Saturday, May 28, 2016

The Mind


You drive down the shadowed green road; cloistered overhang comfort. A memory of another time, curtails your present circumstances. Euphoric recall of freedom these roads brought with such regularity. The mind transforms events. An expanse widens on the horizon. South Louisiana, a lost love, engages softness. Sense deprivation reverts rebirth in the stream of time, always circulating, always waiting. Fingertips in waters of return. Thirst satiated. Remembrance of self buried in relentless urbanity. The story you tell changes to a liquid narrative. The blood moves. You long for another mirage.

Crank the gear. It is all that is known. Electronic surveillance, climate controlled voyeurs interrupt the bit of silence you came for. Oblivious to nature. Sunscreended guzzlers waiting at the pump. You curve under the respite, hoping not to be part of the herd field grazing. Call on the guru. Ask for another attitude. Infestation scrambles with festooned myopia. Where the road gets lost you bow and search for a ticket out. The blackbird understands nothing. Allows joy without payment. Its being a bridge to cross. Lie down in solitude. The diaphanous doors open on either side. Exit leisurely. If still enough, wild things come, rubbing the brow. Singing in the ear. Eternally pleasant. Bad smells overruled.

Noise can inhibit dreams of the next destination. You imagine the Thar desert, new friends, new ideas. Workmen run machinery, backup beeps piece the air. Soon this will be over, the next terrain perhaps a rerun but at least different. When you run the course, all fades like a month old gardenia. A faint fragrances lingers, entices the bargain from before across the corpus collasum. The blue moon came and went unseen but you continue to believe in the restorative power of displacement.  It is a point of view, a way to frame things. As if you have not starved, eating has not the glorious release of the broken fast. We live by comparison, by relativity. Some look for the hidden trail not wanting a continuous cycle. On the other side of the day, breath stirs the traveler's need.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Night and Love


https://youtu.be/0u0M4CMq7uI

Belle Nuit, ô nuit d'amour is from The Tales of Hoffman. The text concerns the beauty of the night and of love:
Barcarolle
Lovely night, oh, night of love
Smile upon our joys!
Night much sweeter than the day
Oh beautiful night of love!
Time flies by, and carries away
Our tender caresses forever!
Time flies far from this happy oasis
And does not return
Burning zephyrs
Embrace us with your caresses!
Burning zephyrs
Give us your kisses!
Your kisses! Your kisses! Ah!
Lovely night, oh, night of love
Smile upon our joys!
Night much sweeter than the day
Oh, beautiful night of love!
Ah! Smile upon our joys!
Night of love, oh, night of love!
Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!


Soprano Anna Netrebko and mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Emmanuel Villaume.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Displaced

Photo by Antoine Merour

Steely gusts scattered our lives across the ocean, across the desert, across the tundra, the street, the border. The shutters closed against us. No one at home. Get the hell out. We don’t want you. In our pain, in our terror, we remained confused for a while. Confusion is better than acquiescence. It is more comfortable than understanding the exact intent. Too many don’t care or worse, they actively predict death. The end. The streets cleaned up. The human refuse gone. Just go now. Everyone holding their own troubles close to the chest, reaching out to push away instead of commiserate. It becomes too dangerous. What if, what if, what if? What if there is a bad seed inside these tumbling apples. It will spread vermin across our land. Or worse, land values will diminish.

In the end, though, what is our land? The first to get here? How far back shall we go? Since we cannot find the beginning, the origin of origins, we can agree to agree on recorded history. Whose precious foot touched the land before all others? These questions run deep in our veins even if ignored. One cannot say immigrant since everyone came from somewhere else at some point in time. Your history echoes through the narrow halls of persuasion. It is curtailed by power and control. It only comes to a full stop when someone defines the borders. When someone says, you and us. When someone positions threat above courtesy. Difference above common denominators. The narrative sets the playing field and both are ever changing. Your cry and disbelief are heard in empty corridors.

Your face and broken eyes remind of other ostracisms but no one is talking. Look at the surface and all you will find is what you have predetermined. Slide off the surface into the chasm of not wanting to bother and you will find a crowd. They may remember how voices cut air, sliced wind, to remove imagined enemies. The void unravels ceaselessly and bridges are built nevertheless. Cross at will in the weather of all days and nights. Hear the slight footsteps reduced from a game of chance. Sing of possibilities. Trudge the road. Nail the spot. Enter anyway.

Another version. The unedited. http://www.museumofvestigialdesire.net/offices/columnists/celeste-regal/displaced