A shadow of Spring in the Fall

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/bacc8993e315c84ad049d5ed10a8b2e0/

Calendar Wisdom.

Delicate whisper of a garden

Incubate a thousand dreams

A shadow of spring in the fall

(composed with Book Lover Kit, but not by me)

I am doing well with the song of myself (September assignment).  My web site is all about me, that is my song.  October is my favourite month and I was born on Halloween.  Let’s see what October will bring.  Beauty, love, wisdom?  Change?  Not only in colours, I hope.  I hope. I hope.

Shadow of History.

The colours and feelings of fall can be exhilarating, the red maple leaves in a cool breeze, a sometimes melancholy season following summer’s easygoing charm, all leading up to the spectral celebration of Halloween.  Poets often like to reflect on the supernatural; considering its power, watching for ghosts, and talking to the past.  During the month, consider what spirits may haunt the neighborhood you walk through everyday, perhaps moving through your streets.  What is the history of your place?  How does it still exist and how has it been covered over?

Quote of the month:

“Autumn is a second spring

When every leaf is a flower.”

- Albert Camus

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘… Did Mikhalich give you the flower?’

‘Yes,’ I answered.  ‘And he told me I should think about the meaning of the message.  But I haven’t come up with anything.  Maybe you can tell me yourself?’

He scratched his head.  He seemed disconcerted by my question.

‘Do you know the folktale about the little scarlet flower?’

‘Which one exactly?’ I asked.

‘I think there is only one.’

He nodded towards a desk with a computer and a silver figurine standing on it.  There was a book lying beside the figurine, with bookmarks in several pages.  The half-effaced red letters of the title on its cover read: Russian Fairy Tales.

‘The story was written down by Sergei Aksakov,’ he said.  ‘His housekeeper Pelagia told him it.’

‘And what about it?’

‘About a beautiful girl and a beast.’

‘And what’s the little flower got to do with it?’

‘It was the reason everything began.  Do you really not know this fairy tale?’

‘No.’

‘It’s long, but the gist is this: a beautiful girl asked her father to bring her a scarlet flower.  The father found one in a magical garden a long way away and picked it.  But the garden was guarded by a terrible monster.  He caught the beautiful girl’s father, and she had to become the monster’s prisoner so that he would release her father.  The monster was ugly, but kind.  She fell in love with him, first for his kindness, and then simply in love.  And when they kissed, the spell was broken and the monster turned into a prince.’

‘Aha,’ I said.  ‘Do you have any idea what it’s about?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes? What is it about?’

‘About love conquering all.’

I laughed.  He really was quite amusing.  He’d probably bumped off a few heavy hoods and ordered a hit on some banker, so now, with typical human presumption, he thought he was a monster.  And he also thought that love would save him.

He took me by the arm and led me across to a futuristic divan standing between two groves of dwarf bonsais with miniature arbours, bridges and even waterfalls.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘I can explain,’ I said, sitting down on the divan and pulling my legs up under me.

‘Okay, explain.’

He sat at the other end of the divan and crossed his legs.  I noticed the edge of a holster peeping out from under his uniform jacket.

‘It’s one of those folktales that express the horror and pain of a woman’s first sexual experience,’ I said.  ‘There are lots of stories like that, and the one you just told me is a classic example.  It’s a metaphor of how a woman discovers the essentially bestial nature of man and becomes aware of her own power over that beast.  And the little scarlet flower that her father picks is such a literal symbol of defloration, amplified by the theme of incest, that I find it hard to believe the story was told by a housekeeper.  It was probably composed by some twentieth-century Viennese postgraduate to illustrate his thesis.  He invented the story, and the housekeeper Pelagia, and the writer Aksakov.’

While I was talking, his expression turned noticeably gloomier.

‘Where did you pick this stuff?’

‘It’s all truisms.  Everybody knows it.’

‘And you believe it?’

‘What?’

‘That this fairy tale is not about how love conquers everything on earth, but how defecation realizes its power over incest?’

‘Defloration,’ I corrected him.

‘It does not matter.  Is that what you really think?’

I thought about it.

‘I…. I don’t think anything.  That’s simply the contemporary discourse of folktales.’

‘So you’re saying that because of this discourse, when someone gives you a scarlet flower you think it’s a symbol of defecation and incest?’

‘No, don’t be like that,’ I replied, a little embarrassed.  ‘When someone gives me a scarlet flower I….I’m simply pleased.’

‘Thank God,’ he said.  ‘And as for contemporary discourse, it’s high time to take an aspen stake and stuff it back up the cocaine-and-amphetamine polluted backside that produced it.’

I hadn’t expected such a sweeping generalization.

‘Why?’

‘So it won’t defile out little scarlet flower.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I understand about the cocaine.  You mean Dr Freud.  He did have that little peccadillo.  But what have amphetamines got to do with it?’

‘I can explain,’ he said.  And tucked his legs up underneath himself in a parody of my pose.

‘Okay, explain.’

‘All those French parrots who invented discourse were high on amphetamines all the time.  In the evening they take barbiturates to get to sleep, and they start off the morning with amphetamines so they can generate as much discourse as possible before they start taking barbiturates to get back to sleep again.  That’s all there is to discourse.  Didn’t you know that?’

‘Where did you get information like that?’

‘There was a course at the FSB Academy about modern psychedelic culture.  Counter-brainwashing.  Oh yes, I forgot to say – they’re all queers too.  In case you were going to ask what the backside had to do with anything.’

I wanted to make a different post on Halloween.  A poem by Edgar Allan Poe.  “The Raven”.  I thought it would be more becoming.  More becoming my mood and the spirit of Halloween.

My plans have changed.  They usually do.  Something happened and it was somewhat pleasant, somewhat strange and more becoming my melancholic mood and longing for love.

“Gefunden.”  Some things are just strange.  The only thing that I remember from years of learning German was (is) a poem by Goethe.  “Gefunden” means “Found”.  It is about a flower the author finds in a forest while walking there without a thought in mind.  Instead of picking it and letting the flower die, the author digs it out with all the roots and replants it in his garden. 

Und pflanzt es wieder

Am stillen Ort;

Nun zweigt es immer

Und blüht so fort.

The reason the poem has surfaced again was that I met “a friend of a delicate nature” who claimed that he could read German.  His claim turned out to be somewhat exaggerated, since he could not read nor translate “Gefunden” with the online translator.  But that is quite understandable and, to be honest, is precisely what I assumed at the beginning.  Reading a language without properly learning it seems a tall order.  But this story is not about him.  Well, not entirely.

The poem keeps coming back to me.  And this time I found out that Goethe wrote this poem not about a flower, but about his love for a real woman.

I have a dream.  I want to find my love and I found a flower.  Literally.  Where and when?  I was working and walking in circles in the department store full of misplaced clothes.  Of all days, it was Halloween, my birthday.  I did not expect to find anything.  Yet I did.  I found a red rose, slightly battered, slightly faded, smelling of perfume, still beautiful…

I picked it gently and took it home, treating this red rose as a gift, as a sign, as a new hope.

Some things do come out of the Blue.

And my friend with his beautiful deep eyes, seductive voice and a reminiscence of a true love is only a vision of my longing for something or someone whom I will find.

One day.  Out of the Blue.  On the Halloween?

Source:

http://9221.portfolio.artlimited.net/image/en/162653

После того как я долго и упорно учила немецкий язык, осталось в моей голове не очень много.  Одно стихотворение Гёте – «Цветок».  Наверное, нужно было учить больше стихотворений, чтобы была возможность возвращаться к ним вновь и вновь.  Ну, что ж, пусть будет только одно.

Ich ging im Walde so fur mich hin

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/36905d74f387888d85b250efb7cf657c/

It has been a long time since I was learning German.  I remember practically nothing or so I think.  I can read, but, of course, I don’t.  But one thing stayed – a poem I learned.  Why?  These things are easier to remember for some reason.  I keep returning to it in my memory again and again.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Little did I know, that this poem was not about a flower at all.  That was I read at the web-site http://www.garten-literatur.de/Leselaube/goethe/goethge.htm.

Well, I did not exactly read, I had to rely on the online translator, the text seem to make sense, so I will take it as an accurate translation.  If you know more about this poem, I welcome your comments and feedback.

At first sight it may be a sort of an “ecological poem” with his appeal to the esteem before the creation.

However, Goethe wrote this poem exactly a quarter century, after he had “found” his Christiane, namely in August, 1813.

Christiane is the little flower which he found; she defended herself against the strange request of a frivolous, short love relationship which would have impaired her social call and with it her marriage ability sensitively – ” should I have broken to the wilted “?

Today the self-representation of Goethe may not fit emancipated women as the loyal-providing gardener who saves the tender little plant Christiane by digging in his (!) garden before wilting.

However, in addition, it is still an extenuation of the facts; since with “digging”, i.e. of the marriage ceremony, Goethe let itself another 18-year time…