the pale hour... (after L-P Fargue)

"l'heure passe que les mains de la nuit faufilent aux vieux murs..."

(when they are very old, you forget how long they have lived...

you feel that you should know them better, 

even if you have known them a long time)

as the pale hour steals by, leave shadows quiver in the fading light...

***

"on entend le bruit nombreux des feuilles partout comme un feu qui prend..."

(when they leave us, you realize you don't miss them so much...

even as you know they are gone forever,

but the grieving and the regrets remain)

a certain pervasive scent lingers on, infusing the amorphous life...

***

"un rayon rôde encore à la crête du mur, glisse d'une main calme  et nous conduit vers l'ombre..."

(and everyday is a little less - a little less of them, a little less of you...

you will not know them any more now

than when you had known them then)

the branches nod in silence, a black tangle upon the darkening sky...

*selected lines in french from "Au Fil de l'Heure Pâle" by LEON-PAUL FARGUE (1876-1947)

eyes water, nose bright

a certain subversive law of body averages is determined by randomly equal levels of intensive porus scrutiny and in puris naturalibus fleshhh apathy

the lack of self-form awarenessses

greedy eyes focus on virtual entities

only and only
for hours days years generations

eventual loss of lower body strength 

devolution subtracts toes shortens limbs simplifies genitalia
hair optional for twiddling in momentary ennuiii
soon enough so soon

eyes leak water

noses bleed white

internal visions of skimming round and round a pond of icedwater in the forbidden city

while flakes of snowcrystals pile upon this compounded nirvana for corroding anatomical vessels

ididiom, the book

101 photoimages from my ididiom tumblr site 

have been published in a new book:: 

ididiom 

my id ++ your idiom

a collection of idiomatic expressions, poetic scrawls and ephemeral inscriptions stumbled upon in Vancouver, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Hamburg and other cities

please preview the book in my blurb bookstore

from a winter past...

carrying forward connotations of a winter past 

since the verdancy is lost to the whiteout of rogue snowfalls,

we purify, whitewash, spread the lye in outward calibrations 

towards the ficklefixated exponential reveal...

a most presentient congress of pre-raphaelite hues

gather in sodden joy on sidewalks and in garden dirt

why not a kale tree, 
why not sapient moss

winter solstice

seasonal solace

annual stimulus

anno mmxvii 

you are most welcome

bachelard's reveries...

"In a reverie of solitude which increases the solitude of the dreamer, two depths pair off, reverberate in echoes which go from the depths of being of the world to a depth of being of the dreamer.

Time is suspended.

Time no longer has any yesterday and no longer any tomorrow. 

Time is engulfed in the double depth of the dreamer and the world."*

"Confronted with witnesses to the past, with objects and sites which recall memories and make them precise, the poet discovers the union of the poetry of memory and the truth of illusions.

Childhood memories relived in reverie are really "canticles of illusions" at the bottom of the soul"**

"In every dreamer there lives a child, a child whom reverie magnifies and stabilizes. Reverie tears it away from history, sets it outside time, makes it foreign to time.

One more reverie and this permanent, magnified child is a god."***

"...reverie toward childhood will experience a great benefit of repose if it deepens itself by following the reverie of a poet.

Within us, still within us, always within us, childhood is a state of mind."****

*from page 173 of The Poetics of Reverie by Gaston BACHELARD, (1969 translation from the French by Daniel Russell, Grossman Publishers, Inc.) published in 1971 by Beacon Press, Boston

** from page 119

*** from page 133

**** from page 130

ruinminations...

here, too, stand mysterious ruins by water's edge,

from what brute architects to what hollow kings

 foment hardcore monuments in mild forest glens,

with cold altar upon altar heaving heavenwards

where are they now, the lumbering ruminators

to unearth such moss encrusted stratagems fore

[and regain long lost powers of primeval strain

only to lose them again in the immutable march]

less and less arden

just another old run down apartment building on east broadway waiting to be replaced...
I have driven, bus-ed, biked by too many times and always the name on the glass above the front door catches my attention - pulling from some nostalgic incantation...
so many times, too, I tell myself to go back and capture salvage save it from oblivion,
and now finally on the eve of the building's demise, I am here to record it before ARDEN APTS. in pale gold lettering shatters to pieces along with the rest of the building...

and such arden apartments with flaking paint and sad-eyed windows are no more...

vive le romantisme...

even in the wealthiest enclave, there can still be found undisturbed riffs of a more romantic era, when secret lovenotes were passed through ornate iron gates, and devotion scratches on mossy walls hid behind a curtain of ivy... then the long quiet walks through lush overgrown gardens...

well before over-indulged children roar their maseratis through the wide leafy boulevards and wander lonely through their immaculate mansions in a loveless virtual ennui...

WilMar:: what will not remain...

From the days when demanding calls were made from inside the house, when there were others at one's beck and call, when every command was heeded with haste...

+++++

As one ages, the bathtub is no longer a negotiable option and one must install a contraption of sorts, a contrivance crossed between a laundry machine and an amusement park ride to facilitate bathtime...

+++++

And of course, the fireplaces will no longer burn brightly on cold rainy nights - no more gathering around the hearth to read or tell secrets or feel grateful for the privileged life in a large roomy mansion that now sits empty, waiting patiently for a resurrection, but most likely a complete overhaul...

WilMar:: letting the light in again

The WilMar House on Southwest Marine Drive is one lucky oldie to have escaped the demolition crunch. It had been occupied by three successive generations of the same family since it was built in 1925 by Willard and Mary Kitchen, and the last one and only granddaughter died here alone in 2006. She had bequeathed her whole estate to the Vancouver Foundation which has since sold the property to someone who is willing to save the mansion by modifying it into two separate units and adding a few more houses on the two acre site.

Having the opportunity to visit it on a recent Vancouver Heritage Foundation House Tour, it was an unexpected surprise to find this large Tudor Revival style house left mostly intact in its original state. It has been unoccupied for almost 10 years now but maintained in good condition. Windows were uncovered of their plywood boarding, the rooms aired out and light flooded in once again to welcome strangers into the reclusive spaces on this sunny spring morning...

The separate coach house with its unfinished interior and barn-like atmosphere... James would not have been happy living here, even if he could drive some fancy cars!