Recuerdo

Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

 

 

We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

At last the service was over, and they all quietly dispersed, and it was dark and empty again, and there followed that hush which is only known in stations that stand solitary in the open country or in the forest when the wind howls and nothing else is heard and when all the emptiness around, all the dreariness of life slowly ebbing away is felt.

From The Murder, Chekhov's Collected Short Stories

La Figlia Che Piange

T.S. Eliot


O quam te memorem virgo ... 

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair
Lean on the garden urn
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather,
Compelled my imagination many days.
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

The central confusion, that both surrounds and underlies the experience of a rhythmic discontent, seems to me to be the impossibility of answering at the same time 'who am I?', and 'what is the meaning of being?'. The dispute Heidegger tried to raise with so much vehement futility against Descartes rings as firm and irrepressible as when I try to stop from hearing the sound of my own beating heart. The nonsense of trying to interpret Heidegger's project as set out in his impossible opening to 'Being and Time' arises from the inescapable suspicion that the two questions should for the purposes of a coherent understanding of deliberate action be only one. Yet one begs and contradicts the other; the assumption of one that truth is one grounded by definition is made ridiculous by the other's insistence that value is a fundamental phenomenon, unique to being and prior to the act of understanding.

When one lands on new ground and tried to build, and decides, this is what I am going to do, should that not be a declaration of both who one is and what one values? In fact it is a declaration of, I am the content and meaning of what I do. But that is no good. It makes the meaning of the fact of being contingent on who one chooses to be. Every so often I find myself claiming, I want to do this because, and after a long chain of becauses, I am mired in the confusion of what is true and what I mean. I cannot choose to be something without enforcing the incontestability of my wants, the unfalsifiability of my good. A display of devotion to one's own agency that is not a godsend, but god. I am the content and meaning of what I do because I HAVE meaning.

Yet one feels compelled to persist in acts of self-persuasion that puts one in sync with the laws of the known world, without which all one's efforts cannot speak to the actions of others.  We want to confront a world that can exist without us and we want to get in bed with our own kind, we want to sing in harmony, we want to bump into hard things and knock ourselves out cold.

Anthony Adams in Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket describes Dignan: Say what you will about him, but he's no cynic and he's no quitter. Some days I  feel very strongly about wanting to be Dignan. The actual state of things should have nothing to do with what I want to do, facts of life considerations can go get stuffed. On other days everything I come into contact with flows right through me. The world runs on madly by. The only thing I can touch is time itself, and I ride with it.

Geese of Beverly Road

We'll take ourselves out in the street
And wear the blood in our cheeks
Like red roses
We'll go from car to sleeping car
And whisper in their sleeping ears
We were here, we were here
We'll set off the geese of Beverly Road

Hey, love, we'll get away with it
We'll run like we're awesome, totally genius
Hey, love, we'll get away with it
We'll run like we're awesome

We won't be disappointed
We'll fight like girls for our place at the table
Our room on the floor
We'll set off the geese of Beverly Road

Hey, love, we'll get away with it
We'll run like we're awesome, totally genius
Hey, love, we'll get away with it
We'll run like we're awesome

We're the heirs to the glimmering world

We're drunk and sparking, our legs are open
Our hands are covered in cake
But I swear we didn't have any
I swear we didn't have any

Hey, love, we'll get away with it
We'll run like we're awesome, totally genius
Hey, love, we'll get away with it
We'll run like we're awesome

We're the heirs to the glimmering world

Oh, come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight
Serve me the sky tonight
Oh, come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight
serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon

無眠

明月幾時有 把酒問青天
不知天上宮闕 今夕是何年

我欲乘風歸去 唯恐瓊樓玉宇
高處不勝寒 起舞弄清影 何似在人間

轉朱閣低綺戶照無眠
不應有恨何事長向別時圓
人有悲歡離合 月有陰晴圓缺
此事古難全 但願人長久
千里共嬋娟

我欲乘風歸去 唯恐瓊樓玉宇
高處不勝寒 起舞弄清影
何似在人間

轉朱閣低綺戶照無眠
不應有恨何事長向別時圓
人有悲歡離合 月有陰晴圓缺
此事古難全 但願人長久
千里共嬋娟

Celestial Music - Louise Glück

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she’s unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I’m always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I’m like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness—
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person—

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We’re walking
On the same road, except it’s winter now;
She’s telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height—
Then I’m afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth—

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It’s this moment we’re trying to explain, the fact
That we’re at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move.
She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering—
It’s this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

Grimes - Skin

we thought our very hearts would up and melt away
from that snow in the nighttime
just going, and going

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

i still have a prayer because i love what i cannot control