![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com"But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable.
"But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
"And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
"That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
--David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water"
"We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there."
--Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
"Archaic Torso of Apollo"
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell
"When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
--Audre Lorde
"Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift, unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believe could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle black brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through an after life, it spread, until it invaded whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own."
--Toni Morrison, Beloved
"An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent."
--Harper Lee, on writing
October 27, 1948
There are so many thorns here--
brown thorns, yellow thorns
all along the length of the day, even into sleep.
When the nights jump the barbed wire
they leave tattered strips of skirt behind.
The words we once found beautiful
faded like an old man's vest in a trunk
like a sunset darkened on the windowpanes.
People here walk with their hands in their pockets
or might gesture as if swatting a fly
that returns again and again to the same place
on the rim of an empty glass or just inside
a spot as indefinite and persistent
as their refusal to acknowledge it.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
December 8
Quiet day. An empty table.
I see things as they are.
I have my hands in my pockets.
Who can I thank for this?
*
Under the lukewarm water of night I held
the hand of sleep and the sense of forgetting
the texture of the blanket and of the wall.
If you lift the sheet
you won't find me.
Try to find me--don't you understand?
I'm deeper in.
*
There were two glasses on the table
a stool in the corner
the shadow of a hand that might have picked flowers
a shadow split between bed and ceiling
I don't remember I wasn't quick enough to see
only the shadow of the window that didn't open
on the white wall
and the hand that didn't cut flowers
the hand that itself was cut in the first instant of moonlight
falling in the middle of the road in the muddy waters
beside the broken wheel of the mail truck.
*
A mandolin an angry angel
a glass of water a cigarette
the sounds that binds us together for a moment beyond our solitude
so we can part again without saying goodnight.
Later the eyes that open two holes in the wall.
*
I planted a tree. I'll raise it.
Whatever happens I'm not going back.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
December 11
The floor seems in a good mood today
as does the cane bench
I look at everyone the same way
it's quiet
I like it
I want to hold on to it.
And yet
a snuffed lamp in the morning
doesn't give you the slightest idea
of what night can be.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
December 24
Each morning flocks of wild geese
head south.
We watch them, unmoving.
You get tired of looking up.
Soon enough we lower our heads.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
January 18
Our house, you said. Which house?
Our house is over there
with the single bed
with the broom
with the unsuspecting poems
not yet torn.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
January 23
At last
the mirror shows you
your severed hands
though you have no hands to applaud
your victory.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
January 26
I want to compare a cloud
to a deer.
I can't.
Over time the good lies
grow few.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
"But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
"And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
"That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
--David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water"
"We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there."
--Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
"Archaic Torso of Apollo"
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell
"When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
--Audre Lorde
"Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift, unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believe could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle black brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through an after life, it spread, until it invaded whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own."
--Toni Morrison, Beloved
"An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent."
--Harper Lee, on writing
October 27, 1948
There are so many thorns here--
brown thorns, yellow thorns
all along the length of the day, even into sleep.
When the nights jump the barbed wire
they leave tattered strips of skirt behind.
The words we once found beautiful
faded like an old man's vest in a trunk
like a sunset darkened on the windowpanes.
People here walk with their hands in their pockets
or might gesture as if swatting a fly
that returns again and again to the same place
on the rim of an empty glass or just inside
a spot as indefinite and persistent
as their refusal to acknowledge it.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
December 8
Quiet day. An empty table.
I see things as they are.
I have my hands in my pockets.
Who can I thank for this?
*
Under the lukewarm water of night I held
the hand of sleep and the sense of forgetting
the texture of the blanket and of the wall.
If you lift the sheet
you won't find me.
Try to find me--don't you understand?
I'm deeper in.
*
There were two glasses on the table
a stool in the corner
the shadow of a hand that might have picked flowers
a shadow split between bed and ceiling
I don't remember I wasn't quick enough to see
only the shadow of the window that didn't open
on the white wall
and the hand that didn't cut flowers
the hand that itself was cut in the first instant of moonlight
falling in the middle of the road in the muddy waters
beside the broken wheel of the mail truck.
*
A mandolin an angry angel
a glass of water a cigarette
the sounds that binds us together for a moment beyond our solitude
so we can part again without saying goodnight.
Later the eyes that open two holes in the wall.
*
I planted a tree. I'll raise it.
Whatever happens I'm not going back.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
December 11
The floor seems in a good mood today
as does the cane bench
I look at everyone the same way
it's quiet
I like it
I want to hold on to it.
And yet
a snuffed lamp in the morning
doesn't give you the slightest idea
of what night can be.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
December 24
Each morning flocks of wild geese
head south.
We watch them, unmoving.
You get tired of looking up.
Soon enough we lower our heads.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
January 18
Our house, you said. Which house?
Our house is over there
with the single bed
with the broom
with the unsuspecting poems
not yet torn.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
January 23
At last
the mirror shows you
your severed hands
though you have no hands to applaud
your victory.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
January 26
I want to compare a cloud
to a deer.
I can't.
Over time the good lies
grow few.
--Yannis Ritsos, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, from Diaries of Exile
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}