Bringing Worlds Out from Within

[Video: Lista (The List), a short film by Paweł Łyczkowski. It won the 2010 “Best Film” Suzanne Award, for users of the Blender open-source animation and visual-effects software.]

From whiskey river:

Lao Tzu exhorts us to listen to the world “not with ears but with mind, not with mind but with spirit.” Some days I hear what sounds like breathing: quick inhalations from the grass, from burnt trees, from streaming clouds, as if desire were finally being answered, and at night in my sleep I can feel black tree branches pressing against me, their long needles combing my hair.

(Gretel Ehrlich [source])

…and:

There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves — our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives — large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That’s a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.

(Henri Nouwen [source])

…and:

It is a delicious thing to write, whether well or badly — to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people spoke, even the red sun that made them half-shut their love-drowned eyes.

(Gustave Flaubert [source])

Not from whiskey river:

House-Hunting: 81 Sycamore Street

When you mention this street, no one knows its name.
On the map it is lined with careful grey pencil:
it smudges beneath your wet thumb. Weeds
in the yard. Chicken-wire fence. Step over

razors, needles, syringes, your lover’s hand hot
in the small of your back,
a parent persuading a child.
Windows stare wanly, pupils dilated—

the front door sighs open, ready to welcome,
slams in a sharp gust of wind.
Inside, your eyes blink hard to adjust
to a cliché of dust, sheets over chairs. Light bulbs

blown out. Each door reveals another dark room,
nesting dolls shrinking in size. This could be a study,
says the Real Estate Man. Trying to convince you, and himself.
You send the Real Estate Man to the car, and kiss your lover—

His tongue is on fire. Steady wail of sirens closing in.
House of your nightmares. House of your dreams.
You cannot say which is stronger: desire
to fix it up, or desire for decay.

(Alison Pick [source])

…and:

I remember one of my early trips to the Amazon. I was then a young anthropologist investigating the healing practices of the shamans of the rain forest, and I’d decided to use myself as a subject. I explained to the jungle medicine man that as a child I’d fled my country of birth because of a communist revolution. I had seen bloodshed in the streets and I’d been terrified by gunfire in the night. Since then I’d suffered from recurring nightmares in which armed men would force their way into my home and take away my loved ones. At the time I was in my late 20s, yet I’d been unable to enter into a lasting relationship for fear that I’d lose the person I loved…

During one healing ceremony, the shaman explained to me that like everyone, I can either have what I want or the reasons I can’t. “You are too enamored of your story,” the old man said. “Until you dare to dream a different dream, all you will have is the nightmare.”

(Alberto Villoldo [source])

…and:

Pierce remembered the short drive home on his final Friday [of work], the first fifteen minutes of his retirement, forgetting to stop down at FoodFresh on the way, walking in the back door with the sting of congratulatory cake icing still clinging like a coat of paint to the roof of his mouth. The silence of the house as the door swung open that afternoon. The silence deepening as the door closed. Basil rubbing against his ankles, hungry already. Pierce looking down at his coal-black familiar, feeling the want and need from the sleek body, Feed me, human!, feeling the strange clutch at the back of his own throat, his suddenly blurring vision, the wet line tickling his cheek and down to his neck, the uncertainty, the empty space yawning before him, food, he would need food, and time. He had plenty of time, had he not? He had Basil. He had the piano and he had church. He would soon have time, plenty of it. More time than he had ever had. Plenty of time for… what?

(JES, Seems to Fit)

Of course, one of the surest ways to bring a mere idea into reality is to insist upon its opposite: Murphy’s Law, right? One of the purest musical expressions of this idea is the vaguely tango-ish number “Never Say No,” sung by a pair of despairing fathers in the musical The Fantasticks:

[Below, click Play button to begin Never Say No. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:15 long.]

[Lyrics]