[Image: “Dionisio (You’re Almost There),” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) For the full-size version and the #jesstorypix-tagged story behind the photo, see the caption here at SmugMug.]
From whiskey river:
Self-Portrait
Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers—but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor’s profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I’m no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife’s face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don’t know.
I’m truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that—so far—
belongs to me.
(Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh) [source])
…and (italicized sentences):
I have a limited stock of furniture which constitutes the materiel of my pictures. My pictorial vocabulary is limited to one tree, one house, one flower, one sky, one face; with these I render the infinite variety of trees, houses, flowers, skies and faces which exist in nature. You see, I know nothing about drawing. I couldn’t even copy a drawing until the year 1926 or ’27. Then, by accident one day, I discovered that I was able to make a likeness of George Grosz, whose self-portrait I had found on the cover of one of his albums. From that day I took pleasure in using pencil and brush. On good days I can draw with a cleaver. I don’t go in for likenesses any more; I am satisfied with reality. Everyone has their own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid, or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is. If you can get it down on paper, in words, notes, or color, so much the better. The great artists don’t even bother to put it down on paper: they live with it silently, they become it.
(Henry Miller [source])
Not from whiskey river:
And when the day arrives for the final voyage
and the ship of no return is set to sail,
you’ll find me aboard, traveling light,
almost naked, like the children of the sea.
(Antonio Machado (translated by Mary G. Berg) [source])
…and:
Dreamy Child. I think [the Happy Prince] looks like an angel.
Teacher. What Nonsense! How do you know what an angel looks like when you’ve never seen one.
Dreamy Child. I do know! I do! I’ve seen an angel in my dreams.
Teacher. You children should be far too tired to be dreaming — I can see I shall have to work you even harder. Come along now, back to school.
(David Perkins (per Oscar Wilde) [source] [see also here])
…and:
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the “creative bug” is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”
(Hugh MacLeod [source])
…and:
I saw nothing but two small projecting ears lit by the morning sun. Beneath them, a small neat face looked shyly up at me. The ears moved at every sound, drank in a gull’s cry and the far horn of a ship. They crinkled, I began to realize, only with curiosity; they had not learned to fear. The creature was very young. He was alone in a dread universe. I crept on my knees […] and crouched beside him. It was a small fox pup from a den under the timbers who looked up at me. God knows what had become of his brothers and sisters. His parents must not have been home from hunting.
He innocently selected what I think was a chicken bone from an untidy pile of splintered rubbish and shook it at me invitingly… the universe was swinging in some fantastic fashion around to present its face and the face was so small that the universe itself was laughing.
It was not a time for human dignity. It was a time only for the careful observance of amenities written behind the stars. Gravely I arranged my forepaws while the puppy whimpered with ill-concealed excitement. I drew the breath of a fox’s den into my nostrils. On impulse, I picked up clumsily a whiter bone and shook it in teeth that had not entirely forgotten their original purpose. Round and round we tumbled for one ecstatic moment…
For just a moment I had held the universe at bay by the simple expedient of sitting on my haunches before a fox den and tumbling about with a chicken bone. It is the gravest, most meaningful act I shall ever accomplish, but, as Thoreau once remarked of some peculiar errand of his own, there is no use reporting it to the Royal Society.
(Loren Eiseley [source])
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