An expression of poetry that was lost

the invisible thing inside
circling
     glass
     on its voyage out
     to the heart

-Michael Ondaatje, “*(Insomnia)” from the collection The Cinnamon Peeler

Image: Louise Bourgeois, The Insomnia Drawings, 2000
Title: Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

The Sadness of Geography

"Do you understand the sadness of geography?"

—Michael Ondaatje

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Lands, a List (Mythological and Otherwise)

• Avalon
• Buyan, an island with the ability to appear and disappear in Russian mythology
• Shambhala
• Shangri-La, a fictitious valley in Tibet the idea of which may have been inspired by the myth of Shambhala
• Quivira and Cíbola, also known as the Seven Cities of Gold. These were suspected somewhere in America by the conquistadors.
• El Dorado, mythic city of gold.
• Atlantis
• Lemuria (continent)
• Mu (lost continent)
• Ys; a mythical city built on the coast of Brittany, and later swallowed by the ocean. Most versions of the legend place the city in the Douarnenez Bay.
• Cantre’r Gwaelod is the legendary ancient sunken realm said to have occupied a tract of fertile land lying between Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island in what is now Cardigan Bay to the west of Wales.

Image: La Sphere du Monde, 1549, by Oronce Fine