Sketches of a Black and White Painting

8/4/2019 Sketches of a Black and White Painting

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SKETCHES OF A BLACK AND WHITE PAINTING

A Poeme in Two Parts

I.WHITE

FOREWORD

Colors of the living.

Literary sketches of paintings from an anonymous museum that tell a story.


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Introitus: Requiem aeternam

REQUIEM

A clear white road,

Two ivory projection boards, that clasp the sky.

With pale, irradiant ribbon of the sun a hue of gold.

Brushed-in calligraphy,

And installation works in blinding luminance exposed,

To a flowering bed of opium leaves.

Paint cannot be tossed, dialects of Japanese,

Heard within the executive crowd,

Now faded and lost, and faces grow dim,

In quiet work and barrister abound.


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Kyrie eleison

WALL STREET

Grey dust blends in rows of stone and column,

Luminous spirits in wondersome rush,

Supereminence, glow of white collar,

Leveled tone-brush.

Streams of silver, shine past belvedere lines,

Pixilated gloss in bright parterre,

Behind colored swathes of smattered prattle, drained in sound

Of moving white-rimmed china,

From checkered squares of terraced tier.

Each Supereminence, the Word of honesty,

Falling locks of long, stray blonde hair,

From reaching, elevated balcony above,

On Zegna glove, in trimmed cashmere maroon,

And passing coats of black cocoon.


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Sequentia: Dies Irae

THE BLONDE ON THE BALCONY

*Hotel, New York City.

A serving-man, proud in heart and

mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap;

served the lust of my mistresss heart.

and did the act of darkness with her.

King Lear.

Dies ir, dies illa.

Youre lying on white sheets,

Tall, thin, haggard with liqueur.

From shoulder blade and bow of arm,

Red fabric corseted, with blackened beads cascade.

A series of images, photo collage,

As if massaged, against the swell of skin over the bone,

Bright tomb stones, in tapes of blue,

Motion, 16 Mm K-3 camera,

Distressed over-exposures of tailored, black-suited figure,

In delusional view.

In the beginning there was sex, mulling over unkemptly

The purpose of a woman, taken violently,

Allowing the odd gasps of air,

Disheveled, jerking movement of bronzed hair,

And ashen eyes, fall, on shaken imagery of orange lines,

Pink unlaced peignoir, red hosiery slovenly damp,


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Tramped, vaginal gauche,

In heavy unction, crackling smarm of tissue,

Against her rib cage.

Last trumpet and trochee,

In a puddle of vaginal juice.


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Tuba mirum

SYLVIA

I.

My Ann,

White cotton, layered white,

Supple angles, abrasive curves of body in viscose threads,

Posed in tinted satin, visions of draped silk,

In shadows of white garments, verdant waterfall, over foisted cornice.

Standing leavened, her inflected figure,

In the foreground of a mounted black, wall paper sheet,

Crystal lustre, a marble body wrapped in black translucent veil,

And silver chandelier, as in cascade, smells of pear.

The frippery cleft of black wooden legs, that tangle wildly,

With red hosiery on bare,

Legs with knees of downward stare,

Buttressed by passive hands, and swollen tones of sculpted figure.

II.

*Recollections on a scene.

I.

A lurid, foul morning an age of old, a grave, has dusted the stretching lines of crinkled streets,it seemed, hued beyond the white light pouring in densely through the lateral shutters of the kitchen

window just above the slightly steepened terrace. A cold dampened breeze hazed and danced through

the room, mixing wildly with the derelict shadows left standing in remote corners from the night before,


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like the last waning garrisons of Napoleons army. The entire, quite theatrical display was indescribable

and could only be collected to render a stage of perfectly arranged sensations streaming like the

personalities of Moliere, the organic palpitations of Tolstoy; coiling and percolating soundly through the

watered, alluvial carnival of Schumanns impressions of the 19th century. The complexity of feelings

taking place that morning could only be professed true, through a simplicity of a certain loneliness, a

loneliness of a just peacea kind that does not wilt away rather, the corpus of being; but blossoms

gardens, orchards, vineyards and the satisfactory notions and satiation of the fires of those timeless

days, when rolling in the gables of Esenian grass and kissing the girls was not a scholarly practice of

objectivism and personal vainglory.

When opalescent canvas of white in triptych,

Is hued and stained in blackened orange,

Presto agitatissimo e molto accentuate,

And your breast sweat-soaked,

Baroque in motions of purple,

The ecstasy of my corpus,Composed between your legs.

II.

That morning the invective rays of memory pierced my consciousness prior to my bodys wake.

The fleeting afternoons of listless activity, want of opprobrium, the spastic, ruddy colors of Russian

breakfasts caviar, sometimes salmon and eggs, weaved by the instantaneous flash of mygrandmothers restless hands, while the clank and clatter of dishes enliven and vivify the kitchen,

embroiled in the fresco of variegated but slowly dissipating, morning lights and shadows, reflecting

through the grace and incessant activity of the trees beyond the heavy atmosphere of boiling water,

laden steam and the resultant colonies of moisture on table-side, that surmount in a faux tapestry of a

stained glass window, evocative of the plaintive and ruminative odes of those transplanted American

mornings of strictly Soviet families.

Blood runs in velvet streaks,

With deepest shades of roses and pale lips,

Intoxicated by your gaze,

And Blok in golden shadow, runs wildly lit.


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III.

Her laugh is an almost sexual incendiary. She has never looked more beautiful. Her eyes have never

bordered on such earnestness the vaguely unremitting guise of a broken spirit. A candid joy and a real

sense of self, which had grown interminably dim, like the myriad of buildings lighting the night sky and

effacing the fabric of the firmament in a blinding sweep through a self-conscious, daily partaking in

degradation a rare wasting away. She mutters in a faint, trembling voice through her fingers, as she

attempts to bite her hand to muffle severe involuntary sobs that seem to be deeply set, and physically

difficult to control. She stands motionless for some time.

Your body in this livid light, the Eleatic bust beneath acacia,

Seems welcoming to death, and I would die

Beneath exotic plants, archaic Greek spoken amid red-figure,Embraced in garments of marble, and Rilkes voice,

To be with you.

To penetrate your red lips in eternal youth,

Molding the world of hardened stone,

And sending it awash in waters for our pleasure.

Transeunt.


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Rex tremendae majestatis

SATYAGRAHA

Tall windows line the wall, in quiet form one after the other,

Painted mesh of leaves in quiet tones, past the Christian glass in early morning.

No visible dimension in the still, the calloused branches, to the glass seem affixd,

Flooded with clear water, from the nearby ponds.

Clear, piercing sky, the back-drop for the arbor in the Fall,

Feminine figure in white, a virile posture, convexly shaped by sunken face,

In blackened, beastly coat, and even blacker, laminated fur,

Behind, three silent oaks,

That seem, as if forever there,

And she in silent den, of the universe.

The candelabrum torchieres, the webbing trees in morning,

That clutch and weather in the distance, like long, wet hair.

And in her hand, last night from Christies,

An auctioned sketch, in black and white,

A clutching girl. Her shivering eyes, in strokes of ragged cloth,

Expressionless knowing as the plain,

And always.


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Recordare

ST. PETERSBURG

Cast-iron vines and lines of intricate marble, movements of her eyes,

Carefully placed circular lanterns in mellow glows of light, on the floor,

Step by step, in brooding corridor,

Winded plume panache, cleavage of the curtains, near oval, carpeted hall

An echoing sound of laughter hangs in amplitude from wall-to-wall.

Later in the day, divided space set in bluish-gray,

Fragments of overgrown dining room, set table and chairs,

To the left, a grated heating battery,

White crescent paint aligned, by blistered shades, and blinding,

Window, in streaming negatives, penetrates the floor-boards, and spiral stair.

And in the center, fallen plastered wall, a bed of chrysanthemums is set,

All thrashed in golden lace of hair, burned collar of white shirt,

The life of serious photographers in pictures, chrestomathy,

Wrapped in blankets, together with naked feet,

And left forgotten,

A draped mess of upholstered cloth, of sullen skin and satin sheets,

A canopied drawbridge, a running faucet,

In endless light.


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Confutatis maledictis

CHRYSANTHEME

* A residence in New York City.

Proslogion, eternal imagery,

Hot breath of shrouded air,

On 50th floor, as cold skin, golden by wet hair,

Pressed against the blue,

Clear glass like dew, melts against the breast.

In solemn pleasure, a question posed,

Amid the clouds, for time itself to fold, in sheets of ice.

Like ice which falls, below at night.

He has it in his understanding,

But he does not yet understand it to be.

The spectral lighting of the evening cast;

And golden chrysanthemum morose,

In crystal vase, is not the same,

With every minute closed.


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II.BLACK

An evening in the anonymous museum.


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Lacrimosa dies illa

SEBASTIANS SUICIDE

I.

The skyline bronze, and thoughts in mist,

Locks of hair in twilled yellow strands twinned

In chest pocket. On the surface of bleached sheep skin,

A white Piana, wraps the neck.

Two black willows stretch about, in poisonous pose,

In haphazard motion in the shade, as if not clothes,

The caves of reason, in purple sinew of velvet rope.

In my infinite nonbeing, truth must exist?

What fool had said, in light of truth we see truth?

Whence the titans will think

A gun-shot is heard fading into obscurity.


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II.

MORPHINE/NOTES ON LITERATURE

*Evidence discarded as inconclusive and mostly illegible by the authorities.

*Beginning of Sebastians Notes:

NOTE I.

A compendium of some strange maxims and social knowledge was nurtured by ancient civilizations;

from the gilded East, to the morsels of primordial 'Memes' of communal living etched and grounded

through natural law by generations of successive posterity, scattered in the insular spaces ofMikhluho-

Makhlaian clearings of continental wilderness and the Doric and Ionic monumental mold of the

impregnated West. The perception and valuation of progress as a thing-in-itself and portent to

harmonious development with the most clandestine yet quintessential of laws that govern us since

before the Cambrian age have been left unheeded. The pedigree of their discovery and century-long

praxis which would permeate into every seepage, sliver and receptacle of rural and civil life, did not lead

to the institutionalization of approximating the very need for development, parallel with the very

ground whereof we reap and which nourishes our existence from the basic rudiments of the village, to

the ever-spiraling socio-ecological environments. The fleeting over-extensiveness of the European

phenomenon, conceived in the womb of the opalescent Parthenon, pillared on the coarsened

firmament ofGizeh, and the sagacity ofSumner,Jericho andJudah grafted voraciously the harvest of

the past, but never mastered the plow, and never inquired with the necessary probity to iterate the

acculturation of the finer harmonies found in the crafted balances and vitality of our elders. We marvel

at Apuleius with ineffable wonder as the hinterlands of artistic infancy are purest in form and function.

On days of heavy snow Adagio Solemne.Draught paths saline, scented with ale,

Streams of silent grey warmth,

Colossus.

Ossification both of cold and stupor of dismay,

From bitter shards of shades of grey,

That fills the streets into the day, and night

Amid the tepid flickering of lights.

In times like these, oft times I fear,

My swollen throat would tear,

Alike the earth beneath my feet.

Yet I am soothed, in harrowing calm;By golden honey, copper-like,

Much like our stars, and then the sun.


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NOTE II.

We observe, through the unforgiving prism of momentous, unmediated time which augments

with the impregnable cast of nature, the force that tramples, and destroys the virtues of man's idea,

devouring man himself. The aggrandized masses in a time of egregious, even fatal tribulation and the

need for systemic survival, retrieve their members in squalid obeisance, and return to the instincts of

their bi-pedal prime, or perhaps fetal nascence the faceless compunction to give oneself into the

hands of another, to shed oneself of purpose shivering for shelter, seeking a savior, even if to be saved

requires the diffidence of relinquished freedom.

The howling seconds consumed by howling wind,

Thoughts adrift through forest fires,

The howling windowpane of white.

Whilst howling smoke caresses us,

From cigarettes so dimly lit,

Mercurial figures of the crowd,

Like stiletto chimney silhouettes,

Against the paint of white.

NOTE III.

Despite the end of literary and art history, we have fallen out of the abyss of the Postmodern age. Since

from the disoriented rubble of questioning the continued necessity of human constructs; we have once

again, as in the latent stages of material history, entered into a stage where our demands from nature

are justified by her demands from us lulled by the resounding lyres, returning to Rousseau.

Prescribe to quiet grandeur Beethoven.

Bent hands, droning storm, shadows erect in the rain.

The stolid wreath of paltry parchment, fingers crossed.

Looming tractate, hands bare the silence of weary pigeon love.

Hand-doves caress golden calves, vernal long-lace,

Face bears sweat, thighs knead.

Blue-eyed wide, wife kneels down shadowed passage,

Leavened heel.

Wet children reel perpetual poverty.

Morning flowers bloom in parturition, arched womb.

Strychnine ampoule for morning stool.For the Eschatos to consopite tonight.

Garments enrobe the striated skin of her feet divine bliss.

Moist kiss. Warm piss.

Over catechumens sacristies of mono-tapestry,

Her legs triumph thus,

The white vessel purveyed supine seas feline.

Reclined pride, soaked in brine. *End of Sebastians notes.


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Offertorium: Domine Jesu Christe

/THE DEAD SEA

Our Image, in the early light of day,

The final tare of passing night, as sacred oil,

Embalms the wood, in the house of Filomen and Bauci

The rest are in eclipse.

As I lay late, transposing theologoumena; condemning Urantia, Calvin,

And the history of man proselytized Greek Demons;

Luzitania, Principia.

The English sons of Adam, basking in the wildlife gardens,

Computer works and general heteroglossia,

Of privet, hawthorn, oleander, barberry,

Andr Le Ntre, and continental Northern beauty.

Love-drunk and lulled to sleep like a wanton child,

While Belgian factories ran wild.

Of Plebeian Republic, Young Peru and Dios Olivorio.

What at once is, what else have we come up?

But sheets of rain in clear gradients,

Through rustic windows only wild-berry darker.

Like children run when struck by sudden rain.

Radiance of spirit Qaa, Den and Semerkhet;

Djet, by the wayside of funerary rites, stelae

Djer and Merneith,

The people live here, and so they die cleaned in the waters,

In the lands glitter, where lies the Palace of the Leaves,
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Partially flooded, as the chotts by the side-sweptsands.

And the high dunes ofBas Sahara, the Ahaggar massif in the West,

The long valley of Saoura,

Disappearing into the stretches of the Tanzrouft.

My conscientious dance, with frogs, toads Reptilia;

Squamata, Crocodilia,

Worm lizards, extant Testudines,

Cryptodira of green sea, and fish of kind,

In feigned temperament, beneath the passing trains half-heartedly,

As the newspapers fizzle with envy and blood-lust,

And language of prismatic meaning.

A high gentlemens fling Wien Classicists Ball,

The Narcissist aristocratic gaff of mistaken century.

A gamme from Tcherepnin.

Audient clade at a pronounced antique escort,

A blithe under-current of passing women,

Snazz up, so ungentlemanly.


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versus: Hostias et Preces

I.

PRAYER

A landscape of an evening, the lake of tapered cellophane,

A bereaved voice of a man, in flashing flame,

Sauntering, in the black woods square,

The bare, symphony of a moments stare,

Of glinting things close-by and almost human-like,

The scent of extirpated earthy tree-root,

And still reflections in half-light.

I see them here as they wonder through the forest,

Beneath the hanging cliffs,

And bathe in open fields beneath the hanging sun,

The men who shake the trees,

To please the children, who play in the rain till sunset?

Our fathers and mothers, the passing,

Early days of our society, cultural attach,

The drowning rain of coming morning. A hint of winter,

Judging by the ease of breathing patterns, in the stairwell,

And density of air by the receptions desk. Swinging past security,

Imperturbable in their comport the haystacks in the snow.


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II.

SACRIFICE

A shadow passed, from black to white,

Transfixd in the atmosphere of early Spring.

The White Ruins, historicism and marble robes.

The Black the Mare, or aesthetes hooves and bones.

A prayer said for humankind,

The seasons merge, as days behind,

The desk, leave yet a long, long way to go

Before I rest.


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Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth

DEMOCRITUS

: .

.Prometheus.

Resounding fricatives in constant flux,

As the visibility of plankton underwater,

The question of the good and old the aged,

In flight, from painted seas, and schematic skies of white,

In northern slopes; the foundered ships, the brooding sonar.

In the depths the grey beasts, that hide and moan.

And so Ive seen the skier shift,

In the neutral beauty of the Arctic,

Where our wisdom ends.

In a cadence.

And so Ive learned of objectivity.

Playing with fire and fruit.

I am Minus. Negative.

And I exist in everything.

Dfil carnavalesque martiniquais et guadeloupen.

The human sentiment in prose,

An expos of positivism on the nose,

Of constructs in the atomic world,

That bear no meaning on the Word.


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When all is nothing, Sebastian deigns,

To find that glow lost in the evening crowd,

Grey ships, the Earth, the Sea,

And all the shades,

From black to white.


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Benedictus

SONG OF ZECHARIACH

Middle aged woman in Tokyo,

Raises her elbow and smiles,

In a blue blazer and white top,

Her day is clear.

Splash of burnt colour,

A thin daguerreotype from water to horizon,

Through orange tones so deathly dim,

A hanging garden lounges the room.

Through marble faces lit by lamp fire,

Black secretary stands, beneath arched doorway in red wood,

Like ancient diptych, Madonna,

Kimono dress in orchid-print,

Leaning against mounted frames of strange tones,

And cornered oft, by swooning passersby,

In swirling laughter changing shape, and spill into the halls.

By rocks on the water, now turned a dark bronze,

Highly intelligent glass facility, in the warm glow of nature.

And I see sultry black feet,

In soft, spectral flower dresses,

Resting on arid ground,

With a color television,


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And a sand-stone house, crowned by canister light,

And the taste of nightly air.


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Agnus Dei

UNIVERSE

I.

The old tree alleys, showered in vestige of ruby-gold,

A revel, preparation for the dance of witches Sabbath,

To stir the warmth this autumn night.

The evening rays of sun in saturated blur,

The transcendental play of light,

Misshape, the objects of the promenade,

And those in contiguous view

Of patchy spaces set to films, surrounding Indian carinata;

The solid horizontals of South African gardenias,

Off-set by pictures, in black and white,

And whorls of anapetes by interlacing streets.

In the park cubically spaced, a stretched painting,

Of restive figures, in blotches of blue and red,

That change and come to life,

Like canvases in the wash-basin,

In varying shades of natural light.

II.

* A busy office in a corporate setting.


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Sebastian:

I am consistently irritated by everything that happens around me. In a looming migraine of self-

excoriation I fall into the abyss of abject stupidity and emptiness, wrapped in a constant sarcasm

ceaselessly twirling before me. I am not a Browning. No matter how much I learn, I am afflicted with the

fear of intellectual inadequacy. Either the fear of not knowing anything at all, or that my knowledge, inquestion, is never quite enough where knowledge itself, in a nightmare of delusion appears before me

as a grain of sand, concealed away in a fragile pillar of base emotion and personal pride. Who, may I ask

is the great artist then? When I cannot even determine the role occupied by the subject, of which art is

the spoken word? Yes, a doleful, repulsive simplicity of words, only artists themselves come and go,

yet art itself never changes... I find difficulty in understanding such things, just as I find humility in the

existence of Utopias. There is an inexplicable beauty in the well-nursed notion of everything coming to

an end: A lecherous fire igniting my soul the shudder, thinking of an unforeseen catastrophe. I am sick,

but everything seems brighter the swell from this newly found excitement spreading through my body,

making me feel like a school-boy, a sloshed child, in all of my infantilism and diffidence, in the darker

shades of a blushing virgin.

Sebastian: (continues)

I think art justifies the continuation of life, that is why we invent new trends and movements, human

beings need a rebirth, they need a theatrically organized novelty, a staged newness of sorts which

purges their conscience.

Mr. A:

You probably want to know what happens when the theatre ends?

Sebastian:

No, I do not. I just contend myself with the hope that it doesnt.

Sebastian:

Studying phenomena like art, involving the physiognomy of the human being as its conduit, is not like

incubating bacteria or implanting sperm, one cannot expect nature to function according to the recesses

of our personal ideologies. Just observe the jocular cretinism of attempting to use socio-Marxist theories

as a priori for a theory on human psychology, where functional psychology deems itself unworthy notdemonstratively or empirically but on the basis of it being bourgeois. I think our irascible compulsion to

infect the natural purity of investigative science with our insular, egomaniacal convictions is bourgeois.

Mr. A: (with a lush smile)

A social ichthyology. No, really. You dont understand socialism.


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Sebastian:

Its not a question of socialism, but an old adage of sorts, how theory doesnt reconcile with practice,

especially throughout the course of a revolution.

Mr. A:

Every idea is in every idea, like in an atom. If you are referring to an old trodden ground of ours, its

more a matter of ideals not reconciling with life, thats why discourse on progress is difficult, because

the intellect, no matter how infantile, if there notwithstanding, struggles to amend reality in all its

impulsive, parenthetical departures, a classic philosophical problem. Remember Homer? I know its not

fashionable to read poetry, though now and again you hear those ancient names, grafted once more,

exhumed corpses usually, in a quest presaging an acrobatic atonement with a recent contention of

some kind, in a journal perhaps, seeking desperate approval for the same unsolidarities and

congealables of our time Hesiod rescuing Keynes from the serpents nest.

Sebastian: (lackadaisically)

The world should be governed by philharmonic orchestras and symphony musicians, what have they

ever done but make beautiful music? I think people capable of such music are incapable of injustice.

Mr. A:

Like Heydrich? Then again, he was hardly a musician. Who knows. You pluck anyone from their

disposed vocation and they cease to believe what they once believed, until they cease recognizing

themselves all together.

Sebastian: (continuing thought now gleefully and with incipit sarcasm),

Atleast, anyone who is anyone and doing it with conviction these days, would be the Meyerholds,

Karsavinas and Cunninghams of the world! I think if I could see people as innocent children, I would

learn to love them more than I can admit to.

Mr. A: (ironically)

Sometimes I find your sycophantic portmanteaus, aspiring to philistinism, but deep down even as such,

you have your own reason for being I would defend you to the death, naturally.

(Unintentionally mote, intrusive smile, gushing with a broad flatulence)

Though the individual conception of Being and justice can be transformed beyond recognition, from

that of the general or collective conception, of what at once was a visibly obvious thing to most.


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Sebastian:

The human being is both aggression and beauty; one cannot exist without the other. A harmony

between, destitution, misery and art as true art emerges out of destitution, so humanity does out of

misery. A gross inconsistency, wouldnt you say our relationship with death?

Mr. A: (drawing a btise, almost uneasy smile, and very evidently taken aback, by the penchant,

mannerly innocence observably present in the uncustomary logic of his business partner.)

You are a votive Christian after all, it seems Bourgeois bohemian in the flesh.

His obliquely arrogant smile, so self-imposed, that he and many others of his profession often wear, for

reasons that they themselves wouldnt dare delve into or dissect; like the deleterious, unbridled ease,

with which they would gregariously dissect so many others has turned solemn and resolute.

Mr. A:

But listen to me

Sebastian: (tersely)

If you know yourself, you are doomed.

Infitialis!

Amid purple shapes oddly painted Serpentine of the burning bush.

White spirals of spilled paint, coiling in freshwater springs.

Smoktunovskian Hamlet nearby is blonde,

Both actor and play, they can smell the water.

Promethean fires and dark lyrics ofMandelshtam the poet

His dreams ofGoethe songs, notes on quoin and colonnade opulent.

In my hemisphere of tilted red liquid,

Vines torch the trenchant triages,

The yellowed leaves of my coffee books.

As I am asleep, a black square against a blank sheet,

As I am awake, still

The faces of lust looking over the world,

Drinking coffee with tongues of hell fire.

Sebastian pauses for a moment, only to continue again as if overcome by a jolt of caprice, incapacitating

his usual discretion.

Remember Fellini, and the depicted irony of human relationships which are built not out of necessity

but a sort of laziness


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(Smiles, exposing full set of immaculate teeth, from an equally immaculate mouth. Continues.)

Strange. Being mostly in the company of the Why are you wearing that? I dont know ask the

designer type. Youd think I would have learned to live with vanity.

Mr. A: (An invective simplicity and clarity about his face, completely disregarding Sebastians last

comments in a rather noticeable pejorative manner.)

The question then is obvious. Should we be willing to sacrifice ourselves, for the sake of ethics? Who is

willing to take that responsibility? Its an interesting corollary.

The salubrious way in which his compliments prevaricated, almost seemed to confound, as to whether

they were directed towards Sebastian or himself. Sebastian meanwhile, completely absorbed in his own

thoughts, responded only with a comfortable silence.

Sebastian: (Mockingly)

To be or not to be? Should we perish for the sake of ethics, that is the question

Mr. A:

Think ofLe Coq d'Or, where the greatest attention must be paid to every scenic detail, to disrobe the

character of the work, in spite of its apparent simplicity. We can juxtapose these ideas of the

predominance of the detail where there is no delight without to poetry. Because, as the difference

between a play and a novel, is the formers emancipation of the character, it is in the characters

themselves, given tremendous freedom of detail and freedom from the banality of the chronotope, that

find the greatest sympathy in others. It is these details and the indefeasibly absorptive human

personality which confer unto us the greatest impression.

Sebastian: (pedantry in vain)

I think its necessary to seriously understand the posterior analytic of language and its formalities, in

order to grasp the full meaning of a work of art; the modalities e.g., the straight line as lyric, the zigzag

as conflict and drama But then again we have always planted mountains of illusion wherever we live,

in places rather occupied by patent grasslands. Why do you think Plato is so great, in spite of the latter

achievements of civilization? Because he was a poet, without ever knowing it. In spite of his aversion to

poets as they told lies, so he claimed. Indeed we begin to understand that they have told us the truth and so has the bible for that very matter.

(Continues)

I mean, why is it that even the most distinguished figures in literature cannot free themselves from

the burden of references? If we were to take the greatest classics of world thought and attempted to


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extract passages of any real value to us or any true novelty, there probably wouldnt be enough to fill

one tome let alone a library.

Mr. A: (pedantry lost, pedantry regained)

Observation, experience, unconscious meaning of intent, internal dialogue, and the proportions of

each, determine the answer to your question everything that fits into the modern theory of literature.

Sebastian: (An elevated, punctual irony)

So, a formula, for a work of art, thats what youre saying then? And then, naturally it would follow

that estimation is hardly possible and you have a work, emerging by chance, like a chemical reaction, a

Nobel Prize or Coca-Cola?

Mr. A:

"One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different

situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and

again."

Sebastian:

Those are not your words are they? Youre paraphrasing.

Mr. A:

As it happens, yes, how very perceptive. I didnt think youd pick up on it. But I have to admit though,

that the notion of the prodigious share of our society, as elephants with a paint-brush, strangely sits well

with me.

Sebastian:

Well, naturally, as in any developed civilization, our theories have long surpassed us, or our ability to

understand them, its obvious.

Mr. A: (kowtowing)

Its no wonder we are in such a rush to break the lead. We can easily release ourselves from any

incumbent responsibility, since we console each other with having no apparent control over what

happens.

Sebastian:

When I cant fall asleep at night sometimes I look overhead through my balcony window. I often hear

the concierge and the tireless elevator, the warm sonorous glow of the building lobby, the

instantaneous splash of color as vehicles leave their parking spaces on the other side. More and more I


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think that beyond all this, all of our marble and gold what is left is the somnolent, naked reflection of

ourselves, as imprints, except with thinly tapered heads and corded white bodies, staring through these

windows similar to mine, where we hide from the rest of the world. A phalange of bystanders gazing

emptily, with mild curiosity, at the passage of an elusive defilement of Discovery and Greatness, which

chooses irreverently, to abscond from contact. Not just yet it says to us, in an anthropomorphic call,

not in a voice rather, but as something emanating slowly, as if from afar. Let us soak-up the dream of

our microcosms, let our thoughts drift comfortably, like the ribbons they are, ensconced ribbons that

caress us and come to us in sleep. Why do you think every person has the almost ritualistic

tendentiousness to hide oneself? What needs do these rituals satisfy, what is that faculty that takes us

over, in times of staid rumination in complete solitude? As if the inherent need to be alone is a factor of

evolution, a distinction of the species an evolution of intellectual matter, essentially. Maybe herein lies

the answer to your question on ethics; the most ethical are those that are alone? Their going-into-

hiding rituals and inertness thereof, being a fear of the inconsolable burden of the unethical act. Like the

Romantic poets escaping into their own forests, a Tulgey Wood, where everything is not exactly what

it seems.

Mr. A: (veering off)

Dark green theophany aside, the school of physicians understood it best life, ask not where it came

from, but where its going simple. Maybe Wittgenstein could be merited. We constructed a whole

world of anisotropic ideas which we scarcely know how to use let alone live with; as we laboriously

preoccupy ourselves with expansion, cringing evasively to make good use of what is already in our

possession. Seeing how much we can get away with, without having to suffer for it what we call luck.

Those rare moments of inspiration have always stumped me, my intellectual fancy a mind-fuck.

Something at once distant and incomprehensible, all of a sudden pellucid, then the abstraction and

finally the ecstatic release, and then its gone, and you are either satisfied or left wanting.

Transeunt.


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Communio: Lux aeterna

SEBASTIAN AND AIKO

To warm my hands by homeless graves,

Procession of torches, in vaulted citadels,

Easter ritual in East Jerusalem.

Circular Byzantium, in streaming light,

Like light that plays amidst impressions,

Preppy, boarding-school children in a forested shade,

Bergamot, faces in silhouetted mosaic,

Assyrian stone, in soundly masquerade.

In her white panama, asleep,

Like Russian swans by cherry-blossoms,

I spread her thighs, and ate, from her Japanese garden,

And she bloomed, leaving behind,

A last song, and a basket of weaved straw,

That complements her well-heeled summer collection.


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Timothy Viktor Belinsky

Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935).

Sketches of a Black and White Painting

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