Into your wilderness

somewhere deep dark and distant where mossy greens blend into midnight blues and fireflies go about their lives with no fascination about them

there is no extraordinary stirring of leaves by silently whirling breezes which did not already exist otherwise

from within the womb of such plumage rooted snug in soil a misty light softly tender with lavender embers rises gently like fragrant smoke

hardly discernible for no eyes are watching this barely birthed glow makes its way up soaking all else in between with its nothingness

the enchantment of this undefinition reviving all germ, shoot and bloom to blossom into essence each its own

a symphony of unseen spirits breaks into harmonies unrehearsed each mute note falling into the place that it is making

the air coils in dreamy spirals and no one can tell where the earth meets the sky as stars bathed in this formless luminescence dance

somewhere deep dark and distant where mossy greens blend into midnight blues and fireflies go about their lives with no fascination about them

the druid of life in silent constancy brews his alchemy and perhaps you do not grasp this beauty for you remain too caught up with other things.  

(Penned March 20, 2010)

Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour

A song I've been scouting for, high and low for years on end, until I found it thanks to http://twitter.com/beastoftraal

Here's a nice version of it  http://bit.ly/lCtgB

Belle nuit (Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffman)

NICKLAUSSE

Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour,
souris à nos ivresses,
nuit plus douce que le jour,
ô belle nuit d'amour!

GIULIETTA, NICKLAUSSE

Le temps fuit et sans retour emporte nos tendresses!
Loin de cet heureux séjour, le temps fuit sans retour.
Zéphyrs embrasés, versez-nous vos caresses;
zéphyrs embrasés, versez-nous vos baisers,
Ah! Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour, souris à nos ivresses,
nuit plus douce que le jour, ô belle nuit d'amour!

______________________________________________

A barcarolle (from French; also Italian barcarola, barcarole) is a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style. In classical music, the three most famous barcarolles are those by Jacques Offenbach, from his opera The Tales of Hoffmann, Frédéric Chopin's Barcarolle in F sharp major for solo piano, and guitarist Agustin Barrios's Julia Florida.

A barcarolle is characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier's stroke, almost invariably a moderate tempo 6/8 meter. While the most famous barcarolles are from the Romantic period, the genre was well-enough known in the 18th century for Burney to mention, in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771), that it was a celebrated form cherished by "collectors of good taste."

It was a popular form in opera, where the apparently artless sentimental style of the folk-like song could be put to good use: in addition to the Offenbach example, Paisiello, Weber, and Rossini wrote arias which were barcarolles, Gaetano Donizetti set the Venetian scene at the opening of Marino Faliero (1835) with a barcarolle for a gondolier and chorus, and Verdi included a barcarolle in Un Ballo in Maschera: (Richard's atmospheric "Di tu se fidele il flutto maspetta" in Act I).

Arthur Sullivan set the entry of Sir Joseph Porter's barge (also bearing his sisters, cousins and aunts) in HMS Pinafore to a barcarolle. Schubert, while not using the name specifically, used a style reminiscent of the barcarolle in some of his most famous songs, including especially his haunting "Auf dem Wasser zu singen" ("to be sung on the water"), D.774.  

Just like that

It was most remarkable.

A revisited notion.

Startling perhaps even.

Happening in un-happening.

How do the dust specks fall?

And into what design?

Random Elysium.

Much like the word occurred to me.

Out of nothingness at all.

And then it meant something.

And while I watched it crystallize,

It vanished. 

(Penned March 16, 2010)

Shiro and Stitch

I could clearly see her heart. It was within plain sight.

It was getting clenched in a cage of bony fingers which was tightening around it. Stronger and faster, it was trying its best to beat inspite of it, its bulbous, morphing redness barely contained in between the bars. 

She tried to swallow, shoving a certain emptiness down her gullet but it just wouldn’t go down as if all the vacuum in the world gravidly swelled to lay claim to her tender pathways. Her face grew pale and blue.

I felt as if all her color was rapidly commanded, polarized instantly into a spinning vortex at the very centre of an unnamed spot, deep in the very inside of her, just below her diaphragm. I imagined her dizzying in a swoon any moment now but I have no idea what still kept her standing. Perhaps it was me.  

“There’s been a car crash.”

It was getting cold, really, really cold and very, very quickly. Her hand, seeming suddenly old and hideously shriveled, reached out to the edge of the vanity as did mine. She needed to balance.

Rising above everything that was all choked up inside, a mumble, barely audible and most dry, surfaced, “She was there, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. She died on the spot.”

“What about him?”

“He breathes; on the ventilator.”

She had no idea what that meant. Her brain could not grapple with the science of it. I could feel a hundred odd sparks being born and instantly dying within her, the static making the hair at the back of her neck and mine, stand on end. She knew she would have to step out. She knew she would have to go.

She gazed into the mirror. Her eyes, first gently sweeping to it and then transfixed. She was plunging into her eyes, closely, deeply and then into mine. The electricity her body was making bounced off the mirror through her eyes searing my nothingness with an icy flame. It felt as if she sensed that I was inside of her, that we are stitched at the eyes. She was clearly unafraid.

What do I do Shiro? Do I take him away? Tell me. All I have to do is hold out my hand.

She could hear me. I echoed inside her shell. She stood there, gazing and unflinching, lips un-quivering, stitched shut. Mute.

-

He lay there, oblivious. The machine pumping into his lungs as well as the oiling would permit, in solemn synchrony.

I knew she could not see him crouched on the floor in the far corner of the room, battered, cut, spangled with our drying blood.

Tell me Shiro. What do I do? Do I take him away?

She could not even get herself to want to reach out to his hand.

-

The clock was ticking. She blinked like it hurt. The stitching was unraveling. We were coming apart. We were peeling off, separating ever so silently like the bark off a tree.

“Take him away” she willed inside of her, still choking and stepping back to turn out of the room. 

From where I was, I knew she meant every word.

-

The worst thing anyone can do is keep from someone things they truly deserve to know.

(Penned March 1, 2010)