.
Paper kite (Idea leuconoe): photo by Pro2, 2009
Idea fell to earth in a shower of light
............................................................
brain cloud
a bath of heavy water
............................................................
brain cloud
a bath of heavy water
Untitled #8747: Todd Hido, 2009
European Peacock (Inachis io) on a Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense), Chemnitz, Germany: photo by Jörg Hempel, 15 July 2007
Love how that idea seems
ReplyDeleteTo be tiptoeing in flashes
Of black and white.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteThe excursions of reading take you places...often forgotten and their lasting impressions undermined by the authority of truth or the fear of it...Not always
I fell upon this poem today..and i'm seeping through to seem clearer..my deformations thus resulting, are an idea too..I love this..
the rain is able to arise so many feelings.......what a wonderful metaphor !!...love it...:)
ReplyDeleteIdea leuconoe (Paper Kite or Rice Paper butterfly, aka Large Tree Nymph) floats aethereally as its name through the tropical forests of Southeast Asia.
ReplyDeleteThis particular Inachis io (Peacock butterfly) lives in the UK.
It has a split personality, wings open with flashy eye-spots and wings closed, all but unnoticeable.
And if noticed... by rubbing its wings together it is said to be able to make an annoying noise to chase off predators.
This butterfly's name recalls the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses about the nymph Io who was seduced by Jupiter, the king of the gods. When his wife Juno became jealous, Jupiter transformed Io into a heifer to protect her and helpfully emerged from the clouds to order Mercury to rescue her. Mercury guided his herd to the spot where Io was guarded by the hundred-eyed Argus, and then, disguised as a shepherd, lulled Argus to sleep and beheaded him. Not so easily foiled however Juno then took Argus's eyes and tattooed them onto the wings of Io, who flapped off to to the Nile River with the Galloping Furies hot on her trail. Finally Jupiter prevailed upon Juno to cease tormenting the poor nymph; upon resuming her natural form, Io escaped to the forest and ultimately became the Egyptian goddess Isis, happily ever after.
(By "this" I meant not the Peacock in the photo, who comes from Germany, but the one in the video, British don't you know.)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it's raining here this morning. And there are few floating ideas, and hardly a wing tattooed with eyes.
ReplyDeleterain brain cloud...
ReplyDeleteWonderful connection of imagery.
Underside topside
ReplyDeletechange now
with a flutter
thistle my favorite flower
color before
annoying strength
then there's always
the milk thistle
to fall back on
America.
All that ordeal
ReplyDeleteto go through--
trees
unreachable roaming
time with sheep
heavy metal
more waiting, hiding
producing milk
in order
to be changed
into Isis.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteshower of light
.................................................................rain
brain cloud
followed by "Untitled" 8747 -- all so lovely.
10.25
grey rain cloud moving across invisible
top of ridge, shadowed leaves on branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
“subject,” not only what is
past but also what is
painting, see in particular
idea, read as follows
sunlit white clouds in bright blue sky,
shadowed green pine on tip of sandspit
Little papery ancient
ReplyDeleteyou exist
gardening
sort through
overstory
canopy of flowers
end up flitting
above it
always tasty.
Everyone in a movie today
ReplyDeleteDer Himmel über Berlin ‒
and have gone the other way
as one of those witnessing angels
who views dispassionately
from the wings ...
"a bath of heavy water"
ReplyDeleteThe sense of a place to contain the volatility of a thought. This is what The World does.
I can't escape the allusions to nuclear reactors.
WB,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for considering the words as though they actually had a certain depth, a certain history, and certain connotations (contra standard internet practise).
Indeed I did have in mind that particular association you mention, for heavy water.
It follows as part of the radiation burden from "brain cloud".
Four consecutive computer tomography deconstructions of the brain, over the course of an endless trauma-center night, with each laminar slice infusing a Bikini Atoll level of radiation burden, topped off by the bonus radio isotope cocktail piped in intravenously by the beings behind the lead shields, not only imaged the brain cloud, but added to it in a way I would have thought redundant, had I been able to think, or allowed to say No to any of these costly (in so many senses) technological invasions.
With the initial falling-butterfly "Idea" that sparked this scrawled-in-the-dark nocturnal notebook jotting there came (for me anyway, old bore that I am) the inescapable sense of the origin of the word, as it came to Plato, from the Greek eidos, for "seeing".
(Since the automotive blunt-trauma assault upon my cerebrum I've had serious vision difficulties.)
The word "rain", however, here, was simply meant to indicate... rain. Little depth to that.
Perhaps the shallow puddle into which the pieces of broken stars silently tumbled... is that what I saw in the Todd Hido shot?
It may be that when we lose the ability make things out with clarity, we begin at last to see what we had been looking for.
(As though our lost wings had eyes?)