Thursday, June 21, 2012

always an emptiness at the heart of memory



22 comments:

  1. Sometimes it is such emptiness, which makes things usable.

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    1. Robert: yes, exactly! ... this, from the tao te ching:

      We join spokes together in a wheel,
      but it is the center hole
      that makes the wagon move.

      We shape clay into a pot,
      but it is the emptiness inside
      that holds whatever we want.

      We hammer wood for a house,
      but it is the inner space
      that makes it livable.

      We work with being
      but non-being is what we use.

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  2. I feel this way many times...

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    1. Lucia: what connections we make in this world!!

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  3. what a mysterious image combined with your words.

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  4. Such a glorious image, here, James. Haunting.

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    1. Elisabeth: memory is an association of ghosts, isn't it?

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  5. an everlasting path to the lighthouse. I love this, all those little moons leading up to the lighthouse,the promise of the greater light in the sky. the desire is always one day to get to the lighthouse.

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    1. Marion: ah! you remind me of my favorite virginia woolf novel :-) i hadn't even made the connection, can you imagine???

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  6. i love the way the human being exists in the landscape, but marginally so, as if already moving out of sight - as in the chinese or japanese landscapes, where the figures are small and lost in the immensity of the natural landscape, a small part of everything, but not dominating the perspective as in our western tradition...

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    1. Roxana: :-)) you know that i love japanese and chinese landscape painting -- and this is a goal, i think -- to reduce the human presence as much as possible ... as simone weil writes somewhere, i want to see a landscape as it is when i am not there....

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  7. ich kenne niemanden, dessen Bilder mich derartig inspirieren, wie die deinen. sie lassen so viel wundervollen Raum für eigene Fantasien, Gedanken, Geschichten, Worte ... das ist wahre Kunst für mich.


    Mein Dank (auch für deine wundervollen Kommentare bei mir)und Küsse für dich, mein Freund.

    isabella



    P.S. hast du dir schon mal meinen Lyrikband angeschaut (Verlinkung in meinen Blogs) ... vielleicht ist er ja etwas für dich ..

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    1. Isabella: Deine Worte sind sehr großherzig :-))

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  8. every joyous moment, every moment of grief, every poignant taste of life - always lost. and in its passing so it gains its weight, its significance. your title is enough for me. your image pierces. he is small and lost. wait, no, singular and found. wait, no, always both. the lights, the light off the water, his arms slightly open in supplication, surrender, acceptance (?), the graininess, the geometry of the world and the spontaneity of man. any one element is plenty. all of them - painfully beautiful. (i hadn't seen this. how is this possible? this is wrong.)

    xo
    erin

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    1. erin: this is the secret knowledge that is also open and obvious -- everything that we have, we have by losing it ....

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  9. I have seen it.

    The title does fit the picture but gives it the illusion at the same time

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    1. Liz: reality and illusion can be very hard to distinguish ... i think sometimes the distinction itself is the illusion ...

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    1. Robert: and every day offers us a new way ... that is, perhaps, the one thing we can count on ...

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  11. OH!!!!!

    I would love to live in this photograph (it's really like a painting, you know). There is something Charlie Chaplin-y about this, but also lonely (as other commenters have pointed out). WOW.

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    1. Hannah: chaplin!! thank you for the association (though i don't imagine that i really deserve it :-) ... charlie chaplin was a true genius -- and like all the best, truest comedy, his films are about loss and loneliness and death ...

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