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.

THIN ICE

"... all of this unthinkable

 "... rising seas are sinking futures

"... entire countries … disappear forever

"... mass exodus … a biblical scale

"... rising sea levels …shrinking landmasses

"... territorial integrity and maritime spaces

"... death sentence for vulnerable countries

"... threat-multiplier

... any time in the past 11,000

... fraction of a degree

... danger acute … 900 million

... ice cap … 270 billion tons per year.

... $100-billion climate finance

all of this unthinkable ...

NOTES

Captions extracted from Sea-level Rise:  Remarks by UN Secretary-General António Guterres during The United Nations (UN) Security Council’s first-ever debate on the global implication of Sea-level Rise, February 14, 2023.

Photos February 2023 Dry River country of Oregon's Crook County, which continues in Extreme Drought ... with a nod to Chaos Theory; the Butterfly Wing in an upside-down world where rising is sinking.

Wang Wei (701-761 CE) a Chinese poet, artist and practitioner of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism; trans. David Hinton in The Selected Poems of Wang Wei (New Directions Books, 2006)

...

East Creek, Savoring the Moon

From between hewn peaks, a far-off moon

emerges at the edge of my brushwood gate.

Ten thousand trees sharing its clear skies

as shadows blur toward the heart of night,

its radiance offers emptiness white images

and its ch' invests wind with ice-cold dew.

The valley's silent. Autumn streams echo.

Deep among cliffwalls, scraps of azure haze

linger. Crystal pure, it enters isolate dream,

opening shadows, embracing empty peaks,

then I wake at my ch'in window confused:

pine creek at dawn, not a thought anywhere.

Loose Space

m m m m ... CLEAN!

DO NOT WALK OR PLAY

 

The GLEANER

The NET

The STEAMER

AXIS MUNDI  

The SEDUCTION OF GRAVITY

The SKATER

The CLOSURE

The SLEEPER 

NOTES

Loose Space:  The Indeterminate In/Between. Mirror and metaphor of urban contingency. Matter and material of practical adapting.  Caring people seeking place and peace. All that, and the comings and goings...

One Day in Late January 2023: An Iteration of the Underpassage Project.

—  First three photos: Residue after railroad workers break up temporary settlement of campers along the tracks near Washington-Jefferson Bridge. Gleaner: "Never know what you'll find."

—  Photos 4-8: Basketball courts and Skatepark under bridge. Steamer: "I've heard they'll open the other section come Spring."  Skater: "I'm practicing the edge-slide."

—  Final photos: Adjacent to the skatepark, closure by The City of the horseshoe court expanse for "deep-cleaning;" nearby, a person at rest.

Ghost Trees

Ghost Tree placed and night uplighted at a private residence in Central Oregon - spirit arising.

And because matter hungers for form, from form into form it passed— ...

— Jessica Fisher

Ghost Trees dis/placed at Pronghorn Resort and Golf Club & its Hotel/Spa known as Juniper Preserve, a few miles east of Bend.

Pronghorn Resort features thousands of plants, trees and grasses pilfered from adjacent federal land (250 acres of BLM in 2005-2006), according to a 2009 lawsuit by the U.S. government -- a complaint settled simultaneously by Pronghorn for $200,000 in 2009. "The vegetation helped give a desert-like appearance" to the two Pronghorn golf courses opened in 2004. (Sources: Oregonian and Bend Bulletin, 2009)

Ghost Tree installed at a private residence in Central Oregon. Several landscaping companies offer delivery and installation of Ghost Trees. As Source Landscaping claims: “The Central Oregon scenery inspires our design philosophy, and we’re 99% sure we started the ghost tree trend in Bend.” 

Ancient Juniper in a natural landscape, a "Ghost Tree" on BLM; federal lands in the public domain, country once the traveling, gathering and marked places of indigenous peoples. Numerous cultural placed-stones and temporary shelters appear in the vicinity of this Juniper, Central Oregon.

Juniper bowing in fire country. 

Ghost Tree resurrecting as Shoe Tree, a place of pilgrimage for the devoted.

Every artifact, every natural object, with its ghostly wrapping of associations and meanings, begotten and forgotten, is a gathering of minds or contending voices: everything is an invisible assembly. 

— Robert Pinsky

Ghost Shoe, a singular relic in a sage expanse.

NOTES

— Photos D. Beauchamp 2022

— Jessica Fisher from The Hunger for Form in her poetry collection Frail-Craft (2007)

— “Juniper Preserve is a gathering place, a hub, and a sanctuary in the mystic juniper forest of Central Oregon." https://pronghornresort.com/gallery/

https://juniperpreserve.com/ https://juniperpreserve.com/ghost-trees-pronghorn/

— Source Landscaping https://www.sourcelandscaping.co/portfolio/#iLightbox[gallery_image_1]/45

https://www.sourcelandscaping.co/portfolio/#iLightbox[gallery_image_1]/55

— “Time is the enemy of all growing things. We maintain the integrity of your landscape investment so it can grow and be healthy over the long haul.” —Kiley Sampels. https://sampelslandscaping.com/portfolio/ scroll down to Trees

— "Ghost trees. 100$ 50$ installed in cement. These can be decorated with fake animal, lights for different occasions. Use you imagination." Ghost Trees On Facebook 

— Robert Pinsky, in the Note in his collection of poems Gulf Music (2007).

The Dream of Ghost Tree, conjuring the earthly comings and heavenly goings...