A Girl

LE TEMPESTAIRE, JEAN EPSTEIN

The tree has entered my hands, 

The sap has ascended my arms, 

The tree has grown in my breast - 

Downward, 

The branches grow out of me, like arms. 

Tree you are, 

Moss you are, 

You are violets with wind above them. 

A child - so high - you are, 

And all this is folly to the world.

EZRA POUND

Between water and ice, between the liquid and the solid, a new matter is created, an ocean of viscous movements...

JEAN EPSTEIN

 · LA CIÉNAGA ·

There’s a dichotomy between the weight of existence, of bodies that fall to earth and to death, and a search for lightness. People are always floating on top of the water, in a state of ambiguity.

LUCRECIA MARTEL

-trifles-

We experience an infinite number of instants in life. Like scattered dust and seeds, they are so negligible. Few people realize, but these trifles, these most trivial instants are in fact closest to life itself. They enclose beauty that is naked and simple, and embody power that enriches our souls. These photographs are like dust and seeds picked out and blown up by film, life itself constructs the entirety of their existence.

TACA SUI

in praise of shadows

NAOMI KAWASE

Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. 

For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway.

JUN'ICHIRO TANIZAKI

“The situation of consciousness in the daylight.”

ANDREI TARKOVSKY

The environment was my life, maybe because I was an only child. I didn’t have brothers and sisters to play with, so the light coming in through the window was a great event for me. I played with that instead of playing with other children. It was my companion. Beirut is a very sunny city and there were very few cars when I grew up. That was a blessing, because there were people in the street. I remember trying to walk on my shadow. Shadows and light were two strong entities. In Spain or southern France or Italy shadows are very strong and beautiful—the patterns are very clear. 

Light is an extraordinary element. It’s a being on its own, it’s something you look at, and that also you inhabit. 

 · 

The universe makes sense as infinity, not as a continuation of objects. I don’t know Buddhism, but I suppose, in one way, that it considers everything to be spiritual. To look at an object is a spiritual activity; it is not mechanical. The object is not there, you see. The object is only there when your mind meets it. In that sense you can say everything is spiritual.

ETEL ADNAN

December from my window, Etel Adnan

Seeing is an activity; it is not passive. 

There are layers of images—that’s what I meant, very simply. There is thickness. Vision is multidimensional and simultaneous. (...) 
An event in perceiving. It is a speed that you catch. Images are not still. They are moving things. They come, they go, they disappear, they approach, they recede, and they are not even visual—ultimately they are pure feeling. They’re like something that calls you through a fog or a cloud.

Etel Adnan by Lisa Robertson