Realism(s) #23, or: paradise lost

Tabu - Miguel Gomes, 2012, 35mm & 16mm

Realism(s) #22, or: you keep me going here and sometimes I even sing, though last night the song didn't go too well

-

Yes, I have just looked through the window,
and I have to report to you that it's
snowing, snowing again. So it's all very
promising, very very promising,
my friends. A thin snow, a miserable
snow, but snow.

so I wish you strength and endurance and
faith and humor and trust persistent trust
in angels & everything that really matters and
frees and opens and heals & yes, yes, poetry
poetry of being

whatever happens, whatever is the decision,
I am with you this evening -- this rainy thundering
and very very hot evening writing you this
long line letter with a glass of Veltliner next
to me which means I am thinking also about Peter
and P. Adams besides you -- which means, the present
is mitigated -- as Peter would say -- with the
past.

We are all still here, separately but 
together -- 

Even the flesh is not 
burning.
I want to see the eyes. 
Tell me, tell me -- and do not
turn away.
I want to look into them. But I do not
dare, from fear what's in 
them -- 
as I keep moving ahead,
ahead.

--extracts from three separate letters by Jonas Mekas: a mid-January letter to friends (2002), to Stan Brakhage (June 27, 2002), and A Requiem for the XXth Century (January 3, 2000). All published in a collection of nine letters (first edition of 100) by Calico Grounds (CG18), in May 2012.

Everything or nothing #4

-

Eine Freundschaft, diese Freundschaft,

die ein Leben überdauert,

die währt, sich bewährt hat, ständig.

--Peter Nestler's poem for Jean-Marie Straub, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.

History Lesson(s) #12

11/04/2012, nearing death