I heard my voice from below:
It called me by my name.

I ran downstairs.
When I arrived, I was dead.

Carrying myself on my back
I climbed up with myself. The Stairs by Ulalume González de León, translated from Spanish by Terry Ehret & Nancy J. Morales, excerpt

But I knew the end, had already been there.
Touched its elongated snout, the awful hairs.
Watched it pushing its pie tin around
the backyard, its tiny crossed eyes so close
to the ground. Ars Poetica by Bridget Lowe, excerpt

it must have believed it would go on living, just as
all of us believe we will go on living
when we say I will die but really mean
here I am, thinking. Boethius’ Body by Jacob Eigen, excerpt

...marvelous explorer of those aspects that our retinas will never record...
...strange, troubling blurs...
...dreams, dreams, dreams, the domain of dreams expands with every step...

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

Finished reading: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Night moves at the welter pools.
The summer slips, the winter hoars. […]
One day the rings will slip from our fingers.
But not from yours. Everything
we almost are we lose. My animal,
you cannot know how hard in love you are. Animal by Matthew Hollis, excerpt

The new bruise
on her neck darkened
like a dead flower, her voice
a coffin to carry her dead.
& another friend⸻ & another friend⸻
& today, a new flower grows in my backyard,
& I blow the dust off the videotapes,
& today, my mouth is still wide open. Danger Music by Aldo Amparán, excerpt

The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me… no, nor women neither… Nor women neither. Withnail & I, quoting Hamlet

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from the time we were talking
to stones
we took on their
meaning their time and now
their memory is in us [from the time we were talking] by Henri Meschonnic, translated from the French by Gabriella Bedetti & Don Boes, excerpt

I knocked on the afterlife, once
to open the door, twice to bid him bye,

thrice to say look at me,
gift me the house of remembrance. Wishbone by Romeo Oriogun, excerpt

And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up. No Country for Old Men

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• No Country for Old Men
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• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Banging the blue shutters–night-rain;
and a deep gash opened in the yard. […]
I looked up.
That’s where one looks in the grip of a dream. Largesse by Ellen Bryant Voigt, excerpt

When he, my father, closed his eyes
and breath and his body became

a bridge he had left behind on a journey and
they wheeled him down the stairs,

she, my mother, sprang after them.
She cried out:

My name is
inside his tongue. I need to get it back. Vows by Gbenga Adesina, excerpt

an altar pulses open: some ancient bloodlove unfurls
what breath remembers: my body of her body and all
we come from and come from and come from, how
each of us curves with the world, blown like a leaf When I hear my mama sing by Aaron Coleman, excerpt

…churchbells boom.
their reverberations
wrench open
my thin edges.
torso rotating
in circles. I turn
within
within.
I am a doll
inside a doll. Matryoshka by Temperance Aghamohammadi, excerpt

• Wicked:For Good
• Midsommar
• Wake Up Dead Man
• Female Perversions

Time was so slow and so thick
my word-sprung yearning
rode its drifts until, overpowered
by hunger, I fell asleep in the sun.
I did not know that I was happy. After Turning the Clocks Back by Jennifer Moxley, excerpt

I find myself standing each new day
shoulder to shoulder with a sadness that
permeates the walls
turns a key in my head
and plays havoc with the beat of time Shadow by Mariam Meetra, translated from the Persian by Sabrina Nouri & Samantha Cosentino, excerpt

I can’t exist by myself because I’m afraid of myself, because I’m the maker of my own evil. Possession

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• Frankenstein
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

it is like I am eating my own tongue
cut precisely, a flesh triangle
cool red bloodless
and placed in my mouth English Language Assimilation as a Bite of Sashimi by Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen, excerpt

Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know!

Finished reading: The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Finished re-reading: Dune by Frank Herbert.

• One Battle After Another
• Blade II
• Creepshow
• Kuroneko

Life is brief
Fall in love, maiden
Before the crimson bloom
Fades from your lips
Before the tides of passion
Cool within you
For those of you
Who know no tomorrow… Ikiru

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• Ikiru
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It is my mother’s turn in the box
she is alive she is dead
she is a stranger to me and I
am a changeling green with change Schrödinger by Katie Erbs, excerpt

My tongue is slack
with sky-weight,
too slow to move
poem-beams.
It’s hard now,
from mind’s haven,
to drag the swag
Odin swindled. from “Cruel Loss of Sons” by Egill Skallagrímsson, translated from the Old Norse by Emily Osborne, excerpt

On the road that opens
to mountains and snow,
away from the houses cramped
in their quarters like too many socks
in a drawer, the eye of the eye
inside of me opens. So Long by Sunni Brown Wilkinson, excerpt

Criticism gives one the illusion of participating in the act of creation by way of an autopsy. The act is there and it exists and moves and challenges you while criticism fights to approve and validate.

Finished reading: Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions by Guillermo del Toro.

To live without this grief is to see the mountain
without its weight, rivers without depth. Departure: To the Tune “Mu Lan Hua: Magnolia” by Zhang Xian, excerpt

Don’t turn away from love, Sailor. Don’t turn away from love. Wild at Heart

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• Wild at Heart
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• Superman
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Sometimes love is a fish-gill
slit in your heart through which you learn
to breathe. Married, Filing Separately by Claire McQuerry, excerpt

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

My love, can it be worth it? At night
my head hangs from my neck by a single hair
then morning, and the pain of the healed wound
and it starts all over again … Medusa by Diana Anphimiadi, excerpt

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood, like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.

Finished reading: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters. Antonio Gramsci

The moon huge, the new
Blooms opening by faith. Drunk, I slept
On the stairs, and the mercury lamps flared between
Worlds. Drunk by Noelle Kocot, excerpt

the scrawls of blood I smear across that floor
will compose the greatest poem
in the history of the fucking world. When I Hear the Young Poets by Campbell McGrath, excerpt

maybe at night the boys spread quilts under moonlit
elderberry trees moths crawl over their hay-scratched hands

their eyes pulling new shapes from tree-shadows
the shapes whatever they want them to be Dry Run Creek by William Woolfitt, excerpt

Sometimes a wind blows
And you and I
Float in love
And kiss forever
In a darkness The Mysteries of Love by David Lynch, excerpt

Dragonflies drift downstream on a river,
Their faces staring at the sun,
Then, suddenly, there is nothing. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet X, excerpt

My bark.
My palimpsest.
I have a hundred souls inside me.
My skin is biographical,
Tattooed with strange cuneiform.

I can hear voices,
Taste their breaths,
Feel them moving down deep inside.
What will they remember
In all the long slow years
Of my growing?

It’s me, Ana… It’s me, Ana… The Spirit of the Beehive

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I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Clouds boil in that
Witch’s brew of a sky,
Spreading sun-heated
Darkness over Salem.

Do two overlapping shadows become darker? Perfect Days

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• Perfect Days
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She waved at them and spoke
through me, fogging my skin with words I couldn’t hear.
I wasn’t cold anymore, her breath so warm, her cheek
pressed against the fragile glass, which was my body. Séance in Daylight by Yuki Tanaka, excerpt

Who can blame them for believing
what they saw? Bodies
holding each other in the night,
against the darkness.
I have no excuse.
I was there, and I was also dancing. The Inventors by Arielle Hebert, excerpt

when I kneel to the well’s sunken eye,
the cure looks back,
but those blue eyes aren’t mine. At Gleannagalt by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, excerpt

someone wailed & the boy’s mother yells:
This ain’t justice. You can’t throw my son
into that fucking ocean. She meant jail.

& we was powerless to stop it.
& too damn tired to be beautiful. For a Bail Denied by Reginald Dwayne Betts, excerpt

Outside, nothing moves: only the rain
nailing the house up like a coffin. Rainy Day by Bert Meyers, excerpt

Cradled now, we sleep the sleep of stones.
Maybe in twenty centuries you’ll find us here,
another fetal xenolith waiting to be reborn. Stony Sleep by Dan Albergotti, excerpt

The old machines sink down in silence.
Ancient wheels—the circumference of rust.
A field becomes a fen, then a forest,
Old paths gone deep under green.

And when the jaguar dived beneath me
and lifted me up into the light
I clung to his back and rode my life. The River by Pascale Petit, excerpt

Rain is the reason, and old pains
Have emptied the public library so
That only the bare shelves show Canandaigua by Donald Revell, excerpt

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.

Finished reading: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

How many times, I begin to think,
how many times will I still be here with them

sifting slow heat in the grass, not knowing which
will be the time I didn’t realize was the last. Summer Strawberries by Cat Wei, excerpt

Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home - “Don’t do this”. But here we are. Civil War

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Is there a border? A seam?
Another shore where
Everything is green?

I cannot see
To the other side.
Nothing to disturb
My quiet winter-tide.

There is less and less difference
between your shadow

and the shadow inside you
and all the shadows… Any Evening by James Richardson, excerpt

Sometimes I think you’d give anything
to disappear into the twilight again
to walk ashore, not looking back Twilight by Joseph Millar, excerpt

Fishermen in planetary transit
Hauling their catch over light years,
Spreading out fins, sails, foils, wings—
Starships passing over the sun.

So hello universe! My name
is temporary and my bones are made of you, you
with your far mountaining nebulas, you with your fires
that have shown us the way, that show us how there is no way
except where we already dream of going. So Tell Me How It Ends by Andrew Hemmert, excerpt

If only some people can have it, that’s not happiness. That’s just nonsense. Happiness is something anyone can have. Monster

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By which he meant light,
the lightness of air: the lob and lift and score.

The swelling crowd.
The flicker first before the bell
blaring into the night. The Boys of Cass and Pacific by Luke Johnson, excerpt

And what
possible explanation is there
for our wrong turning, but our insistent
repetition of the wrong turning? [Now the Joshua trees are withering] by Forrest Gander, excerpt

I know what it is to exist… between the world’s certainties. Conclave

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• The Brutalist
• North by Northwest
• Conclave

From the Museum of Modern Art, New York:

I got idea, man
You take me for a walk
Under the sycamore trees
The dark trees that blow, baby
In the dark trees that blow Sycamore Trees, lyrics by David Lynch, excerpt

I’ll show you light now. It burns bright forever. No more blue tomorrows. You on high now, love. Inland Empire

R.I.P. David Lynch

Professor, my dreams grow darker. Does evil come from within us, or from beyond? Nosferatu

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• Robot Dreams
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There is a country I see on the internet
and in the street outside I see a country
there is also a country I see in my mind

I dream about this country more than anyone I ever loved
it looks just like a glowing constellation exactly like God Historical Material 2020 by Lena Tsykynovska, excerpt

maybe there’s room
for the wind to fit somewhere.

It used to usher clouds overhead,
and sometimes a few of them would open.

First, birds arriving and lining up on branches.
Then the rain. We Paint the Rocks Blue by Rob Carney, excerpt

What I was
is vanished.

I came back home
but I came back
gone. Dark Register by Cynthia Cruz, excerpt

Tonight, I expect the only star in the sky to be
so bright I’ll forget all I know about sorrow,
how it feels like sandpaper against skin,
how it looks like the old woman my mother has become. Fig of Unfolding by Octavio Quintanilla, excerpt

[…] as they rose through layers of dream to lip at the dark,
to effortlessly fin in and out of the netting, and then
to be gone, with a last flash, away into the morning,
leaving no more than their faint, briny smell in her hands. Room Service by Ted Kooser, excerpt

Flowers are only flowers because they fall,
But thankfully the wind. Shogun

I feel so tempted. I feel so tempted to despair. I’m afraid. The weight of your silence is terrible. I pray, but I’m lost. Or am I just praying to nothing? Nothing. Because you are not there. Silence

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He was a solemn and delicate little boy. […]
The hole in his heart was not what killed him;
it was the way that his lungs had to labor
because of the defect. […]
which was why
it was so delicious to him to be talking
to almost any adult about all there is to know. Death in Childhood by Robert Hass, excerpt

A winged horse is a regatta of stars—
human’s first spacecraft, the moon, too,
is a changing hoof. […]
The tail, a brush of a comet’s
glitterfreeze. I’ve sailed on these half-wings.
The dream rivets to silent, deep space.
The event horizon: an open gate. Pegasus Tattoo on the Left by Jaia Hamid Bashir, excerpt

in the dream, I wake
treading the underwater
in the black beneath I see

like horses galloping
the gloom of the sea Qasida for Abdel Wahab Yousif by Philip Metres, excerpt

Oh, I lie now and then, I suppose. Sometimes I’d tell them the truth and they still wouldn’t believe me, so I prefer to lie. The 400 Blows

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Photos by @briscoepark

Will you tell us how he died?—Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars—the other kinds of men; the other lives?

Finished re-reading: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!

Finished reading: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom. End of the Century

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Your fingers on my spine: primal
shudder of an ancient code. Offices by Rosanna Warren, excerpt

Why does a beautiful sketch accord greater pleasure than a beautiful painting? Because it has more life and fewer forms… Perhaps we find sketches so attractive only because, being somewhat indeterminate, they allow more liberty to our imagination…. Denis Diderot

From the Morgan Library, New York:

From the Morgan Library, New York:

From the Morgan Library, New York:

I believe in today, this apple that isn’t quite ripe yet,
this poem that isn’t finished, a bed rumpled with my husband’s still
sleeping form, my lungs still breathing, my fingers still on this page. On Being Told You’re Dying, but Not Quite Believing It by Jeannine Hall Gailey, excerpt

I woke up afraid I’d bled through the skin
of my body. The furniture wept at the
sight of all that blood. Surfacing by Stefanie Kirby, excerpt

From Poster House, New York:

You say
There was no place in nature we could meet.
You say this as if you need me to
admit something. No place
in nature, given our natures. Half-Light by Frank Bidart, excerpt

• Inside Out 2
• Playtime
• Miss Hokusai
• War of the Planet of the Apes

Some days my own adolescence feels as if it were extinguished.
A me I loved’s past is disappeared, so I fill it with my guts.
I am watching two boys kiss on screen & for once there is no secondhand shame.
There are flames there. Right here there are burning flames. Rewind by Steffan Triplett, excerpt

There is no death that cannot be undone
by simply turning the compost with a pitchfork
or by scattering scratch in the dirt for chickens
who sing each time they lay
Missing the Farm by Travis Mossotti, excerpt

In the afternoon, I float
Upon green-leaf airs
And turn about
A spiral of branches.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Rebecca

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don’t be surprised the ground’s so fertile
young queers been fucking in the fields […]
if they bury enough wild queers in the dirt
one’s sure to sprout in their backyard queer ecology by Evelyn Berry, excerpt

We set out into the Universe to discover life, while life discovered us. Ikarie XB 1

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I ask my mother if she’d like to go for a drive. There’s a loop—we’re backing out of the driveway—it’s taking a long time to happen. […] The scene is stuck, she is not really there. I grab her by the arms. I’m shaking her. Yelling. Why isn’t she seeing me.
of Light by Danielle Vogel, excerpt

the way dark cedars suck light from
sky the way dark hills suck light from air the trees
more perfect black more perfect black
until the flood of daylight. Of Daylight Saving Time, MyFitnessPal, and Indoor/Outdoor Cats by Jessica E. Johnson, excerpt

From the Morgan Library, New York:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you
You sold me. 1984

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They’ve built their own prison, so they exist in a state of schizophrenia. They’re both guards and prisoners and as a result they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made, or to even see it as a prison. My Dinner with Andre

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break the windows come
with your roots and your worms […]
cover us with your rustling greenery
and your spores cover us that we may
become green Come wilderness into our homes by Daniela Danz, excerpt

Foolishness, sir. How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly? Or a peace hold for ever built on slaughter and a magician’s trickery? I see how devoutly you wish it, for your old horrors to crumble as dust. Yet they await in the soil as white bones for men to uncover.

Finished reading: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Brian went outside
and left forever, took the rest
of the silverware. […]
The cutlery turned
ash in his pockets.
That heavy metal in his blood. My Brother Stole Every Spoon in the House by Steven Espada Dawson

Sometimes,
The dream is the thing:
Shadow-split light
On a staircase
That leads nowhere.
Me, standing in a dark room,
With no place to go,
Speaking to someone else
Who isn’t there.

Who is the living food for the machines in Metropolis? Who lubricates the machine joints with their own blood? Who feeds the machines with their own flesh? Let the machines starve, you fools! Let them die! Kill them - the machines! Metropolis

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Your brother is lost, my mother says, because we didn’t believe him.
He told us there was loud humming inside the walls—Go to sleep, we said.
And he couldn’t
couldn’t go to sleep.
Misinformation by Diana Khoi Nguyen, excerpt

But I don’t worship anyone
or anything except the sea
and the mountains and they will
kill me eventually, and I will die willingly.
Meditation In Guanajuato, Mexico by Maryan Nagy Captan, excerpt

Her moans and sighs, her coos perch
on the ceiling fan.
  I pluck them off one by one,
cup them, say:
  Shh, come down. I Begin to Forget the World Without Her by Lee Peterson, excerpt

The moment you said you loved me, your love ended. And the moment your love ended, my love began. Decision to Leave

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instead, we’re waiting for the boy to square his gaze
and ask again, who’s going to teach me now? or hold up
his wrists to the camera, and cry mercy, mercy. Picture of a Boy, Looking Away (Gaza, 2015) by Marjorie Lotfi, excerpt

Tonight, I am a boy again,
Treading air through the dark woods.

That night, in sleep, I saw the forest clearing
by the moor’s edge, and the ring of his ashes. […]
And there: a girl, running for the riverside —
she wore my face, the shade of ash. Muirburn by Yvonne Reddick, excerpt

This was my world. It was beautiful and messy and tragic and silly. It cannot last. Now go make your own. The Boy and the Heron

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From the Museum of Modern Art, New York:

Look! We made an electric tree.
Binary branching,
Node-hanging leaves,
Roots of copper and silicon weave.
Isn’t it beautiful?
Perfection of circuitry.
So much better than our memory.

Dream thoughts are wild and senseless,
yet have a pleasing music. I translate
quickly, or I forget, and the page is silent. FROM D/diaries: Saturday morning, lying in bed, 9th February 2019 by Lisa Kelly, excerpt

Yes, push forward. Pray that you learn valor and be given luck. You will walk many miles. Dozens will become hundreds. Hundreds will become thousands. You will pass through countless villages. But finally, one village will speak to you. Some deep, essential part of you will recognize it, and you will say ’This village is mine.’ Beau is Afraid

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From Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York:

Sweet fin-legged future, with your salt skin and baleen teeth, beat me
against the reef, force a different mode of breathing. Temporally by Leah Poole Osowski, excerpt

I […] saw what was beneath and hidden in the silt.
drank the water, the soil, and what was in that too.
I won’t say I drowned,
that feels too final, but
I haven’t stopped glowing since. the only colors left were blood and earth and still I dreamed of water by E. B. Schnepp, excerpt

From the Museum of Broadway, New York:

The storm is powerful. So we have to be quiet for now…. Just be still. Killers of the Flower Moon

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I saw a hole in the sky,
Gaping mouth of something nameless
Sucking in all the light,
Breathing out a cold, dead wind.
I pointed at it. I shouted.
Told everyone to look up.
But they went on as if nothing was there,
Kept their hollow eyes on the ground.
They never saw those awful teeth
Snarling just behind the clouds.

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.

Finished reading: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

• Se7en
• Friday
• Foreign Correspondent

Just like a dream experience, whatever things I enjoy will become a memory. Whatever is past will not be seen again. Kundun

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I sat in the woods so long
I became something else.
My skin split open,
My bones grew roots,
My hair became a tangle of kudzu.
I looked into the water to see my reflection,
But I didn’t recognize what I saw.
My eyes were algae-covered wells,
My mouth a nesting hole.
When I tried to speak, no words came out,
Only the quiet whispering
Of a gentle wind through the trees.

If I brought back every feeling I had
where would I put them,
what could they mean
to this world on the floor? Findspot Unknown by Peter Gizzi, excerpt

We came ashore on Monhegan,
A foul landing on the Shattering Rocks.
We watched for years as the old boat rusted,
And our lovely bodies turned to salt.

I want to witness my brother’s life. I want to
hear my sister laugh forever. I want the sweet
middle immortal as a photograph, a circle. I thought it impossible
for the entire flower to be edible. What dies gives. Even the blossom. Golden State by Stephanie Niu, excerpt

When I stood beneath the moon,
I wept,
Knowing how perfect the moment was:
The silver air,
Waves swelling in the dark tides,
About to break,
Before they froze,
Like glass,
In my memory.

a boy who has worked all day
sleeps under stars
devoted to nothingness
& the rain about to fall Some Days I’d Rather Be Anyone Else by Jen Levitt, excerpt

Each year I lose a little more of it,
the spaces between the vertebrae
slowly sighing closed
like an accordion Height by Julien Strong, excerpt

Maybe you, I and the fish only exist in the memory of a person who is long gone. Maybe no one really exists and it’s only raining outside. Angel’s Egg

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From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

• Barbie
• Black Narcissus
• Oppenheimer

You’re afraid to be destroyed and recreated, aren’t you? The Fly

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What if this is a past life as well, and we are already something else to each other in our next life? Who do you think we are then? Past Lives

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• Past Lives

See Mount Soracte shining in the snow.
See how the laboring overladen trees
Can scarcely bear their burdens any longer.

See how the streams are frozen in the cold.
Bring in the wood and light the fire and open
The fourth-year vintage wine in the Sabine jars.

O Thaliarchus, as for everything else,
Forget tomorrow. Leave it up to the gods.
Once the gods have decided, the winds at sea

Will quiet down, and the sea will quiet down,
And these cypresses and old ash trees will shake
In the storm no longer. Take everything as it comes.

Put down in your books as profit every new day
That Fortune allows you to have. While you’re still young,
And while morose old age is far away,

There’s love, there are parties, there’s dancing and there’s music,
There are young people out in the city squares together
As evening comes on, there are whispers of lovers, there’s laughter. Ode 1.9 To Thaliarchus by Horace

Carriages waited at the curb for the entire performance. It was widely known in New York, but never acknowledged, that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it. The Age of Innocence

Recently watched:

• The Age of Innocence
• Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt. Call Me By Your Name

Recently watched:

• Mirai
• Children of the Sea
• Call Me By Your Name

If you could be a horseman riding
bareback through the winds and rains
on a transparent horse
constantly buffeted
by the velocity of your mount
if you could ride hard
until your clothes were cast off far behind you
because there is no need of clothes
until reins were done with
because there is no need of reins
until your shadow was cast far behind you
because there’s no need of a shadow
and then you might see countryside not as countryside
but a fistful of air
if only you could cast the horse far behind you
and ride on, on yourself The Desire to Be Oneself by Homero Aridjis

Southern cedar summers.
Pine sap fingers
And honeysuckle smell.
In the lake,
The shadow of a horsefly,
The tickle of hydrilla
Against the soles of my feet.
A cicada chorus plays
As I watch the water bead
Against your neck,
As I watch the setting sun
Light up your raveled hair.

Zoom back camera.

Recently watched: The Holy Mountain.

Cat eyes stare out between
Shop window neon,
Watching the streets change.
Nothing will be the way that it was.
Even the cat, in a few years,
Will be a different cat,
A new street reflected
In differently colored eyes.

From the Morgan Library, New York:

The best of us
Was a cherry blossom,
Flowering for a moment
In perfect sunlight,
Then scattered,
Like ashes
In an October wind.

If there’s nothing else, there’s applause. I’ve listened backstage to people applaud. It’s like - like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, their eyes shine, you’ve pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything. All About Eve

Recently watched:

• Diabolique
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• All About Eve
• The Abyss

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

Recently read: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

I recall these moments […]
from a small place,
the place where my child’s hand
is hidden warmly inside my own. Traces by Matthew Shenoda, excerpt

From the Museum of Modern Art, New York:

From Cooper Hewitt, New York:

You know how everyone’s always saying seize the moment? I don’t know, I’m kinda thinking it’s the other way around. You know, like the moment seizes us. Boyhood

Recently watched:

• Boyhood
• Scanners
• Cat People
• 3 Women
• Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

The furnace inhaled its flames.
It went cold.
I walked out the door to no one.
I was on fire. The Furnace by Robert Krut, excerpt

From the New York Transit Museum:

I’d stopped even paying attention to him. Instead, I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth where nobody could read them. Badlands

Recently watched:

• A Brief History of Time
• Days of Heaven
• Badlands
• The Fifth Element
• The Blob

Pages from a book celebrating the art and design of my brother Luca (1991-2013).

I am floating
Over a cul-de-sac
Of impossible geometry.

I see our old house
Under a streetlamp,
Windows eye-like in the walls.

I float through the front door,
Into purple-shadowed rooms,
Into a dream inside a dream…

I wish, more than anything,
That I could go back there,
But

There isn’t any way to go home.

A spore, a spawn, a seed—
Something grows in the underbrush,
Mycelium through the rot of trees,
Weaving a tapestry of hyaline thread.
Later, after a night-cool rain,
A violent bloom erupts,
Dewy caps bursting out of wet-split bark,
Reaching, reaching for their taste of the sun.

We are lost satellites,
Free from our white-collar shackles,
The suffocating warmth of our mothers’ milk.
Someday, we will burn in righteous fire,
Or drown in deep virtuous waters.

For now, we whirl. We turn.
We let the stinging cold kiss our skin,
The raging fire blister our perfection.
Tonight is a free night, a dancing night,
And worth every unspeakable transgression.

• Avatar: The Way of Water
• The Nightmare Before Christmas

All through the garden
Went gentle-feathered light,
Split colors on concrete diffusion,
Inverted shadow of a bird in flight.

What happens, happens, and then we are gone. Pinocchio

Recently watched:

• Whisper of the Heart
• Tokyo Godfathers
• The Fabelmans
• Melancholia
• Pinocchio

I think I have been
sad every afternoon of my life.
Outside a child runs in the grass.
Soon I will appear and call her to me. Golden Hour by Jennifer Polson Peterson, excerpt

Giovanni: I guess it’s just the two of us now. Hey, let’s just keep going like this forever, okay? That’s right! We’ll always be together, won’t we, Campanella?
Campanella: Hmm. Yes, I’d like that.
Giovanni: But then again, where exactly are we going anyway?
Campanella: Well, I-I don’t know.
Giovanni: As long as we’re together! Night on the Galactic Railroad

Recently watched:

• Night on the Galactic Railroad
• Interstella 5555
• Triangle of Sadness
• Jigoku
• The Lure
• A Tale of Two Sisters

There is an old stone that still remembers
The salty, wet-moustached kiss of the sea,
Violent feather brush of white winged wind,
The copper-fleshed flare of the sun
In untempered jealousy.

We have a right to wander
That still untamed heath,
To stand before the grey stones
At the wild setting of the sun,
To watch the moon rise silver
Over the moors.

Already old, when we find them.
Already marked by a hundred winds,
Deep-grooved by a thousand hammering rains.

The stones have long memories,
But they do not speak.
They do not tell us who brought them here.

At night, we sleep on the long grass
In the shadows of their circle,
And our dreams are dark and strange.

In the small hours, I hear a voice crying:
“It is many miles from the West Woods.
Many miles from Orcadie…”

From the Victoria and Albert Museum, London:

Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?

Finished reading: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.

His friend who whispers. Don’t. Move. And then
there’s a kiss. Lips quickly snipping against his.
Silence. […] He pulls his blindfold. Looks
the older boy full in his up-close face. And sees
that he’s bleeding, everywhere, under his skin. Trick by Mark Pajak, excerpt

We won’t live forever, but I am afraid some wrong citizen
will mistake him for a scar on the neighborhood—they will
take him from me. I settle with a covering spell: Stay safe.
He walks out the door and into a spray of sirens. Stay Safe by Luther Hughes, excerpt

and he who wants to remember can see how the deep suddenly sparks, attracts the light, becomes living as when an eye opens, and he is recognized by another eye below. The well by Lasse Söderberg, excerpt

To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free.

Recently watched: The Trial.

His eyes turned back in his head
working his way to the bedrooms, staining
the sheets with his blistered hands, and though I knew the beds
weren’t for the rest of any body, I sat by and let him sleep. A Season in Hell with Rimbaud by Dustin Pearson, excerpt

• Nope
• Bodies Bodies Bodies

Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren’t you?
Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I’d say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn’t take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it. Double Indemnity

Recently watched:

• Mad God
• Rashomon
• Double Indemnity
• Mirror

She died, and you didn’t. What else could be squeezed out of the rag of memory? School beckons. What matters most is least real. A strand of her hair caught in jewelry. Years later a bit of her laughter in yours. The cool soothing morning air, the distant sounds of sirens. Arias of teenage pain whistling through your ribs like a bitter wind.
The Pigs by Tim Carter, excerpt

you must surely feel the last sweet air
before reaching the point
where the brain unplugs its love
and looks sideways. Sister in a Coma by Suzanne Underwood Rhodes, excerpt

O what Protean forms swim up from men’s minds, and melt in hot Promethean plunder, scorching eyes, with divine shames and horror… And casting them down to Davy Jones. The others, still blind, yet in it see all the divine graces and to Fiddler’s Green sent,where no man is suffered to want or toil, but is… Ancient… Mutable and unchanging as the she who girdles ‘round the globe. Them’s truth. The Lighthouse

Recently watched:

• The Lighthouse
• Top Gun: Maverick

How do we bid farewell to him,
no longer among us? […]
How do we bid farewell to the one
we can never speak to again, we speak only of him? […]
Who is still here among us, as dust and ashes. 3.1 Mourning Verse, on the Death of Lajos Szuromi by Szilárd Borbély, excerpt

Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death. Monologue for an Onion by Suji Kwock Kim, excerpt

Cybernated creature
Slouching towards the Electric Square,
To be born.
It has claws in all our fingers.
It has sunk its teeth
Into the whites of our eyes.
We cannot destroy it.
We love it too much.
Some days, I think,
We love it more
Than we love ourselves.

Long live the new flesh! Videodrome

Recently watched:

• Videodrome
• Incendies

Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air. Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout by Gary Snyder, excerpt

Then we came to the place of broken trees,
The tumbledown land under a dusting of spores.
I saw bones in the undergrowth and remembered
How much I loved all that was buried there.

There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair. The Night of the Hunter

Recently watched:

• The Night of the Hunter
• The Northman

So easy
to rip out a heart when it is throbbing so hard.
I wander out into the winter.
I know what I am. I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again by Vievee Francis, excerpt

A tiny hand start pulling at my sleeve.
In his sleep the child I never had was reaching
Out for me, while the father I never became
Kept his eyes shut. And all the way to my stop
At Orient Heights, nothing disturbed our dream. The Evening Star by George Kalogeris, excerpt

You are transparent.
I see the light through you.
The world looks better, somehow,
When I see it through your skin.

I’m scared, though.
Scared that one day I’ll wake up
To find nothing but your afterimage
On the inside of my eyelids.

…they told me of color, that it was an illusion of the eye, an event in the perceiver’s mind, not in the object; they told me that color had no reality; indeed, they told me that color did not inhere in a physical body any more than pain was in a needle.

And then they imprisoned me in darkness; and though there was no color there, I still was black, and they still were white; and for that, they bound and gagged me.

Finished reading: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson.

To you I’m suddenly speaking Gaelic,
like language translated
into slow light –
and swift dark – Gaelic by Jen Hadfield, excerpt

A good place to hide a drop of water is a stream.
A good place to hide a stream is beneath an ocean.
A good place to hide a man is among thousands
of men. Watch how they rush
through the city like water through a ravine. Letter to Bruce Wayne by Matthew Olzmann, excerpt

From the Noguchi Museum, New York:

I live inside a metal throat,
Steel esophagus swallowing me down,
While I scramble to keep a view of the sky.

I am a passenger in a metal beast.
I have eyes in its mouth,
But I can’t really see much of the world
From this deep inside.

I sit on my web and watch all the people,
I watch as the net bows and sags beneath their feet.
When I’m alone in the darkness I spin something new—
A little lie I can tell them when they ask me who I am.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you the truth.
That would frighten you, and I don’t want to do that.
Little lies are soft and gentle, they go down easy,
And I don’t want you to hurt when you swallow down my words.

(From the Shed, New York)

• Kwaidan
• Lost Highway

Go to the wilderness, they told him.
Go there to meet God.
But when he went,
He built a mansion in his own image,
And no one stayed his hand
When he sacrificed all their sons.

An Estate,
They called it in polite company.
A Second Estate.
He always fancied himself French, after all.
Did he imagine the eye of a needle
Was as wide as those limestone arches?
Or did he really care for no kingdom but his own?

• Wings
• Memories of Murder
• The Batman

I apprenticed myself to the light and saw it
break on everything. Autotomy by JP Grasser, excerpt

• Belle
• La Belle et la Bête
• Night of the Living Dead

Love your past, but travel on. The House

Recently watched:

• The House
• Nightmare Alley

From MoMA PS1, New York:

I can’t
decide if it’s just my being so much older now, or if it’s
always been true, that winter foliage
is the prettiest foliage. Anywhere Like Peace by Carl Phillips, excerpt

A stone is a stone is a stone.
Should I be a round one, worn down,
No edges or burrs or sharpness,
Nothing for the light to catch on to?
Or should I stick out, stick up,
Sit special like I’ve got something to say?
I know the answer, if I’m honest.
I wish I could smooth out all my rough edges,
Shine slick and smooth like a river stone.
But it would take years for the water to wear me down,
And I’m not sure I’ve got that kind of time.

I want to make every word a tree, a loaf of bread or a kiss
I wish for whoever does not love trees
Bread
And kisses
To stop talking Wishes by Riad al-Saleh al-Hussein, excerpt

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

If you think about it,
everything’s inside something else;
everything’s an envelope
inside a package in a case—
and pain knows a way into every crevice. Voiceover by Rita Dove, excerpt

The night dark of Brooklyn,
Dirty amber streets,
Trains running down deep green.
We are all living things,
Under the metal violence of wheels,
Cold tumble of rusted steel,
Old tiles that fall into a grind of dust.
I feel a grinding in my chest,
A rumble under my feet.
But I keep walking.
I keeping going down dark under deep.
I run fingers over black tile teeth
Until all the skin there is gone.

The same ghostly sound the deer makes when it runs
Through the woods at night, white lightning through the trees, […]
The branches tearing back, the mouth and eyes wide,
The heart flying into the arms of the one that will kill her. All Wild Animals Were Once Called Deer by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, excerpt

I had to say stop—and let red
fill the harbor, and let red wash the shore,
and vow never to touch another living thing
for fear of how my being human might kill it. Outer Lands by Bill Carty, excerpt

And does the water leap when you call it?
Does it come panting to your feet?
Does it tongue over all your burrs
And make you smooth
With the wetness of its mouth?

I look into the mirror, as if through my cousin’s eyes—
that afternoon, in the rosemary alley, a boy
was kissed by another boy, & both of them tasted of blueberry. Nude Descending a Staircase by Shangyang Fang, excerpt

I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,
you would spill from me into the earth
drop by bright red drop. Child Burial by Paula Meehan, excerpt

The fields fill with the flashlights of so many people
looking for each other, flooding the skies
here, floors and floors beneath the stars. The Funeral by Felicity Sheehy, excerpt

When I look back, my mother
has become indistinguishable
from the shadows under the trees. Palinode by Michael Prior, excerpt

we watched as they waded, timid at first,
into the liquid crystals of the television.
Then, more swiftly, their daggers clenched
between their teeth, they slipped beneath
its pixilated surface. House Hunters International by Jaswinder Bolina, excerpt

To be so lovely and so lost. To be all answerful with all that knowing trapped inside. To be beautiful and broken.

Finished reading: The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

The city left behind a skeleton of concrete,
Ribs that became a jungle of glass.
Somewhere there is still a tended path
Through a garden of old ideas.
Remember all the dreams we used to have?
Those visions of a world built so perfectly
Out of lithium and polyethylene?

Sit for a while,
Stare at the ground soaked through with cobalt rain.
If you cut through the skin of the new trees,
You will find metal veins.
The crabs at your feet, brilliant blue,
Are not for eating.

Nature moves on, you see,
But it is not the same.
I want to weep when I say it, but
This world is no longer for us.

And will you see the starships
drifting over rain-colored mountains?
The copper-streaked leaves
that shine in the pattering rain? The Octagon House by Geoffrey Nutter, excerpt

From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

Finished re-reading: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Finished reading: The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

Finished reading: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

History was like some vast thing that was always over the tight horizon, invisible except in its effects. It was what happened when you weren’t looking—an unknowable infinity of events, which although out of control, controlled everything.

Finished reading: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

There is a special kind of fire
That only burns in the sky.
Flames of cloud and sunlight,
Warming, then purpling,
Then bruising blue and black—
The wounding of a day.

Some nights We stay up
passing it back and
forth
between us
drinking deep What Keeps by C.D. Wright, excerpt

Sit little spirit,
Sit and think of the elder days,
When the world was yours.

Looking through the kitchen window,
Her hands turned pruny from dishwater,
She saw all the beauty of the world
In a ray of sunlight through the trees.

The prison is empty
On the hill above the water.
I’m not afraid of ghosts, I think,
As I walk the old roads
And startle at every whispery sound.
The gulls, at least, seem happy to be here,
Finding their perch among the cells,
Looking out from behind bars
That no longer hold anything but secrets.

A mist sits over the skeleton woods,
Where dead trees lie like bones,
Old trunks like spines—bent, broken,
A tibia, a femur, a ribcage of branches.

A mist lies over the ocean, too.
The wave spray is a misting breath,
Rising from the water, to fall again,
Giving salty moisture to the dead.

The water comes close.
Every year it comes closer.
I feel the pull strong,
Back out sea-side.
One day the tide comes
And I’ve got nothing to hold on to.
I keep thinking of an old shore,
Long gone washed away.

The story of Misurina—
A girl living forever beneath the water,
While her father weeps.

We give the water ashes of our own dead,
And bless the perfect blue
That will keep him there, safe, forever.

Yellow-pink stucco
In afternoon light.
White sails on Ligurian blue.

There is a gilded chapel,
Sitting in long-grass woods,
Cross pointing to open sky.
I, though, love the nave of leaning trees,
Transept of fallen branches,
Holy altar of wind-carved stone.

Out in the pine woods
He and I built a secret place—
A perfect shelter
Out of branches
And rope.

In its shadow,
We’d whisper secrets,
Give each other names,
Let the rain wash over us
Without a single drop getting through.

But we didn’t hide that place well enough.
We went back to find it,
And it was gone,
Branches scattered,
Rope cut.

Secrets don’t hold forever.
Not in those woods, at least,
And the knots
I thought were tight enough
Didn’t hold.

From the Museum of Modern Art, New York:

From the Art Institute of Chicago:

The day is dark
Is done
Is coming undone.

In quiet places, when the day is old
And I feel the night-chill seeping out of the grass,
I would sit beneath the trees, if I could,
I would walk beside the still and darkening waters,
I would wrap myself up in warm, living earth,
And become a sighing gentle green thing.

When I was a boy, I used to say
“God is blue.”
“Is God as big as the sky?”
“Is God space?”

From the Art Institute of Chicago:

From the Art Institute of Chicago:

That place, that childhood beach,
Where you first learned to love and fear the sea…
Go there.
Stand at the shore.
Let your feet sink into the sand,
And listen,
Listen again
To the waves
Endlessly calling you home.

From the Design Museum of Chicago:

Read aloud the stone words,
Find all the ways the rocks can speak.

An alley can be beautiful—
A narrowness of buildings,
Iron lattice of fire escapes,
The strange darkness of in-between,
Of on-your-way-to-somewhere-else.

There was a haze over the city.
I couldn’t see you from where you stood,
Right there in front of me.
Hold out your hand, I said,
Let me see where you are.
Something appeared—
A shadow like a face in the smog—
But I wasn’t sure it was you.
Had I forgotten already
What you looked like?
Had I forgotten how to speak to you
In a language you would understand?

A memory of light.

Ghost planes over Lake Michigan.

Quiet, quiet, said the storm.
I’m trying to tell you something…
A word, a thunderclap,
A strike of light across your eyes.
Listen, now. I’m trying to speak.
Don’t you know you are being driven
By great winds across the sky?

Great Guide, the Saura called it.
Pilot Mountain.
Maybe my visit is a prayer,
A wish for something as certain as stone.
But no, stone isn’t certain.
It’s just slow.

Pages for Naked in Seoul, a collection of essays and photographs about my time in South Korea.

Winter, creeping its fingers over the eaves.

Back home.

On Macau,
Memories of an old religion,
A crumbling church facade.

Rusted-out tenements,
Casinos, too—
A different kind of prayer.

In Hong Kong.

Winter runs through the stones at Taejongdae,
Chilling the strata, turning them blue.

Sunfire on the heights of Mount Geumjeong.
The last of the year, before the chill comes,
And the world goes dark.

Lonely palace corridors,
Tile roofs tipped with snow.
A winter in Seoul.

Back on the slopes of Sunrise Peak.
It feels different this time.
A goodbye.

Reflections at the Golden Pavilion,
Beside burning incense and an ocean of stones.

Chasing foxes at Fushimi Inari Shrine,
Where torii run endlessly away from me.

Kyoto sunlight striking over kanji,
Breaking through forests of bamboo.

Faces frozen in stone,
At peace or silently screaming,
Gnashing their moss-covered teeth.

I, like the fish, follow the sunlight,
And swim in the shadow of Nijo trees.

Where there are gates and demons, I turn away.

I follow the sunset path to Kiyomizudera,
And watch the shadows take Kyoto.

The vertigo of a million buildings,
And clouds over Mount Fuji.

Living beside Nakdong River.
Sometimes I see mist in the mountains.
Other days, the sun shines through a hazy sky.

The elegant courtyards of Gyeongbokgung.

The quiet gardens of Changdeokgung.

The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, the Jikji.

Dragonflies on Namsan.

Mist clings to the side of Mount Halla,
I walk up, into nothingness.

Alone on Jeju Island, climbing the grassy slopes of Sunrise Peak.

Looking for the holy dragon beneath Jeongbang Falls.

Hexagonal memories at the cliffs of Jusangjeolli.

A visit to God’s Pond, heavy with mist.

Quiet mornings at the Temple of the Nirvana Fish.
My meditation: walking along the forest stream,
Watching the way the sun breaks through the trees,
And green spreads over every stone.

Noxious fumes rise from a green pool,
At the heart of Mount Aso.
Pinpoint bugs bite my arms, my neck.

I see land that was vomited, spewed, and spattered.

Still people make a home there,
Growing rice in the mountain shadow.

Once, in Fukuoka…

Jiri, a mountain of the gods.

We wake in early morning and climb under moonlight.
We wait for sunrise on the peak.

We walk the ridge where the wind is cold,
Where the pines and firs grow strong.

We stop and wade through cold mountain streams,
And add our own rocks to the city of cairns.

To Oedo…

All that grows on the hills of Mount Geumjeong.

Among the ruins of Cheongdo.

Memories of Joseon.

The path to Donghwasa.

On a Sunday…

From the Clayarch Gimhae Museum:

Shadows of the bridge over Nakdong.

The bluster and rain of Jiri Mountain.

A town where everything is made of color,
Even the rust of metal roofs, gold dust over indigo.

Petals on a neon river.
Cherry blossoms in electric light.

Climbing Seorak Mountain in old tennis shoes…
A stranger gives us hot soup and says he loves America.
I nod and smile.
I don’t know what to say.

I am here.

Winter beauty on Geumjeong Mountain.

Alone on Koh Rong.

The orange sand of Bamboo Island.

The Tree of Lost Shoes.

Sundown over Sihanoukville.

The mysteries of Angkor.
Temple ruins emerging from the cocoon of the jungle,
Only to keep their secrets close.

In South Korea for a new season of life.
Evening at Gwangalli Bridge.

What the heart feels when the moon shines over Lake Baringo.

Pages for an exhibit retrospective of Water & Dreams.

I am a Little World

Experiments in high-speed photography with @lejeunerenard. A visual exploration of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet.

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite

But black sin hath betray’d to endless night
My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly

But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore
And made it fouler

Let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it—for there is nothing (so effectual) for which it can be changed. Tao Te Ching by Laozi

Illustrations for The Stones, a short story originally told by my grandfather.

Motion. Light. A crash. A dream.
With @lejeunerenard.

Views from a dorm room window.