A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist’s biggest show to date, entitled ‘Dismaland’, at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
Wallace Stevens: from Two or Three Ideas, a lecture on Baudelaire's La Vie Anterieure
To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing. Since we have always shared all things with them and have always had a part of their strength and, certainly, all of their knowledge, we shared likewise this experience of annihilation. It was their annihilation, not ours, and yet it left us feeling that in a measure we, too, had been annihilated. It left us feeling dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had taken on a look of hardness and emptiness. What was most extraordinary is that they left no mementoes behind, no thrones, no mystic rings, no texts either of the soil or of the soul. It was as if they had never inhabited the earth. There was no crying out for their return. They were not forgotten because they had been a part of the glory of the earth. At the same time, no man ever muttered a petition in his heart for the restoration of those unreal shapes. There was always in every man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his own terms.
It is as if we had stepped into a ruin and were startled by a flight of birds that rose as we entered. The familiar experience is made unfamiliar and from that time on, whenever we think of that particular scene, we remember how we held our breath and how the hungry doves of another world rose out of nothingness and whistled away. We stand looking at a remembered habitation. All old dwelling places are subject to these transmogrifications and the experience of all of us includes a succession of old dwelling places, abodes of the imagination, ancestral or memories of places that never existed.
Wallace Stevens: from Two or Three Ideas, a lecture on Baudelaire's La Vie Anterieure, given at Mt. Holyoke College, 28 April 1951
To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing. Since we have always shared all things with them and have always had a part of their strength and, certainly, all of their knowledge, we shared likewise this experience of annihilation. It was their annihilation, not ours, and yet it left us feeling that in a measure we, too, had been annihilated. It left us feeling dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had taken on a look of hardness and emptiness. What was most extraordinary is that they left no mementoes behind, no thrones, no mystic rings, no texts either of the soil or of the soul. It was as if they had never inhabited the earth. There was no crying out for their return. They were not forgotten because they had been a part of the glory of the earth. At the same time, no man ever muttered a petition in his heart for the restoration of those unreal shapes. There was always in every man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his own terms.
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view
for the artist’s biggest show to date, entitled ‘Dismaland’, at
Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
It is as if we had stepped into a ruin and were startled by a flight of birds that rose as we entered. The familiar experience is made unfamiliar and from that time on, whenever we think of that particular scene, we remember how we held our breath and how the hungry doves of another world rose out of nothingness and whistled away. We stand looking at a remembered habitation. All old dwelling places are subject to these transmogrifications and the experience of all of us includes a succession of old dwelling places, abodes of the imagination, ancestral or memories of places that never existed.
Wallace Stevens: from Two or Three Ideas, a lecture on Baudelaire's La Vie Anterieure, given at Mt. Holyoke College, 28 April 1951
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
A man sits next to pigeons resting on a pile of bricks collected from the collapsed temple damaged during the earthquake at Hanumandhoka Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Nepal on Thursday: photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters, 20 August 2015
A man sits next to pigeons resting on a pile of bricks collected from the collapsed temple damaged during the earthquake at Hanumandhoka Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Nepal on Thursday: photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters, 20 August 2015
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view
for the artist’s biggest show to date, entitled ‘Dismaland’, at
Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
Migrants wait on the Greek side of the border to pass into Macedonia near southern city of Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on Thursday. Macedonian special police forces arrived this morning and blocked the illegal border crossing between Macedonia and Greece: photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA, 20 August 2015
Migrants arrive on the shore of Kos island on a small dinghy on
Wednesday. Authorities on the island of Kos have been so overwhelmed
that the government sent a ferry to serve as a temporary centre to issue
travel documents to Syrian refugees -- among some 7,000 migrants
stranded on the island of about 30,000 people.: photo by Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP, 19 August 2015
Flight
Thousands of migratory birds at Poyang lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China: photo by ChinaFotoPress via the Guardian, 2 January 2015
Simon Howard: ((sonnet)) ("there are no dreams about language")
there are no dreams about language
Simon Howard: ((sonnet)) from walkingintheceiling, 9 March 2013
Common Raven, North American subspecies (Corvus corax principalis), showing a pair of birds as friends, perching on top of a roof, Stovepipe Wells Campground, Death Valley National Park, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 22 December 2004
Group of Common Ravens, North American subspecies (Corvus corax principalis) at a landfill site, Western Mojave Desert: photo by William J. Boarman, 2003; image by Clayoquot, 2007 (United States Geological Survey)
Dogs, Pigeons & Black Cat, Buenos Aires: photo by Beatrice Murch, 27 February 2010
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
A ferry passenger reacts to the sight of massed migrants and refugees as she arrives off of a ferry in Kos Town, Kos, Greece: photo by Jonathan Brady/PA Wire, 20 August 2015
The great escape (spring migration, Salmistu, Harju County, Estonia): photo by OKaur (Kaur O), 28 April 2013
Pelicans escaping from submerging colony, Año Nuevo State Reserve, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 19 October 2007
Flight
Thousands of migratory birds at Poyang lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China: photo by ChinaFotoPress via the Guardian, 2 January 2015
Simon Howard: ((sonnet)) ("there are no dreams about language")
there are no dreams about language
everyone dreams about language
signifies there is no one to dream about anything
other than dreaming about dreams about language,
dreams that do not exist / official wounds
when i opened the parcel
inside were numerous crows all sound
asleep. does that imply i was in paradise back then?
lights go on in the high-rises
like fruit oozing
from a dark orchard. ok they’ll tell the rest of the story
“i drank some soup & felt much better
i lay down with my eyes open
& rain poured in & washed me away”
Simon Howard: ((sonnet)) from walkingintheceiling, 9 March 2013
Black bird (Corvus corax) landing near a tent. (The image stabiliser
happened to track the motion of the bird creating this blurred
background effect.) Stovepipe Wells Campground, Death Valley National Park, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 22 December 2004
Common Raven, North American subspecies (Corvus corax principalis), showing a pair of birds as friends, perching on top of a roof, Stovepipe Wells Campground, Death Valley National Park, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 22 December 2004
Group of Common Ravens, North American subspecies (Corvus corax principalis) at a landfill site, Western Mojave Desert: photo by William J. Boarman, 2003; image by Clayoquot, 2007 (United States Geological Survey)
Dogs, Pigeons & Black Cat, Buenos Aires: photo by Beatrice Murch, 27 February 2010
A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015
A ferry passenger reacts to the sight of massed migrants and refugees as she arrives off of a ferry in Kos Town, Kos, Greece: photo by Jonathan Brady/PA Wire, 20 August 2015
The great escape (spring migration, Salmistu, Harju County, Estonia): photo by OKaur (Kaur O), 28 April 2013
Pelicans escaping from submerging colony, Año Nuevo State Reserve, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 19 October 2007
Too funny RT @bishopwsu: #MonsterStorm is getting real: image via Tiacuca @Tiacuca, 11 December 2014
Migrants wait on the Greek side of the border to pass into Macedonia near southern city of Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on Thursday. Macedonian special police forces arrived this morning and blocked the illegal border crossing between Macedonia and Greece: photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA, 20 August 2015
"... dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in
a home that seemed deserted..."
Storm clouds over Bodie ghost town, California: photo by Dave Toussaint, 5 August 2008
Cargo containers strewn about by tsunami in Sendai, northern Japan: photo by Itsuo Inouye/AP, 12 March 2011
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves...
Wallace Stevens: from The Idea of Order at Key West, in Ideas of Order, 1936
That rose, or even colored by many waves...
Wallace Stevens: from The Idea of Order at Key West, in Ideas of Order, 1936
Cars which were swept together by tsunami and then caught fire, after earthquake in Hitaichi City, Ibaraki Prefecture: photo by Reuters/Yomiuri, 12 March 2011
Thousands of migratory birds at Poyang lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China: photo by ChinaFotoPress via the Guardian, 2 January 2015
Flight
Syrian migrants rescued from the drifting "ghost ship" Ezadeen. The International Organisation for Migration said such incidents took “the smuggling game to a whole new level”: photo by Stringer/Italy/Reuters, 3 January 2015
A Syrian woman looks out from the "ghost ship" Ezadeen. The Ezadeen was the second vessel in four days found sailing without a crew. Earlier in the week, 800 migrants on the Blue Sky M were rescued by Italian coastguards: photo by Alfonso Di Vincenzo/AFP, 3 January 2015
A man waits as the Ezadeen docks in Corigliano: photo by Antonino D'Urso/AP, 3 January 2015
A boat filled with Palestinian and Syrian immigrants sank and immigrants drowned near Alexandria, #Egypt, reports of numerous Gazans dead: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 13 September 2014
“I tried for two years to
take this picture. I took the same photo the year before, again from a
helicopter, of an almost identical boat. But we didn’t manage to get
directly above: some of the people in the boat looked one way, others a
different way. This year I tried again. I photograph the Italian navy
calendar, so we collaborate. I waited 12 days on an Italian navy boat
for the force seven sea to calm, for this moment. I took the shot
outside the helicopter, my feet on the skids. The incredible thing is
that every single person in the photo looks up.”: photo by: Massimo Sestini/eyevine via The Guardian, 28 December 2014
Apropos the last picture: Perhaps "somebody up there likes me"?
ReplyDeleteStevens' Gotterdammerung alongside those pictures of migrations where the rest from flight seems forever deferred; I won't be able to read Two or Three Ideas the same way again. And the last lines of Howard's Sonnet.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, fellows.
ReplyDelete"...the rest from flight seems forever deferred..."
These migrating flocks gathered in deferral grew desperate after three or four nights out in the elements, and took matters into their own hands.