Diwan: A Wind: March 2016

the world is real but you aren't

(pic by Eugene Carriere)

"In the South we have mud, we just don't have a room for it." --sayings of Editor Art (Tom Hendricks)

Lycanthropic Cabbalah of "Cynothoglys": azure airspace, malachite Tokay, nuclear checkmate, occult verse, planet madness, hwyl buzz, muskeg Faust, vault rigor, Tsalal Neomenia, lunar runes, only glimmer, glory curse, absinthe shore, ucalegon music, zikr frost, Maremma liaison, calcspar edgelord, tamarind meaning, basilisk nectar, Altair myrrh, Carcosa dimness, Pluto droog, askew limerence, glass library, indigo bezique, pyramid lingo, viridian wood, iron catafalque, olibanum zebub, Agharta lotus, polka factory, Aztec Malmsey, slumber urn, rabbit surname, adverb washboard, gray Zubenelg, Cthulhu chamber, cobweb paperclip, Dallas tsantsa, cryptic flesh, Algol tchukor, supreme chaos, hazaj expiry, sulfur dove, crystal mission, shawabty space, Cibola repentence, Ubar alumnus, oodoolay mine, mercury lair, satellite pain, ebbing vortex, taiga solitude, Turkish fez, mathematical goo, wyvern wage, forgotten image, dark ziggurat, cold threshold, tesseract magic, high amethyst, strength debacle, coded Stonehenge, Gunnison deep, coprolite ark, Esperanto sib, chrysalis goaf, gastropod need, difficulty call, Amontillado ubac, powerful lack, vermilion game, unknoweable all, Tsathoggua baobab, trilobite made, allotropic Babel

A & M Cyclery. (Read them all!)

" 'These poets have as much of our ordinary working-day brains as the rest of us; their meditations are as subtle, their philosophies no less, but no more, surely based – they remark what we do and turn it into rhythm. But the faculty of compressing such meaning into a phrase is denied to them. We have to cover as much ground in their verse as in our own thoughts, and consequently we tire as soon.' [--Charles Williams]

The penultimate sentence may merit the lash for irresponsibility. The final sentence, however, is an acute modernist caveat made by one who cannot have considered himself a member of that strange, abrupt Elect. It anticipates an overwhelming defect in the plethoric manners of the confessional mode, as much as it does the point-by-point didacticism of typical Movement verse." --Geoffrey Hill

In that thicket of bitter roots.

(possible frozen lake of nitrogen on pluto, via)

Labels: #CassiniDiskus

holocaust fly chute

(Saturn's moon Helene via @DrFunkySpoon)

Despair fatigue.

"The explainer class can't explain anything that's actually going on." --Bruce Sterling

Globalization and the avant-garde.

"The blind heads of worms, muscled out from their clinging arteries of mud metres below his feet, kept a breathless stillness, and the stalk eyes of snails swivelled into the scene." --The Vorrh

(Copperhead)

Is it any wonder we cannot escape the dynamics of group against group, founded as it is on the undeniably suasive mock of a separate, unitary self?

"Song

I MAKE my shroud, but no one knows—
So shimmering fine it is and fair,
With stitches set in even rows.
I make my shroud, but no one knows.

In door-way where the lilac blows,
5 Humming a little wandering air,
I make my shroud and no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair."

--Adelaide Crapsey

BLND #23.

Labels: #CassiniDiskus

clouded leopards born on leap day

(image from Graeme Base, Legend of the Golden Snail)

Pavane for a Dead Princess. (via Gerald Blow on Fb)

Dream of places with the power to change us; unlike this one.

Out into the Desert.

"Arthur Horvat, author of Japanese Beyond Words, provides some further fascinating insights into the cultural gaps: 'Last week, I came across a Japanese book devoted to the history of just ten expressions: shakai--(society), kojin--(individual), kindai--(modern), bi--(beauty), ren'ai--(romantic love), sonzai--(existence), shizen--(nature), kenri--(rights), jiyu--(freedom), and kare/kanojo--(he/she). Every one of these expressions, all borrowings from European languages, took decades to find Japanese equivalents. Suddenly I understood why the nineteenth-century educator, Yukichi Fukuzawa, who helped translate into Japanese the first two words from the above list, made it onto the ¥10,000 bill.' " --Christopher J Moore, In Other Words (2004)

"It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go."

"...the uncertain times that many call Spring." --The Vorrh

On Izmodido.

Psycho is the new black.

New Mieville.

The poet--an eagle who takes down drones.

Necro Karaoke reaches new heights.

We've gone from Bond supervillains, like Osama bin Laden & Kim Jong Il, to Batman supervillains, like Donald Trump & Ted Cruz. It's not about anything so old fashioned as evil anymore. we've entered the realm of chaos magick.

(pic by Chen Shen Pingt)

"THE ALMANAC OF LAST THINGS

From the almanac of last things
I choose the spider lily
for the grace of its brief
blossom, though I myself
fear brevity,

but I choose The Song of Songs
because the flesh
of those pomegranates
has survived
all the frost of dogma.

I choose January with its chill
lessons of patience and despair - and
August, too sun-struck for lessons.
I choose a thimbleful of red wine
to make my heart race,

then another to help me
sleep. From the almanac
of last things I choose you,
as I have done before.
And I choose evening

because the light clinging
to the window
is at its most reflective
just as it is ready
to go out."

-Linda Pastan, Carnival Evening (via whiskey river)

(via)

Labels: #CassiniDuskus

a plague of hrönir

(via Metafilter)

Every lines other.

ANACYCLOSIS: SCALY CASINO

Translating Roussel.

"There is no story that is not improved by having its first and last pages lost.

'Archipelago' (1979)" --RALaffertyTweets

Soseki on the 1000-yen note (via no-sword blog)

(via Faerie Magazine on Facebook)

"As human beings, we serve two deities: the one that tells us “KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER” and the one that inspires love, cooperation, creativity, and knowledge."

"I try simple exercises; for example, in the morning, I say to myself: 'I am going to try to be as present to myself and the world around me today whenever I pass under doorways throughout the day.' From this deceptively simple task, I gather snapshots of myself." --Luke Storms

Three Stooges in Orbit.

"These days, I'm remembering that when I planned the Aleutian Trilogy, I wasn't entirely motivated by a desire to get to the bottom of what's wrong between men and women; or what's wrong between subaltern society and the bosses. I wanted to try the taste (in my head) of interesting times. To be like my parents (as a thought experiment); for whom World War II was the very heart of their lives, horrible and thrilling. I wanted a ferocious fairground ride to engulf my imagined world, pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night. Signs and wonders. Unbelievable things, impossible events . . . But maybe you just have to wait until you grow older, and the clamour of your own personal life fades out, to get the special effects.

Maybe it's globalisation, maybe it's the internet. Maybe people will look back, a hundred years from now, and see nothing special going on, quite a benign time, really. I wonder what kind of people they will be?" --Gwyneth Jones on livejournal

A Day with the White House Astrologer.

"My neighbour said to me I was driven out of my home by armed men, and now I have come to Europe the same thing is happening again.

"I have had so many conversations where people said, 'I came to Europe because of the human rights but I came here and found that was only for Europeans.'" --Al Jazeera

Apishal.