“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

(reading Nietzsche for Modern Contemporary rather unsuccessfully – arvo pÄrt channel on pandora streams glass breaking the hours into pieces – thinking in the back of my mind – as if fn’s words came in, floated into the ether to co-mingle with music projected behind me -never to meld but hang somewhere in an unattainable recess)

An ironic thing about reading N – it allowed me to break the spine of his collected works. Uncertain as to the last time anything was actually read from this book, ergo, it was sweet serendipity that an old Van Gogh postcard was wedged within the chapter, one page to be exact, from the assigned reading – below is a picture just in case you don’t believe me. What does it mean…perhaps that this life is on the right page – or this is my fate…

Tiring quickly, though, of reading his ideas on punishment, good and evil and God, I traveled on to our other reading, Baudelaire’s “Paris Spleen”. Curiously, online I read snippets from three different translations – one was filled with beauty – too beautiful for Baudelaire, I think. It made me wonder, do you think that is a risk of translating – mistranslation based on one’s desire for beauty? A bit of the poetry:

1) “My nerves are strung to such a pitch that they can no longer give out anything but shrill and painful vibrations.”

from “Artist’s Confiteor”

2) “A Wag” – “A Wit” – “A Joker” – all titles for the same poem that made me smile at Baudelaire’s humorous take on the French bourgeoisie, a faction that he seems to detest, thou in a book I have of his, he seems rather obsessed with noting of fashion and the airs of society.
[1]

3) “The Double Room” though the site whose translations read too beautiful titled it ” The Twofold Room” which was quite lovely of an idea. The poem made me jot this down upon reading: reminds me why there is no art found on most of these walls – if it were not abstract or a photograph that defines no mood – would it not imprison one in its nature, never allowing the mind to rest, nor the creative beast to roam free…

4) (Je t’aime le gateau! )”The Cake” – it speaks again of how cruelty dines – the haves torture the have-nots – that ever famous line “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!” No one, however, can ever say if it was the dear lady who lost her head who said it. Many say no for she held no disdain for the poor. JJ Rousseau actually made the line much famous in his “Confessions”. (although this is a book upon my shelf, there is not time to dig for it and its context.. another day).

(it was a day that started with rain and ended in snow. at one point, needing to escape the confines of these walls, these words, these courses that feed the mind but deplete creativity – z & i took a stroll between heavy white lines- this is what did not melt)

How she shows us her power
first in her icy barbs
then heavy sheets of white, cascading down
we all unite beneath her wet
residue. Shouldn’t we slow the fuck down
under such beauty, such duress? Disregard
the siren wailing, blurring our distance.
No one stops their pace anymore
we can race fate, we can fake it
God – we are still incomplete in our consumption.
We sleep under her blanket dreaming of Sunday’s penance.
Observing a field filled with geese
does anyone else see their dozens of beaks
an optical illusion in stalks knee-high
camouflaging existence, their fat bodies. How
we feed only on easy lines and pink words.
Sweating, walking zombies of manufactured landscapes
no naked eye sees it better than we who walk blindly.
Thin skin burns under her cold stare
no where can we escape her reign. Gone
hollow, a rotted stump reveals a secret inside
Someday this (pointing in) will look the same. ~
(chasing fate)

[1] started to watch “Bill Cunningham New York” documentary which curiously came to mind for he speaks of the evil of money and art.