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Immortals (dir. Tarsem Singh)

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Henry to Anaïs A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller

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The Eternal Idol, Auguste Rodin

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Aria Aber, from Hard Damage; “Operation Cyclone”

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I feel things happening around me that are not real. I must be in a dream, or in a movie, or watching a movie on an airplane in a dream. On the other side of the field there are blossom trees in full bloom. They are pale, barely pink, like branches covered in fake snow. I hear the wind begin to rise and think of how in movies, the wind is always a sound at first. I push my hair out of my eyes and see petals fall from the trees in thick waves like something from a Miyazaki film. The sky is that same imaginary blue. My first thought is not of snow but of volcanic ash, of children shaking white dust out of their hair. A layer of white petals on the grass. If the wind kept shaking the trees and the ash flowers kept falling and everything became coated in dust petals they would soon get in our eyes, in our pockets, in our shoes, inside our mouths. You belong nowhere in this spring apocalyptic scene—I didn’t build it for you—but soon you are standing next to me looking at me but not straight at me and we are laughing and making handprints in the dust, listening to the wind blow them away.

Miyazaki Bloom, Nina Mingya Powles

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august, 2024

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"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

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The World and I, E. M. Cioran (translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston)

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Interior view of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, 1820s by Vorobiev Maxim Nikiforovich (1787 - 1855).

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could you explain the despair and the grotesque poem?

Well, it’s an “essay” from the collection “On the Heights of Despair” written by Emil Cioran. One thing to know about him is that he’s a rather dark philosopher. Some say that, compared to him, Nietzsche sounds like sunshine and rainbows. Having said that, I don’t know whether to my dismay or great delight, but I am far too hopeful of a person to fully understand all that he writes. And sure, I am no student of his or of philosophy in general, but I can tell you my perception/understanding of this essay.

It feels to me that despair is the most fertile soil for the grotesque. Other emotions or states of mind don’t have quite the same force to annihilate. For Cioran, the grotesque is inseparable from intensity. You cannot have a mild grotesque, just as you cannot have mild despair. The grotesque is the body’s and soul’s revolt against serenity, against the idea that life could ever be ordered, pure and harmonious. In a way, it’s despair’s lipstain upon us.

The way I see it, the grotesque is the mirror of the abyss inside. And isn’t that part of its seduction? The grotesque feels like a precipice. You peer into it and it peers back into you (Nietzsche!), and there’s a terrible sweetness in the thought “what if I could simply vanish into this void?” The grotesque makes death feel like a form of anti-art because, as Cioran writes, it negates every trace of style, harmony and perfection. It keeps whispering, reminding you that peace was always fragile, that hope was always treacherous, that harmony is a lie. I'm not making any sense, am I?

By the way, I’m thinking of writing an essay on Cioran, Schiele and the grotesque, if you’d be interested. Somehow my essays seem to include quite a bit of Schiele, don’t they?

Anyway, I’m curious to know what you think of it.

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The World and I, E. M. Cioran (translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston)

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"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

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Please support this initiative! For every $10, SIHA Network is able to provide one menstrual hygiene kit for a Sudanese woman or girl. That is a small amount to pay for an incredibly powerful donation.

Donate directly at the link below.

(I found this charity from this tweet. The price for menstrual hygiene kits seems to have gone up since it was written.)

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The Gardener 85, Rabindranath Tagore

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"Morning Light", Nerses Shnorhali (translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian)

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funny thing is, he might be right. the department of “defense” hasn’t been about defense for a long time; it’s been about waging wars and fueling death and chaos left and right.

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Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky (1975)