TC: Humility

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"Oh, don't hurt me! cried Tom. I only want to look at you; you are so handsome": Jessie Willcox Smith, in Charles Kingsley: The Water Babies, 1916 (Library of Congress)

There are a great many things in the world which you never heard of; and a great many more which nobody ever heard of; the picture of happiness which you harbor is steeped through and through in the time which the course of your own existence has conferred on you; and this could equally be a picture of unhappiness; and you would never know it.

An underwater shot looking up at a palm tree and clouds distorted by the ripples on the surface: photo by Bryan Calloway, 4 November 2010

TC: The Last Poem (after Robert Desnos)

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Night Shadows: Edward Hopper, 1921

I’ve dreamed so much of you
Walked so much
Talked so much made love to your shadow
So much that there’s nothing left of you
What is left
Of me is a shadow
Among shadows but 100
Times more shadowy than the rest
A shadow that will come
To rest
In your life in which the sun
Is so much.

TC: The Dream of Constantine

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Parhelion or "sun dog" [similar to that said to have been seen in the "vision" or "dream" of the Emperor Constantine I, on the eve of his victory over Maxentius, 312 CE]: photo by M. Metz, 23 September 2005

To Constantine in the constant cañon of his morbid discontent
Vision distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion
Guarded conspiracies in the family, rebellion bruited, haystacks aflame at the borders
The latest hue and cry from the provinces fading into the din of background noise
The breakdown of communications with the common people,
The haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the wincing shame of the general decay
Across the great breadth of the subject lands, not in his imperial tent alone --

Or again, later, the epidemic of lamentation about the way life was lived now --
The disputes among the wizards, the coins thrown down upon the marble tiles,
The relentless advance of barbarian industry at the exposed frontiers,
The news that the knights sent out to explore the ruins had not been heard from,
That shadows were lengthening across the paved courtyard, even as day was expected to
Be coming on -- the troublous murmurings, the brazen trumpeting from the stables --
To the good ruler once seen banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten,
At the jolly reunion, none of this would have needed to be explained --

So that the attacks of insomnia which had become ever more frequent with the years
Were now no longer interrupted by the brief welcome respites of fitful slumber --
And the cold night wind, another sign, turning back the light of the stars
So that the victims could not make out the astronomical figures on the bills of accounting, this too --
And the light of the stars turning up again on the night wind,

Blowing out over the dark mountains, across the vast lost stretches of the subdued continents
Which must now be left to the helpless ones, the hapless inheritors,
To whom the empty words, without the experiences to which they had once referred,
Could mean less than nothing -- mere words, so plainly useless against the fates --
The relentless advance also of memories of the poisoned son, the wife left to boil in her bath -- and
Other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain --

All of this occurred exactly as had been written.

Legend of the True Cross -- the Dream of Constantine: Piero della Francesca, c. 1452-1456, San Francesco, Arezzo



Marble head of the Colossus of Constantine: Roman, c. 313-324 CE, recovered from the west apse of the Basilica of Maxentius, 1487; Capitoline Museums, Rome (image by Jean-Christophe Benoist, 3 August 2007)

TC: Mirror Traffic

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Mirror Traffic: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, produced by Beck Hansen, cover art by Tom Clark, Matador Records, release date 23 August 2011

TC: Ideology

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Ideology dates back to the veldt,
Blood in the dust, the lion's rage against
The antelope it's about to have for lunch.
For the luckless prey prayer's all that's left,
No ideology's yet been known to incorporate
Mercy as a feature. But of course all this is irony.
No lion's yet been known to subscribe to a noble lie.

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself upon the Antelope: Henri Rousseau, 2005 (Fondation Bieler, Basel)
Lioness hunting warthogs in the western corridor of the Serengeti: photo by Schuyler Shepherd, 2009

TC: Footsteps

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Intersection (downtown Vancouver): photo by Evan Leeson, 3 August 2009

Some crisis of a ruthless order

Must have driven us all off into our warrens

Of private dilemma and compensation

In subjective device, dressed up as

Lifestyle I don’t doubt given the rue

With which if not to seem even greater

Fools we must look back upon a protracted

Adolescence, squeezed into corner pockets

The knowledge of the subject becomes

Actual just at the moment there’s this

Hollow sound of knocking at the door

Followed by footsteps of some singular

Person withdrawing on his or her own

Into whatever constitutes the future

TC: "flat round..."

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Tropaeolum majus: photo by Michael Gaspert, 2005

flat round
nasturtium top
plate leaves with
gleaming pin
head size beads
of last night's
rain water still
balanced on
them

pushed up
on long thin
green stems to
white morning

Tropaeolum majus: photo by Viola Sonans, 2005