Quotes 2017 #37

"Then, in the last light of day, I was startled by a line of dark torsos and a strange hand on a wall just above the canyon floor. I froze, rigid with fear. My usual mental categories of alive and not-alive became permeable. The painted figures stared at me, transmuted from mere stone as if by magic, and I stared back in terror.

      After a few seconds, my body intervened with my mind, pulling it away from a gaze that engulfed me. The torsos became JUST pictures. My mind discovered a comfortable category for the original perception and the confusion passed. But strangely, seeing them as representations did not reduce the emotion I felt. I was chilled, shivering, though the air was warm. I could not override the feeling that the figures were looking at me, and that I was seeing what I wasn't supposed to see."

Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild.

Quotes 2017 #36

"Take fifty photos of anyone. There will be some photos where the face is so different you can hardly recognize the subject. I mean most people have many faces. Jerry had one. Don Juan says anyone who always looks like the same person isn't a person. He is a person impersonator. "

William Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night.

Quotes 2017 #35

"To protect yourself from lightning, the Navajo say, wear a bead of turquoise in your hair. The Navajo divinity Changing Woman, so named because she is life springing from nothing and a woman who renews her youth each season, lives in a house with a turquoise door and four footprints of turquoise leading to a turquoise room. Changing Woman looks through binoculars of rock crystal, the stone of light beams and fire and a natural ally of turquoise. Carried on the tongue, rock crystal is the word in a prayer that means truth."

Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise.

「水牛のように」２０１７年２月号

ウェブマガジン「水牛のように」２月号に「狂狗集　２の巻」を発表しました。

http://suigyu.com/2017/02

俳句の５・７・５をクレイジーに壊した、短い１行詩の集積。 まずはごらんください。

Quotes 2017 #34

"The animal scrutinizes him across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension. This is why the man can surprise the animal. Yet the animal--even if domesticated--can also surprise the man. The man too is looking across a similar, but not identical, abyss of non-comprehension. And this is so wherever he looks. He is always looking across ignorance and fear."

John Berger, "Why Look at Animals?"

Quotes 2017 #33

"Mardohai Simhon claimed the silk scarf he wore around his neck was a mirror.
      'Look,' he said, 'my head is separated from my body by a scarf. Who dares give me the lie if I say I walk with a knotted mirror under my chin? The scarf reflects a face, and you think it is of flesh. Night is the mirror. Day the scarf. Moon and Sun reflected features. But my true face, brothers, where did I lose it?'
      At his death, a large scar was discovered on his neck."

Edmond Jabes, The Book of Yukel.

Quotes 2017 #32

"Day by day he felt the skin of his face hardening in the weather; the stubble of hair on the lower part of his face became smooth as his skin roughened, and the backs of his hands reddened and then browned and darkened in the sun. He felt a leanness and a hardness creep upon his body; he thought at times that he was moving into a new body, or into a real body that had lain hidden beneath layers of unreal softness and whiteness and smoothness."

John Williams, Butcher's Crossing.