Anima Mundi: Spring

 

A NON-SEXUAL SONG
 

In this world
where you should belong clearly

 to one camp or another,
I'm not at home in any!
 

Flesh dies, no matter what shape it's in,
after one lifetime.
 

What can you love forever, but the soul?

-- a restless creature,
coming and going like the Gods,
in one devious disguise or another.
 

Man, Woman, Tree! Insect! Animal!
Stone, Cloud, Water!
 

How do we know it's not someone we loved
once, or are
still yearning to?

 

Kay Johnson

 

Poem: Kay Johnson, Human Songs (1964 City Lights)
 

A sampling of the painted Feminine Divine as she/they/us appear in various guises and revealings in public places.  (Click to enlarge)
— Mural details; official, community, commercial; all ephemeral.
— Artist unknown/anonymous unless BOLD
— Locations approximate, all Eugene

 

1. Spirits Ethereal on Gray Fence
2. ILA ROSE (near Lincoln and 3rd)
3. VALENTINA (on Washington at RR Tracks; now partially tagged and faded)
4. SHAMSIA HASSANI (near Capella Market)
   
5. KATE THOMPSON (Growers Market north wall)
6. Free The Family (Free Wall now removed, near Shelton Mcmurphy)
7. DAN HITCHCOCK (near Lincoln and 7th)
8. Spirit Feathered (near 7th and Blair; now painted over with Kobe Bryant)
9. HANS d’HOLLOSY (Alleyway off Broadway between Charnelton and Olive, formerly New Zone Gallery)
10. ILA ROSE (near 6th and Blair)
11. Gorgon (Chalks on pavement, disappeared)

VEXICON: Syntax

We are suggesting that words and their arrangements (syntax) are soul mines. But mining doesn't require modern technical tools. … What does help mining is an eye attuned to the dark. — James Hillman

have to be

There's no better sight to see / Than you and me / Staring at the sky / Happy right where we lie / Life would be so much better / If you and I were together.  Keep dreaming

— Anon. Entire found poem as written on pavement at the Underpassage

PROHIBIDA

NO

.................................................

I have one mouth.

It holds two words.

Yes, No,

inside all others.

Yes. No. No. Yes.

I say yes to these words, as I must,

and I also refuse them.

— Jane Hirshfield

................................................

Without the Written

RING

STOP

BLACK LABEL SOCIETY

— Anon. Written on the pavement at the Underpassage. 

A quick search revealed BLS is an international touring band.

Lullabye-bye

HOW?

Hey I was Running out of Gas & 

Dont trust Just leaving my rig on the 

side of the Road So I am going to

get gas and can I’ll Be Back ASAP 

— Anon. Found Poem

NOTES

— Signs as Images as Signs in the Current Era (CE) invites an augmented reality (AR). Hence, the conceit VEXICON: the necessity of Vexation & Lexicon. This is not Artificial Intelligence (AI).  The difference? Syntax.  —DB

— Epigram: James Hillman, from Inquiry Into Image (1977) in Spring journal.

— Jane Hirshfield, above, in the collection Ledger (2020) from the poem Now A Darkness Is Coming; posted below.

— Wang Wei (701-761 CE), from the poem A Farmer, trans. David Hinton in The Selected Poems of Wang Wei (New Directions 2006)

.........................................................

Some call it Simpleton Valley, but why

confuse things with yes it is, no it isn't?

— Wang Wei

.........................................................

Now A Darkness Is Coming

Jane Hirshfield

I hold my life with two hands. I walk with two legs. 

Two ears are enough to hear Bach with.

Blinded in one eye, a person sees with the other. 

Now a great darkness is coming. 

A both-eyes darkness. 

I have one mouth.

It holds two words.

Yes, No,

inside all others.

Yes. No. No. Yes.

I say yes to these words, as I must,

and I also refuse them.

My two legs, 

shaped to go forward, 

obedient to can't-know and must-be, 

walk into the time that is coming.