photo 2: a structure like a house made out of “shhhhhh”
photo 3: (text in a big circle-ish thing) [ethereal protective coating] who knows what this coating is, whatever it is, and who cares. it’s an idea. it’s whatever it is that makes us forget where we came from. I had a dream when I was three years old It might have just been a daydream but I remembered being in a white room that was on top of a white tower with a window and light coming in It was in the middle of a city but not Earth and I was by myself This place was in between lives and I had a job in this room maybe i had some decisions to make It wasn’t a dream.And it wasn’t a daydream. Why should I disrespect myself just because I was three I know what I saw [ethereal protective coating]
photo 4: My parents and grandparents were Theosophists and in the house when I was growing up we had a little copy of an old book by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky called “The Voice of the Silence”. I didn’t ask about it because I wasn’t interested but The VOICE of the SILENCE sounded like an irritatingly impossible idea. Which is it, buddy? a voice? or silence? I knew for sure I wasn’t ever going to be able to hear it. You know who would be able to hear it? Serious people. Serious meditators. Fancy, grave adults.
photo 5: a closed triangle of shhhh with an orange question mark in it
photo 6: [four orange question marks falling in a relatively straight line on top of] it’s incredibly challenging to wait for the voice of the silence even if you believe in it or know what it is or simply think it’s a good idea even the voice of this opalescent ghost of mine—which I am not remotely claiming is the THE VOICE of THE SILENCE—is challenging to wait for (this text tipped diagonally by itself, btw. it wasn’t a style choice. why fight it. picking our battles.)
photo 7: During the first couple of months of the pandemic I watched a livestream of a flame that had been kept lit in a Japanese temple for 1200 years straight. Electrifying! [color photo cutout of a flame in a lantern with the text “← re-enactment” next to it] The livestream was a closeup of this small flame flickering in its lantern, I guess—a flame and darkness, that’s all I could see. But for 1200 years a long line of people had agreed and were still agreeing that it was important to keep this flame lit
photo 8: and nobody messed up! Nobody over the course of 1200 years had messed up! Nobody fell asleep on the job, missed their, what, their flame-tending shift. I don’t know how long I watched for. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the flame.
photo 9: what are we trying to say what was so important to come and talk to you about today did we say it already no, not yet [a black rectangle dividing the photo horizontally] oh. i’m remembering a raw translation of a poem that i like better than the finished translation. I found it in Jane Hirshfield’s book of essays, “Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry” the poem is by Izumi Shikibu and I’m not going to give you the finished translation. If you want it you’ll go get it.
photo 10:
NADOTE KIMI / MUNASHIKI SORA NI / KIENIKEMU /
why you empty sky in disappear did (?)
AWAYUKI DANI MO / FUREBA FURU YO NI
Frail snow even ! when falling falling world in
photo 11: the poet had lost her daughter and it seems to me an affront to translate this poem any more than the bare minimum i reject the very idea that anyone other than the poet would even handle this poem even though it would be difficult for people who don’t speak Japanese to understand the poem without a translator — still, get off the poem as fast as you can for god’s sake, stop handling it it’ll melt
Love love love. Your metamorphosis is beautiful. It’s all I ever wanted.
I am sighing with pleasure.