Selections and Provocations

“(…) the sweet facility of the sun in a crystal universe.”

―from Monsieur Teste
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My advice should be followed in only one subject: escape.

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An epic’s tangle of resonant strings. Excursions into the outer edge’s proximity to transparency, of becoming a particle lodged in an eye. The mind drifts accompanied by toads and robins; white noise and gaps.

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“His head is a sealed treasure.”
―from Monsieur Teste

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Tranquility, detachment.

“(…)the absence of trouble and doubt.”

―ibid

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Abandon thought to an existence based solely on sensation. One would have to be tough, uncompromising, and wealthy.


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Living now in a low-tension culture he quickly recognized what an overly accelerated machine he had developed into, unbeknownst to himself for well on three decades. Not only accelerated in terms of physical speed (his legs are long; he is energetic to some extent), but also in how he beholds the world and the various concepts he has employed to navigate it. Or I should say, concepts that he had been immersed in without choice from the moment he was born. It was the difference he had experienced that enabled him to step outside of himself (in a way) in order to see what a bizarre piece of culture he had become. Somewhat fragmented; gentle but fractured, like a Grecian urn. What became most intriguing while this shock of difference was detonating and exploding every other day was the fact that all of his principles, ethics, definitions, meanings, idealisms were hoisted willy-nilly into the air. Or did they crumble? What was once a strong ego (though always secretly self-doubting and unsure) had begun to collapse. A ruin. What can one build out of the rubble of broken ideals, of questionable ethics, of the collapse of foundations one had grown to depend on. Habitual, critical thinking. Gross overextension of perception. The mismanagement of perception. An armor against the raw ugliness of reality in A________. Or was this all illusion, that nothing had seriously changed, that he was still left with these cultural weights and measures? The fact is that he can still consider this episode in his life in the same way he always considered these things: here or there. Perhaps it was the heat, the humidity, the distractions the new city provided him that pushed him into crises?

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“Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living.”


―from Escapism by Yi-Fu Tuan



“A strongly analytical and critical disposition of mind, sustained over time, can lead to cynicism and despair. In the West this has not yet happened to a pronounced degree, and one reason is ironic: The same hard questioning that has corroded traditional covers has enabled Westerners to build a new one—the dazzling technological world that has its own great powers to shield, entertain, and distract. Still, in the course of the last two centuries, critical thinking has undoubtedly dented the modern person’s sense of what the world is really like, raised disturbing questions about the true nature of human relationships, including those long considered sacrosanct, as well as the true character of the relationships between, on the one hand, human beings, and, on the other, animals, plants, rock, the vast silent space. Would not these foundation-shaking queries be another reason, maybe the deepest one, for the vehemence with which the West is sometimes attacked? Besides its egregious faults of imperialism, racism, and speciesism that are generic to civilization, the West has allowed a way of thought to develop that is uniquely destructive of cultural covers and escape routes, not only other people’s but also its own.”

―ibid


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Hilltops


Tor scatters green syllable
through an itinerary
of breathing

in black circular days
readable leaves
cold spray tints from above

The peak was once here
shell-flecked

As one eye is closed
one flow opens

neither in this region
or that
focuses on the end
what’s imperceptible


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