Last week was a self-imposed week off, I guess.

Perseverance

I shall look at the grass
Till I obtain the degree
Of Doctor of Grass.

I shall look at the clouds
Till I become a Master
Of Clouds.

I shall walk beside the smoke
Till out of shame
The smoke returns to the flame
Of its beginning.

I shall walk beside all things
Till all things
Come to know me.

-Marin Sorescu

Like They Say

Underneath the tree on some
soft grass I sat, I

watched two happy
woodpeckers be dis-

turbed by my presence. And
why not, I thought to

myself, why
not.

-Robert Creeley

The Answer

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
------and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
------the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
------and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
------not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
------the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
------and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
------the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
------of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
------or drown in despair when his days darken.

-Robinson Jeffers, 1935

"Man was made to do his daily work with his muscles; but see him now, like a fly on flypaper, seated for eight hours, motionless at a desk. Fifteen minutes of exercise cannot make up for eight hours of absence. The human being was made to breathe the good air of nature, but what he breathes is an obscure compound of acids and coal tars. He was created for a living environment, but he dwells in a lunar world of stone, cement, asphalt, glass, cast iron, and steel. The trees wilt and blanch among sterile and blind stone facades. Cats and dogs disappear little by little from the city, going the way of the horse. Only rats and man remain to populate a dead world. Man was created to have room to move about in, to gaze into far distances, to live in rooms which, even when they were tiny, opened out on fields. See him now, enclosed by the rules and architectural necessities imposed by over-population in a twelve-by-twelve closet opening out on an anonymous world of city streets.

"What was once the abnormal has become the usual, standard condition of things. Even so, the human being is ill at east in this strange new environment, and the tension demanded of him weighs heavily on his life and being."

-"The Technological Society", Jacques Ellul

So what are people for? Is there any way to live without being in this "strange new environment", without having your life and being weighed upon? Or, to quote Lewis Hyde: should I go back to the university, or what?

Love

I believed:
a tree when kissed
would not lose its leaves --
leaves fall
from kissed
trees.

A river hugged
by a hand in love
would not flow away --
it flows away
into fog.

There are in my landscape
errors of colours and scents
yet always
always I love
what incessantly
changes.

As a golden ball
she runs before me:
approached again and again,
my beloved,
Earth.

-Tymoteusz Karpowicz

Two or Three Incidents Recollected

An overturned cup of wine.
A stone path sailing in moonlight.
Where the blue grass is flattened,
an azalea flower is abandoned.

The eucalyptus wood swirls.
Stars above teem into a kaleidoscope.
On a rusty anchor,
eyes mirror the dizzy sky.

Holding up a book to shade the candle,
and with a finger in between the lips,
I sit in an eggshell quiet,
having a semitransparent dream.

-Shu Ting

On the Grey Wolf River

-----Little ouzel bird,
under
------cliffs of pillow lava,
over
-------ice-green
glacier rapids,
---------should I
------go back to the university,
-----------or what?

-Lewis Hyde, 1988

I'm taking a course on Jacques Ellul this semester, and every piece of reading gives me something to chew on, or something that bears repeating. An example of the first is this list; an example of the second is this quote (from this video): "When we oppose things which are too efficient we mustn't try to be even more efficient. For that will not turn out to be the most efficient way."

Efficiency comes up constantly in discussion for environmental studies courses--and what more can you say than that?

Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf

At various times, I have asked myself what reasons 

moved me to study, while my night came down, 

without particular hope of satisfaction, 

the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons. 

Used up by the years, my memory

loses its grip on words that I have vainly 

repeated and repeated. My life in the same way

weaves and unweaves its weary history. 

Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul

has some secret, sufficient way of knowing 

that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing

circle can take in all, can accomplish all. 

Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,

the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. 

-Jorge Luis Borges

 I feel compelled to say, that maybe it's not the universe, but it's God. 

Now that time seems all mine

Now that time seems all mine

and no one calls me for lunch or dinner,

now that I can stay to watch

how a cloud loosens and loses it color,

how a cat walks on the roof

in the immense luxury of a prowl, now

that what waits for me every day

is the unlimited length of a night

where there is no call and no longer a reason

to undress in a hurry to rest inside

the blinding sweetness of a body that waits for me,

now that the morning no longer has a beginning

and silently leaves me to my plans,

to all the cadences of my voice, now

suddenly I would like a prison.

-Patrizia Cavalli

Well, I guess I took a month's vacation. And now I'm back at school, in America.