Monthly Archives: January 2018

Buried moon

Buried moon, buried moon
Who to talk about at noon
When dreams are plundered by light
And powdered in gold and charcoal dust.

Crescent fairies are sad in the rouse
and at falter to surmise
the scanty slumbering traces
that led stupors into trenches.

The owners of the light
Do not know its might
and the pleasure of the sun
to astound and burn above…

Buried moon, buried moon
I want you soon…

As to play my feral dreams
around the all surviving tunes!

© Iulia Halatz

(Reposting an old poem)

Art – Buried moon by Edmund Dulac.

Thursday’s quote

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in Kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018),
The Left Hand of Darkness

 

Art by Édouard Manet.

Sun chokes the atmosphere

Sun chokes the atmosphere
Moon dies and takes
the truth and breath of you
Stars inscribe the sky
and determine
who’s alive…
What are your dreams?
Ask your heart
and put an old wish
to the slaughter.

Wild is the conspicuous green grass
that tells itself
to reach the stardust smell of spring.
Old is the key
that keeps away the chains
and charms unfathomed
to open a new gate
As you wear another’s
beating heart
melting in
and dripping of blue lust
Not knowing when
to destroy the dark
and say:
I am saving the meat
of my dreams for you!

© Iulia Halatz

Art by Konstantin Koborov.

Engleza de joi/ Longing

Longing = a yearning desire.

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.”
George Eliot

 

Art by Aleksandr Golovin.

 

 

What is your word?

If you were to be enclosed in one word, what would that be?
We are already enclosed in small words, small events, small thoughts making up a bigger picture. But what if you respond to only one word?

My word is freedom. I know of nobody being free, but in our world populated with clouds that sweep away the silence of the sky above blue lilacs of amaranthine Spring, I am free. My freedom is but at the words’ length of a magic rub of the lamp of imagination.

Without freedom we cannot feel the wind’s promiscuous touch as if at ripe flowers and leaves, without freedom we cannot be as young as yesteryear’s roses. We cannot see the Autumn climbing up the vines and the heartbeat of the moon, alive and beckoning.

Only with freedom of vision and thought we can unleash our unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful world inside of us.
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them, I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody – Inside them they’ve got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds….” – Neil Gaiman

You cannot paint in colors and words unless your mind is free to travel to your imaginary legendary lands between the corner of sunset and the verge of dawn. Unless your heart dances at the tune hummed by a water-lily. Unless your mind is raving at the wild immaculate trees. With freedom and broken dreams you can do anything. The shards of olden dreams are lavish land for new unbroken dreams.

“A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.”- Elaine de Kooning
A painting is not a noun, it is a verb – to love. To love with fierce freedom and lovely despair of losing one’s self into the loving.
In love we are maneuvering a human mechanism that at times refuses to work…That is clear, but the trying is enchanting. Buckets of enchantment color ethereal worldly beings in agonizing freedom and…love.

 

Art by Gustave Adolphe Mossa.

Engleza de joi/ Grasp

Grasp = a firm hold or grip.

“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.”
Simone de Beauvoir

My “situation” has a penchant for grasping more and more of the world in different and divergent sporting circumstances; cycling, skating, skiing… Sketching over one’s limits melts the stresses of fitting an imperfect representation of perfect living.

 

Art by Evyn Fong.

 

Persephone’s dusk

Why can’t we
sleep with the Gods?
be with them
turn their thoughts to foam
touch and revere
their lapis lazuli skin
until myths flicker in the cave

and the earth booms at their voices
The rain from Olympus
is the fog in the valley.

Life is not all lovely thorns and screaming butterflies.

 
© Iulia Halatz

Art by Gervasio Gallardo.

Engleza de joi/ Dread

Dread = great fear or apprehension.

…I find nothing fantastic in so-called fantastic art, it is an aspect of reality in search of sanity beyond the normal bounds. I believe that fantastic art is related to the protective dream, that it prolongs the healing dream and finds symbols that change dread into wonder, strangeness and beauty. – Thomas Häfner

 

After a pack of dogs jumped at my bike wheels, I developed a “protective dream”. The dogs in the tall dream protected me of the dogs in the tall grass.

Art by Kinuko Y Craft.

Biking Else Matters

The shape of goodness is the shape of life sometimes lived in the cold and fear of falling. My cycling season lasts for as long as the weather makes it (im)possible.

Cycling is my absolute passion. I do not care too much about anything else, with the exception of what I do which has many layers of passion, and roller-skating. I recite incantations for the weather to stay fine until late December. Come to think, for 4 or 5 years we haven’t had snow in Bucharest for Christmas. And I bought my bike 5 years ago. Before, I was a roller-skater. I decided to switch the hat the moment a biker screamed at me pointing that the bike lane was for cyclists. And this is how I changed “denomination”.

The Japanese have a blooming chart for the cherry trees. I have a blooming chart for cycling after lilacs. Every spring day starts and ends with the promise of a more beautiful and balmier day. Spring gives freedom and courage to watch the world from a cocoon of warmth and kindness. When snow is beating at the windows, I feel beaten and frozen. To jump-start my optimism, the beginning of the New Year is the beginning of Waiting for the Spring Festival. Also I get to “fight snow with snow” by tricking and jinxing Winter on my skis…

Cycling is an adventure…Everything can happen. Only this year I have been caught in the rain twice. I was soaked, thinking that if I sped, as usual, I got home in a jiffy. Didn’t happen, my breaks did not catch and I was not able to see anything with the rain in my eyes. I was attacked by dogs (of war), hit my head in branches…Met wonderful people…Saw the world raw and rough on terrible sunsets…Had my face cut by the wind…Shed tears of endearment when an icicle got in my eyes and stayed, for a while…At all costs in tears and shivers, it is marvelous closed circle goodness.

 

From cycling in the cold to breathing in the roar on two of the most beautiful days of 2017 – Christmas day and one folstitia-fire Spring day: