Mărțișoare - ultima zi de marte, cu un băiat și o carte

"[...]
Mâna-i stă pe-aici, pe-alături.
Pune-i degetare
Câte-o sărutare.
Umblă-ncet, ia-i mâna-ncet,
Mută-i-o incet,
Să nu se deștepte ...
Și-n cuprinsul pălmii drepte,
De zîntâi de marte,
Pune-i mărțișor o carte."

Rumania Rumania

The Lee Shore

A small chapter from Moby Dick. Read it yesterday. For some, the struggle is to hang on to something. For others, to keep away, and there is honor and there can be beauty in both.

"Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

AM WAS FRUNZE

FRUNZE
as vrea sa ma asez pe marginea trotuarului,
sa astept sa se faca noapte la capatul strazii – singuratatea
mea de acuma mai are
ceva la fel cu cea din copilarie,
când nu stiam ca trece pentru totdeauna
vremea? nu se poate rascumpara
cu nimic vremea de atunci? nu mai ramâne
adevarat nici un gest, chiar asezat
pe strada cu capul în mâini?
si lumina, care se spulbera pe obiecte,
si obiectele se fac frunze,
si se fac frunze.

mircea ivanescu


AM WAS

am was. are leaves few this. is these a or
scratchily over which of earth dragged once
-ful leaf. & were who skies clutch an of poor
how colding hereless. air theres what immense
live without every dancing. singless on-
ly a child's eyes float silently down
more than two those that and that noing our
gone snow gone
yours mine
. We're
alive and shall be:cities may overflow(am
was)assassinating whole grassblades,five
ideas can swallow a man;three words im
-prison a woman for all her now:but we've
such freedom such intense digestion so
much greenness only dying makes us grow

e.e. cummings

NBD

For What It's Worth: Placebo!

HOMEOPATHY - House of Commons Science and Technology Committee

54. We conclude that the principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak. It fails to provide a credible physiological mode of action for homeopathic products. We note that this is the settled view of medical science. [...]
61. We consider the notion that ultra-dilutions can maintain an imprint of substances
previously dissolved in them to be scientifically implausible. [...]
70. In our view, the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclusively demonstrate that homeopathic products perform no better than placebos.
110.[...]The Government should stop allowing the funding of homeopathy on the NHS.
111. We conclude that placebos should not be routinely prescribed on the NHS. The funding of homeopathic hospitals—hospitals that specialise in the administration of placebos—should not continue, and NHS doctors should not refer patients to homeopaths.

Strangely enough, sometimes it takes scores of scientists to convince you that gin and tonic with only the memory of gin molecules won't get you drunk. If still unconvinced, try taking the holistic approach to getting the car to run on 'memory of gasoline molecules'.

A room of one's own - 8 March 2010

"For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would he impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while."

Virginia Woolf - "A Room of One's Own"

"Magnificent desolation"

I am not sure why I post this. I was on youtube, trying to find something serene, in tune with this beautiful beginning of spring here in Brussels. It would be really difficult to trace how I got to it. I remember Jacques Brel and Gardel along the way. This little clip is beautiful and there are plenty like it in the same online nest.



Space travel, landing on moons and planets, fresh starts, perhaps, in the midst of 'magnificent desolation' - thoughts not quite out of tune with spring, isn't it?