Watering Artificial Flowers Quotes

The morning after / my death” The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be * There was the great death of birds the moon was consumed with fire the stars were visible until noon. Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. The moon darkened at dawn the mountain quivered with anticipation and the ocean was double-shaded: the blue of its surface with the blue of flowers mingled in horizontal water trails there was a breeze to witness the hour * The sun darkened at the fifth hour of the day the beach was covered with conversations pebbles started to pour into holes and waves came in like horses. * The moon darkened on Christmas eve angels ate lemons in illuminated churches there was a blue rug planted with stars above our heads lemonade and war news competed for our attention our breath was warmer than the hills. * There was a great slaughter of rocks of spring leaves of creeks the stars showed fully the last king of the Mountain gave battle and got killed. We lay on the grass covered dried blood with our bodies green blades swayed between our teeth. * We went out to sea a bank of whales was heading South a young man among us a hero tried to straddle one of the sea creatures his body emerged as a muddy pool as mud we waved goodbye to his remnants happy not to have to bury him in the early hours of the day We got drunk in a barroom the small town of Fairfax had just gone to bed cherry trees were bending under the weight of their flowers: they were involved in a ceremonial dance to which no one had ever been invited. * I know flowers to be funeral companions they make poisons and venoms and eat abandoned stone walls I know flowers shine stronger than the sun their eclipse means the end of times but I love flowers for their treachery their fragile bodies grace my imagination’s avenues without their presence my mind would be an unmarked grave. * We met a great storm at sea looked back at the rocking cliffs the sand was going under black birds were leaving the storm ate friends and foes alike water turned into salt for my wounds. * Flowers end in frozen patterns artificial gardens cover the floors we get up close to midnight search with powerful lights the tiniest shrubs on the meadows A stream desperately is running to the ocean The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)

… But how do I create my charioteer? Or do I want to be my own charioteer? I can guide myself only with will and intention. But will and intention are simply part of myself. Consequently they are insufficient to express my wholeness. Intention is what I can foresee, and willing is to want a foreseen goal. But where do I find the goal? I take it from what is presently known to me. Thus I set the present in place of the future. In this manner, though I cannot reach the future, I artificially produce a constant present. Everything that would like to break into this present strikes me as a disturbance, and I seek to drive it away so that my intention survives. Thus I close off the progress of life. But how can I be my own charioteer without will and intention? Therefore a wise man does not want to be a charioteer, for he knows that will and intention certainly attain goals but disturb the becoming of the future. Futurity grows out of me; I do not create it, and yet I do, though not deliberately and wilfully, but rather against will and intention. If I want to create the future, then I work against my future. And if I do not want to create it, once again I do not take sufficient part in the creation of the future, and everything happens then according to unavoidable laws to which I fall victim. The ancient devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive. For a long time I considered what type of magic this would have to be. And in the end I found nothing. Whoever cannot find it within himself should become an apprentice, and so I took myself off to a far country where a great magician lived, of whose reputation I had heard. The Magician After a long search I found the small house in the country fronted by a large bed of tulips. This is where Philemon, the magician, lives with his wife Baucis. Philemon is one of those magicians who has not yet managed to banish old age, but who lives it with dignity, and his wife can only do the same. Their interests seem to have become narrow, even childish. They water their bed of tulips and tell each about the flowers that have newly appeared. And their days fade into a pale wavering chiaracuso, lit up by the past, only slightly frightened of the darkness of what is to come.

Behind its outer walls, the Temple of Inanna was another world. When they entered the bronze gates from the dusty barren city streets, patrons became submerged in a world of sensuality, a garden of earthly delights. Lush flora filled the open courtyard: exotic fruit trees with dates, figs, and pomegranates. Tamarisk and palm trees rose above the floor in a canopy of leaves. The complex artificial irrigation channels of the city watered this botanical paradise of flowers and vegetation. A wisp of incense mixed with perfume wafted through the air, teasing the nostrils. The temple and palace gardens replicated a memory of Eden. It was as if gods and kings sought to retain their ancestral past even as they perverted it into its mirror opposite.

To take an analogy from botany, she imagined a child as an unopened flower; a parent had a responsability to provide light and water, but also to stand back and watch. 'He can do anything he wants', she said, 'as long as he's happy and cool.' In contrast, I saw no reason why the flower should not be bracketed to a bamboo stick, pruned, exposed to artificial light; if it made for a stronger, more resilient plant, why not? (pag. 337)

Fundamentals of Esperanto The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one sitting. Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj & the accusative, -on Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative friend & friends. Ma amiko is my friend. A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA, has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto. Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space on board the Voyager spacecraft. - Esperanto is an artificial language constructed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, a polish oculist. following a somewhat difficult period in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the railway platform just outside Warsaw where I had missed my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit & dark glasses pushed a cart piled high with ripped & weathered volumes— sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing musical scores & outdated physics textbooks, old copies of Life, new smut, an atlas translated, a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics, a guide to the rivers & mountains, thesauri, inscrutable musical scores & mimeographed physics books, defective stories, obsolete sex manuals— one of which caught my notice (Dr. Esperanto since I had time, I traded my used Leaves of Grass for a copy. I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough. There’s a man from Quebec in my head, a friend to the purple martins. Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows. All purple martins are dying or dead. Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest these creatures feel the same levels of doubt & bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity. While driving home from the brewery one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program about purple martins & the next day he set out to build them a house in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything, let alone a house, not to mention a home for somebody else. Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting. Never piped sugar water through colored tubes to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded with strong, tired hands. Never dismantled the entire affair & put it back together again. Still no swallows. I never installed the big light that stays on through the night to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights, never rested on Sunday with a beer on the deck surveying what I had done & what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers. I have never collapsed in abandon. Never prayed. But enough about the purple martins. Every line of the work is a first & a last line & this is the spring of its action. Of course, there’s a journey & inside that journey, an implicit voyage through the underworld. There’s a bridge made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers; a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors; a digression on shadows; That’s how we finally learn who the hero was all along. Weary & old, he sits on a rock & watches his friends fly by one by one out of the song, then turns back to the journey they all began long ago, keeping the river to his right.