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Friday 3 June 2011

Superstition in Heavy Storm


.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Typhoon_in_Hong_Kong.jpg

Heavy storm brought on by Typhoon Sanvu in Hong Kong: photo by Mcyjerry, 13 August 2005





Iron time
swallows
variation, texture. May blossoms,
in the shadow. And then it was all over for that
......day.

But another day too late

like a vine grows and lasts a minute in the
......glistening dark time being. And when this twisted tundra is
......revealed, you say: the sky is lost and there is nothing to take
......its place, and no more time to stay, in any
......case. And so we let the clock come into existence, repeating, we could stay here all night if
......we wanted a deadly white
......wind to take the future the way we are
......going.





File:Rolling-thunder-cloud.jpg

Heavy Shelf cloud (Cumulonimbus arcus) associated with a severe thunderstorm in Enschede, Netherlands: photo by John Kerstholt, 17 July 2004; image by Solitude, 19 July 2004

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've read this a number of times and will go on reading it and looking at the images today and throughout the weekend, I expect. Even so, anything I write now feels like an "instant reaction" to something that deserves something much more thoughtful. I feel more than ever before under the influence of a heavy storm that I am fighting against. Except when blinking my eyes to keep out foreign objects and moving my hands away from heating elements, I try to fight off superstition and ritualistic, reactive behavior, but under the influence of the heavy storm, this isn't easy and I find myself falling into all sorts of obsessive patterns. I love the minatory, architectural look of the words on the page and I am overwhelmed by the photograph of Hong Kong through the stormy distance. Yesterday in Dayton, the president used the phrase "rebuild the future", which sort of confused me. At least it has an element of mystery to it, unlike "win the future", which is just silly.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Yes, as Curtis notes, those storm clouds over Hong Kong are "overwhelming" (likewise, the heavy shelf cloud above Enschede). Nothing quite like here but raining nonetheless (again -- can it be June 4? ? ?), with "wind to take the future the way we are / going"

6.4

grey rain clouds against shadowed canyon
of ridge, wind in green leaves on branch
in foreground, waves sounding in channel

accidental, word for “word”
had several words for

that is, picture as well as
surface, reflect that

grey white clouds reflected in channel,
shadowed green pine on tip of sandspit

TC said...

Ah, minatory, absolutely the right word. How can we rebuild what has already fallen apart when we are so overwhelmed by the disrepair of the present that the warm air from the overheating planet element, rising upward, creates global cooling in the mesosphere. The element of mystery in the apparently

accidental,

as though the

word for “word”
had several words

concealed within it -- "future", "rebuild", "minatory", "overwhelming".

That photo of Hong Kong could almost trick Someone into thinking, San Francisco.

That is all I know, though perhaps not all I need to know.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Absolutely my first thought too -- HK looking like SF here. . . .

TC said...

Yes, uncanny -- until she got to the attribution, she couldn't tell the difference either.