Serendipitous Garden

How beautiful are ancient guides, so keenly aware, for instance, of the barely perceptible susurration of a cortege of ants, so well versed in the viridescent languages (such as the whisper of grasses), so surprisingly replete of cosmopolitan abilities.

2012-01-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

When asked a question, one as evocative as the type often asked by small demons, i recalled the splendor of the violet shade you once stepped into.

2012-01-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

200 shades of blue - 200 irremediable conditions - 200 thin shadows - 200 fidgety words (surrounded by leaden clouds) - 2 adoring eyes

2011-12-05T10:14:00.001-08:00

Consensus

2011-11-28T12:09:00.001-08:00

Juan de Bermudez and a marauding band of merchant bankers discover a mysterious island, where out of limestone cracks and crevices spring scattershot cedars that grin and growl.

They soon arrive at the uneasy consensus that they are too late to claim the devil island as a new territory (the houses were not their first clue, but i do not wish to trouble the reader with the myriad of delusions that trouble the sleep of these brave men).

Physicist Martin Archer offers new proof of subatomic particles traveling faster than light. The known laws of physics are in a tizzy (will my microwave still work, i wonder), but how do you explain Monadenium ritchiei?

2011-11-21T13:01:00.001-08:00

did not exist

2011-11-16T05:53:00.001-08:00

This is like deja vu all over again

2011-11-11T14:27:00.001-08:00

Don't you just hate it when cruise ships double park? Darned meter maid, dreaming meretritious dreams, missing what is as plain as the nose on a tourist's puffy, sun-flecked face.

re-return of the prodigal gal

2011-11-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.

2011-11-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, 1893

You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style.

2011-10-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

In a princedom by the sea. Oh when?

Colville's Glory

2011-10-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Colvillea racemosa on the Isle of Devils.

Pycnostachys reticulata - witch's hat

2011-10-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

"pyknos" means dense -"stachys" means a spike - "reticulata" means a network (describing the underside of the leaf)It is a South African sage plant. It grows in swampy areas (I found out about this later... mine grows in a dry place!) .

remedy (beyond reasonable No. 225)

2011-10-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

poison

2011-10-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

how improbable

2011-09-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Ceropegia stapeliiformis var stapeliiformis

A garden imagined

2011-09-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

Finnegan Quidnunc cried in anguish. He had lost something which he was certain he would never regain. But what was it? A lithesome butterfly coquetting around the garden landed with such portent that he was inclined to think that it meant something. He studied meticulously, both day and night, a hance on the index finger of his left hand, and though slight, it made him believe that he was not the same person he was a fortnight ago. The gaunt shadow of a leafless tree swayed on the sun-bleached planks of a once russet shed. Scud and dark-lined clouds, late for their next appointment, dashed overhead. Finnegan Quidnunc was an optimistic chap; he stretched his arms, rubbed his wiry beard, and sat on an old tree stump with a conquering air. Later, when a few drops of rain would stipple his broad forehead, he would seek out his easel, his chalk, a sanguine crayon, and begin to mercilessly imagine the world.

Hidden Lily

2011-09-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Curcuma roscoeana

lilith, dark moon

2011-09-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

What thaumaturgy existed the day x met y? The sun moved listlessly athwart the sky as it had done for millennia. Was it all so different that day?

2011-09-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

flowers glowed unattained

2011-09-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

Persephone picked a pomegranate (while ending up having a recurring date with her parole officer) and other tongue-twisters from the underworld.

2011-08-31T12:41:00.001-07:00

And, as it so often happens in cases of anthomania, i dreamed of Tillandsia

2011-08-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter

2011-08-25T11:59:00.001-07:00

daughter of nothingness

2011-08-23T06:02:00.000-07:00

Words like conscience, tenderness, and autumn light have already disappeared.

2011-08-19T07:13:00.001-07:00

"...but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool."

2011-08-12T13:54:00.000-07:00

mixolydian etude

2011-07-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

wits' end

2011-07-10T13:11:00.001-07:00

untitled

2011-07-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
André Paul Guillaume Gide

Adenium oleifolium

2011-06-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

uncertain future

2011-06-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Her black porkpie hat had a thin, scarlet ribbon, and, as she walked, the wind kept blowing back her dark sheeny mane, with wisps finding their way into her into her scarlet mouth, which was painted with the care one takes with fine calligraphy. She saw a small café, headed there with a brisk step and, oblivious to the clamor, sat down at a recently vacated table, her lilaceous eyes glinting like a flame haunted by its demise.

"Café, madam," mouthed the waiter amid the encroaching din of the crowd.
"Yes," and she returned instantly to a sallow stare.

She had left a note on her escritoire. It was penned on a scented floral paper (some wildflower print), and she knew that the fragrance, like that of frangipani, would haunt her into the hollow depths of an indeterminable future.

Farragos

2011-06-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

She boarded a bus, hesitantly, almost clumsily, and headed for those blithe fields, where erect poppies gentrify the violet shade under behemothian trees and farragos of dried umbels seem to dance a passionate tango. This was, as she had strenuously explained to her younger sister Murasaki, to purge herself of the pathogenicity of city life. But, she was between Scylla and Charybdis for she recalled many occasions where the glittering lights of motorcars, like haphazard stars in the granite sky, produced a surfeit of tantalizing joy in her often mendacious, or as she was fond of saying, deeply conflicted soul.

The first photo is of a common canna lily, the second is the gloriously wisteria-colored Bauhinia bartlettii, and the umbelliferous Anethum graveolens is last.

snow way-out

2011-03-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

This is a video by über-talented Roxana (poetry, photography, video). My small part was to play a few notes on the piano.

A young woman takes a wintry stroll and meets her alter ego. Based on the poem Snow Way-Out by Rachel Fox, this postmodern essay toys with the doppelgänger figure so common in literature. Within the confines of the multitudinous self, no certainties exist - all is open ended. The ambiguity of the end stresses the fragility of self and the fluidity of the borders between reality and fiction.

Shot, directed and edited by Roxana Ghita
Snow-Way Out by Rachel Fox
Voice-over by Rachel Fox
Original piano music by Prospero
Caido del cielo by Bosques de mi Mente

but where am i supposed to get wool of bat and eye of newt?

2011-01-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

(Angelina, magician's assistant)

epiphany

2011-01-21T05:54:00.000-08:00

garden gnome

2011-01-14T12:22:00.000-08:00

Rabia lesliei

Aloe swynnertonii

Aloe thraskii

Datura seed pod

Pachypodium lamerei

house

gnome

Young and Old Concominantly

2011-01-07T10:09:00.001-08:00

(a small homage to roxana's beautiful blog)

And if I told you I could feel past days pressing on my skin, you would accuse me of being insincere. Yet, age old habits die hard. I have meticulously recorded your footprints on my chest, but they never last longer than the fading din of your voice.

You ask about voices? I have no need for the garrulousness of others. As dark clouds scud by, I drown the chatter with hisses and frothy hums . Perhaps it is Gallipoli this time.

Night falls and I regress to boyhood. All evidence of the past has been erased. I feel nothing ... what a glorious ascent. But now, I hear that raucous hum, and the salty breeze batters my face, its soporific charm outmaneuvering my will to resist till another halcyon dawn ebbs at my tar-stained feet.

Why do you call this 'georges seurat at the beach?' Can you point us in the right direction?

2011-01-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

Why you don't like to take a bath? It's the holidays, you know ... What, it ruffles your plummage!

2010-12-20T12:09:00.000-08:00

L' Être et le néant

2010-12-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

2010-12-02T09:07:00.001-08:00

We were walking past lonely trees in the evening

2010-11-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

The tree/shrub in my far-away dream is Protea obtusifolia (Bredasdorpsuikerbos in African). The Proteaceae genus was named by Linnaeus after the Greek god Proteus. The genus is so varied that Proteus, who could change his form at will, was invoked as namesake.

Do mockingbirds dream of electric clouds?

2010-11-23T06:33:00.000-08:00

blind chance

2010-11-16T08:47:00.001-08:00

Why is my path always in the twilight?

2010-10-29T13:55:00.001-07:00

Rhapsody in the Key of Petunia

2010-10-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

first entelechy

2010-10-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

2010-10-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

Ithaca

2010-10-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

Lang: The poet belonged to a world that grew in harmony, not opposition, to nature.

Prospero: What advice do you have for the poet, Mr. Lang?

Lang: One must suffer.

under the poinciana tree

2010-09-14T11:00:00.001-07:00

summer - autumn

2010-09-03T12:21:00.001-07:00

sins and forgiveness

2010-08-29T14:32:00.001-07:00

summer auguries

2010-08-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

oneiromancy

2010-08-06T12:26:00.001-07:00

though she was surely a deity, her skin was of a terrene silk.

2010-07-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

Patchwork

2010-07-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

The dream ended in a tremendous cacophonous tear. It left behind a shredded patchwork of fabric (in several shades of salmon, mauve, gillyflower pink ) and extended pell-mell to the door, which had, without great argumentation, opened to the tingly dawn air. Of course, he had been in a deep slumber, but now, overwhelmed by the gilded verisimilitude of the dewy grass springing up behind silent footfalls, he assented to a roughish reality that had festooned from all corners of the coruscating courtyard. He looked at his shoulder, his arm, the bones of his pale-skinned hand. The secret of his day had begun.

"Since I have known the body better"--said Zarathustra to one of his disciples--"the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Shelley's Death

2010-07-09T11:44:00.001-07:00

Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.

Ariel's Song from The Tempest

Dissolution

2010-07-07T09:44:00.001-07:00

The impossibility of seeing

2010-07-02T10:22:00.001-07:00

he picked flowers ( no reason was given)

2010-06-29T11:38:00.001-07:00

Prospero's Island

2010-06-25T10:13:00.001-07:00

your inner chaos

2010-06-22T11:21:00.001-07:00

if A is you and B is me

2010-06-17T10:46:00.001-07:00

Dilemme sans réplique

2010-06-08T11:06:00.001-07:00

les fruits

la banane

cerise du Súrínam

le pamplemousse

mon coeur est rouge

2010-06-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

Only the shallow know themselves

2010-06-01T09:30:00.001-07:00

“Only the shallow know themselves.”

Oscar Wilde

blackbird

2010-05-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

An eskimo tale explains the origin of light thus: "The blackbird could not find food in the eternal night and he desired light, and the earth lit up." If there is true desire, if the object of desire is truly light, the desire for light produces light.

Simone Veil

seeing

2010-05-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

to see in near darkness is the prerogative of cats
to see in total darkness is an act of faith

beatrice nine

2010-05-19T11:38:00.001-07:00

strange eclipse

2010-05-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

Baroness

2010-05-05T14:19:00.001-07:00

sharp eleven

2010-05-04T12:15:00.001-07:00

flowers translated into make-believe Icelandic

2010-04-30T12:31:00.001-07:00

a heaven in a wild flower

2010-04-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

The inspiration is William Blake and a certain poker player:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

The penultimate heavenly figure is Bermuda's national flower.

mistress of the vales of Har

2010-04-23T12:35:00.001-07:00

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

2010-04-20T12:05:00.001-07:00

The moving finger writes

2010-04-16T12:06:00.001-07:00

Les Fleurs du mal

2010-04-13T11:46:00.001-07:00

Lux Æterna

2010-04-09T12:06:00.001-07:00

you should have faith

2010-04-06T12:33:00.001-07:00

I want to marry a lighthouse keeper (improbable #5)

2010-03-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

lunatic

2010-03-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

the word moon is a lingering sound. Moon is a beautiful word. The French word is also beautiful: lune. But in Old English the word was mona. The word isn't beautiful at all, two syllables. And then the Greek is worse. We have celena, three syllables. But the word moon is a beautiful word. That sound is not found, let's say in Spanish. The moon. I can linger in words. Words inspire you. Words have a life of their own.
From an interview with Jorge Luis Borges

I know that the moon or the word moon
Is a letter that was created to share
In the complex scripture of that rare
Thing that we are, both manifold and one.

It is one of those symbols given to man
By fate or chance, which one day he
May use to write his own true name,
Uplifted in glory or in agony.

From Dreamtigers, translated by Harold Morland

the improbable spring (3)

2010-03-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

a wall is

2010-03-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

a barrier

a projection screen

a deep well of emotion

overview

2010-03-09T14:10:00.001-08:00

Prospero's neighborhood

Prospero's garden

impulsive

Hey, Angie! Any evidence of spring yet?

2010-03-05T11:56:00.000-08:00

Sans Soleil

2010-02-26T12:24:00.001-08:00

and, for all his enemies, a tempest was summoned

2010-02-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

is not

2010-02-09T12:45:00.001-08:00

“Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.”

Jean Baudrillard

soupçonnés de sortilèges

2010-02-05T14:19:00.001-08:00

le siège du sorcier

the dark heart

2010-02-02T12:55:00.001-08:00

beauty is your armor

2010-01-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

so little

2010-01-26T12:15:00.001-08:00

You mistake my shadow for myself - and so do I.

2010-01-22T12:23:00.000-08:00

a sound as delightful as the sound of a piano

2010-01-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

Morning

2010-01-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

(curiously homonymous with mourning)

La plage est une peau. Le ciel est l'âme.

2010-01-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

No light, but rather darkness visible

2010-01-08T10:07:00.001-08:00

interview

2010-01-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

When I should be going forward, I move backward.
Is this advisable?
No. And yet, the reverse is also true.
The obdurate crime is stasis?
It is the only offense worthy of punishment.
Will you speak in aphorisms from now on?
The obvious answer is no. But beware of obvious answers.

Prospero interviews Prospero (what a train wreck that is).

dans l'ombre de ma rencontre

2009-12-11T14:19:00.000-08:00