027

to be enfolded...

026

even the slightest,
the most mundane
of gestures
had its art.

025

drawn close,
over the blank pages
that she reads as the world,
each unsaid word
cherished.

024

during the day
she had no need of dreams--
each gesture,
each breath,
another portal.

023

there was never a need
to seek shelter--
the dark just one
of many harbours.

022

in return,
she let things
express their gratitude.

021

even those
who didn't know her
found it easy
to miss her absence.

020

the ritual,
if ritual she had,
was to find the flaw
then revere it.

019

cherished the world
enrobed in dreams.

018

with each glance
she refracted
a thousand times.

017

even when crying,
her lament
drenched the fields
with light.

016

often mere looking
is offering enough.

015

for her,
the thought of the world
was no more dazzling
than the world itself.

014

born from light,
to light her garden
would return.

013

she savoured things...

012

unaware that anyone was looking
she was at her most opaque.

011

vulnerable,
she had become invincible.

010

among others
she shed herself,
and in so doing
revealed something
of the essential.

009

her fragility was not a weakness,
but the secret to scattering joy
with each breath.

008

firmly rooted
in the soil of her longing,
the tendrils of her gaze
grew far beyond her field
of vision.

007

she cupped the sky in her hands,
to better listen to the echo of her silence.

006

out of the silence
answers arose,
nourished by need
and doubt.

005

she paused there,
a blossom nestled
among the leaves of speech.

004

she set down her cup.
the steam still rising,
so that we might see
her true form.

003

a calla lily resting on an empty bowl.
could any dream be more real?

002

she shed tears
so that the world
might stay afloat.

001

“kissako” she said,
her kettle already full.
their cups will never be empty
nor their thirst.


*Note: A literal translation of kissako ( 喫茶去 ) is impossible, but Roxana explains it as: stop here for a while, drink a cup of tea with me, then you may go your way, but let's enjoy this cup of tea now, together.

the beautiful foolishness of things

"Let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

Kakuzo Okakura

collaborare

collaboration. the roots go back to the latin 'collaborare', which means: to work with ('com' + 'labore'). but is it possible that the work is no work at all, occurring as naturally as the flow of a river, and the 'with' - a dialogue in the mystery of the encounter?

I use Celan's words here, his famous description of the poem (which, however, can stand for every work of art) as an interplay between solitude and the Other:

"The poem is solitary. It is solitary and on the way. Whoever writes it is given to it for the journey. But does not the poem by that very fact, therefore already here, stand in the encounter – in the mystery of the encounter?

"The poem wants to reach this Other, it needs this Other, it needs a vis-à-vis. (...) The poem becomes - and under what conditions - the poem of a person who, as before, perceives, who faces that which appears. Who questions this appearance and addresses it. The poem becomes dialogue..."

two banal water bottles, hanging on a string, in front of countless windows: such an encounter is implausible, if not genuinely absurd, and yet everything combines so well, that one is led to believe that nothing can be more natural, that this is the way things are, or, even more, should be. beauty emerges.

Here, everything happens instantly, that very moment in which the line between the invisible and the visible becomes fluid and goes right through us, returning us to that which we truly are, the middle-ground between being and nothing. Merleau-Ponty's 'chiasme'.

I remember the simple story of my Japanese pottery Master, who told me one quiet afternoon, "I will rest when my hands have created the 無空有 bowl." mu-ku-yu, a word he coined himself, 無 (void) 空(emptiness) 有(existence): the unity of being and non-being. In this space we allow 無空有 to reveal itself, in the glimpse of a second, the butterfly wings' flicker.

--Roxana--