I'd Say I've Gone Fishing, But I Actually Hate Fishing

Fig. 1. Utagawa Kuniyoshi - Fishermen at Teppozu, early 1830s


'It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.'

Charles Baudelaire

Addendum: Anon's poetry corner ...

Ophelie

1

Sur l'onde calme et noire où dorment les étoiles
La blanche Ophélia flotte comme
un grand lys,
Flotte très lentement,c ouchée
en ses longs voiles ...
- On entend dans les bois des hallalis.

Voici plus de mille ans que
la triste Ophélie
Passe, fantôme blanc, sur le long fleuve noir.
Voici plus de mille ans que
sa douce folie
Murmure sa romance à la brise du
soir.

Le vent baise ses seins et déploie
en corolle
Ses grands voiles bercés mollement
par les eaux;
Les saules frissonnants pleurent
sur son épaule,
Sur son grand front rêveur s'inclinent les roseaux.

Les nénuphars froissés soupirent
autour d'elle;
Elle éveille parfois, dans un aune
qui dort,
Quelque nid d'où s'échappe un petit
frisson d'aile:
- Un chant mystérieux tombe des astres d'or.

2

O pâle Ophélia! belle comme la neige!
Oui tu mourus, enfant, par un fleuve emporté!
- C'est que les vents tombants des
grands monts de Norwège
T'avaient parlé tout bas de l'âpre
liberté;

C'est qu'un souffle, tordant ta grande chevelure,
A ton esprit rêveur portait d'étranges bruits;
Que ton coeur écoutait le chant de la Nature
Dans les plaintes de l'arbre et les soupirs des nuits;

C'est que la voix des mers folles,
immense râle,
Brisait ton sein d'enfant, trop humain et trop doux;
C'est qu'un matin d'avril, un beau cavalier pâle,
Un pauvre fou, s'assit muet à tes genoux!
Ciel! Amour! Liberté! Quel rêve,
ô pauvre Folle!
Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige
au feu;
Tes grandes visions étranglaient ta
parole
- Et l'Infini terrible effara ton oeil bleu!

3

- Et le Poéte dit qu'aux rayons des étoiles
Tu viens chercher, la nuit, les fleurs que tu cueillis,
Et qu'il a vu sur l'eau, couchée en ses longs voiles,
La blanche Ophélia flotter, comme
un grand lys.

Arthur Rimbaud

Eugene and Caspar Jump Through Plato's Window

Fig. 1. Caspar David Friedrich - Sunrise over the Sea, c. 1826


EDMUND: You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself - actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! ... Then another time, on the American line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A clam sea, that time. Only a lazy groundswell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which sleep together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came, the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbour, the joy of belonging to a fulfilment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! (He grins wryly.) It was a great mistake, my being born a man. I would have been much more successful as a sea-gull or fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!

From Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

The Sunday Six: Bill Viola - Ocean Without A Shore, 2007 (video installation)

Fig. 2a. & 2b.

Addendum #1:

Interview with Bill Viola at the Venice Biennale, 2007 (TateShots)

Addendum #2: Katie (thanks!) and ESVM's poetry corner...

Even though I live close to the Pacific ocean, seeing this Friedrich and reading the O'Neill passage (I so need to re-read Long Day's Journey!) make me think of the Atlantic ocean, and how much the sea meant to my Grandfather. I'm sure he had a similar sense of a bigger belonging when out at sea.

I'll lay off the ESVM for a while as I'm sure you're tiring of her, but she had such strong feelings about her beloved Maine coast, and I think she and Edmund would have been a good match:

Inland

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore, -
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for, -
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning, -
One salt taste of the sea once more?

Addendum #3: Anonymous' (thanks!) poetry corner...

L'Homme et la mer

Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroument infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer

Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.

Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abimes;
O mer, nul ne connait tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!

Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
O lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!

Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)

Builders Of Ten-Fingered Bridges To Aural Fantasias

Fig. 1. Andreas Feininger - Brooklyn Bridge by Night, 1945


'The whole of visible universe is only a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination assigns a place and a relative value; it is a kind of nourishment that the imagination must digest and transform.'

Charles Baudelaire

Your Ears Will Orgasm #48c: Franz Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsodies 13-19, played by Michele Campanella (MixPod Player)

13. No.13 in A minor
14. No.14 in F minor
15. No.15 in A minor (Rákóczy March)
16. No.16 in A minor
17. No.17 in D minor
18. No.18 in F sharp minor
19. No.19 in D minor

Even Though The Fat Lady Has Not Stopped Singing

Fig. 1. Wilhelm Freddie - Monument, 1941


'Opera once was an important social instrument - especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.'

Luciano Berio

Addendum: Anonymous' (merci beaucoup!) poetry corner...

La Musique

La musique souvent me prend comme une mer!
Vers ma pâle étoile,
Sous un plafond de brume ou dans un vaste ether,
Je mets à la voile;

La poitrine en avant et les poumons
gonflés
Comme de la toile,
J'escalade le dos des flots amoncelés
Que la nuit me voile;

Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions
D'un vaisseau qui souffre;
Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions

Sur l'immense gouffre
Me bercent. D'autres fois, calme plat, grand miroir
De mon désespoir!

Charles Baudelaire

Never Stop Talking To The Animals (Happy Birthday)

Fig. 1. Paul Klee - Cat and Bird, 1928

'Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.'

Leonard Cohen

Your Ears Will Orgasm #38: Takako Minekawa - Fantastic Cat (MixPod Player)

Addendum: A wonderful contribution from "Anonymous". Thank you!

Les Chats

Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.

Amis de la science et de la volupté
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;
L'Erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;

Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Etoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.

Charles Baudelaire

Kindling The Light Of Meaning In Crepuscular Times*

The Sunday Six - Part Four (Relatively Romantic):

Fig. 1. Bill Henson - Untitled #1, 2007/08

Fig. 2. Bill Henson - Untitled #3, 2007/08

Fig. 3. Bill Henson - Untitled #6, 2007/08

Fig. 4. Bill Henson - Untitled #18, 2007/08

Fig. 5. Bill Henson - Untitled #27, 2007/08

Fig. 6. Bill Henson - Untitled #38, 2007/08

'In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.'

Charles Baudelaire

* 'As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.' Carl Jung