The Absurd

There is a certain absurdity about the tropics and it is a certain absurdity that one would do well revel in. Firm and fecund follows alongside foetid and futile. A tropical flower is often a beautiful allegory to life. A life that forever aspires sun-wards, reaching and grasping for the unobtainable distant fiery firmament but in its maturity creates a sensual beauty that turns earthward and, like the divine weight of a breast in the palm of the hand, is tactile symbolism of all that is not us and our brave attempts to know the other, to feel as the other feels and to transmit those fleeting, Faustian fantasies that make life what it is, or, at least what it could be...

We could equally be talking about the Datura (OK for the pedant it would be the Brugmansia, but datura sounds better!) that poisonous "Angel's trumpet" which is most kaliesque in its beauty:

Racines and romance

The datura hangs but does not drip.

Its flowers, not the living wax of the poet,

But the trumpet of death.

Why would a flower so full; buxom.

Why would a flower, fully fecund like that, droop drearily to the earth?

Because we are to conditioned to believe that all that is good is up.

There is only one down and that is hell.

The earth is dark, dirty and damned

So, damn all those that find life and reason there.

Damn all those that cannot up lift their faces

And receive the blessings of a god on high.

Damn those that would seek their own identity

In the roots; the very earth of their creation.

And have the courage to rejoice,

Shouting their defiance at a jealous god.

Damn the datura for its presumption.

Damn the datura for it is free

And its beauty betrays its freedom.

Perhaps, these are not trumpets, they are amplifiers

And their scent is their interpretation of the life that caresses their roots.

The language of the flowers is not some nonsensical Victorian sentimentalism.

The language of flowers is their scent, their colour, their tactility

Each one speaks to us in its own language,

Each one describes in its own way the experiences

Of its deep and intimate relationship with the earth,

The Earth.

Each element of creation speaks

In its own manner, by its actions

The scent of the flower,

The song of the bird,

The breaking of a wave.

What then is human society

A dying testament to our relationship with creation?

…and we amalgamate all these mutated half-lives,

These narcissistic fancies and call it society

And that must be protected at all costs....

More grey...

For the last decade everything has become grey. From shades thereof to waxed concrete we are creating an absurd and anodyne dualism that is reflected in our moral perversity. Happily, there is far much more to life than the baying of the herd, the black and white cattle of humanity, who will, one day block up the windows, block out the sun and...

... fortunately, fail.

Shades of grey

So just what is the difference between colour and black and white ? The former is more concerned with the interplay of light on the form. one apprehends the image in some hinterland midway between the eye and the image. There is a strange interaction of the eye reflecting the colour of the colour reflecting the eye.


Black and white is more tactile, it has more depth and is somewhat more brutal. it is about substance. These are the things that are and not as they seem to be. The eye is apart from the apprehension, alone it cannot comprehend. We need to touch the image ...


But, after all, they are but images. Reflections on perception that should inspire one to seek form and substance, that sensual connectivity, wherever one can.

Winter

Cetain etters have refused t wk n my keybard which means that this text is even mre pathetic than ever. S, this is hw he wrte Ridey Waker.



Unti next time enjy the pics !

Twisted limbs and communication crucifix.

What tangled webs we weave and how tangly woven with our own limbs. Seeing writhing human forms in Banyan trees is probably not a good start to a Sunday morning especially after watching the setting of the full moon. And, no, I didn't see the eclipse as it was on the other side of the island behind a great 3072m lump of volcanic rock.





Entangled vines, twisted limbs and lines of communication all on a Sunday. Communion or communication whose is the new god ?


...and then the trees start to walk.


Life is far more tranquil at the rising of the day and the setting of the moon.

KISSING AND HORRID STRIFE - a photographic poem

KISSING AND HORRID STRIFE

I have been defeated and dragged down by pain
and worsted by the evil world-soul of today.

But still I know that life is for delight
and for bliss
as now when the tiny wavelets of the sea
tip the morning light on edge, and spill it with delight
to show how inexhaustible it is:

And life is for delight, and bliss
like now when the white sun kisses the sea
and plays with the wavelets like a panther playing with its cubs
cuffing them with soft paws,
and blows that are caresses,
kisses of the soft-balled paws, where the talons are.

And life is for dread,
for doom that darkens, and the Sunderers
that sunder us from each other,
that strip us and destroy us and break us down
as the tall foxgloves and the mulleins and mallows
torn down by dismembering autumn
till not a vestige is left, and black winter has no trace
of any such flowers;
and yet the roots below the blackness are intact:
the Thunderers and the Sunderers have their term,
their limit, their thus far and no further.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife.
Life is for the angels and the Sunderers.
Life is for the daimons and the demons,
those that put honey on our lips, and those that put salt.
But life is not
for the dead vanity of knowing better, nor the blank
cold comfort of superiority, nor silly
conceit of being immune,
nor pueriIity of contradictions
like saying snow is black, or desire is evil.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife,
the angels and the Sunderers.
And perhaps in unknown Death we perhaps shall know
Oneness and poised immunity.
But why then should we die while we can live ?
And while we live
the kissing and communing cannot cease
nor yet the striving and the horrid strife.

D.H. LAWRENCE

Untangled webs and twisted minds