A Book Is Paper Infected With The Virus Of Language

Fig. 1. Andreas Gursky - Bibliotek, 1999


'It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.'

Oscar Wilde

Hail The Season Of Mists And Mellow Fruitfulness*

Fig. 1. Jacob Cats - Autumn Landscape with Rainbow, 1779


'Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.'

Albert Camus

* From Ode to Autumn by John Keats

Addendum: Katie and ESVM's poetry corner...

I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that you're heading into Autumn, and I'm eagerly awaiting Spring. ESVM and I can deal with two seasons at the same time though:

Autumn Daybreak

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,

I know−for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor−
How many boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.

Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;

When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.

Yes, You Can Colour My Pleasure Night Vermillion*

Fig. 1. Takashi Murakami (click) - Army of Mushrooms, 2001


'I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.'

Hunter S. Thompson

Addendum: Click Meeee! Click Meeee!

One Point English Lesson (from Vermillion Pleasure Night) - Lesson 1: First Rate Cunt Lapping

The Fuccons (from Vermillion Pleasure Night) - Trailer

* With thanks to Dive for bringing Vermillion Pleasure Night to my attention.

M.A.E.W.I.T.C.P.Y.H.F.J.D.Q.L.K.Z.S.B.X.O.V.R.U.G.N. ...

Fig. 1. Giacomo Balla - Velocità astratta + rumore (Abstract Speed + Sound), 1913-14

'I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.'

Baruch Spinoza

Addendum:

Fig. 2. M. C. Escher - Circle Limit II, 1959

Fig. 3. Annual migration of the Golden Ray

Feeling (And Seeing) The World As A Limited Whole*

Fig. 1. Desiree Dolron - Xteriors VIII, 2004


'Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively.'

John Berger

'Feeling the world as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.' (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Six More Flaming Rhapsodies In Red, White & Green

Fig. 1. On March 8th 2008, pianist Yosuke Yamashita donned a fireproof suit and played a burning piano on a beach in Ishikawa prefecture. The improvised jazz performance went for about 10 minutes until the flames rendered the piano silent. (With thanks to Pink Tentacle.)

'The key to the mystery of a great artist is that, for reasons unknown, he [sic] will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another ... [leaving] us with the feeling that something is right in the world.'

Leonard Bernstein

Your Ears Will Orgasm #48b: Franz Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsodies 7-12, played by Michele Campanella (MixPod Player)

7. No. 7 in D minor
8. No. 8 in F sharp minor
9. No. 9 in E flat (Pesther Carneval)
10. No. 10 in E (Preludio)
11. No. 11 in A minor
12. No. 12 in C sharp minor

Sometimes, Kisses Are A Better Fate Than Wisdom*

Fig. 1. Marlene Dumas - The Kiss, 2003


'A kiss, when all is said, what is it? / ... 'Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear.'

Edmond Rostand

* since feeling is first (e.e. cummings)

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Addendum: Larissa (thank you!) writes:

I adore e. e. cummings. Here's another great poem by him:

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands