What is there behind WORDS?

PAROLE, PAROLE, PAROLE....


we use WORDS to


reveal,
to conceal,
to metamorphose,
to transform,
to unveil,
to deceive,
to convince,
to domesticate,
to disillusion,
to conjure,
to protect,
to destroy,
to blur,
to skin,
to clear,
to blame,
to exonerate,
to blacken,
to build,
to dream,
to haunt,


we rarely use words to SAY anything.

What is there behind words?

picture by FT

A barred Owl.

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl's voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

"Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you"?

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also domesticate a fear,

And send a small child back to sleep at night

Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

Richard Wilbur

PRISENGRACHT 263

Writing about one of those lovely tiny pictures in her diary, Anne Frank says :


"Dit is een foto, zoals ik me zou wensen, altijd te zijn... Dan had ik nog wel een kans om naar Holywood te komen. Maar tegenwoordig zie ik er jammer genoeg meestal anders nit."


13 oct. 1942
Zondag


This is a picture, just as I wished I would always be... Then I would still have a chance to go to Hollywood. But I rather see that unfortunately this is hardly going to be so."

Anne didn't go to Hollywood. 

On August 4, 1944, 10.30 a.m., the police stops in front of number 263, Prisengracht Straat. Somebody has warned them a whole family is hiding there.

They are taken first to Westerbork. In March 1945, Anne, one day after her sister Margot, dies from typhus in Bergen-Belsen. 

They both thought they father was dead, just as their mother Edith. But Otto had been liberated 6 weeks before from Auschwitz. 

He published her diaries and fought until he could open the house where they hid as a museum in 1960. Prisengracht 263. 

Do visit the place, remember you can and will go back to your life, remember Anne never did, never could. Anne never went to Hollywood.

Anne Frank Huis


Even now, after twice her lifetime of grief
and anger in the very place, whoever comes
to climb these narrow stairs, discovers how
the bookcase slides aside, then walks through
shadow into sunlit rooms, can never help
but break her secrecy again. Just listening
is a kind of guilt. The Westerkerk repeats
itself outside, as if all time worked round
towards her fear, and  made each stroke die
down on guarded streets. Imagine it-


three years of whispering and loneliness
and plotting, day by day, the Allied line
in Europe with a yellow chalk. What hope
she had for ordinary love and interest
survives her here, displayed above the bed


as pictures of her family; some actors;
fashions chosen by Princess Elizabeth.
And those who stoop to see them find
not only patience missing its reward, 
but one enduring wish for chances like


my own : to leave simply as I do, 
and walk where couples drift at ease
up dusty tree-lined avenues, or watch
a silent barge come clear of bridges
settling their reflections in the blue canal.




Poem by Andrew Motion

HANDS

picture by FT

I.1.The terminal part of the arm below the wrist,consisting of the palm and five digits, forming the organ of prehension characteristic of man.Also applied to the terminal member of all four limbs in the quadrumanous animals or monkeys. b. The terminal part of the fore-limb in quadrupeds, esp. when prehensile, or of any limb of any animal when prehensile. In Anat. and Zool., the terminal part of the "arm" or fore-limb in all vertebrates above fishes; also, the prehensile claw or chela in crustaceans. ME. +c. transf. The whole arm -1751. +d.The trunk of an elephant -1859. e. fig. 1592. 2. Used to denote possession, custody, charge, authority, power, disposal, O.E. b. Roman Law. The power of the husband over his wife (tr.L.manus) 1875. 3. = Agency, instrumentality O.E. b. Part or share in the doing of something 1597. 4. Side (right or left); hence gen., side, direction, quarter. Also fig. (arch. or dial.) O.E. 5. As used in making a promise or an oath; spec. as the symbol of troth-plight in marriage; pledge of marriage; bestowal in marriage ME. +6. Hence in oaths and asseverations -1636.

[    ]

at hand

by hand

for one's own hand

in hand

off hand

on hand

upon hand

out of hand

to hand

 change hands

 give one's hand

 make a hand

 put one's hand

 better hand

 clean hands

 hand in, hand out

 hands off!

 hands up!

hand and foot

from hand to hand

hand's turn

.

.

.

(from The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)

You never know if the hands you love are gonna be hands that stroke or hands that strike, 
hands that heal or hands that break, 
hands that conceal or hands that make, 
that hit, take and heap, 
or that show, share and teach, 
hands that take, hide and lie, 
or that guide, seek and write the way, 
hands that preach, that despise and and that cheat, 
or hands that pray, respect and forgive, 
hands that pull the trigger of thunder or touch the keys of pianos, hands that silence men or draw the world again. 


For the time being, I love your hands because they're yours.




(words by FT)

ART??

Un tableau ne vit que par celui qui le regarde.

Pablo Picasso.

Je suis étendue sur mon divan, et je vois mon autre divan. Je vois les coussins qui se superposent au hasard, les couleurs, les formes, les dessins, je regarde, mon oeil devient une caméra, clic, on dirait... On dirait quoi? On dirait presque un tableau, une peinture aborigène, je m'exalte... Eh... voila mon chien qui essaie de grimper sur le divan. Hop! Lui, il ne voit rien que des coussins, confortables et moelleux, et la perspective d'une bonne sieste, en somme, l'art de vivre...


Guy de Maupassant faisait dire a Roger de Salins dans L'inutile beauté :

...."je dis que la nature est notre ennemie, qu'il faut toujours lutter contre la nature, car elle nous ramène sans cesse à l'animal. Ce qu'il y a de propre, de joli, d'élégant, d'idéal sur la terre, ce n'est pas Dieu qui l'y a mis, c'est l'homme, c'est le cerveau humain. C'est nous qui avons introduit dans la création, en la chantant, en l'interprétant, en l'admirant en poètes, en l'idéalisant en artistes, en l'expliquant en savants qui se trompent mais qui trouvent aux phénomènes des raisons ingénieuses , un peu de grâce, de beauté, de charme inconnu et de mystère. Dieu n'a créé que des êtres grossiers, pleins de germes de maladies, qui, après quelques années d'épanouissement bestial, vieillissent dans les infirmités, avec toutes les laideurs et toutes les impuissances de la décrépitude humaine. Il ne les a faits, semble-t-il, que pour se reproduire salement et pour mourir ensuite, ainsi que les insectes éphémères des soir d'étés."

[  ]

"Pour adoucir notre sort de brutes, nous avons découvert et fabriqué de tout, à commencer par des maisons, puis des nourritures exquises, des sauces, des bonbons, des pâtisseries, des boissons, des liqueurs, des étoffes, des vêtements, des parures, des lits, des sommiers, des voitures, des chemins de fer, des machines innombrables; nous avons, de plus, trouvé les sciences et les arts, l'écriture et les vers. Oui, nous avons créé les arts, la poésie, la musique, la peinture. Tout l'idéal vient de nous, et aussi toute la coquetterie de la vie, la toilette des femmes et le talent des hommes qui ont fini par un peu de parer à nos yeux, par rendre moins nue, moins monotone et moins dure l'existence de simple reproducteurs pour laquelle la divine Providence nous avait uniquement animés."

c'est pour ça que j'ai un divan?


                                              des coussins?


                                                     que j'y vois un tableau?


et mon chien?

et Bouddha qui dit : "Toi-même es un Dieu"...






?

MATTER OF TENSES

Tantie and one of the many Folettes. 
Author unknown, but NOK.

There is NO mystery to happiness.

Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish they denied, some blow to their pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing : meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder