Look Forward, Look Back

(A Short Pronouncement that Turns to Dialogue. And Citation.)

Look forward, look back: isn't that what we we do on this day?  But why just this day, or yesterday, or during the intervening week between Christmas and New Year's, when news is on short rations and so simply recycles? Always so many questions we might ask, but don't:

Who knocks as the clock clangs, as the snow piles up, flake by flake?
Will I be the one who must answer?

Our beauty so fleeting it runs out like ice on a hot day.

How far do I have to run to avoid coming back?

--As if you could, you know.

"Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep."

--I know that, that's Heraclitus.  Just so you don't have the last word, here is another of his aphorisms:
"If all things turned to smoke, the nostrils would sort them out."

Or this: "The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings."

--I knew you'd do that, get the last word.

But it wasn't me; it was Heraclitus. 

And now it's you.

No, it's you.  

Notes:
Heraclitis, Fragments LXXXIX, CXII and CXXV from Charles H. Kahn.  The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. 

Photo: Old Montreal through the side mirror

Undying Light

15 June 2010

We're walking around the yard after dark.  A pink glow backlights the silhouettes of trees to the west, a sliver of moon begins to set as the evening star rises, and bats flit through the air.

The peepers are still singing; the wind, which raged all day, tossing stinging salt spray across the yard, has settled; a flower of some sort opens and vibrant perfume fills the air.  We walk along the water's edge; our feet are in darkness but the sea still glows softly silver.  "This time of year," Marike says, "the light seeks surfaces where it can linger."

It's as if, just like us, it's not ready to slumber yet, but clings, wakeful, to every last minute it can turn to day.