“he who controls the Spice controls the universe.” 
Herbert, F. (1920-1986), in Dune







{random poetry #125}


The Verb to Be

I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no wings, it doesn’t necessarily sit at a cleared table in the evening on a terrace by the sea. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of insignificant facts like seeds that leave one furrow for another at nightfall. It’s not the moss that forms on a rock or the foam that rocks in a glass. It’s a boat riddled with snow, if you will, like birds that fall and their blood doesn’t have the slightest thickness. I know the general outline of despair. A very small shape, defined by jewels worn in the hair. That’s despair. A pearl necklace for which no clasp can be found and whose existence can’t even hang by a thread. That’s despair for you. Let’s not go into the rest. Once we begin to despair we don’t stop. I myself despair of the lampshade around four o’clock, I despair of the fan towards midnight, I despair of the cigarette smoked by men on death row. I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no heart, my hand always touches breathless despair, the despair whose mirrors never tell us if it’s dead. I live on that despair which enchants me. I love that blue fly which hovers in the sky at the hour when the stars hum. I know the general outline of the despair with long slender surprises, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I get up every day like everyone else and I stretch my arms against a floral wallpaper. I don’t remember anything and it’s always in despair that I discover the beautiful uprooted trees of night. The air in the room is as beautiful as drumsticks. What weathery weather. I know the general outline of despair. It’s like the curtain’s wind that holds out a helping hand. Can you imagine such a despair? Fire! Ah they’re on their way … Help! Here they come falling down the stairs … And the ads in the newspaper, and the illuminated signs along the canal. Sandpile, beat it, you dirty sandpile! In its general outline despair has no importance. It’s a squad of trees that will eventually make a forest, it’s a squad of stars that will eventually make one less day, it’s a squad of one­-less-­days that will eventually make up my life. 

André Breton (1896-1966)





My heart is at ease knowing that
what is meant for me will never miss me,
and that which misses me
was never meant for me.

Imam al-Shafi'i 150–204 AH (767–820 CE)


If you expect any benefits from your 
search, material, mental or spiritual, 
you have missed the point. 
Truth gives no advantage. 
It gives no higher status, 
no power over others; 
all you get is truth and 
freedom from the false.

M. Nisargadatta (1897-1981)


“a serious girl, when she finds someone who calms her spirit and quiets her busy thoughts,
will love you so fiercely, it will defy even her own logic and reasoning.”
Dammit, M.


The classical idea that objects and processes exist “in” space and time is now dead ... 
space and time should instead be seen as phenomena that somehow “emerge” from relationships. 
Alexander Wendt in Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology

#TimeIsAConcept


i want to be with you,
it is as simple,
and as complicated 
as that

Bukowski, C.

{random poetry #124}


You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:

you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head —
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.

Stafford, W. (1914-1993)


“...they say it is by the pull of abysses, 
that you measure height.”

Tsvetaeva, M. (1892-1941), in Poem of the Mountain



“There is something in personal love, caresses,
and the magnetic flood of sympathy and friendship,
that does, in its way, more good
than all the medicine in the world.”
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)