Which is the same through my eyes

As the night sky is to the riverrun

Through dark fields of wheat and fire.

NUIT FAISEUSE D’ANGES par Camille Schuwer

NUIT FAISEUSE D’ANGES

par Camille Schuwer

elle est née

Sélèné

c’est l’aînée

à l’heure du réverbère

il lui pousse un corps bleu des feuilles d’air

au bout des flammes de vent

de toutes parts la rue est dans les blés

sans compter les roues amères

et la tour de vos cheveux

o mort armure à rendre

ah me voilà

âme à voile

âme vois-là

comme elle tremble aux étoiles chues des terrasses

les chômeurs de l’ombre pillent aux vitres

tout ce qui n’est pas or mais brille

dans le ciel au bord de la mare

la tête des maisons se suicide

ENGLISH TRANSLATON

Night of the angels

she has been born

Selene

She the eldest

at the time the street lamp was lit up

she’s growing a blue body leaves of air

at the tip of flames of wind

the street is in wheat fields all around

not to mention the bitter wheels

and the tower of your hair

o death armor to restore

ah here I am

soul with sail

soul you see

how she trembles to the stars fallen from the terraces

the invisible unemployed loot in the windows

all that glitters but is not gold

in the sky at the edge of the pond

the head of the houses commits suicide

"NUIT FAISEUSE D’ANGES" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Collection of Leonora's translations from Transition: Leonora's Translations from Transition

Ber: Picture of the Day, 236-240

Some other Scotland

It seems, don’t it, that in trying to understand the whys and wherefores of other people’s lives we are just trying to understand ourselves and justify our own choices, for there but for the grace of God go I? It’s a silly business, but it makes community possible and not just because it gives us all something to talk about, the lives of others, but provides safety in numbers, wherein we may ourselves disappear. Like that time you said you loved Charles but wouldn’t marry him because he was too much like your father. And I thought to myself, no girl, you are just afraid of life. And then you married someone else you didn’t love and had your family and only now regretted your choice when it was too late anyhow, though you and I would talk about what might have been, you seeing yourself in some other Scotland, a materfamilias of a brood of children who would live out all the lives you saw for yourself when you first fell in love with Charles, laughing at yourself, and me offering the lazy, redundant comfort of a friend, saying we were both a pair of fools.

Foraging

Last night the raccoons foraged

in our backyard: there were grapes,

bread, cheese, wine and figs

we'd left out ‘til morning.

All the while we slept

and I, dreaming of dreaming,

tasted honey and found you

close, pawing softly, hands

and feet rhythmically climbing.

In the morning there were tracks

on my arms and legs and you,

looking out, cursed the varmints

gently and, like a detective, traced

your fingers through your hair

and could not help but smile.

L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux, par Joë Bousquet

L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux

par Joë Bousquet

Parler, une chanson d’argent qui s’élève à la vie

Parler pour qu’une passante devienne de la lumière qui

m’écoute et qui s’avoue combien une solitude est profonde

Parler, la route dans la neige, le silence des voitures arrêtées

devant les maisons

Ouvrant autour d’elle la nuit protectrice où je me sentais

m’enfoncer

Des mains où la chair était aussi légère que le regard, flot-

tait sur lui comme un miroir pour le ciel qui passait

Un cœur pour que ma douleur me conduise

De grandes ailes lasses dans ces jambes brisées pour qu’un

rayon vivant éclaire ce qi n’est pas dans une image qui nous

appelle,

Des bouches dans la chair, toutes les ardeurs qui soulèvent

un corps sur l’oubli de lui-même.

Ma chair dans mes yeux, un miroir d’eau pure sur la terre,

Un abîme dans ma stupeur où se lève la toute-beauté de

son visage comme un regard rayonnant dont sa chair se ferait

une proie.

Quelle douce main dans ces yeux ouvrait les yeux du jour ?

Tu le sauras. La nuit sans mouvement que ton œil cache

avec du ciel

Habille de tes larmes l’âme qui dit que tu n’es pas.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Love gave me eyes

Words, a song about money rising to life

Talk so that a woman passing by might become light

listening to me and avowing how deep solitude is

Speak, the road in the snow, the silence of parked cars

in front of the houses.

Opening around her the protective night into which I could feel myself

sink

Hands with flesh as light as the gaze, floating

on him like a mirror for the passing sky

A heart so my pain can lead me

Large weary wings in those broken legs so that a living

ray can illuminate what is not in an image

calling us,

Mouths in the flesh, all the passions that lift

a body on its abandon.

My flesh in my eyes, a mirror of pure water on the earth,

An abyss in my awe where rises the very beauty of

her face like a radiant look on her flesh

as prey

What soft hand in those eyes opened the eyes of the day?

You will know. The still night that your eye hides

with some sky

Dresses in your tears the soul that says you are not.

"L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933
Background: Transition: A Quarter ly Review

Where no angels reside

You want to know

what is your life

but all you find

are words, zeroes

and ones,

and bread crumbs

in your beard.

Where you ask

is the red iris

that is your heart?

Where the feather

of your breath

or your absence?

You want to become

what you already are

while there is still a you

that cares how light

becomes a face

and looks at you

like you were glass.

There comes a time

when love turns away

and finds itself in dust

where no angels reside,

no one teaches you

how to live, where

no one knows

you are not there.

Leonora's Photography: 11-15

youtu.be/HTRw_rsg9HM
(Marc Mellits- Gravity-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved
Underground

youtu.be/S8JxMvMFL4U
(Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet Nº7-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved
La danse du serpent

youtu.be/KZP3V76UBUE
(Louise Vertigo - La Danse Du Serpent-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved
Les oiseaux ne savent pas quand c'est dimanche.

"(..) je voudrais un moment me transformer en oiseau pour connaître le contentement et la joie qu'ils éprouvent à vivre"
Giacomo Leopardi, poète italien (1798-1837) in"Petites oeuvres morales"

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Chaque rayon de lune est un rayon de miel

youtu.be/Nft7tiy5E-w
(Claude Debussy - Suite Bergamasque - Clair de Lune-)

You can find more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/

Salaire de mes yeux, par Joë Bousquet

Salaire de mes yeux, par Joë Bousquet

Elle est tout mon regard; mon regard où ma chair se

traverse de sa nuit comme un œil clos dans la lumière qui

l’a créé.

Le langage du cœur, celui qui donne un

corps à ce qui nous poursuit

Un voile léger, ton visage

briller, redire avec mon regard, redire dans

le vertige de mon regard: A qui sont ces yeux ?

Voiler de ma présence la pensée que tu es

une femme, le ciel déchiré de l’autre chair.

Le soir ; sur la nuit vaine, la rose des regards où l’es-

pace ferme les yeux et rêve entre nous de nos corps;

Une étoile de mer dans la main des sables

mouvants.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

My rewarding eyes, by Joë Bousquet

She is all I see; a gaze where her night

crosses my flesh like a closed eye in its creative light

The language of the heart, the one that gives

flesh to all that pursues us

A light veil, your face

to shine, to say it again with my gaze, and to repeat it in

the vertigo of my gaze: Whose eyes are these?

To hide with my presence the thought of you as

a woman, the torn sky of the other flesh.

Close of day; on the vain night, the rose of gazes where space

shuts one’s eyes and between us dreams of our bodies;

A starfish in the hand of the shifting sands.

"Salaire de mes yeux" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Do you have a sister?

His sister, well not exactly his sister, more like an aunt who was born after and somehow arrived in his life as though he had known her since childhood, his sister, if you like, though unknown as such to others who were actually of his blood, more like a greek goblin goddess, you know, like those sculpted images that plague the precincts of Cybele in Pessina --she asked as innocently as you please, if I had kept safe the letter she had written me when she was away for school and then away for good because someone, not me, had lied to her and had left her an orphan. Her question prodded another, Do you have a sister or not? And the answer was right there in that letter, along with a litany of liaisons, assignations and other matings and musings, a letter of letters, depending on how you multiply the readings, that I had in fact saved into my present old age through what seemed now like epochs of history but were actually no more than a boy who had withered away into adolescence, died and reborn again as a New Man, who in turn withered away, and now crept along on three feet, soon to be four – the answer was that every man had a sister whether he knew it or not and so every woman a brother. That’s what the letter said and that she was my sister whether I liked it or not, whether I loved her or not, and that If she were an orphan, then so was I. But, you ask, is there, was there, such a letter? Here. Read it for yourself.

Out of time

Following the long clean broken line of sight we fill in the gaps with the only words that fit: separation, dust, fulfillment that is in itself no more than rain. No, he did not love her, nor she him, but both knew with certainty what was at stake and a sort of dreamy dialogue between the two would follow and conclude in an embrace, as much understood as the speech of an idiot who says one thing and means another. They spent their nights together, hungry for each other, the darkness as harsh as a hammer upon an anvil, leaving them both barely alive and without breath save the one they shared. In the morning, they would be strangers again and would remain so until the one, feeling on her skin an approaching storm or the dry cacophonous clattering of leaves, would fall upon the other as though he could bury her whole, devouring her cries like dry sand a sudden summer shower. He knew her then, knew himself, the long clean broken line disappearing from sight.

“Coréâme” by Camille Schuwer

Coréâme

Because you did not lie on the day you were born,

The seers’ sun, the incandescent light,

delighted you under your eyelids, and the wheel of greenery

turning with your blood, became centrifugal,

splattered stones, was truth.

There were smiling eyes and crying flowers

at the end of the hands cutting the day’s rose,

the buzzing mouth to prophesize,

a black brain to bury oblivion.

At the foot of the towers the soil

was like a place ceded without a fight;

the dead looked like trees,

like their flagging flames.

The soul told the body:

if you like, I’ll take you everywhere without touching your clothes,

without letting you fall out of sleep;

you will go through the walls, the sheets of lead;

your raging thoughts, my star presence,

will redden the patients’ brow,

and steal from the poet his turn to speak;

you see the sun’s noise, the perpetual movement

of the bee that stays in one place

like a pulsating factory;

the same night, the same sun; you understand it all.

And the body answered: I hear less than the deaf,

I am thirsty, I feel dizzy at the edge of my anthill,

they fatten me like a queen, I am losing my seeds

and my blood, in spite of my heart’s rose window;

I scream, I have my own light, I feel hot in the snow;

O Sisyphus! O the ordeal! I fall and get up again;

time is feeding my strength and my fatigue;

please just give me a little foliage before I die.

The soul also said— sounding like Antigone:

who knows the weight of the shadow, a thin column,

O my palm tree head holder,

here is the wind of my mind, without all its glories;

and the heavy light one, supporting supported

wobbled along carrying its tower of light.

Dazzled they sleep in the middle of the darkness,

black, it slumbers, as the mangoes roll out of its hands.

Translator's Note: The paranomastic title is a pun on “Corps et âme“, which sounds exactly the same and means “Body and soul”.The created word means nothing in French. I have left it in French

"Coréâme" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: Download Coréâme II

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review:

"For Peace" (Pour la Paix) by Jacques Baron

For Peace

With time passing, with water flowing, with

the workers leaving the factories,

with the rumours of the stock market,

with the memories, the desires, the wasted moments,

the doors opening and shutting without knowing why

with all that we wanted to say that remained on the edge

of our lips,

with a landscape already seen in a dream,

with the habit of reading newspapers,

we went for that romantic stroll we had promised ourselves

a long time ago.

We took beaten tracks, so beaten that they screamed like beaten dogs,

we wanted to leave them but a sound philosophy would always prevent us from doing so.

We argued with ourselves, we grabbed each other's throats; and tore each other apart

after ferocious insults,

We did not entirely succeed in forgiving ourselves but the heart was in it,

the always obliging heart,

the very bar that grants credit,

until the time when all the paths that you’ve always followed

fall back on you and crush you like four-leaf clovers

pressed between the pages of a book.

Suddenly it is not the same any more,

not exactly the same.

You’ve left you’ve disappeared you are in the air you breathe and you see everything.

You see a woman and you grab her by the waist. She says yes.

She does not really know what she means by this.

But you hear the rustling of wings.

The dairyman’s hello is brighter.

The large drapes of one’s memory solemnly fall down

behind a procession of runaway actors.

But the branches of the pepper trees are stirred

in sweltering countries, where are buried under the sands,

temples dedicated to bloody cults.

Out of one’s nerves a rug is made on which to lie down

and one fears

that all pain might have vanished.

You stop writing to your friends

and you are forgiving about their letters gathered in the dew.

And all that remains slowly warms up.

The horizon becomes blurred

and you congratulate yourself that the good weather will last.

You call on the muses. They pretend not to

understand;

they are camping,

catching centaurs running.

But all that happens is good.

You are as pleased as when you’ve passed the age

of the New Year’s visits.

You slip into the Adriatic Sea near a charming woman

whose eyes are islands peopled with castaways

sensing their hour of deliverance.

She is swimming.

Now is not the time to understand.

"Pour la Paix" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: View this photo

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Leonora's Photography: 6-10

Le monde de la carpe koï

Garden with a view

Observatoire sous-marin

Orgues urbaines

Dans l’eau du temps qui coule à petit bruit

You can find more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/

Hovey Jude Corbin aka Henry David: singer-songwriter: "The lesser I suffer, the lesser I know"

Singer-Songwriter: https://www.hoveyjudecorbin.com

I was the proud teacher of Henry David in English, Latin and Ancient Greek, 2015-2018.

Here is what Henry David wrote for his "This I Believe" statement, the last writing assignment of his senior year.

Hovey Jude Corbin

I think I believe in too much to be whole;
a rose with too many thorns, most would not hold.
They tell me, when grown up, I’ll learn to let go – Yet…
The lesser I suffer, the lesser I know.

I believe in the wand’rer who’s stuck in my soul,
I grit my teeth, bid him to lay down his load.
He’ll make me his home ‘til I fin’ly grow old,
and we’ll riot like schoolboys, and tear up the road.

I believe in the song that I’ve kept in my chest,
and I’ll keep singing on to the day that I rest.
I’ll rot away blissful, greeting Death with a smile,
into torture we’ll go, singing both all the while.

I want to believe in the honey of love,
I’ve felt it before and I house the white dove.
Still it cuts me to pieces, and tears me to shreds,
I lie awake bludgeoned ‘til daybreak instead.

I believe in the heart that will beat my life long,
there the drum and the drum and the drum through the wrong.
It makes me a well, and it fills to the brim,
to be lost in the streets as they slowly go dim.

I believe I’ll be lost ‘til I finally pass,
that I’ll endlessly wrestle myself to the last.
I will toss and return to the fasting, and drought;
I will eat of myself from the in to the out.

I believe that I know how I’m hopelessly not,
that I’m clueless as here, even now, as I’m shot
by my old smoking gun that I light on mine own
as I sit and pretend that I’m carved into stone.

I think I believe in too much to be whole,
that I’ll keep a tight grip on the dreams that I hold,
I know that, still someday, I’ll need to let go. Yet! –
The lesser I suffer, the lesser I know.

~Henry David

"Anonyme" by André de Richaud

Anonyme

Les biches de l'amour ont pleuré jusqu'à l'aube
les bêtes de ma vie ont toutes les yeux faux
Et toi — tête de gel qui sanglotte dans la flamme
sans pouvoir redevenir le nuage
visage étonné des étincelles du silence
calciné par l'odeur des cuivres emmêlés
et les chevaux du rire impatients
de mordre la chair des astres ennuyés
et les femmes de verre qui se brisent quand on ne pense plus à elle
et celui qui se décompose en souriant
au fond de la glace miroitante
et sa jambe lépreuse de soleil
et son sexe couvert de rosée
et le ventre de cette femme tout parsemé d'hirondelles évanouies
qui vont et viennent et passent à travers les anneaux de diamant comme
si le diamant ne pouvait se faire comprendre
sans le secours des oiseaux du ciel

- -

Parle nuit plus douce que les amandiers de sa bouche
qui neigent sur ma langue quand l'heure se couche
Parle, fantôme étonné du silence.

* * * * *

Nameless

Until dawn the does of love cried
all animals in my life have phony eyes
And you—frozen head sobbing in the flame
unable to be cloud again
your face baffled by the sparks of silence
charred by the smell of tangled brasses
and the horses of laughter eager to bite
the bored stars’ flesh
and the glass women breaking through oblivion
and the one who is smiling as he rots away
at the bottom of the shimmering ice
and his leg under the dappling sun
and his sex covered in dew
and that woman’s belly dotted all over with unconscious swallows
going in and out of the diamond rings as if
the diamond could not be grasped
without the help of the birds in the sky
_ _

Speak up night, softer than the almond trees in her mouth
falling like snow onto my tongue when the time retires at night
Speak to me, ghost amazed by the silence.

André de Richaud's "Anonyme" originally appeared in Transition: A Quarterly Review, No. 26, 1937.

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Blue hair and all that

For -Bel

In the beginning your hair was blue like fire and you had webbed feet and no knees. You were different and beautiful and strange and somehow despite all the daily crushing normalization, all those pretty pictures of what we are not, despite all the soulless practicalities of life and more and there is so damn much more, especially the cool hypocrisy required just to get along, you are still strange and different and beautiful, blue hair and all.

She: What? Where did you get all that? Was it something I said?

He: You tell me. Where does 'all that' come from?

She: That’s not an answer and you know it.

He: Sometimes I don’t seem to know the difference between a question and an answer.

She: That seems pretty basic to me.

He: The “not knowing”?

She: No, “the difference”. It’s the simplest thing. You can’t keep answering a question with a question. It's annoying.

He: Well, then, let me try again: a question is when you hear the wind calling and an answer is when you stop listening.

She: You’re so strange!

He: I suppose so. Hey, is that blue hair natural?

She: You tell me. What do you think?

He: And your feet, they’re webbed? And you have --

She: I know, I know, I have no knees and all that.

She had had quite enough and told him so, though the air was moving. When she spoke again, she asked almost in a whisper, "Is my hair really blue?" But this time, all she heard was wind.

Touch

Your skin like this ground

Upon which all things run

Is scarred and cracked

yet yearns for life

and wordless words

that speak of love.

You lie there

and think of spring.

You are as old as rain

and ever young.

A way of dying

He held her feathers in his hand

But the wind took them for itself.

There was nothing but these words

To write on this dry coarse paper,

Her skin, the red ink she died of

Running off like a mountain stream.

What poets do

A hawk is as little

a darting thought

or glance

As it is a sky-wolf

or windborne voice.

It is a name

for what cannot be

named within ourselves

and would else be lost.

So we stop and die

But would bravely say,

We dive like hawks

and climb the sky.

So deep his eyes

for mickey

There is life and death

and life again, ground

to common cosmic

dust. Here we end

and begin again,

his eyes so deep

we find in death

his life and love

within ourselves.

only different in form

prima puella

'heart blooming

irises'

even at night.

hhimwich is the author of all poems and other writing unless indicated otherwise.

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David Chalmers: Fragments of consciousness

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Watching you

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Les murs parlent

The old tree

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A fleur d'eau♫♪youtu.be/hTe9wYTWd4M(Lauth Quartet - Pastels-)

Fields of Gold

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S'envelopper dans la lumière d'un jour d'été♫♪ youtu.be/7v8zxoEoA_Q (Vivaldi -Sonata in D Minor 'La Follia'-)

Technologie et tradition

Dendrobium

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Chaque rayon de lune est un rayon de miel

A fleur d'eau
♫♪
youtu.be/hTe9wYTWd4M
(Lauth Quartet - Pastels-)

*
♫♪
youtu.be/e7wjbNpw2Xk
(Fourplay - Fields Of Gold-)

S'envelopper dans la lumière d'un jour d'été
♫♪ youtu.be/7v8zxoEoA_Q (Vivaldi -Sonata in D Minor 'La Follia'-)

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Underground

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La danse du serpent

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Les oiseaux ne savent pas quand c'est dimanche.