from the anthology of Chinese monk poets, Hanshan Dequing (1564-1623), this translation by Red Pine

283 ecosystems tend toward diversity and markets do the opposite
285 people aren’t the apex species they think they are
295 riding the wild bends, sempervirens
304 hopelessness makes them determined
312 it’s like i had the word book and then you put one in my hands
314 like the angel at Eden’s east gate who kept the humans, poachers of one forbidden tree, from breaking back into the garden and eating the other fruit that would have solved everything
Continue reading “overstory notes”i have a habit of removing time from the equation, in my fiction especially, as i enjoy the way this distorts habitual ways of seeing. so before the new year i gave myself the challenge of changing that up, and concocting a piece that addressed current issues more directly, via the cue of this journal of fine, environmentally literate folk. as a writer i’m used to moving my body around and becoming another; we are shapeshifters by nature. writing from the viewpoint of the atmosphere took a tad of dissolving but hey, it’s good to get into the flow.
new work is up, new issue is live here.
from cicero’s de devinatione: it causes the motions and cries of birds during augury
to be featured in Gaia soon…stay tuned…
7) Beginning wherever you wish, tell even us.
13) fingers laced to expel all extraneous space
47) You see inspite of. Your sight. Let that be a lesson to you. You see farther. Farther and farther. Beyond what you are made to see and made to see only. You pass the mark, even though you say nothing. Everyone who has seen, sees farther. Even farther than allowed. And you wait. You keep silent. You bide time…Some have been born into it. And some would die into it.
48) southbound birds are mouthpieces wear the ghost veil for the seed of message. Correspondence. To scatter the words
50) no drought to the extentions of spells, words, noise. music equally out of proportion. you are yielding to them. they are too quick to arrive. you do not know them, never have seen them but they seek you, inhabit you whole, suspend you airless, spaceless. they force their speech upon you and direct your speech only to them.
53) neither takes you neither will take you heaven nor hell they fall too near you let them fall to each other you come back you come back to your one mother to your one father
65) of its bodies extension of its containment
106) they do not touch it is not like that. the touching made so easy the space filled full with touch. the entire screen. to make the sequences move. in close up. to fabricate the response. so soon. too immediate. to make fully evident the object.
108) you walk inside the room, you sit behind her you knew the music, which ones.
149) it is between seances
155) you remain apart from the congregation
157) withholds brilliance as the evanescent light of a dark pearl. shone internally. as the light of an eclipse, both disparition. both radiance. mercurial light, nacrous. no matter, not the cloister of the shell. luminous all the same. waits the hour. to break. then break.
162) water on the surface of the stone captures the light in motion and appeals for entry. All entreat to stir inside the mass weight of the stone.
179) to break stillness bells fall a peal to sky
I found this article originally printed in the now defunct Numero Cinq to be a satisfying read, its relevance to the issues of the day a reminder of a long stretch of history holding little originality with regards to conflict resolution.
Continue reading “with the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud”If your own private house up in the woods and down the road from Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens sounds like a good place to spend your Spring, today is the last day to apply to their Visual Artist Residency.
The time I spent there as the writer in residence was invaluable, and I know will continue to inform my work for years to come.