The Asymptote

Let be be finale of seem

[theasymptote]

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

- Fernando Pessoa

from The Book of Disquiet, ch. 196 (translated by Richard Zenith)

image: detail from Hieronymus Bosch’s Temptation of Saint Anthony

[theasymptote]

We cannot even imagine how to be humble.

I can see humility

Delicate and white

It is satisfying

Just by itself

And trust

absolute trust

a gift

a precious gift

I would rather think of humility than anything else.

- Agnes Martin, Writings

photo of Agnes Martin in her studio taken in 1960 by Alexander Liberman 

[theasymptote]

“Et le printemps m'a apporté l'affreux rire de l'idiot.” ”And Spring brought me the frightful laughter of the idiot.”

- Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer (A Season in Hell)

[theasymptote]

1. We want to sing of the danger of love, the daily creation of a sweet energy that never disperses.

5. We want to sing of men and women who caress each other to better know each other and to better know the world.

9. We want to ridicule the idiots who disseminate the discourse of war: the fanatics of competition, the fanatics of the bearded god who incites us to massacre, the fanatics who are terrorized by the disarming femininity within in us all.

- Franco Berardi, from his Manifesto del Dopofuturismo (Post-Futurist Manifesto) (translated by The Asymptote)

painting: Max Ernst, The Kiss (1927)

[theasymptote]

I do not know wisdom – leave that to others – I only turn fugitive visions into verse. In each fugitive vision I see worlds, Full of the changing play of rainbows. Don’t curse me, you wise ones. What are you to me? The fact is I’m only a cloudlet, full of fire. The fact is I’m only a cloudlet. Look: I’m floating. And I summon dreamers… You I summon not.

- Konstantin Balmont (translator unknown)

Balmont composed these impromptu verses one evening in 1917, just after hearing Sergei Prokofiev play a series of twenty new short piano pieces. Prokofiev was in turn inspired by Balmont’s verses to name the pieces Mimolyotnosti - “fleeting visions”. Outside Russia, the pieces are better known by their French title, Visions Fugitives.

Listen here to Prokofiev playing selections from his Visions Fugitives

image: twenty details from Kasimir Malevich’s 1917 painting Suprematism 55 (Spherical Evolution of a Plane) - cropped and arranged by The Asymptote in 2017

[theasymptote]

“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few.”

- Shunryu Suzuki

(photograph of the Pacific Ocean at sunset taken by The Asymptote in Malibu, California on January 8th, 2016)

[theasymptote]

But the difficultest rigor is forthwith, On the image of what we see, to catch from that

Irrational moment its unreasoning, As when the sun comes rising, when the sea Clears deeply, when the moon hangs on the wall Of heaven-haven. These are not things transformed. Yet we are shaken by them as if they were. We reason about them with a later reason.

- Wallace Stevens, from Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction, part 3 - 'It Must Give Pleasure'

photograph taken by The Asymptote in Malibu, California on July 20th, 2017

[theasymptote]

Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house.

- Izumi Shikibu c. 1000 C.E.

(translation by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani)

painting: Topaz War Relocation Center by Moonlight (c. 1943) by Chiura Obata

[theasymptote]

“We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, from the essay Politics in Essays: Second Series (1844)

Image: photograph of The Statue of Liberty in New York City as seen from a supine position, taken by The Asymptote on December 28th, 2016

[theasymptote]

El hechicero insiste y labra  a Dios con geometría delicada;  desde su enfermedad, desde su nada,  sigue erigiendo a Dios con la palabra. El más pródigo amor le fue otorgado, el amor que no espera ser amado.

The magus persists and shapes A God with geometrical elegance; Out of his affliction, out of his void, Keeps raising up a God with the word. The most prodigal love was granted to him: The love that expects no love in return.

- Jorge Luis Borges, from his sonnet Baruch Spinoza (translated by The Asymptote)

photograph of the convergence of a noonday sun with certain prominences of Disney Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, taken by The Asymptote in February 2017

[theasymptote]

da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus inuidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more, then another hundred, then still another thousand, then a hundred. And then, when we’ve shared so many thousands, we’ll mix them all together till we couldn’t tell how many, so some killjoy can’t envy us,  knowing how many kisses there were.

- Catullus, excerpt from poem 5 (translated by The Asymptote)

image: Cupid & Psyche (1794), plaster model by Antonio Canova, photographed by The Asymptote at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 2011

[theasymptote]

“See,“ Ochwiay Biano said, “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are all mad.”

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

“They say they think with their heads,” he replied.

“Why of course. What do you think with,” I asked him in surprise.

“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.

- Pueblo elder Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake), as recorded by C.G.Jung in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)

image: detail from The Card Players (1917) by Fernand Leger, cropped and manipulated by The Asymptote in 2017

[theasymptote]

ἆρ᾽ ἐν παννυχίοις χοροῖς θήσω ποτὲ λευκὸν πόδ᾽ ἀναβακχεύουσα, δέραν εἰς αἰθέρα δροσερὸν ῥίπτουσ᾽, ὡς νεβρὸς χλοεραῖς ἐμπαί- ζουσα λείμακος ἡδοναῖς, ἡνίκ᾽ ἂν φοβερὰν φύγῃ θήραν ἔξω φυλακᾶς εὐπλέκτων ὑπὲρ ἀρκύων, θωΰσσων δὲ κυναγέτας συντείνῃ δράμημα κυνῶν: μόχθοις τ᾽ ὠκυδρόμοις τ᾽ ἀέλ- λαις θρῴσκει πεδίον παραποτάμιον, ἡδομένα βροτῶν ἐρημίαις σκιαρο- κόμοιό τ᾽ ἔρνεσιν ὕλας.

When will I join in the all-night dances, stamping my white foot in Bacchic frenzy, tossing back my head in the dew-moist air, like a fawn who sports in a meadow's green delight?

She's just escaped the terror of the hunt with swift-running, twisting strain, past the watchers... over the tightly-woven nets... beyond the shouts of the huntsman urging on his coursing dogs...

Now, free of men, she leaps along the riverside plain, rejoicing among the tender shoots of a leaf-shaded wood.

- Euripides, Bacchae lines 862-876

(translated by The Asymptote)

image: two dancing maenads in New Orleans, Louisiana, May 1, 2014. photograph and photomanipulation by The Asymptote

[theasymptote]

Alles das Eilende 
wird schon vorüber sein; 
denn das Verweilende 
erst weiht uns ein.

All this busyness will soon come to an end; only by taking our time can we enter the sacred.

- Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus : Book I, number 22 (translated by The Asymptote)

painting: Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism with Blue Triangle and Black Square (1915)

[theasymptote]

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, und Grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

All theory is gray, dear friend, and life’s golden tree is green.

- Goethe, Faust - part 1

photograph taken by The Asymptote in Westchester County, NY, October 26, 2015

[theasymptote]

The lower half of a dancing maenad, photographed by The Asymptote at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, sometime in the second decade of the 21st century C.E.

[theasymptote]

quae tum alacres passim lymphata mente furebant euhoe bacchantes, euhoe capita inflectentes. harum pars tecta quatiebant cuspide thyrsos, pars e divulso iactabant membra iuvenco, pars sese tortis serpentibus incingebant, pars obscura cavis celebrabant orgia cistis, orgia quae frustra cupiunt audire profani, plangebant aliae proceris tympana palmis aut tereti tenuis tinnitus aere ciebant, multis raucisonos efflabant cornua bombos barbaraque horribili stridebat tibia cantu.

These Bacchantes were raving all over the place, out of their minds, frenzied, shouting “Euhoi!” Tossing their heads about. “Euhoi!” Some carried ivy-covered stalks, waving them aloft. Some brandished the limbs of a young bull they’d torn to pieces. Some adorned themselves with writhing snakes. Some carried hollow baskets and performed strange rites, mysteries the uninitiated long in vain to hear. Others held up tambourines, beating the skins with flattened palms, or shaking tinkling music from cymbals of polished brass. They blew many raucous blasts from ram’s horns. The barbarous shin-bone flute shrilled forth a fearful song.

- Catullus, from his 64th poem, lines 254-264 (translated - liberally, liberally - by The Asymptote)

image: Two satyrs and a maenad depicted on an Ancient Greek red-figure kylyx-krater from Apulia, 380–370 BC. Louvre, Paris. (orginal photo appropriated, manipulated, and luridized by The Asymptote)