Dreams come true

2010 почти уже наступил. Больше десяти лет назад, я задумался о том, что неплохо было бы писать одну страницу текста в день, неважно какого текста, просто текста. Если бы я тогда начал делать это, то сегодня у меня уже было бы не меньше трех с половиной тысяч страниц текста написанного моими руками. О чем были бы эти страницы, о фантастических путешествиях, переживаниях и нервных срывах, описание каждодневной рутины, может быть романтические поэмы о любви. Столько всего могло бы появиться на свет, но - увы. Я оказался слишком ленивым или занятым или просто оказался не способен свести несколько предложений во что-то заслуживающее внимания. Очень много мыслей о себе никогда не приводили меня к чему-либо хорошему, но, похоже, что необходимо всё-таки задуматься над происходящим и вернуться к началу.

Начало, память, история, время. Понятия, которые сегодня для меня достаточно расплывчаты и я не нахожу уже в них былого упоения и фанатизма. Память всё чаще меня подводит, а вместе с ней стираются история и время. Как в том эссе про облако - взрослому приходится смириться не просто с тем, что вся жизнь меняет свои формы, но и с неизбежным уничтожением прошлого.

Природа времени и прошлого ускользает от понимания и определения. Время, будучи чем-то фрагментарным и уже прошедшим, только в умах мастеров, познавших вечное Дао, постоянное сейчас, остается неизменным. Вечное сейчас, наследие будущего, которое уже ушло, но стремится наступить и стать прошлым в нашем восприятии размытом, как картинка улицы через стекло, под струями дождя - текучее и изменчивое.

Начало, первые впечатления, отделены от реальности толстой стенкой. Словно это был я, но вот уже, спустя пару строк, я становлюсь прошлым, сила настоящего уходит из букв и они, застывая гранитными кусками, формируют фундамент для той горы, которая становится мной. Каждая новая буква, как метеор упавший с небес прямо на вершину, на мгновение замирает на ней, а потом скатывается вниз, по утесам смысла и хребтам значений, пока не найдет своего места в общей структуре.

С какого самого раннего возраста я помню себя и помню ли я Начало. Иногда, кажется, что сквозь дымку впечатлений и воспоминаний пробивается вкус размолотой в порошок геркулесовой каши. Потом, кажется, я вижу, как делаю первый шаг в костер, прямо на угли, становлюсь на них. Это была поляна обросшая по краям жасминовыми кустами, они тогда как-раз цвели и их запах наполнял собой всё вокруг. Там было много взрослых, мир выглядел огромным, рядом с поляной на четырех опорах стояла огромная водонапорная вышка с цистерной на самом верху. Она, кажется, тоже была зеленого цвета. Так хочется пробиться в это время чтобы увидеть все детали, но в голове всплывают только фрагменты травинок, ящерки, снующие между камней у фундамента вышки и сотни бежевых пахучих жасминовых цветков. Где-то совсем рядом начинался лес, в котором стоял огромный камень принесенный сюда ледником. Я помню, что мой дед и его знакомые не раз приходили к этому камню, садились возле него и пили свежее молоко, вспоминая о чем-то своем, смотря на солнце, пока мы, дети, резвились на опушке.

Начало воспоминаний сплетено вокруг боли. Как рождение начинается с боли, так и Начало явилось болью. Этот основной момент, когда меня заметили и осознали, когда я заметил и осознал свое существование, явился Началом существования. Началом того человека, разумного существа, которым я являюсь. Я не помню, что за шашлык мы тогда ели, я помню какими молодыми были тогда мои родители, младше, чем я сейчас. Помню их друзей, помню, как притушили костер и строго настрого сказали мне, тому, кто еще по их мнению не понимал и слова не подходить к костру. Конечно, у меня был другой план. У меня была своя задумка, своя идея исследования мира в который я пришел так рано, и уже понимал, что это место, в котором мне предстоит провести не один десяток дней. Помню, что тогда, идея десятков еще не посетила меня, и основными мерами были много, очень много и невыразимо много. Невыразимость объема, длинны, продолжительности, наполненности, пустоты, одиночества, любви, всё это передавалось с помощью звуков и простых слов, в которые уже вкладывался смысл, звуки уже имели значения, связанные с временами года, тепло и холодно. Шершавая и твердая рука деда, мягкая рука матери.

Я встал перед костром и смотрел на угли. Взрослые были заняты своими взрослыми делами. Они суетливо расправлялись с остатками пикника, собирали мусор и делали десяток других дел, но я в этот момент уже выпал из зоны их внимания. И хотя там было не меньше десятка глаз, на меня смотрели только жасминовые цветы, облака и ящерка, которая скреблась в моем кулачке, стремясь вырваться из плена. Я помню свои ноги, они были очень маленькие, но тогда они казались мне сильными и большими и я пел себе песни, которые наверно поет каждый маленький мальчик, песни о том, как я буду смело идти по миру и пройду по всем землям и увижу все дивные виды и чудеса какие только бывают на земле. И вот, набравшись смелости, я сделал первый шаг. Я встал на угли. Мир вдруг забегал быстрее, я стоял и смотрел на цветы и на ящерку, на бегающие огоньки у моих ног, на серый пепел и пролетающие надо мной облака. Не знаю сколько я так стоял, но точно помню, что мне не было больно пока я не услышал крик. Сейчас я уже не знаю, я кричал или кто-то другой, потому что спустя мгновения уже точно кричал я, а чьи-то руки отбросили меня с углей на траву. Я помню испуганные глаза мамы, как менялось выражение лица отца с негодования, до переживания и почти эмпатического чувства моей боли. Помню, как меня куда-то везли, как мазали ноги каким-то кремом и поливали водой. Мне мало рассказывали об этом событии. Говорили, что я не должен этого помнить, что всё это было так давно, но я помню. Помню, как поляна осталась позади и я, визжа от боли, понимал, что только что, какая-то важная часть моей жизни осталась позади и стала прошлым.

"If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye, what then? "

-Samuel Coleridge

Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art
by John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever or else swoon to death.

PRAYER

Let me not know how sins and sorrows glide
Along the sombre city of our rage,
Or why the sons of men are heavy-eyed.

Let me not know, except from printed page,
The pain of litter love, of baffled pride,
Or sickness shadowing with a long presage.

Let me not know, since happy some have died
Quickly in youth or quietly in age,
How faint, how loud the bravest hearts have cried.


by James Elroy Flecker

This appears as darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gate to all mystery.

Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings, and learn the wonders of God. For, on a certain night, when I laid me down to sleep, I called upon that most holy name of God, IAH, and prayed for the ineffable wisdom, and when I was beginning to close mine eyes, the angel of the Lord, even Homadiel, appeared unto me, spake many things courteously unto me, and said: Listen O Solomon! thy prayer before the most high is not in vain, and since thou hast asked neither for long life, nor for much riches, nor for the souls of thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself wisdom to perform justice. Thus saith the Lord: According to thy word have I given unto thee a wise and understanding heart, so that before thee was none like unto thee, nor ever shall arise.

The Kiss of the Sun for Guidance
The Song of the Birds for Mirth
One is Nearer Gods' Heart in a Garden
Then Anywhere else on Earth

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - PRECESSION OF SIMULACRA - it is the map that engenders the territory....(Baudrillard, 1994, p. 1)

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out.
To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa

...

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."

And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them.

And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."

And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.


From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

LOVE is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

by Emily Dickinson

"What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When someone loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," asked the Rabbit, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."


From "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams (1929)

"Through love we steal from the time that kills us a few hours which we turn now into paradise and not into hell. In both ways time expands and ceases to be a measure. Beyond happiness and unhappiness, though it is both things, love is intensity: it does not give us eternity but life, that second in which the doors of time and space open just a crack: here is there and now is always. In love, everything is two and everything strives to be one."

Octavio Paz
The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism

Heavenly Grass

My feet took a walk in heavenly grass.
All day while the sky shone clear as glass.
My feet took a walk in heavenly grass,
All night while the lonesome stars rolled past.
Then my feet come down to walk on earth,
And my mother cried when she give me birth.
Now my feet walk far and my feet walk fast,
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.


by Tennessee Williams

The Art of Poetry

To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

by Jorge Luis Borges

Is it right or wrong that my love for you is so strong
I don't know
I light up another bong

Do not undermine your worth
By comparing yourself with others.
It is because we are different
That each of us is special.

Do not set your goals
By what other people deem important.
Only you know what is best for you.

Do not take for granted
The things closest to your heart.
Cling to them as you would your life.
For without them, life is meaningless.

Do not let your life slip through your fingers
By living in the past nor for the future.
By living your life one day at a time,
You live all the days of your life.

Do not give up
When you still have something to give.
Nothing is really over
Until the moment you stop trying.
It is a fragile thread
That binds us to each other.

Do not be afraid to encounter risks.
It is by taking chances
That we learn to be brave.

Do not shut love out of your life
By saying it is impossible to find.
The quickest way to receive love is to give love;
The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly.
In addition, The best way to keep love is to give it wings.

Do not dismiss your dreams.
To be without dreams is to be without hope,
To be without hope is to be without purpose.

Do not run through life
So fast that you forget
Not only where you have been
But also where you are going.

Life is not a race but a journey
To be savoured each step of the way.
So smile and let the sun shine through.
For there's someone, somewhere watching over you...

Do not smile to yourself
Like a green mountain
With a cloud drifting across it.
People will know we are in love.

by Sakanoe

Sudden Light

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82)


I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turn’d so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death’s despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

FLOS AEVORUM

You must mean more than just this hour,
You perfect thing so subtly fair,
Simple and complex as a flower,
Wrought with such planetary care;
How patient the eternal power
That wove the marvel of your hair.

How long the sunlight and the sea
Wove and re-wove this rippling gold
To rhythms of eternity;
And many a flashing thing grew old,
Waiting this miracle to be;
And painted marvels manifold,

Still with his work unsatisfied,
Eager each new effect to try,
The solemn artist cast aside,
Rainbow and shell and butterfly,
As some stern blacksmith scatters wide
The sparks that from his anvil fly.

How many shells, whorl within whorl,
Litter the marges of the sphere
With wrack of unregarded pearl,
To shape that little thing your ear:
Creation, just to make one girl,
Hath travailed with exceeding fear.

The moonlight of forgotten seas
Dwells in your eyes, and on your tongue
The honey of a million bees,
And all the sorrows of all song:
You are the ending of all these,
The world grew old to make you young.

All time hath traveled to this rose;
To the strange making of this face
Came agonies of fires and snows;
And Death and April, nights and days
Unnumbered, unimagined throes,
Find in this flower their meeting place.

Strange artist, to my aching thought
Give answer: all the patient power
That to this perfect ending wrought,
Shall it mean nothing but an hour?
Say not that it is all for nought
Time brings Eternity a flower.

by Richard Le Gallienne

Пару ночей назад я размышлял над одним из недавних снов. В нем я оказался на берегу океана. Казалось, что люди там были вовсе не озабочены повседневными заботами больших городов. Лазурная вода и кварцевый песок, мелкие рыбки посреди волн, счастливые глаза и шумный гомон детей.

Мне было хорошо в этом сне, когда я хотел плавать, я плавал, когда я заволновался - где же мне найти парус, всё побережье оказалось только и ждало момента, когда подует ветер, и сразу же, вслед за ним, лавки наполнились всевозможными парусами и досками, на берег потянули яхты, а в небо гордо взлетели воздушные змеи.

Я отошел от берега уже на пару миль, когда заметил на горизонте полоску земли и зелени. Словив ветер, я устремился туда.

Когда я подошел к этому острову, меня ждал белый песок, удобная бухта и одноэтажный ресторанчик с плетеными столами и стильными стульями, словно сошедшими с полотен французских художников века девятнадцатого. На стенах были развешаны пано, пахло вкусной пищей и уютом.

Я оставил доску и парус на острове и вернулся на берег на небольшом баркасе уже к вечеру.

Когда воспоминания схлынули, я вновь обратился к строкам.

***
So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life
is outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that
it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than
earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less
lucid than the colour of lilies.

...

The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or
fade according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to
foot, the luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud
permits, that their own local colour and their own local season are
lost and cease, effaced before the all-important mood of the cloud.

The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is
the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a
handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge
with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and
makes the foreground shine.

Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and
partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the
mountain slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out
part of the view by the rough method of standing in front of it.
But its greatest things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence
does it distribute the sun.

...

It is no change in the gardens. These are, as usual, full,
abundant, fragrant, and quite uninteresting, keeping the traditional
secret by which the suburban rose, magnolia, clematis, and all other
flowers grow dull - not in colour, but in spirit - between the
yellow brick house-front and the iron railings. Nor is there
anything altered for the better in the houses themselves.

...

Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in
Japanese compositions, complete designs in which there is no point
of symmetry. It is a balance of suspension and of antithesis.
There is no sense of lack of equilibrium, because place is, most
subtly, made to have the effect of giving or of subtracting value.
A small thing is arranged to reply to a large one, for the small
thing is placed at the precise distance that makes it a (Japanese)
equivalent.

...

He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become
conscious of something more than a change in his sense of the
present and in his apprehension of the future. He must be aware of
no less a thing than the destruction of the past.


***

from "The Colour of Life", by Alice Meynell

Я решил испробовать пантакль во снах. Я положил его под подушку и уснул. Неожиданно я оказался среди поющих полых холмов, мои друзья были рядом, укрытые от посторонних в небольших гротах. Геометрия пространства поменялась, холмы соединялись с образами, пространство вокруг холмов превращалось во фрактальные нити, распадалось на образы и сюжетные линии. Пантакль имел свойство изменять форму, сначала он из круга стал квадратом, и столь же странным образом изменились рисунки на нем, потом он стал расслаиваться на длинные гибкие струны, состоящие из звенящего стекла цвета индиго. Немного похоже на то, как от разбитого оргстекла отделяются кусочки. Струны являлись естественными мостами в разрушенных снах. Из них можно было плести окружающее пространство.

Часть сюжетов представляли собой телепрограммы и фильмы врисованые в голографическое представление реальности.

В один из переходов я открыл глаза и увидел неожиданно глубокое синее ночное небо и яркую желто-белую луну посреди окна. Картинка была почти сюрреалистичной.

Интересным было ощущение непосредственной близости к реальному миру, другая геометрия, время и пульсация фрактального рисунка из сюжетных линий.

Я увидел некоторые места где узор нарушен и соотнес их с геометрическими и информационными элементами реального мира доступными для коррекции.

Сюжетные линии переключаются определенным набором геометрических программ - в том числе телевизионными, рекламными роликами - последовательности определяют наборы вероятностей сюжетных линий.

Таким образом, каждый журнал, видео-ролик, набор картинок, повторенные в определенной последовательности (по сути определенные стимулы системы) через промежутки не меньшие чем время декогеренции системы (психологической или физической) приводит в мир с предопределенными вероятностями (вариантами) выбора.
Для реализации важна повторяемость во времени (периодичность).

Геометрические информационные пакеты распространяются через интернет.

i wish i never knew you
i wish i never had your kiss
i wish i never saw your eyes
bliss
i hate the colour of green
the colour of green is filled with so much pain and lies
the colour of green is a collection of lost tries
i wish i had the power to turn all the green in the world into yellow
yes
i wish i had the power to turn the green sky blue
shortcuts from the past
it is just that you do not have enough storage space
all memories are lost
all daydreams are under ten degrees of frost
i wish i never saw that old movie
another lesson to consider
run
lightning strikes
there is noone perfect
but you
but you

In Ireland the quest for wisdom was realized by pursuing the white doe under a wild Apple tree. (Pepper)

I am sitting in the holographic center of the simulacra.

As I type these words my thoughts shape the music and the music shapes everything else. The video on the screen obeys the rythm which is played from the different source.

from under the eternal
youth ornament rising...
sun

Issa, 1811

Видеть время - это также как смотреть на звезды. На огромное небо полное звезд и той необъятной дымки, мерцания и перемен. Когда смотришь вверх, то видишь сразу всю картинку. Все звезды, большие и маленькие. Они висят в пустоте, словно яркие мгновения в нашей жизни и видны сразу все. Какие-то ближе, какие-то дальше, и кто знает, какой извилистый путь нужно проделать чтобы попасть с одной на другую. Это огромное море света в неведомом пространстве. Иногда стоишь смотришь в эту бездну и понимаешь ее.

Будущее. Океан этих огоньков. Всё равно в памяти остаются лишь самые яркие. А целые галактики событий со временем становятся просто размытыми точками - смесью шагов, звуков, прикосновений и картинок. Всё одно - проходит время и рельеф событий уже несколько иной.

Gentle foothills,

and in the dew drops of the mountains,

soaked, I waited for you--

grew wet from standing there

in the dew drops of the mountains.





her response


Waiting for me,

you grew wet there

in gentle foothills,

in the dew drops of the mountains--

I wish I'd been such drops of dew.

LIFE IS BUT A DREAM

by: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

A BOAT, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--

Long has paled that sunny sky;
Echoes fade and memories die;
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?

THE MAGIC FLOWER.

THROUGH many days and many days
The seed of love lay hidden close;
We walked the dusty tiresome ways
Where never a leaf or blossom grows.
And in the darkness, all the while,
The little seed its heart uncurled,
And we by many a weary mile
Travelled towards it, round the world.


To the hid centre of the maze
At last we came, and there we found--
O happy day, O day of days!
--Twin seed-leaves breaking holy ground.
We dropped life's joys, a garnered sheaf,
And spell-bound watched, still hour by hour,
Magic on magic, leaf by leaf,
The unfolding of our love's white flower.

by E. Nesbit

Emblems of Love
By Lascelles Abercrombie

She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself, when into known delight
His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,—
This mystery of a world sign of his striving?
Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind
With labouring in the wonder of it, that here
Being—the world and we—is suffered to be!—
But, lying on thy breast one notable day,
Sudden exceeding agony of love
Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge.
I was not: yet I saw the will of God
As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame,
Interminable, not to be supposed;
And there was no more creature except light,—
The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s
Unutter’d joy. And then, past telling, came
Shuddering and division in the light:
Therein, like trembling, was desire to know
Its own perfect beauty; and it became
A cloven fire, a double flaming, each
Adorable to each; against itself
Waging a burning love, which was the world;—
A moment satisfied in that love-strife
I knew the world!—And when I fell from there,
Then knew I also what this life would do
In being twin,—in being man and woman!
For it would do even as its endless Master,
Making the world, had done; yea, with itself
Would strive, and for the strife would into sex
Be cloven, double burning, made thereby
Desirable to itself. Contrivèd joy
Is sex in life; and by no other thing
Than by a perfect sundering, could life
Change the dark stream of unappointed joy
To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves
And worships its own Being. This is ours!
Yet only for that we have been so long
Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.—
But we, well knowing by our strength of joy
There is no sundering more, how far we love
From those sad lives that know a half-love only,
Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever
Sealed in division of love, and therefore made
To pour their strength always into their love’s
Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap
Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we:
The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage
Its flame against itself, here turned to one
Self-adoration.—Ah, what comes of this?
The joy falters a moment, with closed wings
Wearying in its upward journey, ere
Again it goes on high, bearing its song,
Its delight breathing and its vigour beating
The highest height of the air above the world.

She

What hast thou done to me!—I would have soul,
Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held
By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire,
My body knows itself to be nought else
But thy heart’s worship of me; and my soul
Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air.
Nay, all my body is become a song
Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

He

And mine is all like one rapt faculty,
As it were listening to the love in thee,
My whole mortality trembling to take
Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

She

Surely by this, Beloved, we must know
Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds
The common dullard thought, we are things lost
In an amazement that is all unware;
But wonderfully knowing what we are!
Lo, now that body is the song whereof
Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight?
Knoweth not beautifully now our love,
That Life, here to this festival bid come
Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night,
Filled and empower’d by heavenly lust, is all
The glad imagination of the Spirit?

He

Were it not so, Love could not be at all:
Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil
Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth
Of sense to hold and understand the vision
Made by impassion’d body,—vision of thee!
But music mixt with music are, in love,
Bodily senses; and as flame hath light,
Spirit this nature hath imagined round it,
No way concealed therein, when love comes near,
Nor in the perfect wedding of desires
Suffering any hindrance.

She

Ah, but now,
Now am I given love’s eternal secret!
Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy
Of our for ever mated spirits; but now
The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit
Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy
Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them
Round him in fashion’d radiance of desire,
As into light of these exulting bodies
Flaming Spirit is uttered?

He

Yea, here the end
Of love’s astonishment! Now know we Spirit,
And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit.
Now all life’s loveliness and power we have
Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning
Carries all shining upward, till in us
Life is not life, but the desire of God,
Himself desiring and himself accepting.
Now what was prophecy in us is made
Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy,
We in our marvellousness of single knowledge,
Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate
And drawing into his light the greeting fire
Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love
Wedding himself to utterance of himself.

Touched by Love

I knew I had been touched
by love...
the first time I saw you
and I felt your warmth
and heard your laughter.

I knew I had been touched
by love...
when I was hurting from
something that happened,
and you came alone
and made the hurt go away.

I knew I had been touched
by love...
when I quit making plans
with my friends
and started dreaming dreams
with you.

I knew I had been touched
by love...
when I stopped thinking in
terms of "me"
and started thinking in
terms of "we".

I knew I had been touched
by love...
when suddenly I couldn't make
decisions by myself anymore,
and I had this strong desire
to share everything with you.

I knew I had been touched
by love...
the first time we spent
alone together
and I knew I wanted to stay
with you forever...
because I had never felt
this touched by love.

Of all the illusions, forgetting is the most dangerous.
-- Dionisio D Martinez


水火も辞せず

As I muse in the morning
On the hovering clouds
Ambassadors of heaven
Winged angels of Love

I long for your kiss
Sweet and soft whispered words
The blissful touch of your lips
In the brightest of worlds

I lift the veil of the dream
To be with you
I open my eyes to the light
To see the look of your smile

You know
It's Love that I feel
And Love
I admire