The Failure of Language

…you know
that language failed me
early with you: in my mouth you found
a hidden stammer. In all
the days since, what have I said
that was right? So little.
But know: when we stood on one side
of thick glass to watch
a world of water ignore our entire lives,
I kissed your fingers
and each one in that light was blue.

—Paul Guest, from Water

[image via Agence Eureka]

On Swimming and Seas

“Joyce consulted Jung, who diagnosed his poor daughter as incurably schizophrenic partly on the evidence of her brilliant, obsessive punning. Joyce remarked that he too was a punner. “You are a deep-sea diver,” said Jung. “She is drowning.” 

-Edward Hoagland, Learning to Eat Soup

Photo: Todd Jordan, Sidescape, Albierto Portugal. July 2010.

Immaculate Silence

My silences are immaculate.

-Roberto Bolaño, By Night in Chile

Photo: ILona Olkonen

Space Undefined

“I don’t know what the word “space” means…I keep using it. But I’m not quite sure what it means.”  

– Gordon Matta-Clark

Image: Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975

Our True Face Never Speaks

 

 

[Title by Rilke]

Art: Augustus Vincent Tack, Evening, between 1934 and 1936