February 2012
9 posts
2 tags
For @vajramrita & @morrisresearch
Mose...
2 tags
Get out of the car. Put down the phone. Take off...
2 tags
2 tags
“CREATIVE GENIUS
In most histories of German and European literature Hamann...”
– The seventh chapter titled “Creative Genius” of the nine chapter book by Isaiah Berlin concerning Georg Johann Hamann “The Magus of the North”
Always and ever loath to discuss matters of genius, i nonetheless scanned and posted this in part because of its excellence in an...
2 tags
“Thou forgettest me.”
– Sappho, from a fragment translated by J. B. Hare (via proustitute)
1 tag
“Have you ever while pond’ring the ways of the morn,
Thought to save...”
– http://byneddiejingo.blogspot.com/2005/03/greetings-from-fort-mudge.html
2 tags
Whenever I see The moon on the shore. Or read...
2 tags
“The Jug
Once the Baal Shem said to his disciples: “Just as the strength...”
2 tags
“Once, Rav Simcha Bunim of Peshischa was crossing a bridge over a rushing river...”
January 2012
14 posts
1 tag
“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It...”
– John Steinbeck. East of Eden (via yochanah)
1 tag
3 tags
“There’s an eye shop in the sky”
– eno
http://tinyurl.com/8u238t
1 tag
“I dreamed that I was Jimmy Carter’s lover, and I was somewhere, I guess in the...”
– “Democratic Way”
Laurie Anderson
2 tags
Translating Brecht ... Fortini →
driftwork:
All afternoon a thunderstorm hung on the rooftops, then broke, in lightning, in torrents. I stared at lines of cement, lines of glass with screams inside them, wounds mixed in and limbs, mine also, who have survived. Carefully, looking now at the bricks, embattled, now at the dry page, I heard the word of a poet expire, or change to another voice, no longer for us. The...
2 tags
2 tags
“I
Thirty-two years before the Baal-Shem-Tov was born, there died within a...”
– “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi and the Baal Shem Tov”
From The Origin And Meaning of Hasidism
by Martin Buber
1960
3 tags
2 tags
In The Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives The Heart →
hereshe:
In the slight ripple, the fishes dart Like fingers, centrifugal, like wishes Wanton. And pleasures rise as the eyes fall Through the lucid water. The small pebble, The clear clay bottom, the white shell Are apparent, though superficial. Who would ask more of the August afternoon? Who would dig mines and follow shadows? “I would,” answers bored Heart, “Lounger, rise” (Underlip...
2 tags
“It is up to man to purify the sparks out of the things and beings he meets day...”
– Martin Buber from The Foundations Stone in The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism
2 tags
3 tags
i’ll never leave you
3 tags
(mvt. 1) From Chicago to New York. One of the...
1 tag
December 2011
14 posts
2 tags
It’s as if a painter started with eyes →
chaikoan:
It’s as if a painter started with eyes, the lines along a rim and irises aglow, to determine how the rest of the face fell onto the canvas or scrap that follow from brush to palette mixing the shades and hues in a fine gloss on flat surface. Then like life, by some jump, fingertips scratched into focus, fondling or feelings, then an ear comes round in sympathy for the difficulties...
4 tags
2 tags
Czesław Miłosz, On Prayer →
bellswithin:
You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the color of ripe gold Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That Bridge leads to the shore of Reversal Where everything is just the opposite and the word ‘is’ Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned. Notice: I...
3 tags
2 tags
Amidst Worlds - by Innokenty Annensky →
chaikoan:
Amidst worlds, and radiant star A lustrous light, I murmur Her name and sigh… Not because She was mine to love afar, But merely because I suffer those drawn nigh. And if my anguished doubts remain, I wish to divine Her answer on this night, Not because the light She sheds will sustain, Only because with Her I need no light.
translation by LynnChakoian and S. Albertoff
January 2011 -...
3 tags
Mayakovski
driftwork:
Omnipotent one You thought up a pair of hands Fixed it So that everyone has a head. Why couldn’t you fix it So that without torment We could just kiss and kiss and kiss ?
Mayakovski … quoted from Roman Jakobson Verbal Art….
2 tags
“Be not overeager to go to the house of God. (Ecclesiastes 4:17)
This verse...”
– Opening page of Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah
1 tag
2 tags
Cold War by Fred Eaglesmith
2 tags
“Happy Birthday
JOE: In our country, you’re free and so you’re born and so they...”
1 tag
2 tags
Our Era is Political →
bikerbar:
We are children of our era; our era is political. All affairs, day and night, yours, ours, theirs, are political affairs. Like it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political cast, your eyes a political aspect. What you say has a resonance; what you are silent about is telling. Either way, it’s political. Even when you head for the hills you’re taking political...
2 tags
More Government, Please!
It is September 2011, and Speaker of the House John Boehner is making an important statement on the subject of our flagging economy. He is dressed in a dark suit and one of those luminous ties for which he is renowned; the monotone of his voice says solidity, predictability, the sort of consummate, reassuring dullness it must take a lifetime of Rotary meetings to perfect. It is actually...
1 tag
1 tag
November 2011
17 posts
2 tags
"One Thread Only"
bikerbar:
One thread, one thread only! Warp and woof, quill and shuttle, countless cloths and colors, a thousand hanks and skeins with ten thousand names ten thousand places. But there is one thread only.
________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulleh_Shah
2 tags
2 tags
Han-shan (Cold Mountain Poet)
bikerbar:
Children I implore you get out of the burning house now three carts wait outside to save you from a homeless life relax in the village square before the sky everything’s empty no direction is better or worse east is just as good as west those who know the meaning of this are free to go where they want
________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanshan_%28poet%29
2 tags
“Rabbi asked R. Ishmael son of R. Jose, The wealthy in Palestine, whereby do they...”
– Shabbat
119a
1 tag
“Already emptier than i would imagine them
The poplars stand without a visible...”
2 tags
Yearning →
mamagrae:
We speak before we speak, with eyes and lips, in how we tip our heads, in how we lean like trees tired of waiting for the sun. We tell our whole story before we even open our mouths. Yet we frequently pretend that nothing is conveyed. We pretend we are strangers and deny what we learn before words.
We are all made up of yearning and light, searching for a way out, afraid we will...
1 tag
2 tags
1 tag
3 tags
4 tags
2 tags
“The Depths
When the white fog burns off,
the abyss of everlasting light
is...”
– Denise Levertov from The Jacob’s Ladder