And remember the Christmas wreath on our door—At sight of angels or anything unusual
when we threw it away and it jumped blue up the fire?
The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart. If that be gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched. If that remains, it matters very little if a few Early Victorian armchairs remain along with it...So long as human society will leave my spiritual inside alone, I will allow it, with a comparative submission, to work its wild will with my physical interior. I will submit to cigars. I will meekly embrace a bottle of Burgundy. I will humble myself to a hansom cab. If only by this means I may preserve to myself the virginity of the spirit, which enjoys with astonishment and fear. I do not say that these are the only methods of preserving it. I incline to the belief that there are others. But I will have nothing to do with simplicity which lacks the fear, the astonishment, and the joy alike. I will have nothing to do with the devilish vision of a child who is too simple to like toys.
The child is, indeed, in these, and many other matters, the best guide. And in nothing is the child so righteously childlike, in nothing does he exhibit more accurately the sounder order of simplicity, than in the fact that he sees everything with a simple pleasure, even the complex things. The false type of naturalness harps always on the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The higher kind of naturalness ignores that distinction. To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained. The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of fairy-tales. In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam-engines. And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steam-engines is not that men pay for them or work at them, or make them very ugly, or even that men are killed by them; but merely that men do not play at them. The evil is that the childish poetry of clockwork does not remain. The wrong is not that engines are too much admired, but that they are not admired enough. The sin is not that engines are mechanical, but that men are mechanical.
-- G.K. Chesterton "On Sandals and Simplicity" Heretics (1905)
Heretics
Ground lapis for the sky, and scrolls of gold,
Before which shepherds kneel, gazing aloft
At visiting angels clothed in egg-yolk gowns
Celestial tinctures smuggled from the East,
From sunlit Eden, the palmed and plotted banks
Of sun-tanned Aden. Brought home in fragile grails,
Planted in England, rising at Eastertide,
Their petals cup stamens of topaz dust,
The powdery stuff of cooks and cosmeticians.
But to the camels-hair tip of the finest brush
Of Brother Anselm, it is the light of dawn,
Gilding the hems, the sleeves, the fluted pleats
Of the antiphonal archangelic choirs
Singing their melismatic pax in terram.
The child lies cribbed below, in bestial dark,
Pale as the tiny tips of crocuses
That will find their way to the light through drifts of snow.
-- Anthony Hecht
Anthony Hecht
How deeply can one go into the distances
and yet come back unannihilated by the immensity they represent?
The doorway gave way suddenly: I was projected into the infinite whisper.
-- Peyton Houston XVI Complex Songs at the Borders of Silence
Aren't we enlarged
by the scale of what we're able
to desire? Everything,
the choir insists,
might flame;
inside these wrappings
burns another, brighter life,
quickened, now,
by song: hear how
it cascades, in overlapping,
lapidary waves of praise? Still time.
Still time to change.
-- Mark Doty, from "Messiah (Christmas Portion)"
more from "Messiah (Christmas Portion") here
Mark Doty
Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen, fühle,
wie dein Atem noch den Raum vermehrt.
Im Gebälk der finsteren Glockenstühle
laß dich läuten. Das, was an dir zehrt
wird ein Starkes über dieser Nahrung.
Geh in der Verwandlung aus und ein,
Was ist deine leidenste Erfahrung?
Ist dir Trinken bitter, werde Wein.
So in dieser Nacht aus Überdruß
Zauberkraft am Kreuzweg deiner Sinne,
ihrer seltsamen Begegnung Sinn.
Und wenn dich das Irdische vergaß,
zu der stillen Erde sag: Ich rinne.
Zu dem raschen Wasser sprich: Ich bin.
At that moment I saw you at the end of the platform. You were wearing trousers. On the long platform beside the stranded train, in the vast white diffused late-afternoon light of the rift valley, you looked very small. With your appearance everything changed. Everything from the passage under the railway tracks to the sun setting, from the Arabic numerals on the board which announced the times of the trains, to the gulls perched on a roof, from the invisible stars to the taste of coffee on my palate. The world of circumstance and contingency, into which, long before, I had been born, became like a room. I was home.
-- John Berger And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
Bed is too small for my tiredness;
Give me a hillside with trees.
Tuck a cloud up under my chin.
Lord, blow the moon out, please.
Rock me to sleep in a cradle of dreams;
Sing me a lullaby of leaves.
Tuck a cloud up under my chin.
Lord, blow the moon out, please.
-- Traditional
I meant that it is often supposed that in order to write a play one has, or ought to have, an idea, or certain ideas, or a coherent set of ideas that must be translated into scenic images, which will illustrate these ideas or doctrines...
In actual fact, the language of artistic creation is often that which is the most complex, the most charged with meaning; far from having to be determined by some system of thought which is extrinsic or superior to it, and to which it merely has to submit, it's often the artist's language which stimulates and engenders the thought of others, which creates new ways of seeing the world, hence a new mentality. Ideologies, sociologies, systems of aesthetics are nurtured on works of art. There can be no philosophy of culture without culture itself, no philosophical theory without those living examples of psychology, works of art, whose authors did not need to know or take into account the closed experiences of the past. Otherwise there would never have been anything new. This new element, which is knowledge of something, is also construction, of course, since any knowledge, any encounter between the self and the world is a projection of the self into that substance which is the world, a projection, that's to say a pattern, a shape, an architecture.
To sum it all up, let's say that the artist may perhaps not have any ideas at the back of his head, or over the top of his head, which he feels bound to demonstrate. But he has ideas in his head which are potentialities, living seeds which shoot up and blossom in their own way, according to their own nature, according to the modalities proper to creation which is a concrete, autonomous form of thought, exploring the world and at the same time constructing it, since all knowledge is projection.
A whole world is built up, or disclosed, as the artist writes it and thinks it.
Practice makes perfect, or, as Raymond Queneau has neatly and wittily put it: 'C’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron, c’est en écrivant qu’on devient écriveron.'*
-- Eugène Ionesco Fragments of a Journal
Translated by Jean Stewart
*It is in forging that one becomes a blacksmith, it is in writing that one becomes a writesmith.
Whatever you do mindfully is meditation. When you touch a flower, you can touch it with your fingers, but better yet, you can touch it mindfully, with your full awareness. "Breathing in—I know that the flower is there; breathing out—I smile at the flower." While you are practicing in this way, you are really there and at the same time, the flower is really there. If you are not really there, nothing is there. The sunset is something marvelous and so is the full moon, but since you are not really there, the sunset is not for you. From time to time, I let myself look at the full moon; I take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and I practice: "I know you are there, and I am very glad about it." I practice that with the full moon, with the cherry blossoms . . . We are surrounded by miracles, but we have to recognize them; otherwise there is no life.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh True Love
Thich Nhat Hanh
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
-- William Butler Yeats
When you look at circulatory man, you see why humans had to hug. But when you look at neural man, you see why humans had to fly.
For the nerve ends, taken altogether, make a complete human shape, while pointing with their flametips away from drags of gravity and heft, toward open air, as if into space. They make the man appear to be on fire, not so wrapped inward as circulatory man, but radiating outward, especially at loin and crown...
In Vesalius's work a cool, unflinching eye for physical truths meets Titian's hot, imaginative flair. Just where we might have feared that the inexpressibility of human being would be reduced to mere mechanics, or mere fancy, instead we find our attentions rewarded with a wealth of a spirited self-revelation, an extension rather than an abridging of the mysteries (mysteries which lie at the very heart—or maybe synapses—of our happening at all, in time and space). To my mind, the ultimate gift from Titian and Vesalius working together is the kind of evidence no mere theories of brotherhood, no willfulness of theology, can match. Revealed right there in graphic terms, both in the flesh and past it, are the matters that must matter most: blood's embrace, and nerve's release... For what's beyond us is within us: look at the fact and the art, the mark and the remarking. There you'll have it: loving's fabric, and the evidence of spirit.
-- Heather McHugh, from "The Fabric: A Poet's Vesalius" Poetry December 2007
"The Fabric: A Poet's Vesalius"
Andreas Vesalius: De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Still, if you are in luck, you may be granted,
As, inland, one can sometimes smell the sea,
A moment's perfect carelessness, in which
To stumble a few steps and sink to sleep
In the same clearing where, in the old story,
A holy man discovered Vishnu sleeping,
Wrapped in his maya, dreaming by a pool
On whose calm face all images whatever
Lay clear, unfathomed, taken as they came.
-- Richard Wilbur, from "Walking to Sleep"
Richard Wilbur
Good Vibrato: The Occasional Blog of the Wordless Music Series (music paired with paintings)
The words "United Artists, a Transamerica Company," appear in white over a silent black screen, cutting almost immediately and suddenly to a series of shots of the New York City skyline. As "Rhapsody in Blue" is heard over the scenery, the images flash on and off: the skyline at dawn, the sun silhouetting the Empire State Building, jutting skyscrapers, parking lots, crowded streets, the Brooklyn Bridge, neon lights advertising Broadway, Coca-Cola, various hotels, the snow-covered and lamp-lit streets of Park Avenue and Central Park, the garment district, an excited demonstration downtown...
As the music swells over the Manhattan scenery, Ike's voice is heard, as if reading aloud from his writings.
IKE'S VOICE-OVER "Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion." Uh, no, make that: "He—he...romanticized it all out of proportion. Now...to him...no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin." Ahhh, now let me start this over. "Chapter One. He was too romantic about Manhattan as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle...bustle of the crowds and the traffic."
As Ike continues to talk, more Manhattan scenes are shown: sophisticated women walking down Fifth Avenue; construction men drilling on the streets; the docks; a ferry moving into port; children running down the steps of a private school, finished for the day. Accenting Ike's words, the images continue to flash: a fish market, presided over by a man in a smudged apron; two elderly women, bundled in winter coats; a fruit stand; high school boys playing basketball in a fenced-off court; joggers in the Park; the Plaza Hotel; garbage piled up on the streets; building fronts of such landmarks as Gucci and Sotheby Parke Benet; the Guggenheim Museum; people, young and old; trafficked streets; three men loitering on a corner; the crowded lower level of the 59th Street Bridge. The "Rhapsody in Blue" score continues very softly in the background.
IKE'S VOICEOVER "To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles." nah, no...corny, too corny..for...my taste (Clearing his throat)...I mean, let me try and make it more profound. "Chapter One. He adored New York City. To him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity to cause so many people to take the easy way out...was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in—" No, it's gonna be too preachy. I mean, you know...let's face it, I wanna sell some books here. "Chapter One. He adored New York City, although to him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage." Too angry. I don't wanna be angry. "Chapter One. He was as...tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat." I love this. "New York was his town. And it always would be."
While Ike finishes his recitation, "Rhapsody in Blue" Loudly fills the screen as the pictures of New York City life continue to appear on and off the screen: a man and a woman kissing on a balcony; a lighted Broadway; Yankee Stadium at night, its lights illuminating the crowds; two actors performing on the Delacorte Theatre stage; Radio City Music Hall; and ending with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline at night, [fireworks] flashing over the buildings and dark sky, as the music reaches a crescendo and abruptly stops and the film cuts to:
EXTERIOR/INTERIOR. ELAINE'S CAFÉ—NIGHT
The camera shows the word, "Elaine's" drawn on the glass of the restaurant, and moves inside, past patrons being shown to their seats, past the crowded, noisy smoky tables, to Issac (Ike) Davis' table, where he sits with his date, a young girl named Tracy, his good friend Yale Pollack, and intellectual teacher-critic and Yale's wife Emily. Yale is in the midst of an intense discussion as the camera moves in closer to his face.
YALE I think the essence of art is to provide a kind of working through the situation for people, you know, so that you can get in touch with feelings that you didn't know you had, really.
IKE Talent is luck. Tsch. I think the important thing in life is courage.
EMILY To Tracy chuckling) They've had this argument for twenty years.
IKE Listen to this example I'm gonna give. If the four of us (Smacking his lips together) are walking home over the bridge (Inhaling) and then there was a person drowning in the water, would we have the nerve, would one of us have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save the person from drowning?
YALE (Overlapping) Jump into the water and save the drowning man.
IKE Because...that's a—that's a key question. You know, I—I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it.
-- Woody Allen (b. 1 December 1935) Manhattan
