The Musings of Alencia Lysander

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.

1.  The Monument Always once -- here once sat (always) -- here is the monument.  The moment could have been embellished with light and adorned by the form of gods.  Desire quickens it until it has meaning, and on that spot, in what is now empty as space and still as time, they erected the memory.  That there would be a memory is their legacy's erection. 2. All But The desert is a collection of sand and hills of sand.  It offers space at the behest of an unknown benefactor to a nameless god.  The wind is a voice, still singing the old song -- but breathlessly.  It exhales and it sighs, it hums and soughs.  Though it is a spirit -- though it is a memory -- repetition without rebirth, idleness but not recreation, echo without voice, sound save for thought. 3. A Tableau of Emotions The desert is a tableau of emotions felt then passing.  They have drifted and accumulate.  In the sun they are made as pure as time. 4. ...

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down of his soft breast uncurls his coral feet. Creature of the sea, made from the deep, Not its darkness where the hundred monsters Sleep but from a deeper still, where pearls And other jewels their corazón await, A depth so clear, so still, Deeper than the deep, about its treasures Clinging like a sheet, edge upon the edge Of what is seen, a flicker and a sweep. This way to emerge! Royally too evident become And darker darkness radiate, to sweep and fly, Ever in the way things underneath Have shown themselves And wear the world as a wreath, Oblivious to any demand, "Why?" Through the deep purple of the dying heat of sun and mist, the level ray of sun-beam has caressed the lily with dark breast, and flecked with richer gold its golden crest. Gold on gold more gilded, on the other hand, recedes Into a darkness and stillness, leads The mi...

Incarnated among appearances, a voice That like the lazy morning lilts and in me Lingers, under the familiar, invisible And barely audible, a promise or a spell In which is rehearsed the gaiety its tiding brings, A solemn exhortation to rejoice, Where, like the spider's fly, the things Of all this world harbored, what the earth Produces and their elements of birth Entangle me.  Wound up in and by these lives I only can watch raptly as by chariot arrives The sorcerer who keeps within her gallery The forces of her manifest. What worth Will carry me into the ice of afternoon, If through the prism of the morning I can see, Under the endurance of the present, what lacunae, Omens of her rapt appearances, are yet to be, The whistle and the adze, spokes and song, if humanity Unable to endure, unwilling to commune, Is yet too stubborn or too weak to come so near The revelations I prefigure here?

Because they read no books, the villagers cannot believe in labyrinths; The children come the closest when they listen to the priests’ imbroglio, More because the church is warm in winter and in summer smells of tamarind -- And buzzing springs and swerving falls -- than what a soul, if simpatico, Ever could be brought to understand. No distinction between oval and ellipse Can root itself in blameless limbs, and more than any creed a piece of chocolate Is the currency in idle hands. When heedless, unschooled puberty eclipses So sensual an age, blooming hands could not care less to trade a coronet For those still sophistries. Life swings too eagerly towards what the sage decries In time-bound tomes as heresy to notice or escape what it implies.