“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924)
Art by Vladimir Kush.
Chortle = laugh in a noisy, gleeful way.
“Books feed and cure and chortle and collide.”
–Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 2, 2000)
Art by Boris Diodorov (cover for The Little Mermaid).
“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.”
–Adam Smith (June 16, 1723 – July 17, 1790)
Art by Vincent van Gogh.
Womb = uterus; a place where something is generated.
“You look at trees and called them “trees,” and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a “star,” and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, “tree,” “star,” were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of “trees” and “stars” saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was “myth-woven and elf patterned.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Art by Ian Miller.
“What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Art by Chelsea Cardinal.
Heartbeat = one complete pulsation of the heart.
“A poem is when you hear the heartbeat of a stone.”
–Jean-Pierre Simeón, This is a Poem That Heals Fish
Art by Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903).
Asbestos = a soft, greyish-white material that does not burn, used especially in the past as a protection against fire and as a form of insulation.
“Some writers can handle lava with bare hands, but I’m not so tough, my skin is not asbestos. And in fact I have no interest in confession. My games are transformation and invention.”
–Ursula K. Le Guin
Art by Dani Soon.
Symbiotic = involving interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association.
“Stories … are genuinely symbiotic organisms that we live with, that allow human beings to advance.”
– Neil Gaiman
Art by Rob Rey.
There are countless lures in our lives or it may be that our lives are made of lures. Mine is the sea. I hear its song all over the year and like Ulysses’ sailors I am not wise enough to deafen my ears. I am trapped into its blue.
The sea knows things and is a cure. For loneliness, grief, unhappiness and love, as Mr. Somerset Maugham wisely put:
“You know, when one’s in love,’ I said, ‘and things go all wrong, one’s terribly unhappy and one thinks one won’t ever get over it. But you’ll be astounded to learn what the sea will do.
Well, love isn’t a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You’ll be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable.”
―W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
So when one’s in love, get on a boat… I cannot help but love Somerset’s magic realism.
I illustrate with pictures from my short May holiday in the Ionian.
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” – Bruce Lee
In the whirlwinds of our existence we don’t look at Things… We are petrified in the rat race. When was the last time you saw the stars? A flower, the blossoming trees? Felt the wind on your face?… I have read that only 80 people on earth can remember every single day of their lives. So why should you be so angry or miserable today, when you won’t even remember Today? We probably remember the best of days that trampled upon our souls in shimmering happiness.
Be like water! Change color and flow…
There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners. –Antoni Gaudi
Maybe the rumors are right, maybe Gaudi was counselled by a fairy about his high-end innovative, dream-like “curved” architecture. In this respect I am relieved and resolved to keep on talking with the fairies that at times whisper soft and pleasurable words into my ears.
Also a fairy has told me that in Love, space is curved, not straight… As Love is the most natural thing of things to feel and to flow in as if in water, smoothly and naturally spreading walls of scented charm like innocently does a plum tree. Amend the curves, give valor to them and expect nothing.
Do you think the moon expects applause when it shines above dense darkness and blinking eyes in the murky forests?
© Iulia Halatz
Art by Vladimir Kush.