Page 3 of 5

Posted on

snake woman

Small viperine snake
Small viperine snake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

taking a walk in a field i found a snake about to molt, wedged between two rocks. carefully i crouched down next to her and watched her efforts to escape her old skin. the wind was gently breathing over the field, above us some birds chattering idly, then they withdrew. in the ensuing silence i heard a gentle whisper.

“i am liquifying the space between my new skin and my old, waiting for the right moment to leave behind one skin and assume the next. i feel new scales glittering under the brittle parchment i am about to leave. i have always enjoyed the moment when it was time to withdraw from the old serpent‘s confinement and greet the light again.

how many times i have done this? i do not remember. i do remember, however, my previous incarnations quite clearly still but there is no sentimentality towards them. i do not dislike them but they are alien to me even though the pattern my scales imprinted on the left behind skins is unmistakably mine. if necessary, i address my past manifestations respectfully and formally the way i would greet a stranger – but i prefer to acknowledge them with a glance and a nod only whenever i chance to happen upon an old skin adopted by some harmless creature as a clever disguise, and I silently slide by.

i don’t remember sliding out of my first skin and i am sure i will not keep a memory of my last one either. someone has told me they are the same, first and last. i listened with polite interest as snakes do. that means i did not listen, you know that.

i am liquefying the space between my old skin and my new one. my new scales glitter under the brittle parchment of my old skin as i am about to give birth to myself once again.”

and with these words she freed herself. for a moment i could admire her jewel-like new incarnation and she held still as if to allow it. She lifted her head ever so slightly and for a moment met my eyes.  Then, with a glance and a nod, she disappeared – fast as lightning into a hidden crevice between the two rocks and left me shuddering and brittle.

Posted on

reweaving the fabric of time

IMG_5724

i have committed to the practice of exchanging, if only for 3.141592653 minutes a day, now for then, up for down and today for yesterday

so when, during those 3.141592653 minutes, i see my hand guiding a pen over the paper, rather than to follow the steady progress of a new drawing, i see it erased line by line, and am rewarded by the promises of a work just envisioned, not yet constraint by its execution,

when i scan the sky for vaporous messages of ominous prophecies instead of wilting under the weight of a heaven i care not to imagine i look down into the vast expanses of the deep oceanic universe consisting of the probabilities of its continuable or discreet measurable properties, energy, position, momentum, angular momentum, and i escape, if only for a moment, the inescapable urge of the common mind to inject the holy into the profane as described so aptly by eliade

and, at last, when i walk the well-known streets that carry the contagion of my own history continuously infecting my present with meaning like an obsession i backtrace and erase the past step by step to acquire a new sense of what this place could be if it was not what it is already.

Posted on

a galaxy of marbles

galaxy of marbles

Marbles are wonderful and mysterious. They are simple, fit in any pocket. You can take them with you wherever you go and start dreaming.

You see, in this marble I hand to you today, there is a whole world. If you can’t imagine that, if you object: ”But it’s much too small, how could there be a whole world in it?”, I would answer: “Just ask yourself how our planet Earth looks like for a voyager in space, like the astronauts of the Apollo Mission who eventually landed on the moon.”

Small. Perfectly round. Mysteriously blue. From the distance our planet is a beautiful marble in space. You wouldn’t know of the uncountable stories that take place there every day, so serene and peaceful does our planet look from not all that far away.

Yet you know better. Think of all the things that happen to you every day, add all those that you know happen to your friends and family, and their friends, and go on, and on, until you think of over 6 billion people, the whole population of this amazing, beautiful planet, until you get quite dizzy and confused with trying, and then you will have an idea how relative the words large and small are.

So, if you feel lonely, or bored, or if you have to write about something for school but don’t know where to start, or if you want to write or think about something no one else has thought about before you, or if you just desire to dream yourself far away from everything, take this marble, roll it in your hand, feel its pleasant weight, hold it against any source of light, a lamp, sunrays coming in through the window on a November morning, the full moon in a bright winter night, and you will find your story right there in your marble.

And it will be uniquely yours for that is the mystery of marbles: like humans from a distance they seem the same but upon closer inspection there are not two that are exactly alike.

And more, even if you cannot look at the little glass orb, after a while you will be able to imagine it, and the stories will come to you through the window of your open mind, from far away, from the gleaming galaxy of the marbles, way out there, right inside you.

Posted on

art as a sanctuary

art as a sanctuary

Every person in this world has a place where they can go when they are tired of all the other places. For some people it is a favorite tree that they like to lean against and spend an hour gloomily looking at the world beyond the glimmering green shadows until they feel that something has been taken from their overflowing heart and they can leave feeling satisfied and able to go on with whatever it is that they have to do. For some people it is a song that they listen to, their eyes closed until they feel they can go on with life. Everyone has the right to retreat, to do nothing of consequence, to regain that mysterious balance that humans need to exist peacefully.

Posted on

sun witnessing a faint heart

sun witnessing a faint heart

the cold, distant star once called “our sun”
saw me walking to the very edge
of what some perceive as mere darkness,
others like to define as infinity,

saw me taking three steps out,
three reluctant, cowardly steps

into nothingness

and then, unbelievably,
turn back,
like someone who forgets to lock the front door
emerges sheepishly from the car in the driveway,

saw me turning back
to regain my balance at the very edge,
having gained nothing,
still in search of possessive pronouns

Posted on

fever and another barefoot stranger

fever and another barefoot stranger

The last winter before the completion of the new church he had an encounter with a stranger who had called upon him repeatedly and who was staying at the town’s only inn. He was dressed in simple, yet elegant clothes, cut out of fine, dark cloth. In a small town a stranger like this would normally have generated a great deal of curiosity. But he was so quiet and unassuming in his manner as to almost appear invisible. He went for daily visits to the rectory where he was served tea and would have long conversations with the pastor. The elegance of his appearance was so convincing that it took a while for the pastor to notice that the stranger wore but a kind of biblical footwear, close to being shoeless.

It was late fall. The trees were brilliantly red as if with religious fervor. The pastor felt alert, alive almost as if a lifetime of doubt and study suddenly held some promise, as if the dark aspects of his life were less weighing on him. Then the stranger came down with a severe flu which delayed his departure. High fevers made him delirious, and the doctor and priest both were called to soothe the rage which seemed to devour the man who had been a quiet guest until he came down with this fever. After three days he lost his consciousness and did not regain it. He died in the fourth night without the pastor at his side. The pastor himself was delirious in fever at this time and died only two days after the stranger.

Posted on

time oscillating

IMG_5724

In the meantime I discovered the places where the seams come undone Every classroom in my school had a clock on the wall right over the door, and all the clocks had identical clock faces, and every one of them showed a slightly different time. I don’t know whether clocks in classrooms today are all connected to one central, totalitarian time piece as I suspect might be the case, though I hope it is not so.

I always loved the way time oscillated between classes, obstinately refusing to be tamed. Officially, students had three minutes to walk to the next classroom after a period ended. But for the way from science to math, for example, you’d better made do with 1 minute and 29 seconds – the clock in Ms. Kirsch’s class was as fast as our teacher’s ability to conjure numbers out of the back entrance to Hilbert’s Hotel and as inexorable as her refusal to admit to time measured outside her class room.

On the other hand, you could afford to leisurely stroll to French after that, using not only the 1 minute and 31 leftover seconds from math but also the 40 seconds the French clock was late, giving you an ample 5 minutes and 11 seconds (not counted the additional minute or two Mme. Petite rustled with her papers, ignoring her students’ ongoing conversation).

The clock in language arts had the peculiar and infamous habit of stopping at exactly 12.00 pm every couple of weeks and could only be persuaded back into service by Superintendent Segrob who, for that very reason, was particularly fond of it, and year after year insisted on repairing rather than replacing it.

Every day for a few moments just before noon instruction in language arts paused and everyone’s eyes followed the unhurried second hand making its way from 11.59.59 am to 12.00 pm. It was almost like a pagan ritual, these four seconds of silence, as if we were paying our respects to the spirit of the clock, Time. Time, sputtering, fleeing, stopping, resuming its course, divided itself up over the 79 clocks in our school according to its own preference. With other words, it seemed to be on our side and refused to be institutionalized.

I know that the language art clock did not stop on that day. I don’t think it would have been possible for it to stop while I was willing it on. Apart from Time herself though nobody noticed that I counted every second of the school day, 24,000 seconds in all, stops, gains and losses, until, at last, the 2.47 pm bell wrapped it all up hurriedly and dropped the leftovers for the time dogs.

Posted on

rabbit’s heart

rabbit heart

scared
sacred
so close.

i would make the case
that my rabbit heart
is sacred

but i know a lost case
when i see one.
success and failure,
what are the odds
for one or the other.
sometimes you just know.

my rabbit heart
is scared,

a fool’s heart,
no more.

but at least
it admits
to being a fool,
scared of the shadow on the wall,
scared of the whisper in the dark,
like don quichotte
it is yet willing to fight
against windmills.

because not to defend
what is sacred
against the shadows
of your own imagination
would be erraneous.

among those shadows,
camouflaged as doubt,
lies a shadow
cast by someone
who considers
rabbit heart
a good dinner.

Posted on

a walk without you

a walk without you

unless looking into a mirror
one only sees the world ahead
void of the self
that otherwise
seems inescapable.

in a world before
silver mirrors
and gleaming, reflecting
surfaces
one would only catch
one’s own image ever
as a fluid ghost
on the surface
of a still water.

maybe the self
was more fluid then, too,
less defined by the
expectations that came
with the knowledge of one’s
appearance.

once you asked me
what i thought the world
would be like
after you were gone
and i told you
to just look ahead.

today i took the same walk
and i can confirm
what i said back then.
the world is still
the same
void of you
as it was with you.

only someone walking
behind us would have had
a different view
of our world,
a view that would have
included us.

but through my eyes
the world ahead
the curve in the road
the tree that bends over the path
the fence with peeling
– or fresh –
paint depending on the
time of year
still does not include us,
never has
and never will.

i am glad
that the small path
we used to walk
does not depend
on our presence
to be lovely.

only the fluid images
of you and me passing by
the quiet pond
used to acknowledge human ghosts.

but those did not take up much space
and one barely notices your absence
as only one of us
passes by.

Posted on

a questionable moral choice

a questionable moral coice

My pale, transparent reflection
in the window pane confirmed another aspect
that I had omitted
when thinking about the ever morphing,
transitional aspect of every physical space.

I was a transitional being as well.
Everything had to change.
Only yesterday I had been a child,
and it had seemed
that I would be a child forever.

Growing up had always seemed to me
to be some kind of failing,
a questionable moral choice.

now it was apparent that I, too,
would eventually have to grow up.

My mirror image clearly
was not that of a child
anymore.
My other self was hovering
between the trees
lining the residential street
and the book shelves reflected
in the window.

It seemed like I was sitting
in a fabulous natural library,
looking from there
into the confined space of the reality
of my room
like at a framed painting
that didn’t concern me much.

It looked like a peaceful place,
that library,
like a place right out of someone’s mind.

Like a place where one would forget
time and space
and never feel hungry or tired or aggravated.

My stomach grumbled as I thought about that place.
Being of real flesh and blood I was hungry.