30.1.09

Nevercadabra

The labyrinth piece from tuesday
and Lisbeth`s thread from wednesday
startet a little dance together...














"It is scribbled along the body
Impossible even to say a word

An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground
It is a practice alphabet, work of the hand

Yet not, not marks inside a box
For example, this is a mirror box

Spinoza designed such a box
and called it the Eighth Sky

called it the Nevercadabra House
as a joke

Yet not, not so much a joke
not Notes for Electronic Harp

on a day free of sounds
(but I meant to write "clouds")

At night these same boulevards fill with snow
Lancers and dancers pass a poisoned syringe,

as you wrote, writing of death in the snow,
Patroclus and a Pharaoh on Rue Ravignan

It is scribbled across each body
Impossible even to name a word

Look, you would say, how the sky falls
at first gently, then not at all

Two chemicals within the firefly are the cause
Twin ships, twin nemeses

preparing to metamorphose
into an alphabet in stone"

(Michael Palmer: Eighth Sky)

28.1.09

Back to g - w - r

It´s one of these grey-white-red
days today...















This strong shiny red thread
I found when last visiting my mother.
My grandaunt Lisbeth snitched it,
allegedly, at work - a shoe factory,
in the Fifties...

27.1.09

Puzzled

Still in labyrinthic condition...











"Who in the world am I?
Ah, that´s the great puzzle."

(Lewis Carroll, born Jan. 27, 1832 -
one of today´s quotes at Thinkexist)

22.1.09

Labyrinth doodle...









...and a batch of eye pillows I
made for a friend´s yoga school











"inky blue sex
inky blue sex
I opened my eyes way up wide &
still all I could see
was inky blue sex
all around me

you turned into
an animal
I was happy not to get involved
I was focusing my purity
I just lay back & watched you
become a bull

at first I thought you were
a horse
or let's be clear about this a horse god
filled your body for a while
then I realized no
it was a bull

even if it was
a horse god
that would be the wrong image
or a bull god since in any case
you turned into
the animal itself

your breath so fierce
through your nostrils
that I might have assumed that if passion
were pain then you there anguished
as you came apart
were released of pain

there was enough starlight
to fill the world
& yet there was only you
only you gone godly
it was the inkiest of plummets
& I tremored

in the labyrinth
of our limbs
all our dreams got tangled &
the wind beat down vast fields in sleep
flank quiver come
to me come to me

who issues thus from this
chewing that claggy blood
in the heart of the maze?
his name is Asterion he has never seen
the sky at night he smells starlight
& distant apple groves"

(Luke Davies: Pasiphae to Taurus)

20.1.09

Second floor labyrinth

Starting some small explorations
about spiders, webs, labyrinths -
and beasts residing in the center
which are said to be also angels...











"I'm sorry I was late.
I was pulled over by a cop
for driving blindfolded
with a raspberry-scented candle
flickering in my mouth.
I'm sorry I was late.
I was on my way
when I felt a plot
thickening in my arm.
I have a fear of heights.
Luckily the Earth
is on the second floor
of the universe.
I am not the egg man.
I am the owl
who just witnessed
another tree fall over
in the forest of your life.
I am your father
shaking his head
at the thought of you.
I am his words dissolving
in your mind like footprints
in a rainstorm.
I am a long-legged martini.
I am feeding olives
to the bull inside you.
I am decorating
your labyrinth,
tacking up snapshots
of all the people
who've gotten lost
in your corridors."

(Jeffrey McDaniel: Compulsively
Allergic to the Truth)

14.1.09

Pillow Talk

A while ago Jude at Spiritcloth postet
about a pillow she´d made. That had me
realize I have made a few pillows by now
as gifts, but none for myself (except
State of mind, which seems to be rapidly
moving away from being pillowly) -
so I´m making this one:














"Not for nothing
are we given at least as much
sense as God gave a goose,
which we have no access to, sensewise.
We don’t speak goose
nor recognize what body language
there may be in a body
which is mostly neck and dollop.
But down, now there is something
to build dreams on.
We have recourse
and in the morning the feathered snow
will have come and closed the roads.
Linger. Leave off."

(Michael Chitwood: Take Comfort Where You Can)

11.1.09

Seam-stress

Cutting an old shirt to pieces, I thought:
What if I use the seams and sew them
together with light cotton and linen scraps?













The result reminds me of railroad tracks -
not the modern highspeed kind of course, but
for old-fashioned trains, where one could hop on
and be gone...
So I stitched some writing referring to this
(big wheels turning - gone 500 miles when the
day is done). I think I´ll add a landscape
border to it...


"In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia
Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading
A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It
can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there."

(Kenneth Koch: One Train May Hide Another)

9.1.09

Somewhen the clouds will lift











Added some stitching to the plain
edges of the ex-summer-quilt...


"Irgendwann wird der Schnee
sich auflösen in der Schmelze
und zum Gießbach werden,
der die dunklen Flüsse aufhellt
auf ihrem bewachten Weg
zum Meer. Irgendwann
werden die Wolken hochgehen
und die Bühne freigeben
für die bittenden Augen.
Irgendwann werden wir wieder
im Freien sitzen
an den frisch gebeizten Tischen
und die Bücher lesen,
die im Winterschlaf lagen.
Also komm bitte bald,
denn so wie es aussieht,
wird es irgendwann wieder
schneien."

Somewhen the snow/will dissolve
in melting/into a torrent/which
brightens the dark rivers/on their
guarded way to the ocean. Somewhen/
the clouds will lift/and reveal the
stage/for the begging eyes/Somewhen
we will sit out in the open again/
at freshly stained tables/
reading the books/ which have been
hibernating/ So please come soon/
for, as it looks like/ there will be
snow somewhen again.


(Michael Krüger: Wettervorhersage)

7.1.09

Hibernating...











"This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.
I have whirled the midwife's extractor,
I have my honey,
Six jars of it,
Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,

Wintering in a dark without window
At the heart of the house
Next to the last tenant's rancid jam
and the bottles of empty glitters ----
Sir So-and-so's gin.

This is the room I have never been in
This is the room I could never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint

Chinese yellow on appalling objects ----
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,

Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin

To make up for the honey I've taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.

Now they ball in a mass,
Black
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,

Into which, on warm days,
They can only carry their dead.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women ----
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanis walnut,
Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring."

(Sylvia Plath: Wintering)

5.1.09

What is snow? What isn´t?











another childhood image
(no, it´s NOT becoming a habit...)


"Let's ask a poet with no way of knowing.
Someone who can give us an answer,
another duplicity to help double the world.

What kind of poetry is all question, anyway?
Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.

Poet, Decide! I am lonely with questions.
What is snow? What isn't?
Do you see how it is for me.

Melt yourself to make yourself more clear
for the next observer.
I could barely see you anyway.

A blizzard I understand better,
the secrets of many revealed as one,
becoming another on my only head.

It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,

or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,

is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!

Who won't stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.

Don't we melt it?
Aren't we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?
Anyway, the question—

if a dream is a construction then what
is not a construction? If a bank of snow
is an obstruction, then what is not a bank of snow?

A winter vault of valuable crystals
convertible for use only by a zen
sun laughing at us.

Oh Materialists! Thinking matter matters.
If we dream of snow, of banks and blankets
to keep our treasure safe forever,

what world is made, that made us that we keep
making and making to replace the dreaming at last.
To stop the terrible dreaming."

(Brenda Shaughnessy: Why is the Color of Snow?)

4.1.09

How the hell did it get here so soon

Yesterday was my birthday.
After birthday-walk, birthday-cake,
birthday-talk I must have felt
some need to cope with the
inevitable, so I made this:









That´s me, on my first day at
school, 47 years ago...









I used a tea-dyed napkin, and I didn´t
crochet the cobwebs, of course.
And I went to bed much too late again,
of course...










There are problems here with
uploading a video, so please go
to www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IaNaQHjIRE
for the source of the writing
(I don´t wanna be a good girl scout,
I don´t wanna learn to count,
I don´t wanna grow up...)

"You´re never too old to become
younger".

(Mae West)

2.1.09

State of mind 2009

Snow!








gone before the day was done, of
course...

Thought it appropriate to attack
some of yesteryears loose ends,
dug out the state of mind-pillow









did some stitching on it, added pieces
of an old hankie and curtain...









and this fellow (who was inspired by a
detail in a photo of a pair of
embroidered boots which once belonged
to Peter the Great - whether he´s
wearing his royal lace underwear or is
having an x-ray of his rib cage I don´t
feel fit to decide...)










Zum Jahresbeginn,
vom Vorjahr mir geblieben
sind fünf Scheffel Reis.

At the start of year,
what I got left from last year
are five bushels rice.


(Basho, mit Gruß an Simone...)