There’s a thread the Idiot follows. It goes among things that change.
London, England
Joined August 2017
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The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
"I'm just trying/ to get through enemy lines / with my words."
Karl Krolow
Translated by Stuart Friebert
If you listened to the latest @OdeAndPsyche on Franz Wright, we discuss Krolow was one of his great German poet influences-- new to me. & Im Loving it so much. – at Quintana Roo, México
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
Mike Eigen is so great. I've been thinking about the rejection of the so-called "mystical" from various angles--he's speaking to it as a dimension or dimensions-of experience. I love how he admits not knowing exactly, keeping open.
& I love
this bit where he feels like a vagina.
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
Ah this is a nice companion piece with the poem below… or an evil twin perhaps?
“This is what I see in my dreams about final exams” A poem by Wislawa Szymborska.
ALT BRUEGHEL'S TWO MONKEYS This is what I see in my dreams about final exams: two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill, the sky behind them flutters, the sea is taking its bath. The exam is History of Mankind. I stammer and hedge. One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain, the other seems to be dreaming away— but when it's clear I don't know what to say he promnpts me with a gentle clinking of his chain.
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
I love this Joseph Ceravolo poem so much
ALT CROSS FIRE This is the second day without anyone. I am chinning against a dark sky to strengthen my arms. A picture of everyone I love passes thru me. No clear light streams thru this cell. There’s no dawn. What have I gained by lying in this abyss, waiting for the masonry to show a little slit for my soul to get through?
Getting my Xmas greetings in early this year. Happy Crimbo 2024, folks!
The Comfort of Bleak Life Mantras youtu.be/-1fWjzUwhH0?si=aikJ… via @YouTube
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
youtu.be/Z7ix7LJt70k?si=JF36… Me and Steve from @TheIdiotsIChing got together on Hampstead Heath a few days ago and talked about Reich & the I Ching in a nice, free flowing chat. Please give it a listen if these topics grab you
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
highly recommend @weirdstudies . the most i've been obsessed with a podcast in forever. listening from the beginning
The most punk rock thing to do? Being earnest.
open.spotify.com/episode/0yP…
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
The extraordinary sequence in Proust’s Time Regained where the narrator fails to recognise a room full of elderly-looking people before realising that, in fact, they’re his friends who have like him become old without realising.
The Idiot’s I Ching retweeted
IT'S HERE🚨 Join me & Alina Stefanescu to discuss Rilke's "The First Elegy," which sets the stage for his decade long inquiry into the inner-outer world of the psyche, experience in the world & the "mission" of his poetic oeuvre 🌬️🔥 @OdeAndPsyche @aliner podcast.ruthstonehouse.org/p… – at Vermont, USA
This may also have been the inspiration, or part of it (tangled tale) of Yeats's poem On A Picture Of A Black Centaur
Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.
I knew that horse-play, knew it for a murderous thing.
What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat,
And that alone; yet I, being driven half insane
Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat
In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain
And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep;
I have loved you better than my soul for all my words,
And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep
Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds.
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Wachtel: You’ve noted that attention is a form of prayer, and from paying attention to who one is, one can then step beyond the border of oneself and then move from there to the creation of a work of art. Can you link that chain for me, tell me more about how that works?
Carson: Yes, well, maybe I can. I don’t remember when I wrote that or what it meant at the time, but lately I’ve been studying John Cage and I think that’s something I very much appreciate in him, that he moves or tries to move to a place of complete stillness and attention within himself. He says, “I want to get every Me out of the way in order to start doing whatever the work will be.” And that is an ongoing struggle, to get every Me out of the way.
Wachtel: For you? You would like to eliminate the Me?
Carson: Yes, I would.
Wachtel: The Me is a kind of interesting flicker through the work.
Carson: It’s hard to keep it at the flicker level though. It tends to take over, it becomes the only principle of reasoning. I want to reason about something else. Life is short.
Wachtel: Isn’t that what the Classics, particularly Greek and Latin translation, gives you, because it’s so far out of yourself?
Carson: Yes, but anything can . . . I mean, looking at a pencil can give it to you. It’s just a matter of causing your mind to focus on that thing, that question, whatever you choose to consider a question. Translation, yes, is an ideal process because it’s so big it envelops your whole day but you can do it with very small things too.
Wachtel: How?
Carson: Well, looking at a stone. I mean, attention is a choice of where you put your mind.
Wachtel: And looking at a stone to the extent that you forget you’re doing the looking.
Carson: Yes exactly. Well put.
(brickmag.com/an-interview-wi…)