THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1930, 7*, attic, day, desire, light, night, poem, roof, streets, William Carlos Williams, windows

                THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE:

                                the unused tent
                                of

                                bare beams
                                beyond which

                                directly wait
                                the night

                                and day–
                                Here

                                from the street
                                by

                                   *   *   *
                                   *   S   *
                                   *   O  *
                                   *   D  *
                                   *   A  *
                                   *   *   *

                                ringed with
                                running lights

                                the darkened
                                pane

                                exactly
                                down the center

                                is
                                transfixed

 

from Poems, 1930: the word becomes the poem, nothing beyond the word itself – cf. * SODA * – but everything in it just the same; WCW was an atomist, a catalyst and maybe, even, an alchemist, but he was not a dogmatist or a fantasist and definitely not a rhapsodist, although he was a poet, and very often-enough, didn’t know it

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

light & windows wormhole: window
night & william Carlos Williams wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
roof wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
streets wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896

 

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Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896

Tags

'scape, 1896, 2018, 5*, bridge, buildings, desire, industry, lives, Pissarro, river, rooftops, Rouen, sky, smoke, storey, streets

                                   Great Bridge,          Rouen, 1896

                                                   to span       the river

                                   is to ride the banks            with quarter and delve inland

with vascular street and hood-eyed blocks         of storey looking down

            under receding ateliers of desire          under oblivious

                                                      plumes      of sky

 

spanning the reach of the Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896 by Camille Pissarro, the eternal dialectic between nature and industry

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

bridge wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902
buildings wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
river wormhole: Sujātā
rooftops wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
smoke wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
streets wormhole: {reading right to left}

 

beguiled / desire

Tags

2018, 7*, ageing, death, desire, drifting, evening, hands, heart, holding onto, letting go, life, retirement, sleep, song, Ulysses

                when I tie myself to a mast
                and the evening is closing in without,

                without that song that deliciously
                extricates my beating heart I know,

                I know ‘tis time to loose those bonds
                from my numb and welt hands caught

                once again and ever by beguiled
                desire better, by far, to drift where I lie

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

death wormhole: moon- // washed
evening wormhole: between
hands wormhole: sufficiently away
letting go wormhole: anxiety
life wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
retirement wormhole: someone’s got to do it
sleep wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

'scape, 1917, 7*, anchor, angle, birds, blue, branches, buds, concentration, convergence, desire, disappearance, energy, erect, flying, grey, ground, holding, orange, passing, red, right, rock, sky, Spring, sun, tap root, trees, twigs, William Carlos Williams

                                SPRING STRAINS

                In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                crowded erect with desire against
                the sky–
                            tense blue-grey twigs
                slenderly anchoring them down, drawing
                them in–

                            two blue-grey birds chasing
                a third struggle in circles, angles,
                swift convergings to a point that bursts
                instantly!

                            Vibrant bowing limbs
                pull downward, sucking in the sky
                that bulges from behind, plastering itself
                against them in packed rifts, rock blue
                and dirty orange!

                                                                                But–
                (Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)
                the blinding and red-edged sun-blur–
                creeping energy, concentrated
                counterforce – welds sky, buds, trees,
                rivets them in one puckering hold!
                Sticks through! Pulls the whole
                counter-pulling mass upward, to the right,
                locks even the opaque, not yet defined
                ground in a terrific drag that is
                loosening the very tap-roots!

                On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,
                at full cry! Now they are
                flung outward and up – disappearing suddenly!

 

from Al Que Quiere, 1917

the cacophany of a single moment – all instruments loosening-up, scaling, tensing, waiting for the grand inaugural middle ‘C’ – all held together in a fidgety bag; the shabby audacity of this piece – ‘let’s not just have vignettes, let’s also have local, tectonic landscapes’ – made my young eyes work, I had to read it several times successively to hold together all the strands, and then he lets me off, I finally ‘got’ the three birds disappearing … you don’t hold it all together, you don’t; there’s no need to; William Carlos Williams was a crafty master

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

birds wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
blue wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
branches & sky wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
orange wormhole: I
passing wormhole: tram
red wormhole: Bridgnorth
Spring wormhole: city streets
sun & trees & William Carlos Williams wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III

Tags

2014, 4*, bus, coffee shop, desire, father, joke, Jon, Lewes, raspberry, son, speech

                Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III

‘double-decker bus        gravestone
                dingle berry        fumbling        clutching’

                                hot day in the coffee shop
                                I’ll have something different
                                ah yes, a Double-Decker Dingle-
                                berry Gravestone Cooler
                                would be good, I think,
                                amid the ambient fumbling
                                and clutching of desire,

                                ‘would you like raspberry
                                 sauce with that, sir?’

                                uh, no thank you, I have
                                a bus to catch

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

bus wormhole: municipal garden
coffee shop & father & Jon & Lewes & speech wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

 

so pleased to see you again

Tags

2017, 8*, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, compassion, desire, doing, echo, eyes, faces, gravity, lifetimes, light, love, memory, mother sentient beings, others, seeing, Shantideva, sky, space, speech, true nature, vanity, will

                oh, my loves, who look at me
                with eyes that dull-echo from

                lifetimes back “don’t I love you,
                don’t you owe me?” but cannot

                remember; yes, yes you do, yes
                I do, with so much real interest;

                I will love, I will do, what needs
                to be done, and short-circuit all

                this vanity and indifference;
                enough of peripatetic desire and

                unsustainable will, I owe your
                dear sweet faces (so much to

                account, so much to invest) a
                truer nature to acknowledge,

                a current in to which to plug,
                a circuit around which to light –

                exponential to the bursting sky –
                space-walking gloriously around

                the gravity of our own true natures,
                so pleased to see you again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 17-19

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Bodhichitta wormhole: inbreath
compassion wormhole: transmuted
doing wormhole: everwhile
echo wormhole: open window
eyes & lifetimes & sky wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
faces wormhole: Sylvia
light & love wormhole: writing: // in turn
others wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
seeing wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
space wormhole: within
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance

 

the purple mist between

Tags

1964, 2016, 5*, architecture, becoming, blindness, desire, Dr Strange, gods, identity, inside, light, lunge, middle way, mist, outside, pattern, power, purple, samsara, Sanctum Sanctorum, shadow, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Strange Tales, true nature, windows

                     outside and inside are merely
                     framed by the window and

                     the shadow; where shadow
                     is architectural and ornate,

                     there is the Sanctum Sanctorum;
                     on entering one becomes

                     the patterns of past shadows
                     alternately contrasted with

                     one’s own light, most know not
                     that they have entered already –

                     dim under their own
                     machinations; others take the

                     Bigger Picture and illuminate
                     their own self hideous to

                     their godly desire: both the
                     light and the dark will blind you,

                     tripping you to all manner
                     of lunge, there are few,

                     indeed, who will settle for
                     the purple mist between

 

contrasted out from within ‘Beyond the Purple Veil’ in Strange Tales #119, April 1964; written: Stan Lee; drawn: Steve Ditko

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

architecture wormhole: Elektra
black wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
Dr Strange wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
identity & light & mist wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
power wormhole: lonely and free
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
samsara wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
shadow wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
windows wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs

 

my // shell – poewieview #19

Tags

1970, 2016, Bowie, Buddha, delusion, desire, echo, eyes, forest, happiness, identity, karma, lifetimes, monkey, others, samsara, shadow, shell, the Three Poisons, thought, words

                my

                                shadows whip `round me
                                sometimes before you’ve
                                thought your words

                                you cannot help it
                                I have echoes in my eyes
                                from all the “I”s that faded

                                too soon to cast open their
                                only desires left hanging tantalic,
                                your monkey’s hand held tight in the

                                                                                 shell^*

 

^* “the prince heard the cry of a monkey in the forest: it had been trapped by hunters who used a nut case which was so-shaped that a monkey’s hand could fit into the shell when opened flat, but not if the hand was held as a fist.   The hunters placed food in the shell which greatly attracted the monkeys; when they put in their hands to grab the food they could not withdraw their hands, and yet they wanted the food so much that they would not let it go.   And so they were trapped.   This seemed to the prince that it might be the answer: beings find no happiness in life because the very act of trying to get happiness binds them to frustration.   In selfishly trying to grab their own lives, they were trapped in them.   The enemies to fight were the delusions within oneself: selfishness, pride, greed, belief in the self, anger, jealousy, hate, desire etc, those things which try to grasp happiness in life.”

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Bowie & eyes wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
Buddha wormhole: out!
echo wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
identity wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
lifetimes wormhole: thick thick fog
others wormhole: crescendoeing cascade of chordage – poewieview #10
samsara wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
shadow wormhole: keep the light off
thought wormhole: strange / tarnish
words wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky

 

out!

Tags

2014, being, Buddha, conception, context, desire, discernment, habit, identity, looking, Majjhima Nikaya, meditation, microscope, Pali, passive, point, reductionism, seeing, talking to myself, telescope, the Poison Arrow Analogy, thinking, transitive, will, world, writing

                                is seeing transitive
                                              or passive
                do you look to see as the will will direct
                                or do you select what you see as
                                              desire will allow
                                is it a microscope that focusses down
                                              to constituents
                                or a telescope that conceives
                                              what there is from what isn’t
                                do I see the point
                                              or contextualise it
                                              does it come to me
                                                              or do I dwell in the world defined by my looks and habit
                                                              is it both or neither

                                or should I just get this damn arrow out!
                                              of my eye

                                                              –O~~~

 

                                                                                    ~~~O–

                                                              so, is
                                              writing or meditating
                                                              transitive or passive …

                                                              – SLAP! –

 

“It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison.   His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’   He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’   He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’   The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.”

from the “Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya” (Majjhima Nikaya 63), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.   Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.063.than.html .

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & Buddha wormhole: de Boeddha // of light
identity wormhole: zok! and pow!
looking wormhole: dream 260815
meditation wormhole: between
seeing wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
talking to myself wormhole: exactly equal
thinking wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
world wormhole: Detective Comics #345
writing wormhole: enough