“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
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was November ~ the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines.
– L.M. Montgomery
It was November ~ the month of promiscuous trees, turbulent moons dressed up in haze, opal leaves layering the smock of earth.
Art by Charles Vess.
You are the mellow vines
ripe at the touch of Autumn.
You are a blue alphabet
falling from the sky…
You are the amber leaves
lured in the sleep of Winter.
You are the macadamized trance
of flowers
when Spring is climbing up the trees.
If you are not the fragrant moon
to bread stars from shimmering flour
You are the color of fire
that burns in everything you see.
Art by Michael Cheval.
Trek = a trip or movement especially when involving difficulties or complex organization.
“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” – Albert Camus
Art by Charles Courtney Curran.
Solitary = living or being by one’s self; having no companion present; alone; lonely.
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
–Franz Kafka
Art by Kinuko Y. Craft.
Widen = to increase the width, scope, or extent of.
“Our task must be to free ourselves … by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
– Albert Einstein
Art by Toshio Ebine.