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Monday 17 August 2009

After the Deluge


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As soon as the Idea of the Flood had subsided, caravans set out. And the Hotel Splendide was built in the chaos of ice and polar night.

Waters and sorrow, rise and unleash the Floods again.

Because since they rolled away... oh, so disappointing... the Sorceress who tends her flame in an earthen vessel no longer relates to us what she knows, and what we do not know.


.


The next world, so near and yet so far away.

(One does not ask the clouds for directions/answers.)












Muelle en el cielo: photo by Lucy in the Sky, 2009.

Location:
Lago Lácar, a lake of glacial origin, at 40 degrees southern latitude, 277 m. in depth at its deepest point, enclosed in a mountain range of the Andes, in the province of Neuquén, Argentina. Lucy in the Sky: "...I am enclosing some pictures I took this morning. As soon as I woke up, I looked through the window and saw the lake covered by a thick fog. I dressed up quickly and went out with my camera. It was amazing..." (July 14) "Doesn't it look like a ship ready to sail into the clouds?" (August 12)

"Aussitot que l'idée du Déluge se fut rassise...": Après le Déluge, from Illuminations: Arthur Rimbaud, 1874

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The next world, so unknown...

TC said...

Yes, who knows what we will find when we sail into those clouds...

And speaking of celestial voyaging: those readers who are familiar with this blog will know by now that Lucy in the Sky has been a repeated and generous benefactor with her writings and photos.

The title of her photo here, Muelle en el cielo, means Pier in the sky (or in heaven).

It's perhaps no coincidence that Lucy's own marvelous blog is a kind of heavenly docking-place. She calls it Locos por naufragar: El blog de las barcas derivas--that is, Crazy about shipwrecks: The blog of drifting boats.

You can get there from my list of links. It is absolutely worth the attention of your mouse navigator. Not to mention your eyes, your heart and your mind. Currently Lucy has a bilingual poem posted: she is adroit in both Spanish and English. And her photos that have appeared on posts here by her kind permission can be seen in the context of her original writings on her blog, an enchanted space which hosts the spirit of the poetic as graciously as any island I've yet discovered in this great cold ocean of shipwrecks and drifting boats, ghosts and presences, lost and found and wandering souls, the Mare Blogospherium.

Mariana Soffer said...

Tom


Great post man

The next world is so far cause it is not here where we as but if you take just a small step you can see it s behind.
You do not ask clouds, but you can ask stars, cause they are settled in their place and they do not move arround.

Take care

Anonymous said...

Beautiful.

(One might not ask the clouds but sometimes they answer anyway.)

This is also the title to one of my all time favorite songs:
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Anonymous said...

ps of course the SONG title is "Before the Deluge" but at some point, post-survival, it changed in my mind to "after".

TC said...

Thanks again Mary. Know what you mean about "post-survival". Getting harder to hang on to those memories of life Before the Deluge...

Anonymous said...

Tom, what a great version of the song. David Lindley-- wow. Just wow.

There's another version that pops up on u-tube occasionally, a duet with Joan Baez but it gets deleted quickly. Very beautiful version as well.