[Image: excerpt from Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons (“Dancing”); you can see the whole thing over on Salon. The caption to panel #3 not only appeared at whiskey river over the last week (see below), but has been widely quoted elsewhere around the Web in the 20 years since Barry’s comic appeared at Salon.]

From whiskey river:

The Mystery of the Hunt

It’s the mystery of the hunt that intrigues me,
                   That drives us like lemmings, but cautiously—
The search for a bright square cloud—the scent of lemon verbena—
                    Or to learn rules for the game the sea otters
                                      Play in the surf.

                  It is these small things—and the secret behind them
                                    That fill the heart.
                        The pattern, the spirit, the fiery demon
                                That link them together
                      And pull their freedom into our senses,

             The smell of a shrub, a cloud, the action of animals

         —The rising, the exuberance, when the mystery is unveiled.
                                 It is these small things

                   That when brought into vision become an inferno.

(Michael McClure [source])

…and (last two stanzas):

Clouds

The clouds moved in another hundred feet
during the night, just as they have done
each night for the past two weeks.
Now they hang barely above the range
of thrown stones. The sun is someone else’s story,
the rich relation of a slight aquaintance.

Bending over us, the clouds have the texture
of faces seen through smoke.
Thoughts in a confused mind look like that.
Tell me again that they are not hostile,
that they have come merely out of curiosity
to see again that we are possible.

If so, then why are doors more difficult to open,
as if some sadness were leaning against them?
Why do windows darken and trees bend
when there is no wind? You call that occasional
roar the roar of a plane and I imagine
a time when I might have believed that.

But now the darkness has been going on
for too long, and I have accustomed myself
to the pleasure of thinking that soon
there will be no reason to hold on in this place
where rocks are like water and it’s so difficult
to find something solid to hold on to.

(Stephen Dobyns [source])

…and:

The groove is so mysterious. We’re born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away.

I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.

(Lynda Barry [source])

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