6
I don't know what I am about to write. So perhaps in this sense it will not do for you to call me a writer. How far, for example, does the artist's signature go in making him an artist? I've been leafing through a book on Frida Kahlo in which are included reproductions of her first love letters to Alejandro. Throughout the letters she illustrates particular emotions with drawings, herself crying, or a dove. Should I include one here? What visual image would be appropiate to what I am feeling right now? But this is silly. I don't love you. Who are you? You are perhaps someone waiting for a bus, or sitting on a toilet. In a spare moment you grab for something more appropriate, something answering to the needs at hand. Ordinary things, things without color, useless as the image of yourself in the mirror behind your back.
5
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Ray Charles
When I'm down in the dumps, sad, depressed, I put on a Ray Charles song and in a heartbeat things are rosy again and I begin to dance. The same goes for this great photo of Ray. I look at it and it fills me with happiness. The exuberance of the smile, the belting laugh coming out of his cavernous throat, the reflection of piano keys in his sun glasses, it all takes me right to where he is and I feel in my bones the Dionysian vibration of life.I want my soul to look like the photo!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
When the British had an Empire
6
One of my favorite books is Lady Chatterly's Lover. Not abstractly or generally, but rather concretely. Among the books that are physically in my library this is one of my favorites. Not because of the story, which I imagine is very good (I've never read it), but because of some special characteristic it has. The edition I have was published in Sweden in 1950. Thanks to obscenity laws, it wasn't published in England until 1960. The wonderful thing about this edition is that on the inside front cover it says, "The sale of this book is prohibited in the United States of America and the British Empire." That last bit really impressed me. I had in my hands a little book that, like David, dared to challenge an empire. That's why I love this book. Its like an artifact, as if in an archaeological excavation they had discovered the very stones that David used to knock out Goliath.
I found it many years ago in a small Jewish library in New York. I paid $2.50 for it. What a jewel! Unfortunately it suffered an accident. I was living in Boston at the time and was getting ready for my move to Mexico (where I now live). I had almost all my books stored in boxes in the basement. I was working then at the Harvard Bookstore and one day during work this huge storm came out of nowhere and dumped a deluge of water. My roommate called me to tell me the basement was filling with water. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi but got home quickly and found the basement knee-high with water. I've never worked so hard in my life hauling those boxes out of the basement. I lost a good many books that had to be thrown away, but Lady Chatterly's Lover survived. Its safely here with me in Mexico, with some water stains, with the price written on the inside cover in pencil, and that wonderful and arrogant warning of a lost empire.
5
One of my favorite books is Lady Chatterly's Lover. Not abstractly or generally, but rather concretely. Among the books that are physically in my library this is one of my favorites. Not because of the story, which I imagine is very good (I've never read it), but because of some special characteristic it has. The edition I have was published in Sweden in 1950. Thanks to obscenity laws, it wasn't published in England until 1960. The wonderful thing about this edition is that on the inside front cover it says, "The sale of this book is prohibited in the United States of America and the British Empire." That last bit really impressed me. I had in my hands a little book that, like David, dared to challenge an empire. That's why I love this book. Its like an artifact, as if in an archaeological excavation they had discovered the very stones that David used to knock out Goliath.
I found it many years ago in a small Jewish library in New York. I paid $2.50 for it. What a jewel! Unfortunately it suffered an accident. I was living in Boston at the time and was getting ready for my move to Mexico (where I now live). I had almost all my books stored in boxes in the basement. I was working then at the Harvard Bookstore and one day during work this huge storm came out of nowhere and dumped a deluge of water. My roommate called me to tell me the basement was filling with water. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi but got home quickly and found the basement knee-high with water. I've never worked so hard in my life hauling those boxes out of the basement. I lost a good many books that had to be thrown away, but Lady Chatterly's Lover survived. Its safely here with me in Mexico, with some water stains, with the price written on the inside cover in pencil, and that wonderful and arrogant warning of a lost empire.
5
Feast on Your Life
6
This blog is called "Feast on Your Life". It is taken from a poem called "Love After Love" written by Derek Walcott, a Nobel Prize-winning poet that I had the honor of meeting many years ago.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
This poem is the first match of many to come. Its all about finding again the love of your life, who is yourself, myself, your deepest and profoundest self, the stranger you have abandoned and the cries out to return. I'm so hungry! I hunger for myself, for what I am and what I can be.
5
This blog is called "Feast on Your Life". It is taken from a poem called "Love After Love" written by Derek Walcott, a Nobel Prize-winning poet that I had the honor of meeting many years ago.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
This poem is the first match of many to come. Its all about finding again the love of your life, who is yourself, myself, your deepest and profoundest self, the stranger you have abandoned and the cries out to return. I'm so hungry! I hunger for myself, for what I am and what I can be.
5
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