valeriesylam-blog

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I’ve been working hard on a few exciting things at the moment which are starting to come together, can’t wait to share them!

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high tide and low tide in great britain. photographs by michael marten

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Salzburg, 2011.

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The Eagle by Alfred Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

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Nine-word poem: Phosphorus

Sun-bathed tree phosphorus green; dawn breathing life to day.

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Dreamscapes

Like a secret, it came unexpected and would rather engrave itself on memory than let you dismiss it to yesterday. Unsearchable, the chase for beauty is far more liberating than beholding it, possessing it. Dreams are wild things that need galaxy length to run and stretch and transform; living things that can suffocate in harassing city full of vain noises, driven mad by an epidemic of anxiety. Test the dreamscape boundaries and feel the tingling fearlessness that perceiving blind men know when they walk on water: forward following, leaving the sight of expectation behind.

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Holocene by Bon Iver

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Time Warped by Claudia Hammond sounds fascinating.

(By the way, can you spot three clocks in this video?)

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Baked

Yolk-eyed sun

slumped solid over there,

heat oozing from its flabby rays expanding so wide

clogging the atmosphere, engulfing day and night,

reduced to haze indiscernible.

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Nine word poem: Half

Hand cusped face of the moon, waiting for dusk

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The author of “The Glass Castle” and, most recently, “The Silver Star,” is not a fan of “escapist” literature: “Reality is just so interesting, why would you want to escape it?”

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But when you make romance the church of your choice, you're subject to the movement of your feelings all the time, which can be problematic." - Ethan Hawke

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Nine-word poem: Suncatcher

Suncatcher, a spider's webbed afternoon

of slow delicate labour

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Nine-word poem: Suncatcher

Suncatcher a spider's webbed afternoon of delicate slow labour

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“What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.” - Gretchen Rubin

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Poem for the boundary midnight hour

The day is flat, made smooth,

it is an agate, it is a lemon,

it is a slippery grape:

its duty was to depart.

From so often emerging from the night, 

from so often returning,

the day turned into amber,

it turned into pure matter.

As with worn-out knives 

the handle and the blade grow thin,

they change to the touch,

I have seen this day return

from a long journey through night

turned into a blue knife,

tool of the moon.

- Use of the Days by Pablo Neruda

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"Imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time." The seasonal trope of the commencement address is upon us as wisdom on

Robert Frost once wrote that a poem "begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with." 

From Frost's precious, raw, half-formed entity of poem-to-be, I love what Debbie Millman writes about how this process is applied to the brave and stupid path of a creative professional.

Source: Brain Pickings.org