etude

*The Year of the Rodent*
Yesterday I looked through my blog, and it seemed so funny. It’s nice that my blog spreads some forgotten poetry by some old authors, yet in other respects the blog looks and sounds sentimental and naïve. But my blog is not a journal, and I’m not a pure blogger and am not afraid to seem sentimental.
Life is but a word; there are only love and death; death is worth living, and love is worth waiting. Life is a whiff of fragrances and smoke of cigars and incense, if you like. And you want to fly where flowers of happiness are blooming in the iridescent shine, where bluebells beckon inviting to Dreamland, and butterflies sing and dance above your face as you are looking up at the stars. You want… You are tired to saying “I want”, you’d like to say “I can” and “I’ve done it”--however that’s a psychological stuff--and I enjoy seeing my hands flying over the keyboard, typing a text on the screen, depicting something, may be my own world, and the world is not too much manifold or variegated. Sometimes the world seems to be a mouse-hole in which the hostess embroiders something, but nothing comes of her work. Sometimes the world looks like Tour Eiffel; the desire for fame overwhelms, and my world submits to the only idea: to create a work of art. Sometimes this world becomes a kind good friend, sentimental and funny, turning into a golden leaflet gone with the wind of changes. In short, the writer’s den on the top of the Ivory Tower.
Remember, it's the Year of the Rat now--whatever that means--perhaps everyone has to buy a rodent and keep it for good luck? Verlaine has the line: “Dame souris trotte Noire dans le gris du soir…” (“Lady mouse minces, black in the gray colour of the evening…”); the poem was written at long sleepless night in the prison--the settings are as important as the characters--at the hour when Apollonian sleep has been interrupted and life slacks up, the poet feels the close and elusive presence of the mouse. Insomnia is opposed to dream. And like a small crack in the Apollonian light and harmonious world, a mouse appears at the sleepless night. At the hour, when your strain ear listens to slightest noise of the night, it’s so naturally to hear a squeak and rustle of mice running about. And their mystery is set off with the invincible sacred fear caused with a mere presence of a mouse. The fear of mice is an enigma of human mentality. The fear connects our soul with some ancient and dark scores that have remained as an obscure symbol. It’s difficult to know the character of the Apollonian fear of a mouse; it seems to be unfounded, senseless and irrational. Neither a serious danger nor an ugly form causes it. A mouse is not ugly. The humans subjected to the Apollonian fear simply have not time to discern its exterior. Sooner they are ready for defining the sense of the fear as the mouse’s quick motion, the quick slipping away; the mouse is as though an elusive crack in their sleep. Friedrich Nietzsche defines Apollonian element as the element of dream, opposite to Dionysian element of intoxication. Apollo’s world is a beautiful dream of life--well-ordered, rational, and serene, distinguished from Dionysian element--life is beautiful as far as we take it as our dream; at the same time we aren’t enabled to forget it is but a dream, for we are afraid that the dream can turn into the rough reality. Thus, being initiated in the mysteries of Apollonian dream, the mind is between two abysses: on the one hand, the danger to believe that it is not a dream, on the other hand, the danger to wake. To wake is to die; to believe in reality is to lose one’s divinity. A winged statue on the tip of a pinnacle can be an image of a human, devoted to the Apollonian dream. The tip eludes, and that at the same time it is the only fulcrum in the real world, the only link which we hold not to lose the sense of reality--it’s a moment. To give oneself to the current moment and at the same time not to lose one’s spiritual balance, to love all the moments of one’s life, preferring the current moments to the past or future ones--that’s what the Apollonian wisdom demands. It as though says: Apollo is not only Musagetes (the leader of the Muses), but he is Moiragetes (the leader of the Moirae), and Parcae, the sad Muses of time are subjected to him. He is Archegetes (director of the foundation), he is Coelispex (he who watches the heavens), he is Neomenios (lord of months), and finally, he is Horomedon, and this rare epithet can be translated as “the leader of time”. Among the official retinue of Apollo, among the nine Muses we can’t find connection with Time till we recall that the Muses are daughter of Mnemosyne that is memory. Memory-Mnemosyne is as though the oldest of the Muses; memory is an ancestor of arts. The capability to foresee implies deepening into a moment. And if the supposition that in Apollonian cults the mouse is a sign of a fleeting moment is right, then the myths of prophecies and oracles have to be connected with the mouse. Indeed, the ancient Greeks called the mouse a most prophetic animal--according to the report of Pliny the Younger (N. Н. VIII, 82). In the fleet motion of the tiny animal the Greeks saw similarity of the fleeting elusive moment, the thin subtle crack that always threatens to disturb the Apollonian dream that, in its turn, can be realized only thanks to the crack. As soon as we understand the symbolic meaning of this fleet, fearsome and enigmatic motion of the mouse, we shall understand one more familiar and enigmatic image: Time-Eternity, the strained, perpetually moving sphere of inward intuitive feelings that could be pictured as an enormous mountain of dark and chaos; the mountain shudders, and from its crack the infinitesimal moment-mouse is born. The mouse, fearsome to many humans, is an embodiment of the elusive moment now. The non-submissiveness and sadness of the Apollonian dream are concentrated in it. This joyful and painfully sad motif sounds in the Hellenic lyric of Anacreon and Sappho, it sounds in the flawless Florentine Quattrocento beauty, we find it in Verlaine’s poetry, as firework it is scattered over the stones of Venice, it is repeated over and over again in the 18th century music. The book “La Canne de Jaspe” by Henri de Regnier gives a great set of symbols, images and personifications for expressing the attitude of the Apollonian poesy towards a moment. “Love is a mute god, and there are no statues for him but embodiments of our desires”. The words throw new light upon the face of the god with the silver bow. John Ruskin said: immortality is not in masterpieces but in the power that create them. The human genius if not a human’s property, it is a revelation of the sun-god. A work of art is a golden dream that can be destroyed or lost, therefore, don’t fear to lose it. A work of art is but a miracle. But the law is higher than a miracle in the Apollonian world. The cycle of death and rebirth more sacred than the golden dream. “Listen, listen--there is someone who speaks by echo’s mouth, who is lonely amidst the world’s life, who holds the double bow and torch, he who is so inconceivably we…”, as de Regnier says about the mystery. “O sacred face! I minted you as medallions of silver, soft as autumn dawn, of gold, hot as the sun, of copper, gloomy as night, of all the metals that sound clear as joy, that sound fatal as glory, love or doom; but the best medallions I’ve made of clay. …And the world’s great dream lives in me to come to life in them”. The Apollonian mentality is out of the sphere of being that can be devastated by time, and its roots are deep in the fleeting stream of moments. Below: the initial sadness and struggle of contradictions, which is base of life. Above: the eternal harmony of being, the most real reality, the transformed face of the true deity. The statue of Apollo stepping on a mouse with his heel--as a plague god and defender against rats and locusts, Apollo was known as Smintheus ("mouse-catcher"). Above: the sun-god, the prophetic dream giver. Below: the mice’s fuss of life. Now we realize: the mouse is not a miserable small animal which the god treads under foot, but a pedestal, which Apollo stands on, and they are united by the ancient struggle, which is the closest union.
All the statuary and mythological ideas of the past are nothing but delusion, if you like, but I would say, it all is a simple logic, or it’s the universal wit plays with a human’s imagination.

sources: obscure or unknown.

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*japonaiserie*
I cover my eyes with the cobweb of the early morning being in the state when I’ve not awaked but sleep no longer. The daylight is like pearl scales of a weird fish that drifts drowsily by a rocky shore, and a cup of tea solves everything, so there is nothing for me but to put my kimono on, to ribbon my long hair and to have some hot green tea, musing about the indifference of beautiful things and about their perfection. On the table there are the Japanese drinking bowl, saucer and milky teapot. The teapot’s handle is in shape of a small snake-like dragon. The drinking bowl is brimmed now. Reflecting the daylight the film over the tea surface wavers making circles and giving trembling yellowish-green sobs because I blow to cool the tea--I pour some more tea--the surface tightens, and another moment a few drops of tea is in the saucer and turning into flat puddles. But all this subsides suddenly: the tea surface is like a becalmed sea, and the millimeter brim of the drinking bowl is like an assurance: that’s will be all right, no more emotions or undulating circles--down with shocks!--only the calm filling the content of the drinking bowl, and the even warming its porcelain. Presently I pour some more tea once again--agitation again--the tea billows, trembles and reproaches silently: “Why? I’ll be in the saucer right now. Couldn’t you leave the saving brim? Couldn’t you take the drinking bowl in hands and get it carefully to your lips, carefully as though it is a cup from the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, and make a sensible burning sip?” The drinking bowl is irritated too, for the teapot can brim it any moment, and again the trembling and guessing will begin: whether it brims over or not? what extent the film can hold to, not spilling its soul?--and the canning provocative teapot tries the nerves of the Japanese-bowl, knowing that the saucer insures it. These things live their own life, filling each other and entrails with the tasty drink and tealeaves, catching the shades, fingers’ caress and sways of the world. The things imbibe all what’s going on around, and it makes no matter how much time will pass--5 years or 500--for somebody will pour boiled water, making aroma tea, will blow and drink in a sunless room or in the sun--nothing will change, just like the inland sea of my love for my beloved ones, humans and animals, which makes to believe that the sea is an offspring of the Niagara Falls or Marianas Trench, and other geisha will bow catching a moment which is beautiful.
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from The Knight who Slept on the Snow by Henri de Regnier
Here lives he who had no adventures because he was too up to date to the era that is no more. Hence there are my loneliness and the fact that I seem proud toward the fate. The meanness of what the fate offered me justified my abstaining from condescending to that. I have limited my desires confining some things that are the desires’ symbols rather than simple things. I have added some flowers to them here and there. The flowers have no other meaning but themselves, and I dearly love them for that. I have several glass and crystal things on the stands. Isn’t that’s enough to have only one vessel to inevoke all the springs we never drank from? Similary, in the frosting of the windowpane I see drawings of the shores I never moored to, and the forests where I never got lost.
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*my favorite song*
“StaY
By My Side!
Say
(ah-ah-ah…ah-ah-AH)”--
there is so much of the past in the music, so much of youth and desire, so much of pain and beauty. But a cry is not pain, and music is not pain--sooner it’s an endless desire, sex desire, I venture to say. The weather of December feeds my doubts. I’m immersed in my work, I merge with planes, railway stations, hotel apartments and faces; I’m adaptable, I’ve learnt some clichés of acrid intonations and panegyrics, it’s easy for me to generate new ideas or to catch eyes of the faceless mob. I admit, in my wish to live at peace with myself and not with society is a good deal of mysterious, Tibetan and forbidden--esoteric. Who knows… I have my own rhythm that is out of tune with the tired streets. The music stops. The next song. It’s the radio in the supermarket. In the song, which I’ve enjoyed but just and which can be often heard over the radio, I can understand only two words of the refrain: “Stay!” and “Say”. If only anybody told me the names of the song and the singer… A young man’s voice.
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links:
This is the wonderful blog of my friend Emiel Maes from Belgium:
http://ploeg4b.skynetblogs.be/post/5398555/l-o-n-d-o-n
The astonishing adventures of Lord Likely:
http://lordlikely.co.uk/
Le Blog 2007. The Esthetic of Senses. A regularly updated personal photography collection of nature, architecture, artistic nudes and other blows of hearts. Our universe is perhaps yours! Daniel & Didier:
http://danieletdidier.blogspot.com/
the website for carrot lovers:
http://www.thecarrottykid.co.uk/
promoting my book--and myself
http://www.blog.co.uk/user/ohlala007/
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fancy-pansy for ever
The garden attracted with the honeyed bitterness of herbs and the bluish-milky air. The star-spangled sky looked like his long velvet array. His gloves, made of bewitched bat-skin, matched his deep-purple gown. His golden hair was done as a ponytail; his iceblink-coloured eyes were veiled with black eyelashes. When he looked skywards, the fiery flashes made his eyes grayish-blue, and the hosts of heaven admired him at the moment. The magic seal-ring of the moon lit his way. While walking noiselessly he peered at the secluded corners of the garden, and merged with rustles and cicadas’ singing. His baldric had only a sword. The quiver full of barbed arrows was left at the palace. Knowing the language of flowers and stones, he preferred to listen to stones, though they kept silence for centuries, imbibing the sweet infusion of the peace. Now he continued his way in the garden, which he laid out yesterday--two millenniums ago.
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/14/fancy_pansy~2093231
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my jocosity
Some jokes about the Muscovites:

At present Moscow looks like a dosser who has visited the barber’s but just, manicured, pedicured, put a new dinner-jacket on over his dirty underwear, and went to play in the casino.

One of Ten Commandments: “Don’t steal! The government dislikes to have competitors”.

The only way to make Russian people observe laws is to legalize thievery.

The Russian doctors’ dream: May the poor never be ill! May the rich never get better!

A story of a woman:
“On the 9th of May my husband felt unwell, and I called ambulance. The ambulance car arrived only on the 11th of May. In the first place the doctor asked some vodka, then he gave an injection into the sofa and left”.

A true story of an Englishwoman:
On the eve of the New Year holyday she had to go to London by plane. In the Moscow airport she went through registration in the VIP-hall. And she was highly indignant at the unexpected fact that the woman-clerk was tipsy.
“Where is your manager?” said the English woman, “I have to tell him about you!”
The woman-clerk told her where she could find the manager at the moment. The Englishwoman came in the room and saw the vice-manager of the airport was sitting at the desk, being drunk as a lord. The Englishwoman could speak Russian a little and she cried out: “Shocking! You are dead drunk!”
The vice-manager of the airport was genuinely surprised, and hardly being able to lift his eyelids he said: “I am drunk? You’ve not seen the crew of the plane, which you’ll take”.
The Englishwoman was scared out of her seven senses, and she refused to fly to London that evening. She celebrated the New Year in Moscow. And the holyday was unforgettable for her.

Other jokes:

“Open, sesame!” With the help of these words, for six days Alibaba was trying to enter the Internet.

Lately the most famous prophet has died suddenly. It’s Mike Tyson asked the prophet to cast his horoscope, and the prophet said openly that Tyson was born in the Year of the Black Monkey.

In Jordan one Arab contrived to sell--at an exorbitant price--to an American soldier--the watch that used to belong to the prophet Mahomet himself.

Fidel Castro said that he wouldn’t put up his own candidature for the presidency for the next 50 years.
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more poetry
For students-specialist in the philology of the Slavs: There is a good poem about Dostoevsky, his country and his time. The poem begins with the stanza:
“The country shudders.
And Convict of Omsk
has known all,
and all he’s given up for lost”.
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signs of the times or off topic
More gossip about the Muscovites. The FSB/KGB agents respectively are rather good guys, but all together they are a sort of a national calamity. It is said, they in the FSB patronize the criminal groups (in the proper sense of the word) and even are present at criminal showdowns (imagine that!), and what’s more, a winner at such a criminal showdown is the criminal group of which FSB patron’s rank is higher (LOL!). I take it the ending of the showdown should do without blood-shedding. Friedrich Nietzsche said: “He who fights against monsters, has to look after himself not to turn into a monster. Try to observe an abyss too long, and the abyss will look in your eyes”. This is a good advice to the Muscovite policemen of all ranks and departments.
If this brief note sounds like a denunciation, then I’m glad; I really enjoy doing my small denunciation and am about to keep on doing something of the kind in the future.
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