“More than silence, it asks us to speak in whispers to calm the shrieks of today’s society. I don’t think we need to shout more to fight the scream. That’s a mistake. We need to create the silence needed to hear our little voices.”

– Jaume Plensa

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“Silence is desire, a dream, an aspiration, something so unknown and so inaccessible that we can only imagine it… Our silence is noise. Noise is the only bridge between sound and silence, between what we know and what we wish. As soon as all is quiet, when we think we have achieved silence, we discover that something interrupts, something as close and familiar as our own body. Our noisy body… I invite you to listen to these noises. I invite you to imagine the silence.” – Jaume Plensa

JB & GO – two boston terriers

A tiny dot-to-dot delight

ZIELONY WIERSZ
Władysław Broniewski

Ja nie chcę wie­le:
Cie­bie i zie­leń,
i żeby wiatr ko­ły­sał
ga­łę­zie drzew,
i że­bym wier­sze pi­sał
o tym, że…
każ­dy nerw,
każ­da chwi­la sa­mot­na,
każ­dy ból – jak­że czę­sty, jak czę­sty! –
zwia­stu­je otchłań,
mówi: nie­szczę­sny…

Ja nie chcę wie­le,
ale nie mniej niż wszyst­ko:
Cie­bie i zie­leń
i żeby list­kom
aka­cji było wietrz­nie,
i żeby ser­cu – bez­piecz­nie,
i żeby kot się ba­wił fi­ran­ką
jak umie.
Żeby sie­dzieć na je­ro­zo­lim­skim gan­ku
i nic nie ro­zu­mieć.

Pę­tac­ki wiersz
sam wiesz, że łżesz,
ale dla­cze­go tak boli, tak boli?
chy­ba już nic nie na­pi­szę
w ogrom­ną i groź­ną ci­szę
scho­dzę po­wo­li

ja nie chce wiele:
Ciebie i zieleń…

“A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.”

– Dorothea Lange

INNOCENCE
By LINDA HOGAN

There is nothing more innocent
than the still-unformed creature I find beneath soil,
neither of us knowing what it will become
in the abundance of the planet.
It makes a living only by remaining still
in its niche.
One day it may struggle out of its tender
pearl of blind skin
with a wing or with vision
leaving behind the transparent.

I cover it again, keep laboring,
hands in earth, myself a singular body.
Watching things grow,
wondering how
a cut blade of grass knows
how to turn sharp again at the end.

This same growing must be myself,
not aware yet of what I will become
in my own fullness
inside this simple flesh.

“Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon… We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.”

– Dorothea Lange

I’M ABLE TO BE SILENCE

By Rafał Wojaczek

I’m ending in your eyes
I’m able to be silence
I’m ending in your dream
The last echo is silence
the place
where your look is ending
Dream is blinding me, radiant
spark of heart
I’m ending in your eyes

By dream, by you
I’m bringing myself
to your death

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

– Dorothea Lange

not

by Erin Hanson

Your not your age
Nor the size you wear
Your not your weight
Or the color of your hair
Your not your name
Or the dimples on your cheeks
You are all the books you read,
And all the words you speak
You are your croaky morning voice
And the smiles you try to hide,
You are the sweetness in your laughter
And every tear you’ve cried
Your the songs you sing so loudly
When you know when your all alone,
Your the places that you’ve been to
And the ones that you call home
Your the thing that you believe in
Your the photos in your bedroom
And the future you dream of
You’re made up of much beauty
But it seems that you forgot
When you decided that you are defined,
By all the things your not

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect.

Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it.

Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”

― Andrei Tarkovsky

Elm

by SYLVIA PLATH

For Ruth Fainlight

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:

It is what you fear.

I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,

Its dissatisfactions?

Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.

How you lie and cry after it

Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,

Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,

Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?

This is rain now, this big hush.

And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.

Scorched to the root

My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.

A wind of such violence

Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me

Cruelly, being barren.

Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go

Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.

How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?

Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.

What is this, this face

So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids hiss.

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults

That kill, that kill, that kill.

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”

― John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity

“Dear Superwoman,
Remember that a rose does not stop looking beautiful, because of the thorns around it. So, never allow weaknesses to stop you from admiring your own strengths.”
– Gift Gugu Mona

AS I BEGAN TO LOVE MYSELF – Charlie Chaplin’s speech on his 70th Birthday

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
as I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call it “RESPECT”.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.
Today I call it “MATURITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.

As I began to love myself I quit steeling my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness,
things I love to do and that make my heart cheer,
and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm.
Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything
that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations,
and everything the drew me down and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past
and worry about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening.
Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But As I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

We no longer need to fear arguments,
confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others.
Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born.
Today I know THAT IS “LIFE”!

“Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals.”

– Steven Erikson