Quidnovi: The choice is Life    
 The choice is Life7 comments
picture30 Mar 2003 @ 14:48, by Quidnovi

"A strange security results when death is so close a companion. It can be felt while crunching along a beach, a skeleton walking on skeletons with the time machine turning in step, wavefalls and footfalls. A gleeful levity at being so brief, at feeling so exempt."
---James Hamilton Paterson, Sea Burial

"Life is the laugh of the actual in the face of nothing. There is so much to sense, think, and emote about, so much life to endure, such fullness of good and bad---and all of it, suddenly, nothing. Only laughter fits the gap. And he laughs luminously with the great swell of being nothing."
---A.A.Attanasio, Solis

THE ENDLESS WAVE

Saint Anthony knew what ailed the world;
He could see the skull under the mask.
And he thought up long answers to very short questions
Less clever men never would ask.

Yes, Saint Anthony knew what ailed the world,
Though the world didn't know she was sick.

"Shall eternity break like an endless wave?
Can a candle flame burn on a circular wick?
Shall the beast never die that consumes its own tail
Like a dog with gangrene to lick?"

Yes, Saint Anthony looked for a cure for the world,
But in truth he ailed alone.

So off went the Saint in Saint Anthony's boat,
With a bird who played deaf for a fee.

(Melancholy had rusted the preacher-man's throat;
May it never infect you and me!)

And Saint Anthony hoped his parish'ners could be
Bigger fish in a much bigger sea.
(…)
Be assured---any dreamer's a prophet
Who dreams of a house in the sky
Or paradise.

May belief be the slave of aesthetics
And the prettier doctrine apply
Where doubt arise.

For remember---all nightmares are fiction,
And any foreboding a lie
To children's eyes.

And why would the world be more perfect
Than anything else made of clay---
Like you and I?

For the saint is less blessed than the gardener,
Whose husbandry makes of the earth
A paradise.

The naïve---who embellish his garden
Like innocent blossom---are worth
More than the wise.


Both the text above (extracted from "Saint Anthony's Vocation" and "Choose your own Dream") and the illustration ("The Endless Wave", which its author calls a Tomograph, a 3-dimensional scenes created using a variety of real elements mixed with hand painted cutouts) are from Patrick Woodroffe's amazing collection, Hallelujah Anyway.

Its extraordinary images explore and celebrate the border between reality and illusion; a realm of wild wonders and bizarre beings, brought to life through a combination of paint, etching and highly unconventional photographic techniques.

Published: 1987 (currently out of print)


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7 comments

30 Mar 2003 @ 17:48 by martha : beautiful images
and words to inspire. Is that your passion francis?  

1 Apr 2003 @ 12:51 by quidnovi : ...
... I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
---T.S.Eliot, {link:http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3976/Ash.html|Ash Wednesday}

Does that answer your question, Martha?  

1 Apr 2003 @ 15:16 by martha : yes
francis. And here is one of my favorite poems that I use to read my daughter.
Halfway Down

Halfway down the strairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead."

A.A. Milne...When We Were Very Young  

1 Apr 2003 @ 17:07 by quidnovi : When We Were Very Young...
Some of us do manage to remain very so ;-)

{link:http://www.newciv.org/mem/persnewslog.php?did=58&vid=58&xmode=show_article&amode=standard&aoffset=30&artid=000058-000173&time=1049244944
|Kid at heart} or {link:http://www.newciv.org/mem/persnewslog.php?did=58&vid=58&xmode=show_article&amode=standard&aoffset=0&artid=000058-000206&time=1049245112#comments|children of the heart}!

or so I heard :-)  

1 Apr 2003 @ 19:02 by martha : you heard right
LOL  

2 Apr 2003 @ 05:06 by quidnovi : THAT is what we are talking about then!
"The laugh of the actual in the face of nothing"

Instant to Instant,
Whatever attracts the mind
Is "{link:http://www.newciv.org/pic/nl/artpic/232/000232-000052.jpg|THAT}" in disguise.

"For we move--each--in two worlds: the inward of our own awareness, and an outward of participation in the history of our time and place. The scientist and historian serve the latter: the world of things "out there,"where people are interchangeable and language serves to communicate information and commands. Creative artists, on the other hand, are mankind's conscious contact with ourselves, not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit, in the consciousness of being. Their task, therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an ACTUAL SHOCK OF EXPERIENCE will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication accross the void of space and time FROM ONE CENTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO ANOTHER."
---Joseph Campbell on Creative Mythology  

6 Apr 2003 @ 12:26 by quidnovi : My spirit is free

{link:http://www.newciv.org/pic/nl/artpic/59/000059-000004.jpg|Picture found on Butterflykiddo's newslog}  

Other entries in
20 Apr 2003 @ 21:02: Ten million years of uncertainty
13 Mar 2003 @ 00:51: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
11 Mar 2003 @ 22:39: Las Palabras del Diario
7 Mar 2003 @ 19:45: "The World As I See It"
26 Jul 2002 @ 17:06: The Child Next Door
14 Jul 2002 @ 22:59: NCN: The Practical and the Poetic


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