Thursday 14 July 2011

there is no one to say simplify only complexify

there is no one to say simplify only complexify

add layer to layer to layer and grow old my dear

ah, the gulls call to each so far from the sea

i see them confused perching on tall chimneys

then flapping against the dying light of day

3 comments:

Sarah de Nordwall said...

Wow you know what this makes me think about - academia - the nature of a discipline that can become distant and divorced from its inspirational source - the spirit; here evoked by the sea. And I love the images of the gulls perched on tall chimneys which for me beautifully and humorously spoke of the soul perched confused on the ego where hot air emerges from unwholesome depths... ah indeed the dying of the light!
nice one Sarah

Sarah Fordham said...

that is interesting you say that - I saw the gulls from the courtyard of the British Library - I had been in there for 3 hours and had written about 4 paragraphs of the MA! I had come out for a coffee and daylight. I heard this squawking and thought blimey, gulls, so far from the sea (so far from 'home')... and saw them flapping (not really flying) - looking like they did not know what to do - and then perching on these tall chimneys. And then taking off again. It was really intense for only about 5-10 min and they vanished.
As I had a coffee I read this line of Wojtyla's: "then no one will say that I simplify" - and immediately the sentence came to me: "there is no one to say simplify only complexify" and I wrote other the lines.
It was kind of weird because I am up to the point in the MA of exploring inscape - and this experience seems to me to be an example of exactly that.

Sarah de Nordwall said...

that's amazing!

What you make me think of is that academia and its methodology can actually make one lose the contemplative gaze. And this gaze is made of love in the purest sense. An intuition of being... and inscape is in essence this simple beingfulness unique to the inward glory of a thing. Which analysis can only fragment and even destroy.

Was it Gandalf who says that he who breaks a thing apart to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom?

It reminds me also of that striking moment i had at a poetry festival when I was about 8 or 9 listening to a little girl of my own age reciting a poem about a Living Breathing Primrose that she refused to tear to pieces for her biology class. And I thought yes, a living breathing primrose, that's the thing!

intelligence - intus legere - to read into NOT to tear apart.
back to Brian Ferry and the look of love! not to be despised!