Living on Nothing - H.D.

“You can’t live on nothing.” “I can live on sunlight falling across little bridges. I can live on the Botticelli-blue cornflower pattern on the out-billowing garments of the attendant to Aphrodite and the pattern of strawberry blossoms and the little daisies in the robe of Primavera. I can live on the doves flying in cohorts from the underside of the faded gilt of the balcony of Saint Mark’s cathedral and the long corridors of the Pitti Palace. I can gorge myself on Rome and the naked Bacchus and the face like a blasted lightning-blasted white birch that is some sort of Fury. […] And I can live on nothing.” H.D.

Why ambiguity?: Finding meaning

Three books informed this post: Moby Dick, King Lear and A Whaler's Dictionary "In order to understand the fool, one must think and discover, as one does with a sphinx's question, for oneself. The fool makes one responsible for one's own interpretation... by speaking one thing only in order to mean something else." - Dan Beachy-Quick, A Whaler's Dictionary In King Lear the fool is the wisest character. He says the truth beneath things and shows that the man who is supposed to be the real wise man, the king, is actually the biggest fool. That is not the point, however. Poetry and literature is purposefully ambiguous. Intentionally avoiding stating their intended meaning. Some say this is needlessly complex. If the writer has a meaning or has something important to say, why would they hide it behind fiction and overly descriptive riddles? If it is so important, why not just tell it straight? Truth, meaning and understanding come through experience. We cannot experience the same thing that the writer or poet or artist has experienced, but by working through and understanding a writer's work, or our interpretation of that work, we have gained some experience. Finding the meaning, whether it was intended or not, is the point. The act of discovering truth in literature has the effect of discovering your own process of thinking. Ambiguity is a puzzle, but as you find each piece, you discover that you are part of the puzzle as well. Every book you read and interpret, every poem, painting, photograph, landscape, word and relationship become part of you and the puzzle.

Proust: True paradises are paradises lost

“Yes: if, owing to the work of oblivion, the returning memory can throw no bridge, form no connecting link between itself and the present minute, if it remains in the context of its own place and date, if it keeps its distance, its isolation in the hollow of a valley or upon the highest peak of a mountain summit, for this very reason it causes us suddenly to breathe new air, an air which is new precisely because we have breathed it in the past, that purer air which the poets have vainly tried to situate in paradise and which could induce so profound a sensation of renewal only if it had been breathed before, since true paradises are the paradises we have lost.” – Marcel Proust Through memory and re-experiencing old memories in new contexts, we can visit those paradises again and again, but you can never stay for long. Oblivion makes paradise sweet and possible. Oblivion and paradise are not opposites – both exist, are necessary and make life so complex and sometimes wonderful.

Image: black tree to bees to dust

Hanging from a black dead tree that used to grow near the road that led to Boquillas, a small Mexican village, the destination of a long bus ride, was a yellow beehive. Large bees floated over the brown fields looking for the rare flower to bend in the dry land. Men stepped off the rough road to let us pass lowering their hats without turning their faces from the cloud of dust raised by the bus wheels as they fell behind us on their way home. The sun may not have been setting during my sixth and last arrival in Boquillas, but the brown concrete houses seemed to glow a mixture of reds and oranges.