IN ABURDHEVAS

in Aburdhevâs
the year never comes to an end;
the earth never yet completed a full turn
round the sun

in Aburdhevâs
at midnight you hear them shout,
‘Happy New Day!’
and they embrace you and kiss
and tell you of their hopes
with smiles and tears

in Aburdhevâs
are many wonders and interest-things
and I wish I could tell you more,
but already I have to go

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Whilst The Old, The New by reading_is_dangerous]

IN WATAWAGAH

in Watawâgah
my mind became metallic
my thoughts—incommunicable

I muttered to myself,
‘Resounding wheels,
jeweled wheels,
I never knew!...’

the universe is a ballroom.
Here people come to
lusty
conclusions—
I am missing words

in Watawâgah
phrases tried to take over my mouths—
I had two of them, mouths

the nose of my belly
the gold of my mind
the legs of my mustaches—I was a man
within a man

in Watawâgah
the sky was crying into a lake.
A fisherman told me,
‘Take my daughter with you,”
but did she want of me?

my hopes—
they would shrink,
but…

‘Yes,’ the girl said,
my mind became metallic
my thoughts—incommunicable

I was everywhere
I was all the time
I kept my eyes under my arms
my dreams had fingers

...and the finger tips
and the nails
ha! ha!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: in Watawâgah by reading_is_dangerous]

LEAVING NAMNARATH

so I tiptoed from the porch of E’s house
dressed up in white flannels
and leaving Namnarath
with an utterly abandoned feeling
I stumbled almost blindly into the Hills

I was contend to be alone,
but I could hear enchanting murmurs:
‘Look at that’ a voice whispered to me
as I came across silver idols
as if by accident

a dark suspicion was born in my heart.
Later that day was pouring rain

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Idols by reading_is_dangerous]

IN MUSHMUSHEH

in Mushmusheh
I saw a shadow that was jumping across the night sky

what was it the shadow of?
and why was it jumping?
and what was its size?
I do not know.

in this big universe,
there are things big,
and things bigger

I was happy the shadow went westwards
while I was going North,
to the Hills,
to see the ordinary shadows
of ordinary monsters
(although I was told they were not that ordinary)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: in Mushmusheh by reading_is_dangerous]

IN MAGGALEH

in Maggaleh
the Astronomer decorates the New Tree
according to what he reads—
what is written up there,
in light,
in curves,
against the darker background of the Night

::: ::: :::

[Picture: in Maggaleh by reading_is_dangerous]

FLYING

there was Mithra,
then J. Christ,
then Santa and the reindeers—the idea
never changed much

to fly above the land,
to fly above oneself,
there only is one way: LOVE

love this life
and share with others all what you love (including
whiskey and red wine)

This is why I believe the Internet can be
a great tool—it makes sharing ideas (and more!) so easy.

I love reading,
and writing,
and painting,
and that means I’ll be sharing:
more of that with you.

better and better, I hope

Merry Givemas!
To you, my friends

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Flying by reading_is_dangerous] (I found Mr. Santa and the reindeers on the web -- the background and the wonderful snow are from r_i_d!)

IN OGOG-QOMPO

in Ogog-Qompo,
I asked them about the name of their city

they said,
“Everything here
we like it when it’s round
and like the sound of Go,
and like the sound of Qo,
and like the sound of Po,”
and they seemed ready to keep going,
and tell me they liked the sound of Bo,
and the sound of To,
and the sound of No,”
but I cut them,
and I asked,
“What’s in those hills over there to the North?”

“A few old trees,” they said,
“And ruins,
and living among those are some of the
strangest monsters known to us.”

a little Ogog-Qompo boy asked me,
“Will you be going North, and to the hills?”

perhaps…?

(and why that question...? Could it be that... Did I look like a... a mo-)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Hills by reading_is_dangerous]

IN RAMTAVILLE, IN FINTAMEH

In case you’ve been wandering what’s happening to me, and why I don’t write much, and nothing in French, well, it is, because I am stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. I feel like an apricot human being, a monster, a little being that doesn’t know what language to speak, what to say, how, why, where to put a comma, when to stop a sentence, when to hit the return key, etc. I am a fool, not exactly an old fool yet, but I’m going there, one year, two years, three years, one silly poem after the other.

Today I saw a friend, and we played chess, and it was fun, and we laughed a lot, then I went home, and I thought, “Everything or almost has been written about everything, and it feels like there is nothing left to say, but to say it otherwise, except for that little part that hasn’t been said yet. There is a secret I’ve been keeping with me for ten years already, something that could change the world, the way we live, something I got through my brother, something I told a few people about, but it sounds so crazy that I almost never talk about it, and I was about to turn that secret into a mystical novel, but I got stuck, stuck, stuck, and it’s been three years already, and I’m now left without a penny.” Ha! ha!

I saw the moon, and it was full, or it looked like it was full, but there were clouds covering the top part, but the bottom part looked like it was full, and that half of a full moon was coming down in between the new buildings they built this year, Yerevan is booming, you see, if I still had my photo camera I could show you, or maybe I could make a drawing, but why? Imagine boxes, big, gray, ugly, stupid looking boxes with nothing inside yet, they don’t even have their windows ready, so the moon, it could have gone into one of those boxes, and hide there. How beautiful the moon, even if you’ve seen it one million times.

The earliest nightmare I can remember, I mean the oldest, but I was only four: I was falling. Since then I’ve often dreamed that I could fly, and every time it seems as if I could better than the previous time, if only a little better, so that it came to be that I could fly at will, but never too far from the ground, and then at higher altitudes, at higher speeds, with better ease. I dreamed that I could teach flying. I dreamed that I could throw myself down a bridge, and fly despite the fear. The most recent dream I had about flying involved catching a person, who jumped from a building, and despite her weight I was able to fly off and show her around, this is the city, this is outside the city, this is a forest, see how beautiful it is?

I love woods. You don’t see much in the forest, especially a Canadian forest in the winter when the sun left, and it’s all blue, snow blue, and the trees are little, thin things. You can’t see much in there. The wolves have all been killed, there is not as much as a rabbit left. Not a deer. Not a bear (thank god). There was nothing at all for me to see in those woods of my childhood, but much to imagine. What I can’t see, I imagine. What I imagine, it can exist or not exist. I find that what most people call reality is just a tiny part of it. You don’t see much in the forest, if it’s just a tiny part of it you see.

Inside of me is like outside. My inside is part of your outside. You are part of what I call outside, but so is my inside. It’s all outside to me. If there is anything that is really inside it must be the part of me that I can barely get to, the things beyond the things that I can imagine or dream about.

One thing about your dreams: Don’t let other people influence your dreams, and I’m not talking about the things you wish for, no, but of the pictures you see at night, those dreams. Those voices inside of you, the faces, what happens to you–part of it, part of it must be... it came down from our distant ancestors (the fear of falling), but there are other things, recent ones, new thoughts, new combinations, new truths.

Truth can be old or new. Different truths. Truth truer, true like. Can anything be true like or can a thing be either true or not? True here, false there. Now true, then false.

If the universe is finite, then there is something wrong with arithmetic. 1+1+1+1+1+1+... etc. all the way into infinity doesn’t sound true. The proof of it is the monstrosity called Pi. When the space aliens come visiting us, one morn, they’ll show us how to write that number and all the other ones in a way that will make sense.


in Gabdalah
they threw numbers at me

six,
seven,
five,
twenty,
forty,
twelve,
etc.
I laughed at them.


in Fudhimap
they tossed a hand-grenade at me.
I ate it. “Are you men?” I asked them.
“You could behave better than that!”

they screamed, oh!
yes,
they did,
they screamed
they were afraid,
little half-humans,
poor things,
afraid of the light they were.

the light they were. They were light?
They were afraid of themselves.
There can be nothing worse.


in Ramtaville
I was about to delete these words...


in Fintameh
I asked you
what words you wanted me to change.
This one?
That one?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Tzirane by reading_is_dangerous]

I shall come back here tomorrow, to kill the bugs. They must be numerous.

IN POMTOM-NAMEE

in Pomtom-Namee,
pondering on what could be
a tale of a green bird and a blue egg
I thought,
“I need a coffee,”
and going to the kitchen I toyed
with these ideas,
“The blue egg is man on earth,
and the green bird is a winged superman
who made it (back) into Paradise,
and the egg’s shell of course is fragile,
but life in heaven is also uncertain, ha! ha!”

I was unhappy with these simple metaphors,
but there was nobody around to help me
to think of something better

in Pomtom-Namee
I had an espresso coffee device;
I wrongly put the coffee
in the water compartment,
and I almost poured the water
in that little cup
where I should instead have put the coffee!

that incident made me think
the bird should be blue,
and the egg green,
so the colors could lead me to a tale
first of a Man Egg in Eden lush and green,
followed by the story of human beings
coming to life on a blue planet,
and opening their wings:
knowledge and imagination

in Pomtom-Namee
I remembered a famous composer’s saying,
“If a melody is any good,
one should be able to whistle it,”
and, but
I could not decide on any word
to properly finish this:
“If a story is any good,
one should be able to … it.”

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Ballet by reading_is_dangerous]

IN REMSEE-BAREE

in Remsee-Baree
they told me,
“There is a ballet of ideas in your mind,
and those girls are beautiful
and you wish you could invite one to your room,
but we’re keeping an eye on you,
so you better behave well,
and now go to the Grand Ballet
if you will,
enjoy the show,
tonight they are performing
‘THE BLUE EGG OF THE GREEN BIRD,’”
but I didn't go,
and the next morning I left Remsee-Baree
and I went elsewhere in search
of what it was
that I was searching for

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Diamond by reading_is_dangerous]

TRAINS OF THOUGHTS

trains of thoughts
come and go

at the station here I am waiting
for a train—which?
I don’t know yet

but when I’ll see it,
I’ll know

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Model trains by reading_is_dangerous]

IN POTOMATAKO

in Potomatako
they accept no thing,
no plan of action,
no account of any event

they even do not accept
the possibility of their own existence
in Potomatako

of course accepting it
would mean
they no longer could be standing
among those who accept no thing

their life is a bit strange
in Potomatako

::: ::: :::

[Picture: On the road to Potomatako by reading_is_dangerous]

FORTIETH

Ambo flew by a castle tall in the hills. Pink, oh! How pink the walls of Castle Tall were in the hills. A people of mice lived there, standing, female, dressed in white robes, magical, and mysterious. Their language was a strange dialect.

Ambo landed. He picked a blade of grass. “Well,” he thought the grass looked like a sword. It was a sword. Ambo had a sword, green, and straight, supple. “Let’s go see them, the mice ladies.” By then, maybe you guessed it, he had dropped his magic pot of paint (remember it was deep blue) and the elephant-sized brush he wrote words with, onto the clouds.

They were forty mice in that castle. Coincidentally it was Ambo’s fortieth birthday. “What does it mean?” the magician wondered (how did he know they were forty? I don't know). Did I tell you Ambo was a magician? His power was based on this that he thought this looked like that, to such extend that for him this was that and that was it, almost always. Now why did Ambo need a blade of grass? Because it was his birthday, and birthday is almost always a strange day. Especially the fortieth.

A womouse greeted Ambo. "Holle," she said, "my nema is Edilo." Her eyes shone.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Number by reading_is_dangerous]

AMBO THE MAGICIAN

Ambo contemplated the December sky for days in search of what the great whiteness reminded him of, until it dawned on him at last that gazing at the even clouds felt almost the same as staring at his computer screen after having opened a new, blank document. “Well,” he thought, then he took a magic pot of paint (he was a magician and the paint was a deep blue in color) and an enormous brush the size of an elephant, and thus equipped he flew up into the sky, and on the clouds he wrote this first word, “HELLO!” in beautiful, big, blue, bold letters.

It did not take long for a wonderful cheer to be heard coming from below. People on earth had seen the word! They had read it! They liked it! So next Ambo wrote, “PEACE”, and soon there was a lot of cheering heard again. And then as he was flying around and in the clouds, and pondering what he should write, he had this idea for something he thought sounded “pretty much universal”, and he wrote: “GOD THIS IS GREAT!!!” and he underlined the word “this” and he used not only one, but three exclamation marks. Now there were cheers again, but this time Ambo thought he heard some booing too. Maybe some people didn’t like it that he used the word “god” together with the word “this” or maybe it was all because of the word “great” with the three exclamations marks—maybe that made a few people envious?

There was plenty of clouds left to paint on (it was December right?) so Ambo thought he should write some more words, but what? Gift ideas of course! and so he wrote this one first, “GIVE GOLD” because he believed the price of gold would go up very soon (unless everybody gave it away simultaneously), but he didn’t bother to write that on the clouds with his elephant-sized brush, because he thought the smart people would get it anyway, and too bad for the others! But then he wrote, “GIVE POEMS” and with that one he laughed aloud, for reasons that should be obvious. Then he wrote, “GIVE LIVE MUSIC” and with that one, he thought that was enough.

Ambo drifted away from the city sky, because he wanted to experiment with his writing without having one or two million people reading what he wrote on the spot. Somewhere over the hills, with only a few cows and horses looking at him, he wrote onto the clouds, “I AMBO YOU” which didn’t seem to make sense, and then, “YOU AMBO ME,” which already seemed to have transformed his name, Ambo, into a verb, but meaning what?

Next he tried, “YOU AMBO AMBO” which probably meant, “you do-something to Ambo” and finally, he wrote, “AMBO AMBOES AMBO” which seemed to mean, “Ambo does-something-called-Ambo to Ambo.” I make myself, myself? or “I AM WHO I AM”?

(to be followed)

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Communication device by reading_is_dangerous]

TIME DOES NOT FLOW

time does not flow.

time is the nth dimension
where n-1 is the number of dimensions
across which a self-conscious system
can easily have an influence on its motion.

there could be an infinite number of dimensions
or just a very big number like 3,002,988
or only 22
or just five or six.

now! go stretch a bit,
take a warm shower,
have one cup of hot coffee,
work for an hour,
then go to that fax machine
and send that letter your loved ones have been waiting for.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Letters by reading_is_dangerous]

"You — you really can see into the future?" said Constant. The skin of his face tightened, felt parched. His palms perspired.
"In a punctual way of speaking — yes," said Rumfoord. "When I ran my space ship into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been." - The Sirens of Titan, Kurt VONNEGUT

CLOTHED IN SILENCE

this place is silent, silence

all the words
and the pictures
and the links
and the music videos
and the flashy ads
and the colors
and the various options
and the gadgets
and the avatars
and change this and change that
and the rest,
it’s all here,
they’re all here

nonetheless the place here is silence.
We’d hear (!) a poor cat a mile way from here if
it were vomiting silently.

now I am not sure if I feel like to scream or
to whisper (and what words?)

I’d love to see some dust, virtual dust
to cover these lines over time

then a breeze, a virtual breeze would come and
blow off that dust,
and the words

far, far away
The wind, virtual wind would carry everything to a
far away place, a virtual place (virtual distance?)

everything and all would be gone
except for you and me
and a few of these red mountains you see
and this golden castle of ours
and our funny flying machines

::: ::: :::

[Picture: So silent a place by reading_is_dangerous]

BATTLE OF THE SHEETS

Sunday morning.
It is the battle of the sheets!
I struggle with a slab of fat, arg!
I combat a vicious plate of flesh, arg!

Came the afternoon under a bleak December sky
and here it was, a pane of hair

A theory of hair
Magnificent hair that grows only in my imagination

The hair wants to fight a duel with me.
Oh!

I throw ornamental plants at it, them
I try prehistoric passes, but
The magnificent hair gives me a wicked smile
and with a mischievous swing,
woooosh! the pane of hair slices a thin inscription from me

what inscription? What words? These:
“This piece of glass is very flexible.”

this was a long time ago
Far, far from here
In a golden castle it happened

I fled its walls
I fled the country
I fled from you, and that meant from me

::: ::: :::

[Picture: As old as the hills the castle was built on by reading_is_dangerous]

THE MEASLES OF FEAR

the measles of fear
the mumps of fright

the chickenpox of scare
the whooping cough of dread

the diphtheria of terror
the typhus of alarm

the plague of panic
the tetanus of apprehension…

Sound the siren!
This is cholera

Emptied, the soft cylinder of the stomach
Emptied, the ducts, the bowels

Each day was but a thin little square of paper
on a roll, their life

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Human chicken by reading_is_dangerous]

I just woke up with this idea, to mix two or three randomly chosen lists of words from my Longman’s Lexicon of Contemporary English. For the picture I chose light, gentle colors, but I mistakenly marked it with the 6th of December instead of the 8th.

Last evening a sudden and strong wave of tiredness put me to sleep. This is going to be my first “normal day” in a long time. And it’s a sunny morn!

WRITING WITH SCISSORS

while he refuses to distinguish between
what is inside of him
and what is outside,
he will tell you that poetry comes from within
while fiction,
when he writes some,
seems to come to him from the outside

thus as a man or as a writer he stands between
the voice of his soul and
that of a fictitious account of reality

“I am a thin membrane, a filter, a self-conscious filter,”
he explains

“and when it rains outside of me,
it also rains inside of me. And when it
rains inside of me, it also
rains outside of me. So if you need some rain,
you can just tell me,
because I know the secret of making it rain inside of me,
which mean I can make it rain outside of me.”

interesting fabrications he can think of.
The other day he told me that when Matisse (at 72) could no
longer hold a brush for painting
he used scissors to
create the shapes he needed for his works

“that’s what I am doing,” he says,
“writing with scissors.”

yet he’s not even forty years old

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Memories of... by reading_is_dangerous]

SEVEN HENRI MATISSE QUOTES I LIKE VERY MUCH:

1. It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
2. I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
3. There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
4. An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.
5. I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
6. I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.
7. Exactitude is not truth.

PUNCTURE THE SELF

he punched a hole
through his own neck
so all that was inside of him
leaked out

the atoms of his thoughts,
the molecules of his thoughts,
the creatures of his thoughts,
the very thoughts of his thoughts

he destroyed the wall
he removed the skin of the Self
so all that was inside of him
could be one with the rest

any god or human being can do it—
all is needed is a nail to punch a hole in the Self
to let go of self-consciousness
to become one within all

of course I am not talking about a real nail
indeed you have it here, the Holy Grail
it’s in the smile of your third eye—
if it can see, it will also let you be seen

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Both sides of me in red by reading_is_dangerous]

LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS

the sea of your thoughts,
the boat of your speech,
the fumes of your poetry–
ok, let’s try again

the sea of your subconscious thoughts,
the boat of your mind,
the fumes of your speech,
the fish you’re hoping to catch, the poem.

polluting fumes, yes
But in the end, maybe
a nourishing fish!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Gone fishing, or gone to fish, or going to fish, or going to be fishing, I am not sure about it by reading_is_dangerous]

THE TREE-HORSE

this is the tree-horse
each leaf is a small theater in the open air
the plays are short and quick
because every now and then the phlantasnimal takes a run
oh! how it races!
oh! how it jumps!
and the plays abruptly ends
and many the tiny actors,
and many the equally tiny spectators,
many of them fall off from the tree-horse,
and on the trail! (be careful!)

my job is to search for those who fell off the leaves
and try and pick them up (with a spoon!)
before the night comes
before the tree-horse comes back

it always does,
because of the roots, you see?
nice,
nice tree-horse,
oh!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The Tree-Horse by reading_is_dangerous]

excerpts from a book I just began to read

…when the true alchemist spoke of seeking for gold, he spoke of gold in the soul of man. And he called gold that which in the New Testament is called the Kingdom of Heaven, and in Buddhism, Nirvana. And when the true astrologer spoke of constellations and planets he spoke of constellations and planets in the soul of man, i.e., of the qualities of the human soul and its relations to God and to the world. And when the true Kabalist spoke of the Name of God, he sought this Name in the soul of man and in Nature, not in dead books, nor in biblical texts, as did the Kabalist-Scholastics. The Kabala, Alchemy, Astrology, Magic are parallel symbolical systems of psychology and metaphysics. Any alchemical sentence may be read in a Kabalistic or astrological way, but the meaning will always be psychological and metaphysical. […]

A symbol may serve to transfer our intuitions and to suggest new ones only so long as its meaning is not defined. Real symbols are perpetually in process of creation; but when they receive a definite significance they become hieroglyphs and finally a mere alphabet. As this they express simply ordinary concepts, cease to be a language of the Gods or of initiates and become a language of men which everyone may learn.

Properly speaking, a symbol in occultism means the same as in art. If an artist uses ready-made symbols his work will not be true art, but only pseudo-art. If an occultist begins to use ready-made symbols, his work will not be truly occult, for it will contain no esotericism, no mysticism, but only pseudo-occultism, pseudo-esotericism, pseudo-mysticism. Symbolism in which the symbols have definite meanings is pseudo-symbolism.

–P.D. Ouspensky, SYMBOLISM OF THE TAROT

I WRITE A POEM

I write a poem,
then I delete it

I write a new poem,
and I delete it too

…this goes on and on and on,
ten times tonight, already! But
as long as I keep on writing new poems
some hope remains

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Ms Delete (she can't hear me) by reading_is_dangerous]

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. -Oscar Wilde