this is not a diary that should be tossed lightly, it should be thrown with great force. off & on since 1999. autumnal. I'm baaaaack.

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1:16 am - Friday, May. 11, 2012

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Night of Hunters

For those charmed by winter, Ireland and echoes of Chopin...

I've fallen hopelessly, madly, crushingly in love with Tori Amos' new record, Night Of Hunters.

On the 5th listening driving through country lanes & highway stretches of roads as autumn fades slowly into winter - the melodies, the composition, the emotion of it all, the voices - it's a beautiful, magical, wild thing. It's everything I've felt about winter nights and old loves and loss and hope for the present. Just gorgeous.

The more I listen to it, the more I love it.

1:23 pm - Friday, Nov. 18, 2011

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thinking of bronte country

this is lovely.

Loud without the wind was roaring
Through th'autumnal sky;
Drenching wet, the cold rain pouring,
Spoke of winter nigh.
All too like that dreary eve,
Did my exiled spirit grieve.
Grieved at first, but grieved not long,
Sweet--how softly sweet!--it came;
Wild words of an ancient song,
Undefined, without a name.

"It was spring, and the skylark was singing:"
Those words they awakened a spell;
They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing,
Nor absence, nor distance can quell.

In the gloom of a cloudy November
They uttered the music of May ;
They kindled the perishing ember
Into fervour that could not decay.

Awaken, o'er all my dear moorland,
West-wind, in thy glory and pride!
Oh! call me from valley and lowland,
To walk by the hill-torrent's side!

It is swelled with the first snowy weather;
The rocks they are icy and hoar,
And sullenly waves the long heather,
And the fern leaves are sunny no more.

There are no yellow stars on the mountain
The bluebells have long died away
From the brink of the moss-bedded fountain--
From the side of the wintry brae.

But lovelier than corn-fields all waving
In emerald, and vermeil, and gold,
Are the heights where the north-wind is raving,
And the crags where I wandered of old.

It was morning: the bright sun was beaming;
How sweetly it brought back to me
The time when nor labour nor dreaming
Broke the sleep of the happy and free!

But blithely we rose as the dawn-heaven
Was melting to amber and blue,
And swift were the wings to our feet given,
As we traversed the meadows of dew.

For the moors! For the moors, where the short grass
Like velvet beneath us should lie!
For the moors! For the moors, where each high pass
Rose sunny against the clear sky!

For the moors, where the linnet was trilling
Its song on the old granite stone;
Where the lark, the wild sky-lark, was filling
Every breast with delight like its own!

What language can utter the feeling
Which rose, when in exile afar,
On the brow of a lonely hill kneeling,
I saw the brown heath growing there?

It was scattered and stunted, and told me
That soon even that would be gone:
It whispered, "The grim walls enfold me,
I have bloomed in my last summer's sun."

But not the loved music, whose waking
Makes the soul of the Swiss die away,
Has a spell more adored and heartbreaking
Than, for me, in that blighted heath lay.

The spirit which bent 'neath its power,
How it longed--how it burned to be free!
If I could have wept in that hour,
Those tears had been heaven to me.

Well--well; the sad minutes are moving,
Though loaded with trouble and pain;
And some time the loved and the loving
Shall meet on the mountains again!

Emily Bronte

1:13 pm - Friday, Nov. 18, 2011

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a solitary espresso on capri

The solitary espresso in Capri, sitting at the tiny, empty cafe in silent awe of a small funeral procession rounding the corner before me and stopping
beneath the 15th century church only several feet from me in the small piazza.
That moment stretched on into a dream state. I felt completely a tourista,
a witness, some mute observer.

The hearse stopped it's movement and the mourners got out of the miniature vehicle to cross themselves below the church and exchange tiny ball-like yellow flowers. The casket was carried by solemn pallbearers and the family followed them down the steps out of the old church. I sat and stared, afraid to move and shatter this peek into
such an intimate moment: this ceremony of death, of mourning, of burial.

The church bell rang precisely at that moment and its eerie, hollow ringing
sounded forlorn in the wind. The casket was carried into the back of the
Italian hearse and the family entered the car. Some of the mourners walked
up a cobble stoned road up to Anacapri in the same direction of the hearse.
I wanted to follow them, to see further into their traditions, into their lives.

I wanted to know them, but secretly.

I wanted to pack my belongings, or to give them up entirely and stay in Italia and never leave. I wanted to live in some simple little flat and open Dutch windows every morning and breathe in the warm Italian sun and eat fresh oranges and lemons before a long walk in the green country side or a stroll on the seaside. I wanted to take photographs of faces and eyes of real people... people who were alive, who were unapologetically themselves. I wanted an old fashioned black typewriter to write on and to type out strange stories.

I wanted to make love in white sheets, in a white room with wooden floors that creaked. I wanted to learn how to make Roman artichokes and aubergenes and lather olive oil on my hair and face and body at night and take honey baths in a large white old tub. I wanted to dance in a black dress with red hair in a piazza while Italian jazz musicians or wild-eyed gypsy's played reminiscent tunes and I felt like the barefoot Contessa. I wanted the world to be cinematic but real in only the way a movie
could appear real. I wanted to wake in a foreign land with another language on the tip of my tongue and a new day, very different from any I had known before, ahead of me. I wanted the impossible. I wanted the dream. But sometimes dreams spring forth into fruition.

- 1999

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