Thy fearful symmetry

My watch

Portraiture

The Drunken Boat

The picture is mine, the poem is Rimbaud's. (Just in case there is confusion.)

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.


I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons.
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.


Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant clamourings


The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Which men call eternal rollers of victims,
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!


Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit,
Carrying away both rudder and anchor.


And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;


Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!


I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!


I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!


I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps,
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!


I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!


I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds!


I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!


Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!


I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.


Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman...


Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!


But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether,
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;


Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious,
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,


Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;


I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!


I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? -


But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!


If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.


I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

New tank for my fish

I finally did the humane thing: obtained a larger, clean tank for Mary and William.

New pencils

I finally have pencils and paint again! So now there will be a lot of sketches here.

Heron/Pig

Here are some pictures of a heron eating all the fish out of a pond, and then pooping:

K

This is K as a baby. Note that the head is quite large.


This is once he reached toddlerhood-going-on-eminent-statesman.


And this is the handsomest boy smile ever, but I'm partial!

Mmmm

I have ALWAYS wanted to eat Ayn Rand alive. Since she is dead, this is the next best thing:



Food options aside, and the prevalence of overly hip hipsters, the place is lovely to work. The music is well chosen, and soft enough to not block all thoughts from my mind. The voices are quiet, other than a guy asking all his companions if they were Christian. I think that because it a used-book store, it has that library air that keeps the hip hushed. And such comfy chairs and warm light. I had no troubles with the Internet, but Kristiaan did. Try to spot him swearing at his computer below.


To complete the hipster ambiance it has an old typewriter:


I typed my Dutch lesson over and over on it:

Dishes

I borrowed Shrestha's camera (mine has undergone a nervous breakdown) while she was doing the dishes. This picture came out OK:

Resolution

Yet again, I resolve to write SOMETHING in my blog. Unfortunately, the self-seriousness needed to write a blog, about ME, is likely to keep my dear friends laughing for a decade. Why do I even try?

Because I have an unfortunate birthdate. At 25, I am young enough to yearn after the exhibitionistic lifestyle of the Facebook generation. Simultaneously, I am old enough to remember the concept of privacy, and hence hate Facebook. So I seek a non-Facebook route to flaunting my select inner thoughts.

If you are reading this, and you actually know me, you know I am very long-winded, and tell long stories about important topics such as my toenail. To spare my colleagues and friends, I will write (instead of speak) these hard-hitting stories.

Coordinating the outfit to match the dinnerware