Friedrich’s Tomb

For S.L.W.

I.

The concrete is porous, I heard.
As is Time,
You avowed two breaths later
as if Your fate somehow
co-inhabited the axioms.

II.

These haggard steps were perhaps birthed by the mountains
a row of collapsing gravestones,
tenderly guided uphill by roots with quivering skin,
luminescent moss softening the unhurried fall.

Our veins the mycelium, our hearts the filaments
Our linked bodies the budding fruit,
two portholes feeding nutrients
through the gates of Our fingertips,
the tender grip a bridge,
arms stretching across the divide of two worlds,
travelling the crumbling stone
toward the decaying halls of the sky.

III.

Time is only change, you see,
that’s why you cannot undue it,
time only accepts acceleration.
Flawed somewhat, You said,
but please, prey tell.

Listen, listen to the Japanese. There is a term, ‘mono no aware’ which denotes a peculiar attitude toward things, or a receptive mood poised sensitively to the affordances of the world. A relational opening extending to (…). This bundled impression is intimately tied to another aesthetic concept, which revolves around time. Now, there is a notion about the Japanese, that they “see a particular charm in the evidence of old age. They are attracted to the darkened tone of an old tree, the ruggedness of a stone, or even the scruffy look of a picture whose edges have been handled by a great many people.”

(錆), ‘Sabi’, it means to rust.

It incorporates, not just the concept of transience, impermanence, fleetingness, and so on, but also the necessary abstraction, time, as belonging to the thing.
A ‘thing’ is ‘mono’ (物) (in the most general sense);
object, phenomena, matter, being, property, substance, and so on (note the missing essence).
This conception figures into the traditional aesthetic idea of ‘wabi-sabi’, which can be found ubiquitously in Japanese art, and in tedious westernized appropriations, and points toward an enjoyment of a thing’s impermanence, something like ‘mono no aware wabi’. However, that idea is already loaded because the Japanese have here ethically anesthetized and elevated the concept to an idealism. So, sabi is missing. As an intransitive verb, sabi evokes something along the lines of “rusting together”. To reiterate, and more precisely, mono no aware means, most generally, a certain kind of awareness of things, however, the nature of this awareness is properly lacking. It is a type of awareness/sensitivity to things directed in such a way where the ephemeral, transient aspect is entailed in the awareness of one of the elements, which simultaneously implies a deeper field of typically abstract elements, like time (opening the door toward a host of other aspects), enters into a reciprocal relationship, without, imperatively, prioritizing any one specific element in the process. Hence, the translation of sabi as ‘rusting together’. As a result, mono no aware, coupled with the notion of sabi, would translate to a certain sensitivity toward the cyclical and mutually-constitutive relationship between the subject and the thing, bound together in co-mingled rusting…

… rusting together (錆つく).

IV.

Now, You listen, She signalled,
or look, if You prefer,
partially exit Your senses,
as if Your body somehow,
dwelled among the shattered remains.

V.

The gnawed pillars are now spires of the summit,
scattered tombs weeping efflorescence,
a spray of leaves encircling, sent by the wind to
draw the swaying boundaries of the enclosure.

She motioned through the crowned archway,
where vine crawls the rocks, green florets
circuitously pointing the path as they,
seeped through the cavities, while
the damp viridian carpet inundated
fountains underfoot, as We drew closer
to the cavernous nest of time.

Her gregarious song unfurled arcane scrolls,
as She went along, tapestries from inside chambers,
exposing deeper folds beyond the faded doors
releasing lost tales from under the battened ledgers.

V. I.

Without its tainted glass shield,
the window loses sight,
no longer a frame, nor a stage,
where the viewer enacts the most
egregious fallacy of being.
Rivers of light cascade
and surrounding pines,
the world pours in.
Once an ornate rock dome,
presiding over inward huddles,
The ceiling sprouts in brushstrokes
as it clasps the bolstered radiance
of the canvas above.
The withered columns
mere sentries that
guard the innermost cluster,
now burst open as the universe
descends unhindered,
like infinitesimal planetoids
breaking asunder. The vacuum
stirred by omnidirectional crooning.
A prayer of resignation. At night,
the stars blanket the cold floors,
and fractured gemstones are
fossilized by the frozen air, in which
the perennial hymn is preserved.
The heavens held by the distant
chanting – they scaffold the
withering walls, not the other
way around. Echoing boundlessly,
here, the origins of aesthetic creation
reveals itself for what it is, finally
sealing Our tertiary bond.

VI.

Here, time comes to rest,
She added, time comes to die,
to pass, like a burial in reverse,
here, inside the grave, time is lost,
to that most finite of questions,
on whether it managed
to leave a trace. Repeated
ad infinitum, the very arbitrary
rhythm, the very cosmic clockwork
that grounds it. 

The Atemporal Bone of Dionysus

Wir mussen unsere Lebenswelt umsetzen. There is no Place
that is not your Mirror: Else, you would not withdraw
behind the Lines like a shrinking Insect.

Would not fade like Reason’s tamed Echoes
and ripple in hidden Waves through the String
above the Face of the shrieking Wind.

Otherwise, the beckoning Song could not repel you
circled by violent Shivers, dancing inside the Eyes,
sending progressions chanting at the Moon.
His Bones always at Hand,

banging the Drums of the decaying Meat. And yet
his Dream was hunted in Daylight, like the Bird,
whose Flight, for a Moment admired from the Ground,
is stifled with a single blow.

Why X Travels Around the Axis – Part V

Framing that dotted territory, irradiate specks anchoring the molecular chaos of scattered lanterns in a darkened park. Closer emerging, the trembling globe bawls blue, encased in ribbons of florescent jade, a rife organelle body, not yet architecture. Sensing the whole, just as the grasp slips, a sheet seemingly bearing only vagrant intensities breaks into powdered vortexes, the excess intermediary matter hovering like froth upon a frosted forest lake, already breath. Continuing along this gravitational path, the marble flattening against an invisible wall, exposing the vast scaled expanse of moth’s wing, squeezing tightly enough around itself to ooze ridged cubes of life. The exposed and fragile milieu of a huddled internal cosmos, gravity pulling the strings of every nerve, every element bent towards the outside, imagining differentiation where there is only the geography of sea. Why is everything an Ocean? But, look, everything bursts into clusters of pollen, fragmented patches of globular clouds, warm beads of anxious sweat crossing section after section of carbon planets. All haloed in still layers of extra-worldly light, layers of pastel brilliance sedimented in folded shades of blue. Expanding, contracting, the liminal vibrating breath; in this arched world, all is synesthetic breath. Behold the concave vessel of vessels, the systole of froth upon it, the diastole of bubbles beneath, before perspective bares its teeth.
Now, your hovers cease; now you fall toward a spread of green.
An innocent green immediately lost to the speeding fabric of air,
Filling your lungs with geometry.   
Lines drawn, crossing
Grey hexagons, collecting
Monoliths soaked in rain.

He observed her slide along the wet pavement with hands suggestively outspread, waving away the remaining raindrops. “I had forgotten the lights”, he exclaimed to himself. In a low voice, but in a genuine tone of solemn awe. No one heard him, of course, despite the raucous multitude of seemingly disembodied limbs moving arbitrarily to and fro, because, here, the city was the only one who truly spoke. The cellular network wavered in concert to the cacophony, and his towering, slender body trembled like he was readying himself for a jig. He was enthralled. Two aimless steps moved forward, a failed attempt to find his way. He was far too dazzled by the electromagnetic speech of the city. Conversing in oscillating bursts of colours, the city uttered glowing words that flashed vistas of desire, unfolding along a grammatical grid, webbed across vacuum. Underneath the coils of meaning, the phonemes pulsed in radiating, yet deceivingly ordered, flickers – spelling out an invitation to merge with them; offering a rhythm that would even replace the beating of the heart with a pure drumming of forces. He observed how the soaring buildings did not in fact scrape the sky, but instead bent and curved as they pressed higher, eventually forming a vast arc, caked in steel and shimmering glass. In a way, he thought, the city is a self-contained bubble, a kind of neon monad. And its beauty was unquestionable.
Undoubtedly, she was there, behind the drapes, her gesticulating silhouette indicated that much. 

Why X Travels Around the Axis - Part 4

I’m freezing, would you hurry back, and put your arm round mine, and try to stay focused will you, don’t drift off. I need you to count each time we pass the gate, try not to forget the number, it’s imperative that you remember the number. We locked hands. What do you know of the philosophy of the ancients? Nothing, well, nothing aside from fettered figures trapped in a theater of shadows. And the idea of a circle whose center is everywhere … and … circumference nowhere. Thank you. Yes, yes, but no. I’m thinking of Pythagoras, you know, the mystic philosopher and mathematician. I thought they were all mystifying, I interjected. She politely ignored me. Musica Universalis. Music of the spheres they call it, it’s a terribly beautiful idea. On one hand, mathematically determinable melodic rests and ratios emerge between interconnected celestial bodies, where each is an instrument, as it were, in symphony of planets. A pseudo-religious thesis begging for a pre-given harmony of the world. Tedious. On other hand, through their interplay, these orbs birth a particular kind of music. The sounds are so ubiquitous, they cannot be perceived. However, forget Pythagoras, and concentrate on the peculiar nature of this music. In a certain romantic sense, the idea speaks of planetary music, cosmic melodies. Now, leap with me here. The music is conjured, conducted and played, not just by celestial bodies, but the entire world. Everything. And the song is so omnipresent, so condensed, that it is unheard. Silence. Absolute sound inverts into silence. A constituting quietness. Perhaps, the quietness that makes sound possible, despite being the result of sound? I digress. Are you still following? So, Everything, from the infinitesimal, to the cosmic, from excrement, to nebulae; the parts, and sums, and so on, hold hands, or remain estranged, through an overarching silence, a vibrating stillness. Forget, though, about sets, geometric directions or numerical hierarchies, anything proportioned by the senses or the sciences. Rather, it is pure the resonance of things communicated soundlessly, the inaudible stillness of Everything in relation to the silent sum of All. Do you fathom the consequences? Are you counting, by the way? Yes. I lied, and instead I observed the rays slicing in through the fence, becoming dials in the circular clockwork of the garden. My limited perspectival point, though, drifting along the margins of this temporary timepiece, barred me from properly telling the time.

Desperately, I strained to orientate the spatial presence of my body, my traitorous inert limbs, my tilting head, by solely following the sounds in a simple vector. They refused to heed my directives, and furiously scurried and darted in every direction, scattering along the walls, entering a union with the cracks and crevices which increasingly grew wider and denser, slowly consuming the background.