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Thursday 22 July 2010

Over the Falls


.

File:Victoria Falls from Zambia(August  2009).jpg




After a while the worm turns itself inside out,
The diamond transforms itself into an unremarkable dustmote
Floating insignificantly above the outer space dustbin

And the entire past becomes a mere blip, unrecognizable
Against the great foamy blur of the larger scheme




File:Victoria Falls, chasm.jpg


Victoria Falls from the Zambia side: photo by Kounosu, 2009
Victoria Falls, chasm from the western end: photo by JackyR, 2006

12 comments:

AJP Crown said...

Tom, you're being discussed at the LRB blog.

TC said...

This is the Crowning Achievement of My Chequer'd Career, AJP. Thanks!

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Very cool, gives me pause, then I get all misty, and then wet. . . .

7.22

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, quail calling from field in left
foreground, no sound of wave in channel

action, explored as original
ways of positing object

which likewise, in principle,
thought first came from

grey-white of fog against top of ridge,
wingspan of gull flapping toward point

TC said...

Steve,

As Robert Frost began his sonnet apropos Eve in Paradise:

"To do that to birds was why she came".

John B-R said...

Tom, what's "the larger scheme"? I've always, and I mean always, wondered about that ;-)

TC said...

The entire past as a mere blip against the entire scheme of that totality of everything to which Time itself is a mere blip, space itself a mere blip, the blip of totality itself a mere blip.

More literally and specifically, the view from the western end of the chasm is a partial view, foam-obscured, blocked by obtruding vegetation, & c. It is difficult, one gathers, to see the whole of the Falls for the impending wet fact of one's immediate location at the west end of the chasm. It's pretty much hang on to a tree limb and try not to breathe in too much spray through your nose, from that spot.

Outer space seems far away and out of reach, in this our hour of need.

(I first typed "sour hour" and fixed it, though maybe that too would have fit.)

John B-R said...

OK, the scheme then is either one or a series of blips in bliplessness which may itself just be a blip ...

Good enough for me!

John B-R said...

Or, of course, the scheme may be the view from where we stand ...

That too, is good enough for me.

TC said...

...the problem is, where we stand it's so slippery, the scheme seems like it's never going to hold still for even a moment...it's hard to get a handle on it... and just when one feels one is at the point of doing so, here comes another large sopping wet blip, like a pie in the face... infuriating, really... one must try to remember to "go with the flow", but enough already... splat!

John B-R said...

Heidegger should have called that book Being and Pie, I think, not Being and Time ... Time being the Arc traced by the Pie in flight ...

Zeno's paradox enters in somewhat, too, as the Face, no matter how fast it moves, can never escape the Pie, no matter how slowly, no matter how far off we first see it coming from ...

human being said...

i like the second pic... it's like these japanese ink/watercolor paintings i really love to look at...

then i read the poem
then i think the poem
then i watch the poem

i look at the second pic again...

it looks more beautiful!
it want to look at it even more...


what was the magic in your word?

TC said...

Thank you hb, that's how I saw that lower picture too. The atmospheric floating-world quality reminiscent of images from scroll paintings.