Eve asks:

Once upon a time, there was a long bearded blind old man, two young dogs in leash beside him,
I wonder what it means...

Sour Times - Re Joy

Another day, nice enough for a long walk and he had finally the time. There was a frantic freedom in walking, lightness reverberating all through and there was a new smell in the air today, neighbors burning leaves in their backyard, the fire disseminating their essence:
‘Good morning!’

The adrenaline started working: he found himself humming a song to the beat of his heart, rhythm of his walk (it reminded him of Michael Douglas). When was the last time he felt that way? The rhythm grew faster as he thought of her, her face, her mouth: ‘what’s wrong, baby?’ - a different rhythm, a beautiful day today.

Back in the house she pulled her hair back up with an effort and turned on the TV. The ladies on the ‘V’ discussing elections, talking over each other, 'a vagina dialogue of some sorts’! Suddenly she heard one of them distinctly: 'I don't want to be perceived as semantically incorrect...' The phrase was surprising and her laughter filled the empty room.
'That’s good!' her mood changed, she was breathing easy now.
The room felt cozy and warm, the smell of quince and apples, a jargon of a different time.
She was ready to start working now, at the same computer he worked a few hours ago...she remembered his sunken chest, the pain in his eyes.

Another rainy day when they first met. He touched her hair passing by, the flow of fresh air fed with energy the tiny foils at the back of her neck. 
'I'm Chris, what can I do for you?'
She was waiting to meet with someone else but his smile lowered the pressure in the room and all the aggravation outside, his soft voice confident, no modulations of his trade. 
'Nothing lingering about this man, someone who swims easy through the city's disturbance: I'm Helena, Helena A.’
‘I know!’ he replied. His eyes were dark, brightened with joy.
’Don't look into my soul...not yet’ she prayed, instinctively withdrawing her hand.

- Fragment by Ioana Lostun - Sept. 2008  and 2013

Sour Times - The Call

'After all Helena, you’re not yet a known writer, it’s always about first impressions, readers expect something else from women writers!' – her publicist was not taking it well. 'The reader would rather be enchanted!'
'Some characters are vile indeed but they are also victims.'
'Let’s be reasonable here, I don't even know how to define your writing!'
'Think of black tea, no sugar!'

Left by himself at the table, he snored the remaining lines and stepped into the men’s room: same white towels and there, he remembered the first time he had sex with a man, a team mate in spite of his fears, it gave him a sense of belonging and much needed security: ‘brothers’ they called each other  - when one got the 'call',  all others knew: 'today is the day, let’s make some history!’ - just like the ‘brotherhood of lay’ somebody suggested, dropping it like a can of beans.
They got themselves rings encrusted GIG ‘greed is good’ in gold and diamonds, a motivational gadget;  he looked at his:  ‘What happened to Ethan's? Oh, fuck Ethan, the loser! always a pussy!...I have to go home, I know what’s going on here!’
‘Bye Erick! You take care darling and see you soon!’
‘I’m not coming back to this shithole’ he said to himself, 'shithole' he whispered to the bodyguard in his way out.'

By Ioana Lostun - Sept. 2008 and 2013 - Image 'The Lighthouse" by Ioana

James Turrell - The Joy of Sensing

Sour Times - Fragment - Ana in Her Own Words

Ana left the room somehow blurry and indistinct. On the top cabinet she kept, there were clean and clear, the glasses.

Back home she was a pretty girl, boys asked her to movies. 'I had a boyfriend' then 'the person from a modelling agency showed up'. He stopped her in front of the gym class and talking, he opened his wallet loaded with money and cards, showed her ID,  his mustache darker: ‘I promise you, you have everything going for you! There are many, many beautiful girls, 'but there’s something special ...’  and with feline knowledge, slid the card back into his leather wallet.

Four more weeks only, she decided to take the plane. The plane flew high up, height of her dreams, pink summer clouds reflecting softly on her white silky scarf and pearls...she was high up there.
At the airport, man with a basketball cap, cardboard under his arm, she saw her name. After formalities, he pushed her in the back of a dark window car. The other man with gold rings and 'gold bracelet with an ‘Y’ on it', pulled her. She did not understand. ‘Another virgin, Feo, I don’t know where Pauly finds them, he’s the best!’ She fought, screemed and scratched.
‘I should-of-know!!! Feo stop the fuckin’ car! We have a job to take care of over here’,  he said with a fake Italian accent. 'And I fainted '.

The following two or more years were locked into her brain, 'they gave me drugs and I took them'  the only thing she could remember was one day, day she escaped and a man, the guard who turned his back, leaving the door open. 'I think his name was Nick or Nicky'.  She rushed out in the traffic, light blinding, car screeching, piercing sound of siren she was hoping and waiting for for years.

'In the news tonight, the driver of a white Mercedes was unable to avoid hitting a woman who appeared out of nowhere and seems to have jumped in front of the car. The driver was the one who called the ambulance, the condition of the woman is unknown at this time, will continue to follow the story for you'.

At the hospital, 'all were very nice' trying to make her eat and sleep and while she started eating gradually and getting used to the light, she could not speak for two months. 'My voice was not coming out'.
They examined her and concluded that there was nothing basically wrong with her except for the many bruises and cuts; police came with many questions but after a while, at doctor’s orders, they stopped asking so that she can recover.
‘I can’t go back like this’, were her first words in two months.

- Fragment by Ioana Lostun 2013

everythingliterature - Lewis Carroll

FEED YOUR MIND - fragment

I wonder if there is such a thing in
nature as a FAT MIND ? I really
think I have met with one or two :
minds which could not keep up with
the slowest trot in conversation ; could
not jump over a logical fence, to save
their lives ; always got stuck fast in a
narrow argument ; and, in short, were
fit for nothing but to waddle helplessly
through the world.

Then, again, though the food be
wholesome and in proper amount,
we know that we must not consume
too many kinds at once. Take the
thirsty a quart of beer, or a quart of
cider, or even a quart of cold tea,
and
he will probably thank you (though
not so heartily in the last case !).

everythingliterature - Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking

I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself.

M. C. Escher - A Man's Intuition

everythingliterature - truth in beauty

0 REMAIN, DEAR ONE...


"O remain, dear one, I love you,

Stay with me in my fair land,

For your dreamings and longings

Only I can understand.



You, who like a prince reclining

O'er the pool with heaven starred;

You who gaze up from the water

With such earnest deep regard.



Stay, for where the lapping wavelets

Shake the tall and tasseled grass,

I will make you hear in secret

How the furtive chamois pass.



Oh, I see you wrapped in magic,

Hear your murmur low and sweet,

As you break the shallow water

With your slender naked feet;



See you thus amidst the ripples

Which the moon's pale beams engage,

And your years seem but an instant,

And each instant seems an age."



Thus spake the woods in soft entreaty;

Arching boughs above me bent,

But I whistled high, and laughing

Out into the open went.



Now though e'en I roamed that country

How could I its charm recall...

Where has boyhood gone, I wonder,

With its pool and woods and all?


Poem by Mihai Eminescu - Version by Corneliu M. Popescu

Transcribed by Gabriela Brancovici

everythingliterature - Imagine

The decision to prohibit books is a sign of weakness and fear. The gesture invites to laziness and discontent. A book is art. Art is inspiration. Between covers there is paper and hard work. Imagine the man who built his house. There is science and love and pain. Banning books anywhere is an unemotional act. Those who hate other people hate them anyway. They find new ways to pick on them. Political correctness is not correct. What we feel is correct. PC cannot ban what we feel. A book has powers over emotions. It can change how we feel. Artists work with the untouchable. They are not good at other things. Most are not good at living, all consumed. Some writers become mad and commit suicide. Words don’t help anymore. They do it so well, is hard to believe they’re mad. Some are happy writers. They play with words. To the blank eyes, they seem a bit odd or impaired. Banning impaired is not PC.
By ICL

art and the city

everythingliterature - Scheherazade

The Story of the Porter and the Ladies of Baghdad - Fragment


She next stopped at the shop of a fruiterer, and bought of him Syrian apples, and ‘Othmani quinces, and peaches of ‘Oman, and jasmine of Aleppo, and water-lilies of Damascus, and cucumbers of the Nile, and Egyptian limes, and Sultani citrons, and sweet-scented myrtle, and sprigs of the henna-tree, and chamomile, and anemones, and violets, and pomegranate-flowers, and eglantine: all these she put into the porter’s crate, and said to him, Take it up. So he took it up, and followed her until she stopped at the shop of a butcher, to whom she said, Cut off ten pounds of meat;—and he cut it off for her, and she wrapped it in a leaf of a banana-tree, and put it in the crate, and said again, Take it up, O porter:—and he did so, and followed her. She next stopped at the shop of a seller of dry fruits, and took some of every kind of these, and desired the porter to take up his burden. Having obeyed, he followed her until she stopped at the shop of a confectioner, where she bought a dish, and filled it with sweets of every kind that he had, which she put into the crate; whereupon the porter ventured to say, If thou hadst informed me beforehand, I had brought with me a mule to carry all these things.
The lady smiled at his remark, and next stopped at the shop of a perfumer, of whom she bought ten kinds of scented waters; rose-water, and orange-flower-water, and willow-flower-water, &c.; together with some sugar, and a sprinkling-bottle of rose-water infused with musk, and some frankincense, and aloes-wood, and ambergris, and musk, and wax candles; and, placing all these in the crate, she said, Take up thy crate, and follow me. He, therefore, took it up, and followed her until she came to a handsome house, before which was a spacious court. It was a lofty structure, with a door of two leaves, composed of ebony, overlaid with plates of red gold.

Ask Eve - what do you see from where you are?

I see the beauty, the symmetry and the perfect mechanism of the leaf, there is light

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe - living by art

other than words

everythingliterature - Simonides Melicus - Encomium

Fragment 01

WHEN, upon the well-wrought chest,
Fiercely heat the howling wind,
And the oceans heaving breast
Filled with terror DanaCs mind ;
All in tears, her arm she throws
Over Perseus, as he lay
0, my babe, she said, what woes
On thy mothers bosom weigh!

Thou dost sleep with careless breast,
Slumbering in this dreary home,
Thou dost sweetly take thy rest,
In the darkness and the gloom.

In thy little mantle there,
Passing wave thou dost not mind,
Dashing oer thy clustering hair,
Nor fhe voices of the wind.

Yet if thou, my beauteous one!
Felt the weight of this deep woe,
Not unconscious would my son
Hear his mothers sorrows now.

Yet sleep on, my babe, I pray,
Sleep thou too, tumultuous deep
And th unmeasured cares that stay
On my heart,let them too sleep!

Father Jove! I ask of thee,
Vain their evil counsels make!
And, though bold the prayer may be,
Right my wrongs, for Perseus sake.

the absurd - the essential - the manifesto

The man and woman prepare chairs for invisible guests including an invisible Emperor. In between the arrival of invisible guests the man and woman sit on opposite chairs listen to the conversations between their invisible guests. After the invisible guests have arrived the man states that he and his wife can finally die knowing that his story and philosophy will be told and they commit suicide by throwing themselves out of the window. When the Orator finally speaks to the invisible crowd it is revealed that he is a deaf mute and neither the sounds he makes nor the words he writes on the blackboard can be understood. The play ends with the Orator leaving - plot summary from the web

At the end, at the end of the end of the city of Paris, there was, there was, was what?" — Old Man
"The further one goes, the deeper one sinks. It's because the earth keeps turning around, around, around, around" — Old Man

Eugene Ionesco - The Chairs


Constantin Brancusi






DADA knows everything. DADA spits everything out.

BUT . . . . . . . . .

HAS DADA EVER SPOKEN TO YOU:
about Italy
about accordions
about women's pants
about the fatherland
about sardines
about Fiume
about Art (you exaggerate my friend)
about gentleness
about D'Annunzio
what a horror
about heroism
about mustaches
about lewdness
about sleeping with Verlaine
about the ideal (it's nice)
about Massachusetts
about the past
about odors
about salads
about genius, about genius, about genius
about the eight-hour day
about the Parma violets

NEVER NEVER NEVER

DADA doesn't speak. DADA has no fixed idea. DADA doesn't catch flies.

THE MINISTRY IS OVERTURNED. BY WHOM?


BY DADA

The Futurist is dead. Of What? Of DADA

A Young girl commits suicide. Because of What? DADA
The spirits are telephoned. Who invented it? DADA
Someone walks on your feet. It's DADA
If you have serious ideas about life,
If you make artistic discoveries
and if all of a sudden your head begins to crackle with laughter,
If you find all your ideas useless and ridiculous, know that

IT IS DADA BEGINNING TO SPEAK TO YOU
Dada Manifesto

everythingliterature - David Foster Wallace - In Memoriam

The Genius at Work:

I grant that mysterious invisible room cleaning
is every slob's fantasy, like having a mom
without the guilt. But there is also a creeping
uneasiness about it that presents-at least in my
own case-as a kind of paranoia. Because after a
couple days of this fabulous invisible room
cleaning, I start to wonder how exactly Petra
knows when I'm in 1009 and when I'm not. It's
now that it occurs to me that I hardly ever see
her. For a while I try experiments, like all of a
sudden darting out into the lO-Port hallway to
see if I can catch Petra hunched somewhere
keeping track of who is decabining, and I scour
the whole hallway-and-ceiling area for evidence
of some kind of camera monitoring
movements outside the cabin
doors. Zilch on both fronts. But then I see that
the mystery's even more complex and unsettling
than I'd first thought, because my cabin gets
cleaned always and only during intervals when
I'm gone for more than half an hour. When I go
out; how can Petra or her supervisors possibly
know how long I'm going to be gone? I try leaving
1009 a couple of times and then dashing
back after ten or fifteen minutes to see whether I
can catch Petra in delicti, but she's never there. I
try making an ungodly mess, then leaving and
hiding somewhere on a lower deck, then dashing
back after exactly twenty-nine minutes again
when I come bursting through the door
there's no Petra and no cleaning. Then I leave
the cabin with exactly the same expression and
appurtenances as before and this time stay hidden
for thirty-one minutes and then haul ass
back-again no sighting of Petra, but now 1009
is sterilized and gleaming, and there's a mint on
the pillow's new case...
...The shower itself overachieves in a very big
way. The HOT setting's water is exfoliatingly
hot, but it takes only one
preset manipulation of the
shower knob to get perfect
98.6-degree water. My
own personal home
should have such water
pressure: the showerhead's
force pins you
helplessly to the stall's
opposite wall, and the
head's MASSAGE setting
makes your eyes
roll up and your sphincter just
about give.24 The showerhead and its flexible
steel line are also detachable, so you can hold
the head and direct its punishing stream just at
your particularly dirty right knee or something.
But all this is still small potatoes compared
with 1009's fascinating and potentially malevolent
toiler. A harmonious concordance of elegant
form and vigorous function, flanked by
rolls of tissue so soft as to be without perforates
for tearing, my toilet has above it this sign:
II ' ozodoesR t
1 era Cab; I 111y
n stezoard J
J I k.?nOh.
ZOllen I'. IV
111In and J 111y r00111
ZOllenl' ,
111 not?
THIS TOILET IS CONNECTED TO A VACUUM
SEWAGE SYSTEM. PLEASEDO NOT THROW INTO
THE TOILET ANYTHING [SIC] THAN ORDINARY
TOILET WASTE AND TOILET PAPER
The toilet's flush produces a brief but traumatizing
sound, a kind of held high- B gargle, as of some gastric disturbance on a cosmic scale.
Along with this sound comes a suction so awesomely
powerful that it's both scary and
strangely comforting: your waste seems less removed
than hurled from you, and with a velocity
that lets you feel as though the waste is going
to end up someplace so far away that it will
have become an abstraction, a kind of existential
sewage-treatment system.

ask eve - what do you see from where you are?

I see signs of a new period of Enlightenment starting soon and through the next 4 years from England

natural beauty - beauté naturelle