In my bedroom early morning hours January 7th 2018

Gerringong, NSW

The heat almost unbearable tonight; like the years lost to phantasms; memories which mock till sucked dry; the roundness of my back a parachute; this body once carved from Greek marble; the teasing of a spirit which stays young; the soft flesh and decay of teeth; tonight this is not who I am; tonight I am a god smearing moonlight on my face; I am a poet until the sunrise; and my hair is thick and hiding a multitude of stories; Augustine of Hippo “ever-present eternity”; “[y]et the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness” (Khalil Gibran); “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise” (Dan. 12:1); I hear the waves crashing onto the shore; years ago the Pacific Ocean almost claimed me; the water has been after me since the womb; vodka; voda; little water; you can drift off nicely with a huge ear; tympanic membrane; Bugs Bunny “Rabbit of Seville”; Syd Barrett busking in Paris before his conflagration; Estas Tonne’s burning fingers whirling dervishes in Madrid; the blind guitar player on Piccadilly Circus looks my way; word association associative patterns; “[w]ild, wild horses we’ll ride them some day” (The Rolling Stones); Eleni wakes up to a nightmare; J.P. Morgan; the ‘1907 Panic’; the Federal Reserve System; do understand it is a private trust; this generation has been reeling in the darkness; algorithms are without soul; ‘number crushing’ will be reversed; to the right on top my side drawer four books; The Handmaid’s Tale; Titus Andronicus; The Robots of Dawn; David Brooks' The Fern Tattoo; to the left on top my side drawer; the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece; a pair of blue crystal angels; a prayer rope; a Rubics cube; a bronze owl from Istanbul; the stories from Paphos almost done; I enjoyed drafting these on the mountain; I might send them to Westerly; I am nodding off; I will sleep for a few hours; here on this bed you were conceived; 5.47 AM; “From bed and sleep hast Thou raised me up”; dreamt of my Father sitting on a ledge in his suit; episodic memory; aromatic incense; Lily of Aegina; 2 charcoal pieces; Surrealism and the unconscious; Salvadore Dali (1904-1989);  camouflage; concealing colouration; “[y]ou can close your eyes to reality but not to memories” (Stanislaw Jerzy Lec); it is a little cooler; remnants will be left behind; my pillow wet like London rain; I am getting a new laptop; I wish I did not need one; nobody needs Facebook; great alphabets are hidden in our backyard; “[o]nly the body remembers stillness”; Elvia Garcia Ardalani; back soon must quench my thirst; chilled tomato juice; savoury crackers and cheddar cheese; a short black; Boat Harbour Rock Pool; Seven Mile Beach; Cathedral Rocks; midnight Christmas services the Julian Calendar; typewriter patented on this day (1714); total fire bans are in place; motifs return in different keys; they come back on their head; Ludwig van Beethoven; Claude Debussy; Jon Lord; we are all connected; all things touch; except the “internet of things” which has no soul; but Charles Bukowski has soul (1920-1994); Iranian oil tanker fire leaves 32 missing;  “Aussie Flu” outbreak; Donald Trump ‘absolutely’ would talk with Kim Jong-Un; Titus Andronicus; pulp fiction; “Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?” (Titus Andronicus); redemption; “the action of being saved”; recovery; Katina and the little ones at the beach; George gone fishing; my left leg folded under the right has gone to sleep; Tito Colliander (1904-1989); The Way of the Ascetics; searching for faith in a disbelieving world; Pythagoras’ golden thigh; speak to me great river; bite the head off the old serpent; 10:07 AM; I will take a shower; a shower like a baptism promises re-birth; healed in the waters of the Pool of Siloam and the Gihon Spring; blue sundew; purple garlic; dark orange; the dyers guild protected their secrets closely; the porcelain guild even more; my guardian angel above and beyond; Uberveillance is nearer than I thought; who will be able to resist; save your children; blood pressure 157/95; pressure in large arteries; sphygmomanometer; the explosion of colour; diffuse nebulae; interstellar matter; second breakfast: Melba toast, feta cheese, black olives, and a drop of Sangiovese; drafted a poem; revised two translations; listened to Loreena McKennitt; leafed through some old photographs; joyful-sorrow; translate to ‘double-edged sword’; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIS3Y-lZStU;  “I made my song a coat” (W. B. Yeats); Red Mashad Persian Rug; the Blueface Angelfish will dazzle in the Indo-Pacific; diamonds rain down on the surface of Jupiter; Katina and the little ones have returned; George is still with Pops; our neighbours mowing the lawns; the shrieking of Galahs; much cooler and “partly cloudy”; stratus; cumulus; stratocumulous; a postcard from Singapore arrived two days ago; a letter from the bank; an invitation to a wedding; remember Mary Wollstonecraft; she died giving birth to her daughter; the other Mary who wrote Frankenstein; “[i]f I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”; back later don’t go away; 9:47 PM; “The day has passed, and I give You thanks, Lord”; another ritual washing; at least the flesh will be clean; earlier a bowl of lentil soup, onion, olives, with crusty bread; a tall cold beer; a mild cigar; a secure roof; unqualified love; blessings beyond words and so my heart be silent and do not complain; “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever” (Ps.136); belief is action and movement; belief is not dogmatic it is ongoing counsel through the darkness; “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24); Jeremy bouncing a ball downstairs; Eleni drawing pictures in the big room; Frida Kahlo (1907-1954); look on the underside of the image; a magical realist acquainted with grief; I am upstairs in the bedroom; “Beam me up, Scotty” (Star Trek); Google maps; ‘view or edit your timeline’; what will be the truth; to the right of me the bathroom; to the left of me the walk-in wardrobe; and to the front of me “[t]wo roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Robert Frost); Siccar Point; time split into many points; creation and evolution; blue whale; white whale; grey whale; it invariably comes down to triggers; “Stories that educate and inspire those with OCD” (Stuart Ralph); tap… tap… Tao; the Titanic burned; the iceberg came after; like the new world we are building; “dance me to the end of love” (Leonard Cohen); Salome; Isadora Duncan; Martha Graham; chasse triple step; lock step; feather step; Rabindranath Tagore; Nandalal Bose; Niranjan Bhagat; contextual modernism; orchid; lotus; bleeding heart; last week I dreamt I was wrestling with myself; I had the ‘other’ in a tight headlock; subdue that which wars within you; courage; enlightenment; collapsing stars and gamma-ray bursts; all good for now; the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; from the shadow of death; light will dawn; it all goes too quick, the little bird lamented; let us cry together tonight.

Taking notes inside a Bucharest MacDonalds

15 August 2011

Bucharest, Romania

I cut myself shaving this morning when I saw you in the mirror looking back at me; “you yourself are indeed another small world with the sun, moon and stars within you” (Origen); I thought he was a one-winged angel but he was carrying the shopping bag from the inside of his large coat; a deaf Beethoven composing the Appasionata; next to me a big woman has ordered her fourth burger and looks happily content like the Buddha in Bangkok; a young girl is sweeping the floors of broken dreams and timeworn drafts; a bearded old man with a broken ladder has skipped in to tell some stories; the suspicious manager with the gold teeth is keeping an eye on me; the fine-looking woman from across the road has walked off with a fallen angel who missed his train; people should reply to letters within a fortnight at most; George Orwell always replied to his letters even when he was dying; Leo Tolstoi was not an admirer of Shakespeare; a young fellow with a bald patch and a large nose is scratching his armpit in search of answers; I should have ordered the large Coke instead of this cheap beer; my feet hurt from all the running and the taking off; I love Valerie’s photo of Les sprouting up through the trunk of a great tree; a simple stone can fire the imagination with the same force as The Kneeling Nun of New Mexico; despite the heat the forecast for tomorrow is heavy rain followed by possible shipwrecks; more heavy sweeping of the floors and great loss of forensic evidence; Sylvia Plath’s cry for help; outside a little boy in a yellow shirt wishes he was a helicopter; Thomas Merton where are you on Saint Lucy’s Day; “sing us a song you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight” (Billy Joel); notes inégales; what did Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus see; the woman with the one leg has pulled out a large map of the city from her silver purse; remember to ask how to get to Brasov; two old men pleased with the “special deal” are slapping each other on the shoulder and pointing to a place neither wants to go; I am now fifty years and a couple of days old; August 15th the Dormition of the Holy Mother; thank you my dearest Katina; a group of Gypsies are dancing on the street pointing to Ursa Major; we are made of the stuff of stars; one line can save a life more than a great book of a thousand pages; I wonder how many times Mircea Eliade walked up and down this street going about his eternal return; “Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy upon me the sinner”; at what point do we lose our capacity to know God; not random behaviour but yes a “fine tuning” of the universe; Francisco Goya the same as Caravaggio directly onto the canvas; CCTV is everywhere like a second skin which it will soon become; intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance; government denial; laser designators, multi-position mechanisms, skybox satellites; masters of spin, rumour mongers, buyers and sellers of corpses; “Dial F for Frankenstein” (Arthur C. Clarke); Google has actually re-invented the Trojan Horse; there is more to Samsung than you think; Lycett’s Dylan Thomas is another very good read; I cannot get this tune out of my head… I think it’s from the Electric Light Orchestra; OCD is one nightmare after another; Nicholas Tesla is so terribly underrated; a couple of weather wizards have dropped in; really glad to have read Tchaikovsky’s letters; nutcrackers and wooden dolls; you are punishing me, please reply to me; hot white glass slowly stretched; taxis on Bulevardul Banu Manta line the streets like a hive of bees; it all comes down to salvation; Okanokumo, clouds on the hill; maybe I will get some ice cream with caramel sauce; the dogs of Bucharest are in search of their long dead masters; “when you are old and grey and full of sleep and nodding by the fire” (W.B.Yeats); deep down we are all scared that we will be found out; how did Primo Levi really die; progress nowadays has to do with economics and I am sitting in one of its citadels; Augustine’s birds are too sharp this afternoon; I should probably delete this page; Art is no longer the point of beauty; the great gift of comprehension; algorithms will one day choose who amongst us will live or die; I wish that little girl with the green shoes would stop picking at her nose; freedom begins with forgiveness; the Divine Liturgy lifted my spirits today; The Brothers Karamazov dealt atheistic idealism a heavy blow; we are all condemned because one child has died of hunger; hours are sometimes even more precious than love; compassion is the most wonderful of all words; racism is the root of all evil; maybe I should have changed rooms last week; ice particles shape-shift under the sunlight to cause an avalanche; like the hair of an angel which falls to earth; I want to die a good man; Oh, Lord! So many letters I never should have written; Michael Faraday one of humankind's best; beautiful flowers splashed in white; without coal our world would be plunged into darkness; who are the ringmasters; Nero and every other tyrant obsessed with popularity aka “Likes”; the Apocalypse has hurt my mind yet it has not robbed me of hope; “666” I have seen it and it is a merciless thing; Nostradamus relishes playing hind n’ seek with big children; Big Brother is growing enormously fat; be warned Kafka understood ICT; the ghosts in the machine will not need to rest and they will convince us they are not there; please God, please merciful Father, keep the black dog away; sturm und drang; “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence” (Robert Frost); let me be absent from the next to last holocaust; the bones of monks; the fragrant oils of the ossuary; often the real drama is at the back of the pack; the shadow belongs to the thing from which it drops; like prophetic dreams which are not conditional to knowledge; no, I am sorry Ghenadie, I cannot do that; the rhinophores and gills of the nembrotha cristata; the Moab desert in Utah was once home to fish; on Naxos midget elephants have been trapped in stone; and then like John Steinbeck “gradually I write one page and then another”; I will go now and make sure to look for a short-cut; an impossibility like a little book on Chinese motifs.