vinyl
Crow is a parrot. Why is Crow a parrot? To ask me regularly where I am going? Crow is the trickster of the obelisk, never sincere, always accurate. Crow caws for shiny things: broken nib, gold earring, my white hairs. Crow stole me something precious to rob me of my luster. My scrapbook recalls these things about Crow.
Hawk eyes have been spying on Crow. Hawk wishes to be helpful to me, but is also motivated by jealousy: Hawk is metaphysically inclined and feels that if someone is going to shape-shift, it should be Hawk. But Hawk does not see that Hawk metaphysics are conceptualized rationally, through the lens of personality. Hawk shape-shifts in evolution towards a true Hawk self. Hawk is rational enough to believe that Hawk can never be anything but a more radiantly manifested Hawk. Which is, after all, quite-something. It is enough.
Crow, on the other hand, radiantly-manifested black, logician of the irrationally inevitable, master of minute probabilities, infinite leverager of the cosmic shuffle farce…
knows anything is possible. Crow travels fast when looking lazy. Crow is prone to fuzzy logic: howcome time stops where mind is light?
Crow knows.
Soaring Hawk spotted, with hawk-eyes, the rim of something hidden beneath stones.
It is a strange record of peculiar happenings. We don’t understand them. We detect fragments: stones, childhood, art, the self, the real. Disappearing. Crow is in this record. Also a stag. And a “he”, named Cursus.
Hawk and I call this found-arcanum “CROW MORPHOLOGY”.
Imagine you are on a boat far out at sea. You see a large twinkling star: it could be nearby, or very far and very bright. You sail towards it. As you steer by its guide through the black waters of night, your boat scruffs a sandy shore. Still the star is there. You see nothing else. You are stuck. You drift…to sleep.
Wake up. See, where the star was, a black impenetrable tower. The star flickers in an open window. The star is a candle fueling the work of an odalisque and her friend Hawk. The candle heats a teapot which generates steam to turn round and round a record with a pen nib riding its groove.
You, on the shore, hear from that pen what sound?
It is very hard work.
We will incorporate the bits we can decipher here in my scrapbook.
More soon.
–The Odalisque
spring is coming
Ah, Bacchanal!
There are no birds in this picture. Saturn and his wise centaurs. All a-flutter and creepy-crawly. Floriferous, sword in scabbard and spear.
Rummaging through loose papers to find out where on earth/in space I found that face! Faces are unusual in my scrapbook! Here’s the only other one I can think of. It’s from my favorite movie.
Are you bringing me flowers? I like flowers. Particularly the ones that open themselves so fully they fall apart. Hearts do this, and the ego, yearning for transcendence. So, too, the prismatic doors of glass, with no hinges and no handle. You (yes you) must crash through. Oh the light, smashing everywhere and glass shattering like a fist smashed into still water drops like glass throwing light.
My favorite flower, the petals dropleted with moisture, shatters on the sill.
Wait, just a little bit. I will make you a bouquet.
–The Odalisque
fig. 1158 (flaming valentine)
I have nothing to say but I do have a valentine.
Last year’s valentine was my most popular post! It was full of ruins. This one has a hearth, which they say is the center of a home.
I hope you like this one, too, even though I don’t have much to say about it.
Here’s something someone else said:
if what we could–were what we would–
criterion–be small–
it is the ultimate of talk–
the impotence to tell–(emily dickinson)
It doesn’t matter what we say. It matters what we do.
Do something good.
–The Odalisque
Henriette has a job
Finally a letter from Henriette! (Read the last one here.)
Dear Odalisque,
Thank you for your invitation to visit. I have never been in an obelisk, and ah! the aeons since I last saw an ocean, don’t remind me of them, unless I may count the flat deserts that were sea floors. I stood at the bottom of those oceans and drowned myself in a fire-dry sky. Then, I was much happier. When night came, the stars were very friendly, a school of bio-luminescent fish curious about me in my glass bowl.
I have been very busy since October, when the Christmas season began in Venezuela. I have taken a position in the new Ministry of Supreme Happiness. I’ve enclosed a snapshot of this position: does it o’erwhelm you with exalted felicity? So it intends. The shovel intends to remind you that Chavez now hangs out with the people underground. Not in the grave, but in tunnels. Perhaps you’d like to dig yourself one, to reconnoiter with le President? Reports vary as to whether he is still a bird.
When I die (do odaliques ever get to die?) I will return, not as a bird, but as a wolf.
Don’t tell your friends.
Did you ever think you’d see an odalisque draped in blue, blue of Mary’s color?
Hello to the birds, says wolf, salivating.
love & toilet paper,
Henriette
Dear Henriette,
Congratulations on your new position! Will you get a day off?
The birds say they know a very fancy song called Peter and the Birds. The birds, assisted by Peter, trap a wolf. The wolf winds up in a zoo.
But don’t worry. I’m no Peter. And in their song, the wolf manages to eat one bird…duck, I think?
Black swan (who most resembles a duck) says he doesn’t remember anything about that.
I asked the birds if odalisques die. Phoenix got very excited and tried to turn my scrapbook into a pyre. The rest of us aren’t sure. Owl points out that we’re art. Black swan believes we are therefore immortal. Hawk suspects we can die, but we’ll be created at another time in a new, more relevant form. Hawk sees no reason why that form couldn’t be a wolf, so that should please you. Crow (did I tell you crow turned into a parrot?) says “all all perishes.” All, I suppose, includes odalisques, and even the impulse towards art.
I can’t find the starlings, not that it matters as they don’t seem to think actual thoughts. They are feeding on and fertilizing some forsaken marsh.
Mary! How’d you wind up with her coat? Sacre Couer! An odalisque, in Mary’s coat?! What’s she wearing? Have you seen her?
Will we see you soon?
your friend,
The Odalisque
And now I have to wait and wait, for another missive from Henriette.
why does the phoenix (billet 4)
a candle in my ear burned down to ash. wake up. eyelashes caked with ash. head thick with smoke. obscure.
o reader
o out-there
here:
fig. 6: astrolabe/the stairs
(the phoenix leaves flaming notes on my pillow. Click to read the last billet doux…)
there are no words left.
it doesn’t matter what you say.
it matters what you do.
what will you do?