Monday, February 20, 2012

Poems, Paintings, Sculptures, Analects, Prophecies, Plays, Quotes, Axioms, Photographs....

From Parabola:

Horyuji-Kura, Bodhisattvis, from Buddhistische Plastik in Japan by K. With
Horyuji-Kura, Bodhisattvis, from Buddhistische Plastik in Japan by K. With. Scan from Karlfried Graf Dürckheim’s book: "Hara: The Vital Center of Man." 



ARCS
Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, Illustration for "The Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, c.1910.Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, Illustration for The Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning," c.1910
‎“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
George Eliot, from Middlemarch

Marc Chagall. Burning House (La maison brûle). 1913. Oil on canvas. 107 x 120.6 cm. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA.Marc Chagall. Burning House (La maison brûle). 1913. Oil on canvas. 107 x 120.6 cm. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA
"Should I leave this burning house
of ceaseless thought
and taste the pure rain's
single truth
falling upon my skin?"
Izumi Shikibu from The Ink Dark Moon translations by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani. With thanks to The Beauty We Love.

Henry Fuseli, "Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking," 1781-1784Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking, 1781-178
Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?

Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.

Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart.

Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Alfred Eisenstaedt, "Tree in snow," near Saint-Mortiz, Switzerland, 1947Alfred Eisenstaedt, "Tree in snow," near Saint-Mortiz, Switzerland, 1947

Rain Light From a June 26, 2009 interview with Bill Moyers:
[..  BILL MOYERS: When we confirmed this meeting, you suggested that I read a poem in here called “Rain Light.” Why did you suggest that one?

W.S. MERWIN: I don’t know, I just — that seems to be a very close poem to me.

BILL MOYERS: Here it is.

W.S. MERWIN: “All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning”

BILL MOYERS: “Even though the whole world is burning.” It is, isn’t it?

W.S. MERWIN: Yes. It is. It is burning, and we’re part of the burning. We’re part of the doing it. We’re part of the suffering it. We’re part of the watching it helplessly and ignorantly. And we know it’s happening. And it is just us. It is our lives. We’re burning. We’re, you know, we’re not the person we were yesterday. We’re not the person we were 20 years ago.
—Taken from a PBS transcript of a conversation with Bill Moyers and W.S. Merwin. With thanks to Wait-What?

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