A hot summer night

It's summer, it's rather hot, it's pretty humid and I am reading French poets whilst sipping to Scotch Whisky... Thought that just a short post would suffice this time. Good Night!


On Summer Nights

On summer nights, before the shining shop windows,
When the sap pulses beneath the tarnished halos
Formed by the grillwork at the feet of fragile elms,
Leaving black gatherings, gay groups or stay-at-homes,
Who lights up cheap cigars and pipes and puff away,
Into this narrow, half-stone stall I wend my way.
While overhead hangs a poster - Iblend, it states -
I imagine that winter also inudates
Tibet in running water, washing the yellow tide,
And that winter wind spares nothing left outside.

A. Rimbaud

Passing through a City

Yesterday was one of those days when I just plug in my iPod and walk around in the city to get some perspective and some peace. I enjoy these fleeting moments of passing through crowds of unfamiliar faces and unknown streets. Whenever I come to a new city, or an old city I've visited time and time again, I always do the same rutine, music and walking. It may not only be crowded streets I pass through, but empty shops or shops packed with people. I like to pass through everyday life situations only to see the moment become something special, a fleeting moment captured. I sat down on a table outside a coffee-shop to take in the buzzing of the place around me, at this particular day, a clear summer day, the city was full of eager turists wanting almost the same as me; to take in as much they could in a single day. They were all cueing at all possible places they could find to cue up at, they wanted to see everything in just a couple of fleeting moments, waiting until later to take it all in, to look at a screen with a picture and say "I do not know excatly when or where this was taken, but it must have been nice." Well, I sat at the table for a few more moments and walked away to listen to some more music, just passing through.


ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for
future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and
traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met
there, who detain'd me for love of me;
Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long
been forgotten by me;
I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;
Again we wander--we love--we separate again;
Again she holds me by the hand--I must not go!
I see her close beside me, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.

Walt Whitman

Science and Procrastination

A few days ago a friend of mine showed me this television series Fringe, which I immediately fell for. I have been watching the first 10 episodes just in a matter of days. I must confess since my studies into cognitive science is for a mere literary scholar somewhat of a mystery and a curiosity, but also at the same time a bit alarming, I suddenly remebered dear old Edgar Allan's take on science. I would also reccomend for all who have some time to kill, or simply want to procrastinate instead, to read Poe's excellent short story: The Case of Mr. M. Valdemar while on the subject of bizarre science.

Sonnet to Science

SCIENCE, meet daughter of old time thou art,
Who alterest all things with thy piercing eyes!
Why pray'st thou thus upon the poet's heart —
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities!

How shall he love thee, or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering,
To seek for treasure in the jewell'd skies,
Albeit he soar with an undaunted wing.

Hast thou not dragg'd Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood,
To seek for shelter in some happier star,
The gentle Nais from the fountain flood.

The elfin from the greenwood and from me,
The summer's dream beneath the shrubbery.

Daisy

At the present I am sitting in an office helping costumers in need. Though, I would rather have been swimming in a cool lake or some warm and relaxing place. This has been a whole week of sun and summer as rarely seen, and I have been trapped inside with distressed and somewhat angry costumers also wishing to be outside rather than arguing with me. So, I found a poem by William Carlos William, "Daisy", longing for a riverbank with a good book and some refreshments...

The dayseye hugging the earth

in August, ha! Spring is

gone down in purple,

weeds stand high in the corn,

the rainbeaten furrow

is clotted with sorrel

and crabgrass, the

branch is black under

the heavy mass of the leaves--

The sun is upon a slender green stem

ribbed lengthwise.

He lies on his back--

it is a woman also--

he regards his former

majesty and

round the yellow center,

split and creviced and done into

minute flowerheads, he sends out

his twenty rays-- a little

and the wind is among them

to grow cool there!

One turns the thing over

in his hand and looks

at it from the rear: brownedged,

green and pointed scales

armor his yellow.

But turn and turn,

the crisp petals remain

brief, translucent, greenfastened,

barely touching at the edges:

blades of limpid seashell.