Synecdoche

Nights and days pass inside my mind and I can not figure out how to finish this set of entries about the 2013 Fall in 170 Wurster Hall.

Days and nights pass outside my self, pushing me to write a last entry before the Fall ends.

Two words have knocked me during these Moons and Suns of time: "to close" and "farewell". I had not write them until now. As soon as I jotted them down I realize why am I blocked: closeness is something not so far from a grave. Whereas farewell is a word that I knew for a poem by Neruda: a poem that nothing has to do with 170 Wurster Hall, even when Farewell is rooted around my heart and it was through my hands that I explored my heart at 170 Wurster Hall.

There are no place for talking about death nor to intellectualize a meaning that does not vibe at this time. For 170 Wurster Hall is a time for place and rhyme. A rhythm for myth and tune. A hearth for the rainbow and the lighthouse. A sea outside of a bottle that it is outside of a message. A cabin. A delta. A crossroad. A hammer. Honey falling down. A bridge and a hill. A wrapped mountain. A whale in the middle of the air. A New York map. A shoe on the wall. A spring beneath the stairs. A mermaid. A good night for Irene.

An echo...

A peace in its labyrinth. Lights in the heart. Doors. Mustaches and plaits. A little headlight. Clay. Branches. Sticky tongues. Dreams. Tears. Laughing. Watercolor. A spring of life...

Walking eyes from the East to the West. To the South. To the Middle East. And back to the West: A compass sealing on the map. A captain...

Crossroads

The other night I was mesmerized by delta blues' songster Robert Johnson. I just realized at some point that I was absorbed by his voice and performance. Then I wanted to know more about him. It shocked me how young he was when he died and what few recordings there are of him. Reading of his life I remembered that I had seen years ago a film about him and the legend of how he exchanged his soul with the evil in order to become the most extraordinary guitar player. I also remembered that at that time I was condonscending with the story. A Hollywood stuff I thought. But now it was different.

What is the symbolic meaning of a crossroad? I wondered. I looked for lighthouses to iluminate my ignorance. I found several pictures of the blues intersection of highways 61 and 49. Most of them pure kitsch. But I also found an interesting article about criminals and suicides buried at crossroads in the pre Victorian era. The magic thinking expected that the souls of those condemned people got lost at the intersection and were unable to return to the town. Thus, a crossroad is a place for marginal, disposable, people.

However, marginal people also means people who live at the margin, at the frontiers, outside of the mainstream of conventions. Outlaws and revolutionaries. People at the borders: Hermes' believers.

A linear thinking assumes a binary moral between good and bad. A less simplistic but also linear thinking acknowledges a continuum between a bipolar ethical landscape. A croossroad denies such simplification, for it summarizes the intersection of two ways of life: ethical / unethical, conventional / unconventional, given / constructed, spiritual / material, accumulative / unattached... Both ways run in their own continuum where differences are not of quality but of intensity.

In this sense the quid is not how far are you from one pole within a pathway, but what far are the paths from each other. A dynamic answer to such question requires individuals that are aware of their agency. Builders of choices and founders of decisions: Hermes' believers.

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A delta is not different from a crossroad. That's why I depicted the intersection as one of water. The roads are not disguised by their color or texture but by the constant choice making that individuals do at the crossroad. In this landscape a crossroad is the setting where individuals set depth and meaning: sense and orientation...

Quilt

Few months ago I read that some Chinese poems with four verses have a peculiar form: the first verse introduces a topic; the second continues it; whereas the third verse introduces a new topic, and the last joins the former verses. It is like by means of a thematic juxtaposition a new meaning emerges. This new meaning is not the direct sum up of the topics, but a subtle nuance that knits them and creates diferent tones, colors, and warmth. Like a quilt. For lyrical ends, verses one, two, and four should rhyme. It is clear that this rhyming emphasizes the irruption of the third verse. This a free - non rhymed - example:

A silk trader in Tokyo has two daughters
20 years old is the oldest and 18 is the youngest
A soldier can kill with his sword
But those ladies will kill you with just their gaze.

Mississippi John Hurt' lyrics are a flowing river. Suddenly a boy throws a flat pebble over the water. The pebble hits the river, giving birth to ephimerous circles. The river takes the circles with him. The pebble jumps and hits the river again. The river collects the circles. The boy smiles. Eventually the river swallows the pebble. Then the boy puts his hat on his head and leaves his guitar aside. Now he is a man. A peasant that shares his crop with the land owner. A logger going to the forest to chop some wood. A picker that dyes the cotton with his purple.

This night the man arrives to his hut. Puts his hat on the table. Lights the night with logs in the hearth. Reminds the boy throwing pebbles in the Mississippi River. John is the name of the boy. John takes his guitar. John sings a song about a man that picks cotton but this night is cold and the man has no logs to light his night. The left hand of the man is hurt. John does not want a cold night to the man: John reveals to the man that he should ask the youngest daughter to make him a pallet. It does not matter if the fabric is red cotton or Chinese silk. The man sleeps beneath the quilt, rumoring something about guilt and a Chinese poem for a 20 years old girl.