The Musings of Alencia Lysander

Nothing is permanent -- no song, No mistake.  An enterprise Fizzles, an endeavor leaves Nothing more than a lingering scent. The skill to chisel The ever immortal As the same immortal sees Flickers and in an instant Is nothing more than the instance Of its own concentration. If art is a series of reflections, Halting and discontinuous, Ascending from whatever base As an arpeggio To their attainment, That moment, it alone Is what has meaning. Scattered strokes conjoin To make a symbol, lines Assemble into declarations, synoptically The mess of colors becomes form And takes on shape -- Perceived in an instant, in an instant Grasped, and in an instant, When the aim of what was grasped has been attained, Laid aside -- laid waste -- and left off for the next. The next, the next, the next (tomorrow and...) But each one known somehow with its respect To that one's previous relation, Known in an instant, replaced in an instant, Remembered and forgotten in an i...

If a man falls, so not the decadent sky, But an inky irreplaceable blackness, Now captive of his creation, And only the volume is left...

Silence has existed for millions of years Or more it’s a matter of what has not existed Since for such a long time there have not been any sounds It’s hard to remember that everything stated Should be infinitely removed Thoughts should condense into water or evaporate in air The interplay of concepts glimpsed in nature’s mirror Thinkers still trace their mandala in the sand The wind erases, which natural as breathing Is allowed, rest and remnant, byproduct of life. Then there was never silence Or there was and there was not: Beneath the sands are many bones Breaking into grains of air.

Tonight I was feeling depressed, so I broke out my flute and calligraphy brush.  It's probably a good way just of making myself feel more depressed, because practicing I was able to hear and see really how rusty I've become.  From time to time, I remind myself of all the things I used to do -- writing, poetry, calligraphy, Greek, Latin, flute, Chinese -- and then eventually lost interest in.  Writing especially reminds me of the past, of all these things that are literally past, because I so rarely do it any more -- but it embodies the spirit that drove me to all of these things -- the spirit of reflection, which becomes the desire to work myself into a point and push that through, a longing for excellence -- and that was the meaning in or of all the things I successively applied myself to.  Why I've abandoned them, in fact -- because it was excellence first that I was after -- excellence and reputation, virtue.  Pure excellence, pure reputation are nothing. ...

It's been such a long time since I've written anything.  That phrase ought never to be used in the first line of a composition -- as a matter both of ethics and of style.  But if I'm to begin again at all, I have to begin with the first thought that strikes me, and given what I am beginning, the first thought that strikes me is that. I am clearing my throat before I speak or testing out my voice.  It was much the same thing to say to myself again and again "Hello" when I was young -- just to assure myself that I could speak.  It is honesty, anyway, and it is a true record.  But wouldn't it be odd to come across the memorial of a man, each of whose entries began, "It has been such a long time since I have remembered...?"  This is meditation in the way that I know it -- repeatedly catching oneself.  This awareness comes and goes in waves -- in waves, perhaps, it builds into something deeper.  Or else it just subsides and reappears.  But that is...

"All this will never be again."  Presumption That it is, that it will Anything, change being possible, That there is something to lose. There is nothing to lose. As for the menagerie and its disaster, Spitted or shot, cornered, quartered, roasted, Along with the imagined volumes (Despite the fact that if a lion could speak We wouldn't understand him, Which was probably not Intended to be A theological remark) You can't expect an ape have the last word on himself. If I may speculate for a minute, Either it is all entirely mundane, And things continue with no indication of their significance, Or truth, beauty, and the good exist, But in such a way as to be eternal and almost impenetrable Considerable but not such as to be risked By the doom of us who consider them.