Incompleteness in Absence...

Some lines which make you think, feel, dream and wonder...


Tagore:

"From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest."

"When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing."

"You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long."

Pablo Neruda-
"I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul."


"Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand. I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know."

John Donne:

"For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love..."

Painters speak...

Just found some wonderful sayings of some of the greatest painters the world has seen. Publishing them here, lest I should lose them.

Paul Cezanne:

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.

Henri Matisse:

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Claude Monet:

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

Vincent Van Gogh:

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of

everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.

I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

Leonardo Da Vinci:

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

Andy Warhol:

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work', because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.

Salvador Dali:

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.

The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments.

Thoughts...

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

~Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses.


One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.~Rachel Carson

Poem Recordings

I found this wonderful site where you can hear rare recordings of poems by the poets themselves. Click on each poem to read and listen.

There's a plethora of great poets you can pick from. The link to the most striking one, that of T.S. Eliot, I give here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7069

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,

Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river

I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

Like geese about the sky.

The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,

O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

And the deep river ran on.

- W.H. Auden

Listen to this poem in the voice of Dylan Thomas: http://static.salon.com/mp3s/premium/thomas/dylan_thomas_collection/cd5_a_visit_to_america/05_as_i_walked_out.mp3

Lines from Kurt Tucholsky

“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.”

“Nothing is more difficult and nothing requires more character than to find oneself in open opposition to one's time (and those one loves) and to say loudly: No!”

Lines Written In Early Spring -William Wordsworth

I HEARD a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:—-

But the least motion which they made,

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature's holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?