cover of book, stray birds R.Tagore (1916)
 


CHAPTER ONE - Rabindranath Tagore
WEEK FIVE. conversation by clair and jesse

 

5

The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.  Tagore

~  ~  ~ 

very mighty indeed and without a blade of grass.  blades of grass are not natural dessert company. not enough water and too hot for their bodies who, if there in the dessert,  would dry up and become dust themselves...

do desserts really pine for blades of grass?  
clair

deserts are deserts they know who they are. i think there are a few romantic ones who like leonard cohen records but, like len him self, after the first eons of lonliness perhaps they can be self reconcilled. also the desert is a monster. they eating all the grass up. what they really need is some trees.
jesse


hee hee :)
trees grow from grass so theres no chance of that .)
how does lonliness get reconciled?  i dont think leonard cohen reconcilled it through more lonliness... not for long anyway!
anyway, can lonliness become company?
clair

what trees grow from grass? anyway i think loneliness can be reconcilled because lonliness is being disatisfied with oneself in the end. but how long can we live like that? we finally must welcome ourselves into the world, make the introduction both ways and hope we stay friends for as long as possible. us deserts are very harmonious and beautiful places.
j 


yes, from each blade of grass one tree can grow. they grow out of its little head and eventually the roots engulf the grass blade  which is then looked after by the tree.


indeed, but what i was asking, was not if lonliness can be reconcilled, but, if lonliness can be reconcilled by lonliness itself? ...  like i find, when i am bored and then the boredom starts to get extreme then it stops being boredom (intense boredom is more like panic or anziety) and thus bordom gets reconcilled by boredom itself...  very good process indeed!
c

i don't know except that it sounds like you're doing some very important research - and this is part of that research too. this is a good process you're coming out with some gems and good lyrics.  

i was daunted the other day by a short journey on  the metro without a book to read but then realised it wouldn't be too bad just having my own brain for company for a few minutes. took a couple of breaths and forgot all about it of course.
j

yes i can imagine jesse. reminds me of an old boyfriend i had (not you) who, fetched his book to read while he ran his bath.  perfectly normal you say ...  i just thought it was completley mad.  

....im the opposite.  i am only just learning how useful external stimulation can be and recetly have taken to watching  'human planet' series the last one was about jungles.  oh my god, my jaw was dropped nearly all the way through. gosh!  i love other ways. 

funny how different people are.  in the everyday.  how much of it is habit?

im enjoying our conversation :)

c

we had some friends over for dinner tonight, our violinists dad and his wife, and she was telling us how she cried when she walked in notre dame cathedral in paris. all that height and history and all the piles of stone and piles of people worshiping together across time for the last 1000 years. these places are very special and very human. 

old tagore seems to have decided to treat everything as if its a human. which has its charming side but im afraid i find it dismal and shallow. i want a sentece like that to ring, to resonate on every level. he should have wrote pop songs, perhaps he did churning out lines like that for 600 pages its what the french call first degree. ie no other levels. i look for more and i find nothing but my self in the desert turning over a rock, looking for more and not finding it.

j

how do you feel about cathedrals jesse?    

i would like to see a sentence that you like and which is multi dimemtional for you if you feel to share it. :)  incidently, you art the second person who didnt get on with this line of tagores,  (although i must say i quite liked it...)

c

hi clair, 

i was just myself thinking the same thing. how wrong to complain without offering an alternative. i'd like to offer you something by joseph conrad or dosteyovsky both of whom i've just been reading and enjoying. my notes from the books i've been reading arn't at hand so here's a few off the internet. 

"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." dosteyovsky. 

this one from joseph conrad could do just as well for the desert: "The sea - the truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."

mmm...i dont see many of these qualities in man either...

... and can the sea be deemed to be conscious?  and if not, can the sea be expected to be responsible? and if so, responsible to whom or what?  

nature is nature...not for or against us.  
just its natrual self.
c

still neither of them are the kind of sentence i had in mind. here's one from rumi, lens favourite:

"There's the light gold of wheat in the sun
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I'm only talking about them,

as a town in the desert looks up
at stars on a clear night."  rumi
j

merci jesse

c

jesse and his projects can be found :
thisisthekit.co.uk
morningstarsmallorchestra.org.uk
fullmoonorchestra.org