an apology for idlers

a pairing of words and visuals by Eftihia Stefanidi

[an-apology-for-idlers]

somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me

or which I cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me though I have closed myself as fingers

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Poem: somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond, E.E. Cummings

Photography: Christina Dimitriadis

[an-apology-for-idlers]

In the early morning hour, just before dawn, lover and beloved wake and take a drink of water.

She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more? Really, tell the absolute truth.”

He says, “There's nothing left of me. I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance to sunlight.”

This is how Hallaj said, I am God, and told the truth!

The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.

Work. Keep digging your well. Don’t think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.

The Sunrise Rubi by Rumi

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Alone this summer morning on the deserted wharf, I look towards the bar, I look towards the Indefinite, I look and am glad to see The tiny black figure of an oncoming steamer. It’s still far away but distinct, classic in its own way. It leaves a useless trail of smoke in the air far behind it. It’s coming in, and the morning with it, and here and there Along the river maritime life begins to stir: Sails are hoisted, tugboats advance, Small boats jut out from behind the ships in the harbour.

Poem by Fernando Pessoa / Image Unknown 

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Time says “Let there be” every moment and instantly there is space and the radiance of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance. And the gnats’ flickering dance. And the seas’ expanse. And death, and chance.

Time makes room for going and coming home and in time’s womb begins all ending.

Time is being and being time, it is all one thing, the shining, the seeing, the dark abounding.

Hymn to Time by Ursula K. Le Guin / Painting: Le pain quotidien by René Magritte, 1942

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes; your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses. You make him call before he visits. You take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell by Marty McConnell

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Let’s go as we are: a free woman and a loyal friend, let’s go together on two different paths let’s go as we are united and separate, with nothing hurting us not the divorce of doves or the coldness between the hands and not the wind around the church . . . What bloomed of almond trees wasn’t enough. So smile for the almonds to blossom more between the butterflies of two dimples And soon there will be a new present for us. If you look back you will see only the exile of your looking back: your bedroom, the courtyard willow, the river behind the glass buildings, and the café of our trysts . . . all of it, all preparing to become exile, so let’s be kind! Let’s go as we are: a free woman and a friend loyal to her flutes. Our time wasn’t enough to grow old together walk wearily to the cinema witness the end of Athens’s war with her neighbors and see the banquet of peace between Rome and Carthage about to happen. Because soon the birds will relocate from one epoch to another: Was this path only dust in the shape of meaning, and did it march us as if we were a passing journey between two myths, so the path is inevitable, and we are inevitable as a stranger sees himself in the mirror of another stranger? “No, this is not my path to my body” “No cultural solutions for existential concerns” “Wherever you are my sky is real” “Who am I to give you back the previous sun and moon” Then let’s be kind . . . Let’s go, as we are: a free lover and her poet. What fell of December snow wasn’t enough, so smile for snow to card its cotton on the Christian’s prayer, we will soon return to our tomorrow, behind us, where we were young in love’s beginning, playing Romeo and Juliet and learning Shakespeare’s language . . . The butterflies have fluttered out of sleep as a mirage of a swift peace that adorns us with two stars and kills us in the struggle over the name between two windows so, let’s go and let’s be kind Let’s go, as we are: a free woman and a loyal friend, let’s go as we are. We came with the wind from Babylon and we march to Babylon . . . My travel wasn’t enough for the pines to become in my trace an utterance of praise to the southern place. We are kind here. Northerly is our wind, and our songs are southerly. Am I another you and you another I? “This isn’t my path to my freedom’s land” this isn’t my path to my body and I won’t be “I” twice since my yesterday’s taken my tomorrow’s place and I have split into two women so I am not of the east and I am not of the west, nor am I an olive tree shading two verses in the Quran then, let’s go. “No collective solutions for personal scruples” it wasn’t enough that we be together to be together . . . we were missing a present to see where we were. Let’s go as we are, a free woman and an old friend let’s go on two separate paths let’s go together, and let’s be kind . . .

Poem “We Were Missing the Present” by Mahmoud Darwish

Painting: THE KISS by Francesco Hayez

[an-apology-for-idlers]

I always remember your beautiful flowers And the beautiful kimono you wore When you sat on the couch With that tigerish crouch And told me you loved me no more. What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were unkind All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind. Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.                 

>> Pad, Pad, Pad by Stevie Smith // Photo of Brigitte Bardot 

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship out on the sea and the horse on the mountain. With the shade around her waist she dreams on her balcony, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold silver. Green, how I want you green. Under the gypsy moon, all things are watching her and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green. Big hoarfrost stars come with the fish of shadow that opens the road of dawn. The fig tree rubs its wind with the sandpaper of its branches, and the forest, cunning cat, bristles its brittle fibers. But who will come? And from where? She is still on her balcony green flesh, her hair green, dreaming in the bitter sea.

 Romance Sonambulo by Federico Garcia Lorca // Painting by Sir Frank Dicksee

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!

Faithless am I save to love's self alone.

Were you not lovely I would leave you now:

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,

And water ever to my wildest thirst,

I would desert you–think not but I would!–

And seek another as I sought you first.

But you are mobile as the veering air,

And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:

I have but to continue at your side.

So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,

I am most faithless when I most am true.

Words by Edna St. Vincent Millay // Photography by Saul Leiter

[an-apology-for-idlers]

“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”

On Being III by Virginia Wolf / Photography by Charles Fréger

[an-apology-for-idlers]

                                         I

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the selfsame sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

Is music. It is like the strain

Waked in the elders by Susanna:

Of a green evening, clear and warm,

She bathed in her still garden, while

The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb

In witching chords, and their thin blood

Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

                                             II

In the green water, clear and warm,

Susanna lay.

She searched

The touch of springs,

And found

Concealed imaginings.

She sighed,

For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood

In the cool

Of spent emotions.

She felt, among the leaves,

The dew

Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,

Still quavering.

The winds were like her maids,

On timid feet,

Fetching her woven scarves,

Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand

Muted the night.

She turned—

A cymbal crashed,

And roaring horns.

                                          III

Soon, with a noise like tambourines,

Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried

Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain

Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame

Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then, the simpering Byzantines

Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

                                            IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind—

The fitful tracing of a portal;

But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

So evenings die, in their green going,

A wave, interminably flowing.

So gardens die, their meek breath scenting

The cowl of winter, done repenting.

So maidens die, to the auroral

Celebration of a maiden's choral.

Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings

Of those white elders; but, escaping,

Left only Death's ironic scraping.

Now, in its immortality, it plays

On the clear viol of her memory,

And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Peter Quince at the Clavier by Steven Wallace / Painting by Evelyn Embry

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Those were the best days in the lives of Tancredi and Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against the inevitable background of sorrow. But of that they were still unaware, in their pursuit of a future which they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be, made of nothing but smoke and wind. When they were old and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret; they had been days when desire was always present because always overcome, when many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual urge, because restrained, had for one second been sublimated in renunciation, that is into real love. Those days were the preparation for a marriage which, even erotically, was no success; a preparation, however, in a way sufficient to itself, exquisite and brief; like those overtures which outlive the forgotten operas they belong to and hint in delicate veiled gaiety at all the arias which later in the opera are to be developed undeftly, and fail.

Extract from The Leopard by Tomasi di Lampedusa //Painting by Faye Wei Wei

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Used together: seasons, books, a piece of music.

The keys, teacups, bread basket, sheet and a bed.

A hope chest of words, of gestures, brought back, used, used up.

A household order maintained. Said. Done. And always a head was there.

I've fallen in love with winter, with a Viennese septet, wiht summer.

With Village maps, a mountain nest, a beach and a bed.

Kept a calender cult, declared promises irrevocable,

bowed before something, was pious to a nothing

(-to a folded newspaper, cold ashes, the scribbled piece of paper),

fearless in religion, for our bed was the church.

From my lake view arose my inexhaustible painting.

From my balcony I greeted entire peoples, my neighbors.

By the chimney fire, in safety, my hair took on its deepest hue.

The ringing at the door was the alarm for my joy.

It's not you I've lost,

but the world.

-A Kind of Loss by Ingeborg Bachmann // Photo by Stuart Redler

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Whatever happens: the devastated world

sinks back into twilight,

the forest holds its night potion ready,

and from the tower, which the sentry deserter,

the owl’s eyes gaze downward, steady and calm.

Whatever happens: you know your time,

my bird, you take your veil

and fly through the fog to me.

We peer through smoke which the riffraff inhabit.

You obey my sign, fly off

and whirl your plumage and down.

My hoary gray shoulder-mate, my weapon,

bedecked with a feather, my only weapon!

My only adornment: veil and feather from you.

Although the fir’s dance of needles

singes my skin

and the hip-high bush

tempts me with fragrant leaves,

when my curls leap up,

sway and long for dampness,

stardust still tumbles

directly on my hair.

When I, crowned with smoke,

know again, whatever happens,

my bird, my nightly accomplice,

when I am ablaze at night,

a dark grove begins to crackle

and I strike sparks from my body.

When I remain as I am, ablaze,

loved by the fire,

until the resin seeps from the stems,

drips onto the wounds and, warm,

spins down to the earth,

(and also when you rob my heart at night,

my bird of belief and my bird of trust!)

that watchtower moves into the light

to which you, calmly,

in splendid quiet fly –

whatever happens.

My bird (Mein Vogel) by Ingeborg Bachmann // Painting: April (The Green Gown), 1919 by Childe Hassam 

[an-apology-for-idlers]

Each pine at dusk

lodges the bird

of its voice

perpendicular and still

the forests

indifferent to history

tearless as stone

repeats

in tremulous excitement

the ancient story

of the sun going down

Words by John Berger // Painting: Woudsterweg bij Oranjewoud by Jan Mankes (1912)

[an-apology-for-idlers]

To you

Who are the

Foam on the sea

And not the sea—

What of the jagged rocks,

And the waves themselves,

And the force of the mounting waters?

You are

But foam on the sea,

You rich ones—

Rising Waters by Langston Hughes // Photograph by Christine Buchsbaum 

[an-apology-for-idlers]

The only way to do anything is to have it so well rehearsed in one’s imagination that when the moment comes one does it automatically, as though for the hundredth time. Then it is all natural, and there is little likelihood of a slip-up. And there was no slip-up anywhere along the way. It was a heavy day, but not too hot because of the rain, which fell quietly as I walked down the road to the station. On the train I was not in the slightest degree perturbed: I knew there was no chance of any trouble. I kept marveling at the peculiar pleasure afforded by the knowledge that one has planned a thing so perfectly there can be no room for the possibility of failure, all the while being conscious that both the pleasure and the idea itself were completely childish, and that my conviction of success was, at the very least, ill-founded. But certain situations call forth certain emotions, and the mind is a thing entirely apart. I have cakes of soap that I bought twenty-five years ago, still in their wrappers, and I am saving them in the perfect confidence that the right day will come to unwrap each one and use it. And there are probably a hundred books downstairs in the library that I am eager to read, have been eager to read for years, yet refuse to read until the day comes, the day that says to me: This is the morning to start Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, or George Borrow, or Psichari, or someone else. Now, in my logical mind, I know quite well that these promised days are not likely ever to arrive: I shall never use those old cakes of soap that are stored in the linen closet, and I am reasonably sure of never reading Romany Rye, because it doesn’t interest me. But there is that other person, the ideal one that I ought to be, whom it does interest, and it comforts me to think that those things are there waiting for him. Certainly, the mind is a thing absolutely apart.

Extract from If I Should Open My Mouth by Paul Bowles // Photograph by Christine Buchsbaum