ALL THAT TEA

There is a mug next to the computer
On the table

The mug is red and it’s decorated with a
Chinese-style black dragon

Twice I filled the mug with tea; I drank it all.
Now there is a lot of liquid in my belly

I read that some Chinese people consider that some Westerners
Drink tea with gluttony

Maybe
They are right?

I wrote a lot of nonsense during the last year. From
Now on I’ll stick to reality,

and write healthy descriptions of what’s on the table and
Next to my computer

Expect to read more about simple things and
The weather

It is now five forty-one AM. I probably should go
To sleep

You might be thinking that all that tea keeps me awake
But that’s not so, or it’s not only the tea

What really keeps me awake at night, every night, is
The foolish hope that I could save the day

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Abominable Snowman got bush by reading_is_dangerous]

YOGURT SOUP

They are playing English songs
From the 17th century
On the radio

Sparrows chat noisily
In the sycamore
Right next to my balcony

Cars, trucks
Endlessly drive up and down the street
Making an awful lot of noise

On top of all that, I was trying to play
The mouth harp

Only the cat was silent, and she wasn’t
Even asleep

Tap, tap, tap, click, click
I am now typing these words on the keyboard

Next will be the sounds of the modem
Those funny beeps

Today it seems as if nothing else is happening
No war
No people dying for some stupid reasons
No useless speech badly read on TV by a lying president
No thoughts yelling in my mind

Under a gray cloud
In the pale blue sky
There is now the moon
And it is almost full

I should eat some yogurt soup, spas
Cooked with wheat, not barley

By the way, I read that wheat was most likely domesticated
In Turkey, near Diyarbakır, not far from here

Some Armenians still call that city by its old name,
Amid.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Nothing by reading_is_dangerous]

Who were the people who lived in Anatolia six or seven thousand years ago, who might have domesticated wheat or its ancestral specie? A few hours after I posted the above text, I explored Wikipedia, hoping to find out.

On Anatolia, I found a link to another page about a Neolithic pre-pottery settlement named Çayönü. On that page, I read that,

1. Çayönü is probably the place where the pig (Sus scrofa) was first domesticated.
2. …the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research in Cologne has discovered that the genetically common ancestor of 68 contemporary types of cereal still grows as a wild plant on the slopes of Mount Karaca which is located in close vicinity to Çayönü.

Following a link to another page on the “Pre-Pottery Neolithic Cayonu Tepesi”, I read that,

1. Çayönü was a “very early and substantial village-farming community”
2. there lived “people who were upon the very threshold of effective food-production.”
3. that was “within the half millennium 7250-6750 BC”
4. the inventory of the findings does not include pottery vessels, but “it does include clay figurines of animals and a few of humanoid form.”
5. finally, “The inhabitants of Cayonu clearly rejected barley while cultivating both emmer and einkorn wheat. Animal bones are relatively abundant and it is clear that dependence was on wild game.” (italics mine)

I thought it was a funny coincidence, to read that the people of Çayönü rejected barley, after I wrote that I should be eating some yogurt soup cooked with wheat, not barley.

Instead of the soup, dinner was made of rice with oven-roasted vegetables, and Russian smoked salmon, with red wine first, then white, both bottles French. I am providing these details in case somebody would want to know, in eight or nine thousand years from now.

DZAYANNN, DZAYANNN, DZAYANNN, Â

I turned a wave into a spaceship

For you and me

it is ready to leave
So please hurry up!

the wave won’t wait much longer
It is anxious to go
As a wave always is
That’s what makes a wave a wave

you should bring a few books with you
The poems you like

me, I will bring the Jew’s harp a friend gave me yesterday

it took me an hour to understand how
To hold it right
Pushing it against the teeth
Closing the lips
And breathing through the reed while
Striking it

last night, at four o’clock
I played what I remembered from a song
Played by an old woman for me
In Kyrgyzstan, in 1993

with a video camera
I recorded her music
Which I later used in a short documentary film
Together with the pictures of crows
Flying above the Issyk-kul (it’s a big lake in the mountains)

the song begins like this, it sounds like this:
Dzayannn, dzayannn, dzayannn, â…

coincidentally, the harp given to me
Comes from Bishkek

my friend got it last winter, for me
But he forgot about it until yesterday

the mouth harp is one of the oldest music instruments
Known to us

what are the other ones?
I didn’t research it
But I would bet on the one string guitar
And the empty skull as an early form of the tam tam

bom bom, bôm bôm
Dzayannn, dzayannn, dzayannn, â…

I turned a song, I mean a wave, into a spaceship
For you and me

are we ready to leave yet?
Yes? No! Please hurry up!

pictures from Mars show a forest of tree-like structures
Gigantic ones: They are one kilometer in diameter

if you are not against it
That’s where we’ll be going first

nearby the forest, we’ll park the Wave
And ask it to wait for us a little

then we’ll take a walk
And sit under a Martian tree

you’ll read a few poems aloud
While I play my song on the mouth harp

maybe that will attract
Something like a curious Martian crow

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Wave spaceship by reading_is_dangerous]

To see a picture of the tree-like structures on Mars, follow this link.

TANGO

they removed everything
From me
Except my thirst for you.

*

“will you dance with me?” you asked me
“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t know where
Our steps would take us to.

*

if there were a God
There couldn’t be the Devil

because God, the way I see God, one with a Shape, that
God could not have any Enemy.

*

nothing can be
Against Everything

nothing is
Against Everything

on the other side of Everything, there is
Nothing

*

I don’t believe that infinity is related to
Perfection
(there is no perfect circle in this perfect universe)

*

yesterday, I danced with a woman unlike
Any other I ever danced with
Before.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The old pianist’s daughter, a sketch by reading_is_dangerous]

ADVENTURES IN THE FOREST

I saw a winged mermaid, you know?

the other day
I told myself that
I started to write too late, in my life

at thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old
The mind has dried, taken its shape
In my case that means: Without the know-how of a writer

I have many ideas, but I can’t put them in words the
Way I want, properly
So that the resulting sentences would be beautiful like a

a
Woman’s body, and strong like the mermaid’s fish tail

a fish tail is useful when you explore the depths of the
Subconscious.

also, my words, if
They were any good, they could carry me far above my own
Fears

if, if, if.
If I had wings like the mermaid I saw...

the next morning (I sleep in the morning), I had a dream:

I had just arrived at a shopping mall
As it was about to close, within half an hour, I remember

I rushed to a shop to pay for two pencils I had stolen earlier
“People seldom do that.” the owner said
Yeah...

then I saw a bookstore
I really wanted to take a look inside
But I knew the place was about to close
So I was just standing at the entry, hesitating
When a voice said, “Come in!”

“isn’t it late?” I asked
“Don’t worry about it!” the voice said

inside, there were thousands of books
I looked at the ones closest to me
And as it often happens in dreams, they all seemed super
“Why can’t I write stuff like that?” I asked myself

one book was about regional Japanese ghosts
The maps were drawn with golden ink
I read a bit about the “Trout ghost of Y.” and
The “Plum ghost of N.”

one graphic novel told the story of Zack, the faceless little boy
Who lived in a forest with his uncle
Who would release an owl every night, telling the kid, “Maybe the
Bird will find your face in the forest.”

every morning the bird would come back, without a face for Zack
But the little boy didn’t seem to care much

the novel was about his adventures in the forest
With the many creatures he met there, some real
Some imaginary
And all trying to help Zack
To find his face.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Moon by reading_is_dangerous]

AT HOME WITH MY BODY PARTS

The armchair
Took my legs off

What’s on the table,
I could have held it in my hands
Or kept it on my back

Do I really need the ceiling?
When it’s going to rain,
I could just fly away.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Furniture or winged women by reading_is_dangerous]

A LIE SO BIG

There might be
A lie so big
That the truth about it
Couldn’t fit in the mind.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Lines by reading_is_dangerous]

LOOK AT THEM

delete your words
Then wait

your words will come back
Delete them again, then wait

the words will come back again
Delete them again

this will go on until the words go away
Or you get tired, and let them stay

after your words have been with you for some time
Look at them, then tell me:

what are
These words?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Delete the world, then wait by reading_is_dangerous]

THOUSANDS OF METAL WHEELS

I just heard a beautiful sound
That was like a voice from the deep
An extraordinary call

it came from the breaks of a vehicle that stopped
At a red light, below from where I live on the
Fourth floor of an apartment building in Yerevan

there are still a lot of old buses running here, and
Old trucks, and old cars, and their old engines pollute the
Air, and I hate them for so many reasons

the sound that came from the breaks
Reminded me of the day when I traveled by train
From Rome to Sicily, in the spring of 1988

at that place where the carriages went on board of the ferry
Thousands of metal wheels slowly moving on their rails
Made music that was not a song, not a melody

you could have danced to it, although without a rhythm
Except for that of your heart beat, and the sound of your steps
And that of my clapping hands, had I seen you, and dared

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Imaginary girl with a long neck by reading_is_dangerous]

THE ILLUSION OF MOVEMENT

If movement means a change of position
For the thing that moves
And if perfection cannot be changed
Then within perfection nothing moves.

If the Universe is perfect
Then there cannot be any movement within it
But the illusion of movement.

The speed of light is zero
There is no distance
Nowhere to go
No Reason for anything to go anywhere
Because the world is perfect the way it is
Although for us, humans, it seems as if we could make it better
And maybe we can! if that’s part of the perfect universe.

The three dimensions of Space
Are actually three dimensions of Time or
They are something else
And consciousness doesn’t move along them
Although it feels like it.

Within the Void
There is nothing to stop anything
No wall, no will, no truth
So there can be movement within the Void, and change.

What moves?
“The nothing” moves, but it can’t move much
Because any move, any change to a perfect Void means that
It is no longer perfect,
And anything other than a perfect Void can only be
The perfect Universe.

Within the perfect Universe
Everything that can be, is.
What is, is, and it is forever still.

Nothing moves,
Everything is.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Another ugly metaphysical poem or Miss Nothing is about to dance by reading_is_dangerous]

NOTHING MOVES, EVERYTHING IS

they say that consciousness or the peak of a mountain is
A little mountain put on top of a bigger mountain

they say that they don’t believe in movement, but a
Mountain can surely be understood as a kind of wavelet

they say that there is “quick” consciousness and
“Slow” consciousness

as when a mountain says, “I am”
On a beautiful day that lasts ten thousand years

in 1895, H.G. Wells wrote, “There is no difference
Between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that
Our consciousness moves along it.”

that really sounds true to me. I
Also remember the words of Cho de Pod’h:

“Nothing moves,
Everything is.”

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Under the mountain by reading_is_dangerous]

A BRILLIANT SKY

they speak of the mind as you would of the sky
A cloud is a thought, a rain drop is a word

what is a poem? I ask
Sometimes a puddle, they say

what is the Sun? I ask
Clear your mind, they say, and you’ll see the spirit

why does its light leave us at night? I ask
The light never leaves, they say

but you must look away
To take rest, and to visit us, too! In your dreams

they say that what is the body here, is the soul there
What is your soul now, shall be your body

the ground, the sky
There can not be one without the other

what of the Sea, what of the storms? I ask
What of the stars, what of the Moon? they ask me, laughing

::: ::: :::

[Picture: A clear blue mind by reading_is_dangerous]

ALIVE AND WELL

a dead leaf was on the table, at the outdoor café where
I sat down yesterday for a beer

it was a sycamore leaf, the first victim of the season as
I called it

did the wind leave it there, or the hand of a girl, a
Child?

it surely wasn’t the hand of a grown man,
I thought

that was a funny assumption from a man of thirty-nine years old
Who was sitting with a dead leaf in his hand

I threw it away wishing
I had a camera, but

that was a silly wish. Today I wish
I were a different man

one able to bring that sycamore leaf to you, or the whole tree
If you wanted it

alive
And well

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Captain Sycamore by reading_is_dangerous]

PORTRAIT IN BRIGHT COLORS

I saw your portrait on the wall
Of a hotel room in

it was in bright colors
Your face was

it seemed as if you held the whole
In your hand

I wanted to buy the wall, but
The owner said that

“it was this guy’s birthday recently.” I told him
“Wish him a happy birthday for me.” the owner said

“but now it’s late.” I said
The owner smiled, then said: “Time is

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Portrait of I. by reading_is_dangerous]

BRIDGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

One evening at lake Sevan, I played a game of chess with an old pianist, the friend of a friend. I was about to win when he told me this: “Where there is nothing, no music, no words, no voice, no light, no laws of physics, no numbers, no zero, no truth… -Where there is no truth?” I asked, and I played a bad move. “Yes, where there is no truth. Think about it.” the pianist said.

I thought about it, and I lost the game. We played again. This time, he was winning when I said: “No truth means that everything can happen. There is nothing to stop anything from being, and therefore everything is possible. -Indeed,” the old pianist said, “but as soon as something exists, that something (whatever it is) defines the rules for what comes after.”

My opponent was still winning, so I tried this, I said: “There is a list, it goes like this: One, the Big Nothing. It folds itself into Something, and that’s two. Three: That’s life coming out of Something, out of matter. Certain molecules can make copies of themselves, and in the process, they build evolving systems: Life! Four: Life becomes self-conscious, and here we are: Playing chess. Now what’s five? What’s “coming out” of consciousness? Think about it!” I said, and I went on to win the game.

We didn’t play a third time, because the old pianist was tired, but before we parted he told me this: “Out of consciousness come bridges of consciousness: a connection between you and me, from you to me, from me to you and to everybody else; from everything to everything else. The result is a self-conscious universe. Think about it.”

That night I almost couldn’t sleep.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The old pianist by reading_is_dangerous]

A SONG OF SILENCE

words can walk
On water, words can walk

words can float in mid-air
They can also fly in stone

you can see them
The words with their eyes open, and flapping their wings

like birds, but
Inside a pebble

inside a pebble I found a world of
Words

all of them were flying towards their one god
They had one god of countless shapes and names

I spent two weeks at the beach, and swimming
Despite the coldness of the waters

a wave told me that words could drown, and
Their body sink down to the bottom of the sea, I mean: the lake

the bottom! Where it is too dark and too cold
For the crawfish even

of course, there are other tiny beings, who
Knows who they are? They feed on the body of dead words at the bottom

when all the words are dead (and all the tiny beings too)
There is left a song of silence

you can think of it this way: When the last photon in the universe fades away
There is left a perfect night

can you imagine how beautiful that must be? And the perfect night
Soon is followed by the perfect morning, a perfect day

...a perfect week or
Two

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Bird before the storm by reading_is_dangerous]