(Ferrari Sheppard.)

1/14/11

I wonder some days of the persistent sun, of its never-ending warmth; it is that which is and giving to all that we know as beautiful, marvelous. The night indeed has characteristics quite distinct, separate, if only that it is the blanket which lay upon us at the close of each succeeding day, yet to live in absolute darkness, as I can only imagine, would be to take from life the subtle glow of all that has been touched by the sun, but as she smiles, unburdened of tufts of clouds, still do we live in a burl of that which she cannot reach. If it were enough that the sun has risen...yet it is not. If it were enough that night affords to us a new beginning in the morning...but it is not, and that which wearies us grows to such extents that it swallows all that has freely been given to us, that which is hope. No longer then will anything alleviate the fever within, for the never-ending joy of a new day has been forgotten. Only until it be that which is enough to inspire us, endlessly, will we be free from the horror of the modern world.

'But the cookery-book made Dora's head ache, and the figures made her cry.'

-C.Dickens

1/6/10

-Move to France.
-Meet a French woman.
-Fall in love.
-Fall out of love.
-Repeat in Rome.

9/13/10

'Either all, or nothing!'

This idea fascinates me for I feel as though it to be the source of  the beauty, the ideal, of that which exists in such a world, that which on my better days I am able to see, that which you, at a moment in my life when the idea of either all, or nothing, seemed a rather futile pursuit, have, once again, given form to words, yet as beautiful as it is, and as beautiful as I feel it to be, it is very much a love within myself, and accordingly, the source from which much anguish rests, yet is it not unreasonable then to love as such? But are we not unreasonable creatures...

----

In love we are selfless, and any and all want of self, ours or another, disappears, and like the cloud do we drift upon the gentle draft of our lover's breath...

----

12/11/10

The dirge which is December, this December, florid and rosy cheeks, yes, but how cloudy and cold as each morning a blanket of frost glazes all which lay bare, dormant, outside. In winter the mornings are the most difficult if only for the reason that the temperature is most disagreeable and unrelenting. To rise before the sun has opened her eyes is beyond my understanding, to rise and to then go outside is a step closer towards insanity. Each day should start no earlier then noon and end no later then six, and food, always food, good food, for dinner to warm the heart and leave the body exhausted, for there is nothing quite as pleasant as a full belly and a nap to follow...

Began Proust's On Art and Literature today and the prologue is enough to put tears to my eyes as he systematically draws for me how it is and when, from intellect and memory, we are able to draw from moments since forgotten in our past. I see as he forms the groundwork for Remembrance of Things Past, yet it is a rusk for the moment and in Remembrance it is the ever so famous madeline cakes of his grandmother...

'My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!'

-C.Dickens

The contemporary man is a man who menstruates- not blood, but thoughts.

I sometimes feel, though I know it to be day and night, that those whose bodies, from birth, are born unable to communicate in a coherent dialogue with a beautiful mind, is analogous to the station with which a man of letters holds, for humanity be the body which is unable to interpret the subtleties and complexities of one trying to communicate with the whole.

'Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered-delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.'

-K.Hamsun

'They say that Dulcinea del Toboso, so often mentioned in history, was the best hand at salting pork of any woman in all La Mancha.'


-M.Cervantes

And be it as such, under no roof of the same shall we meet again, which, to say the least, befits us both. Since that very morning, no longer did I receive word from her; her life had grown beyond the limits of my reach. As of the last word which I did receive, was that she was moving south, to take a home in the town of the university where her newly beloved was to begin his professorship, and be it that one day these pages are to grace her soft eyes, I hope, and with certainty, that within her station in life she is happy, and if it be within his arms, then such is the case, for something within him has, and will have, brought her much joy, and as such, so too am I joyful. Much of course had passed between us both throughout the years which may not as of yet grace these antiquated pages, yet in time maybe I shall tell.

It was not long after that once again I found myself in the in the midst of things, in search of the soft smile of another, who might be gracious enough to bestow upon me a smile back and, as I ever so hoped, the blessing of her lips, yet I saw in every woman I encountered then something beautiful and longed out of its absence to possess that which I had convinced myself I had missed in the days of my youth, and with such brevity thus composed the follies of the dark and dreary days that the next few years of my life they were to become.


 I fell upon the sight of her and to no end would I have traveled for such as was her smile, and in the course of my life thus far it stands to be one of the greatest lessons that a man can learn, if such a man still exists, painful as it is, the boundless possibilities of his own being, being destroyed, from she who he longs to possess. Yet I am ahead of myself and as such shall return...

'My wife with her mirror sex
My wife with her eyes full of tears
With her eyes of violet panoply and magnetic needle
My wife with her savanna eyes
My wife with water eyes to drink in prison
My wife with wood eyes always under the axe
With eyes on the level of water on the level of air of earth and
         of fire'

-A.Breton

(Photo-G.Ball)

(Photo-G.Ball)

(Photo-G.Ball)

1.

Shell of a man who shits sitting; I am the son of my father.

2.

Above the belt a tuft of darkened wool, a bowl, a cup.

3.

Heaven knows only heaven.

4.

He lathers, leaves before the sun has risen.

“‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching severity, ‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentlemen may be over-careful of himself, or he may be under-careful of himself. He may brush his hair too regular, or too unregular. He may wear his boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is according as the young gentleman has his original character formed. But let him go to which extreme he may, sir, there’s a young lady in both of ‘em.”

-C.Dickens

In a burl of perpetual bloom, the curr of her curls of her hair unfurl; locks of hair bloom to mourn saliferous morning tongues, unwithered and tender.

Such a dry land and such dry hands, midwives and women and dry dying thighs, dried and died thicket land and hands; ‘Will ever there be a bloom?’

Of roads and grass blades of grass, I have know so many mornings when the sun, so much sun and fresh morning drafts; pillowcases and ears and brown curly hairs, kissed and hugged the sun and toes, our toes and dripping noses dropped atop tea and shared toast, over coffee with cigarette smoke.

Spread across a morning shared and tender, spread across a rug, spread and spared of questions, her brine eyes brown eyelids ebb upon her eyes in the bloom of a rotten sun.

(Photo-E.Zuel)

     2

     A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY WIFE

Along far beaches of uncharted seas

the moon-

my wife-goes driving.

She’s redhaired, my beloved.

Behind her turnout,

a variegated throng of constellations scurries,

screaming.

She weds with a garage,

kisses newspaper kiosks,

while a fluttering-eyed page tinsels her train, the

          Milky Way.

And I?

To me, ablaze, the yoke of brows

has lugged fresh pails from deep-eyed wells.

In lacustrine silks you hung,

an amber fiddle chanting in your thighs?

You threw no baited line

into the regions of malignant roofs.

In sands’ nostalgia bathed, I drown in boulevards;

for that’s your daughter-

my song

in mesh of stocking gliding

by the coffee houses!

-V.Mayakovsky

(Translation by M.Hayward and G.Reavey)