tonight I dreamed a dream which wasn't mine. I can't remember the details. It wasn't mine. Someone said to me, 'I dreamed you were going to die a tragic death'. But the dream wasn't mine.

a note on narcissism, or an abrupt post-scriptum to an encounter

A compliment paid reveals but what one desires, and a criticism brings to light what, within oneself, one most fears or reviles. The truth of one's remark lies, perhaps, only in the varying degrees of the generosity of the soul.

There is no generosity without self-knowledge. For only one able to view the world as independent of one's own self -- not indifferent but invested with responsibility -- can be generous. Generosity requires courage: to view the world as independent of oneself means to have envisaged a world from which one is absent. And that is also the highest form of self-knowledge.

Narcissism is the opposite of generosity. For the narcissist, the world's existence stands in causal relation to the existence of the self. A narcissist views the world selectively: only that which sheds a positive light on his person is worth preserving. It is in the nature of narcissism to destroy everything else and, in doing so, to feel justified by safeguarding a part of himself.

... the deadline was a deafline... and this only made the matters worse!

07.11.09

                         solitary walk. Rather than
a crowd colorful explosions a rock band --
water winds round my waist:

if I had a Guide for each of my False steps
and satin sleeves to pass over their heads as I pass --

"the night is still young"
the wind lies in wait

his face lights up, purple, in an instant
I turn --

Time flies
multiply
slower
than
other flies.

Scripta manent verba volant.

"The written word stays, the spoken word flies," said the sage.

"The written word says, the spoken word lies," noted his disciple.

in the margins of a Peter Hutton film

The film tore                    just where
the glass      spilled                    Cleft
thinner than     a                mica leaf
Calmer than l                     A wraith-
note

Sung in slow            tide       Round
under my tongue               No more
but so?              Of winter blossoms
lace-leaf                        & thale cress
spoke

The sheet frayed               just where
the drop        fell                         Words
skip across water                  & catch
flame            White burns the crystal
rose

Asleep                          as deep as river
silt            Eyelashes & lime          Fall
now           or learn to fly          Sooth-
sight is breath you touch               Or
snow

The ice broke                      just where
the wing           stirred            The sun
ached     in its sheath             of cirrus
plume      Frost-leaf             & lucent
stone

Feather upon my lip              A voice
parts wisps                                 of hair
& lulls the wave                  Ice floats
upstream              Ink-white the river
wrote

A warm evening in the Heath. Gossamer bridges between blades of dry grass. The oak above my head alive with the flutter of wings, bird quarrels and terrors. The sun going down behind the line of trees: shadows grow taller and cold. I bike over the hilltop. A green woodpecker , hidden in the grass, takes fright at the approach of two large wheels, and rests on a sunlit tree trunk. Colored fungi grow in secret. Rare happiness: to desire to be nowhere else.