L’amour bursting out of la cage

The mountains were so clear the other day. Such a joy.

“Mercurial” is a nice, interesting word I have come across quite often, recently, which took me to mercury. "Mercury occurs in deposits throughout the world as cinnabar (mercuric sulfide), source of the red pigment vermilion."

I immediately want to put another “l” in vermillion and I thought cinnabar was a town… On second reading, pigment and vermilion become Pygmalion.

I’m looking forward to reading Alain Badiou’s “L’hypothèse communiste”; found an article called “L’hypothèse de l’émancipation reste l’hypothèse communiste”

- which seemed to resonate with another Shakespeare quote - "Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery."

Ad Libitum - At one's pleasure, usually abbreviated ad lib – ad libido (and shake).

Speare definitely said it all. There seems to be a quote from him for everything. I found great comfort in “Time and the hour run through the roughest day” when I was a child. I remember repeating it to myself, clutching at the words like a talisman. Now it seems tame, as if the spark has gone out of it; it just doesn’t seem to mean much now. Could it be that quotes (like words) have a set amount of energy in them and once you have used it up you must move on to new ones? That would coincide with the experience of learning to sing a song. First you are attracted to the song, strongly enough to make you want to learn it, experience it, master it. Eventually, you overcome the difficulties and by the time you can almost do it with your eyes shut it no longer produces the same excitement, the energy has changed...

But not the energy of the song... which is surely fixed ... the energy of the singer, which is free to vary... Two energies, two vibrations = resonance or dissonance, harmony or dissharmony. Britta was intrigued at the fact that you cannot burn one log. To have a fire, you need at least two pieces of wood.

Rather than loudness, there is a kind of intensity, when a sound is just voiced - there is a kind of vibrational threshold, when you can hear voicing, that is where the greatest emotional intensity lies.

I seem to have managed to throw the wolves off my trail. I am no longer swimming in shark infested waters. I have found temporary respite on a kind of island or at least beach. Who knows how I got here. One Shakespeare quote that I find comforting now is “Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.” If the path is the important thing, then a destination (or direction) is maybe not indispensable. Hoc omnia quibus egeo est.

I found some Physalis at the fruit counter of Aldi. I had never considered it edible and I did not intend to eat it, but as soon as I saw it I had to have some. I took it home and left it lying on the counter for a while, hoping it would do something to surprise me. It didn’t. It stayed remarkably the same for a long time. It didn’t even seem to be drying out or shrivelling up. So I stuck two of the fruits, inside their cages, into a pot, and put the pot on the window sill.

A short time later I was amazed to see zillions of seedlings bursting out of the cages. I assume they will grow up to be more Physalis; time will tell. If you click on the photo to enlarge it you can see what looks very much like a clover leaf in there.

Struck, turalisme

The countryside is coming alive with scents. The world smells wonderful. Magnolia, with its macabre undertones thanks to Billy Holiday, the heady fragrance of quince blossom I have yet to hear anybody sing about, and the totally intoxicating nostalgia of hawthorn. When I smell hawthorn I am small and new again. The lilac is budded, the flowers not fully open, but it is everywhere. The mimosa – took ages to find that name, myosotis was on my lips – the mimosa has faded. We have no electronic devices for capturing and transmitting smells, no matter how sweet.

Et tu Brute, Obama confused England and Britain and his wife tapped the Queen on the back! Our wee group of countries is so incongruous in the modern world, so mixed up they can’t portray who they are to the outside (yes I speak English and the parliament that decides on everything for me is in England but that does not make me English!) and why do they still have a queen anyway?

There was yet another killing in America, in an old folk’s home in a town called Carthage. I immediately thought “Carnage in Carthage”. Carthaginian certainly has a warlike ring to it, and indeed, Carthage used to be the capital of the Vandal kingdom, of all places.

It always amazes me how a single letter change can throw the meaning of a word miles off. I get these moments often. The other day it was “doar” for door.

And as I was listening to the radio I heard someone say “scie” followed, what seemed like a long time afterwards, by “canaliste”. That amused me, too. Il était si…… canaliste…



An idea I found in Tolle that is very important to me: background unhappiness is not content-based but structural.


The machine is a book vending machine in an airport...