ETERNITY

Now strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh. — Aristotle (from Rhetoric)

I have occasionally speculated that all metaphors are variance of a small number of archetypes; perhaps this proposition is also applicable to fables. — Juan Luis Borges

Clearly we are here led along among shadows into the constellated realm of Archetypal Psychology.  

 

Something is afoot.   One could say.

 

Something is about, one could also imagine; not say.

 

ETERNITY   (Fibreboard Wall, Blue Paint)

 

The beginning is lost; 

the End stretches into eternity. 

Don't bother with them, they're irrelevant. 

And since all is really nothing,

then nothing is truly everything. 

    — Attar of Nishipur (1125–1221 Persian Sufi)

        From The Conference of Birds by Attar

Strange words, Attar!  Let’s turn to Polish poet Julia Hartwig-Międzyrzecka for another take:

What to do with words

that have no object behind them

nothing to touch or taste

on which to rest the eyes

nothing to relate to human temperature

For example the word eternity

sterile pure cold as the glow of stars

leading us into a desert of interplanetary space

into diluted air the dead bottom of darkness

a word with no temptation no odor no color

a sound no tamed animal would obey

even the wind is more palpable than eternity

a huge number has at least an appearance of countability

But eternity? Once called up it rattles around the skull

once created it can't be erased from the dictionary

ownerless wild and monumental

one more proof of our madness

— Julia Hartwig-Międzyrzecka (1921-2017)

 

WORD  (Diamond Steel Plate, Hand-Welding)

What more could be said?  One more proof of our madness?

Let's turn to poet Anne Waldman, not for the final word, simply for the saying:

Said So

They said must not, must not be said. They said it:

must not be said. Must not must not must not be said. 

They settled it, way leading to a future, lately acquired,

way leading to a future tense. Must not. Said so. Said

not. Will not. I said I am throwing the words. I said

I am throwing the words around. I said something is forming.

Something is forming

I said I am throwing the words around something is forming.

(make it to me to me to me to heal me up again

make it to me to me to me to heal it up again) 

Said: I am spilling the words around.

Tell sky I'm coming 

Tell sky I'm coming

They are this old world getting busy with trouble now

They are getting busy with trouble this world 

Now heal it up again

(make it to me to me to heal me up again)

I said I am throwing the words around something is forming.

Will be. Said will be will be said. Said it now: will be

said. Said so. Something is forming.

(make it to me to me to me to me to heal again)

— Anne Waldman, Said So, in her collection Skin Meat Bones (1983)

 
SAID SO.
Face: Temporary public art, color on slatted fence.
Crown: US Federal Courthouse 

Saying by its nature seeks to contain. This dismaying phrase so said turns back on itself.  Peruvian poet César Vallejo brings us to earth, a gravitational pull:

        And what if after so much history, we succumb,
not to eternity,
but to these simple things, like being
at home, or starting to brood!

— César Vallejo, from the poem And what if after so many words

On or Off the Artbound Bus

Click photos to enlarge

Below: 2 years later, the Rainbow Life rolls on... 

Bus rolls with traveling rock band; below, tattoo of leader of the band

Below rock band bus one year later, rolling on...

Amphibus Omnibus

Always in Reach Omnibus

SKILL YOUR SELF 

The art of driving arriving living on board

on the street and on the road

Trusting beyond the horizon nestles a pot of gold

A COUNTRY OF DREAMS
The country of dreams has its own geography. Any time I enter it, I recognize the same vectors of direction, bearings of roads in the mountains, the way you have to turn in order to come upon the proper street. Not a repetition of the same details, for they change, but as it were an encoded spatial memory, yet taken from where, from what landscapes once seen, it is difficult to tell.
— Czeslaw Milosz