Roussel on Light

“Whatever I wrote was surrounded by rays of light,” a young Raymond Roussel told his psychoanalyst, Pierre Janet. “I used to close the curtains, for I was afraid that the shining rays emanating from my pen might escape into the outside world through even the smallest chink; I wanted suddenly to throw back the screen and light up the world.”

-Alice Gregory, from “New Impressions: Raymond Roussel and the upside of crazy” +

Art: Joseph Beuys, Untitled, 1965

It Was As If

I was lying
under a low
sky breathing
through the eye
of a needle

-W.G. Sebald

Art: Franck André Jamme, Tantra Song, Sigilio Press.

Epiphany

Today was Epiphany.

What can one add to an ineffable day?

Nothing.

January

January: it was the most beautiful of words, she’d always felt, evoking leafless trees, eared grebes, and regret.

(Text: mostly mine, with a nod to Alexander Theroux)

Photo: Dennis Hopper, Billboard, Los Angeles

How to Begin Again

"All the words are not enough to get anything said."

-Yannis Ritsos

Art: Agostino Arrivabene