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It’s cold and dark and they say that soon it will snow. I lit pages of French newsprint to start a fire and fed the flames with logs and letters stored long ago, destined then to burn today. |
11 thoughts on “flames”
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Mattias
huh? in a poetic mood these days? Flames and red autum leaves…
Jill
Oh Mattias, I have many moods, and poetic is often one of them. What’s your mood? The “huh” sounds rather sarcastic and dismissal to me, as though you think poetic moods should be kept under lock and key, at least in a weblog – did you mean it that way? Or am I over-interpreting here?
mcb
Wow, burning letters. That’s very cathartic. There’s a few letters I’d like to burn, but I can’t quite face sorting through them.
Francois Lachance
French newsprint… that’s paper produced in France or paper printed with French??
Between a Huh and a Wow… intersting in how Mattias reads or rather reports top down in the order of a scrolling (flames to leaves) when in narrative terms the entries would provide a diegesis that reads from bottom up (leaves to flames). Very interesting in the metonymic drift that mcb triggers with the reference to “letters” which of course could be the letters on the printed page or missives of the epistolary sort or, as in my initial reading of that comment, a game of trying to write with selected letters missing from the alphabet.
And for some poetic reason I find myself wanting to produce a vowel interchange Mattias’s U for mcb’s O: WUW HOH
Another game with Wow and Huh:
Which combo resists information degradation the most? Scribble on paper or create a print out. Burn. The one with the most symmetry is readable upside down and even a charred bit of it goes a long way in the interpreation of dreams…
Jill
Francois, you are a very skilled reader, you always have such astute comments!
I meant newspapers from France, and letters that once were in envelopes, but I like your possible meanings just as well. The polyvalence (which I hadn’t thought of) in the word letters is far more interesting than my original idea.
Writing without some letters, burning letters of the alphabet and then not being able to use them for writing, wow!
As for the catharsis, yes, but as with so much bravado you pay for it afterwards with post-catharthic hangover.
Or maybe it’s just autumn with its darkening days that’s getting to me… 😉
Francois Lachance
What a very suggestive phrase: “post-catharthic hangover”! I really like the subtle repetition of the “th” sound after the voiced dental “t” — sure to trip up those that are not careful 🙂
[Aside: makes me wonder about the nuances between those that write/speak about “blogosphere” and those that prefer to reference “blogsphere”. ]
Liz Lawley also has been posting verbal and visual combinations that play with the theme of light [a sunset viewed from an office window] and psychological states.
http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/20/recalcitrant_reentry_into_reality.php
Both of you have me thinking of connections between weblog writing and catharsis and the culture of the Cathars. Something about the heresey of healing …
Jill
Ooh, and thanks to Lozano-Hemmer I even know who the Cathars are, they’re thirteenth century dualist heretics – but does their name have anything to do with catharsis?
I like the double th too, though I suppose it’s not really correct, strictly speaking.
Francois Lachance
Jill
You mean Rafael Lozano-Hemmer? If you get a chance, please blog the connection to Cathar.
On Anne Galloway’s blog, I had the pleasure and the opportunity, the pleasurable opportunity, of introducting your double “th” “post-catharthic hangover” term as a response to Andrew writing about “semiotic-and-after baggage”
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2003_10_01_blogger_archives.php#106675089865111515
I think the double “th” is euphoniously correct. And is a wonderful trip cord for those that would too speedily appropriate the phrase.
Jill
Yes, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – the link in my comment above goes to my recent post about his work Two Origins, which uses texts from the Cathars.
Francois Lachance
OOO
Talk about missing the obvious. I hadn’t caught the hyperlink. I missed the different colour. A temporary colour blindness (induced by reading Liz Lawley’s entry on the color picker)? See the links report at her entry: http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/22/color_picker_site.php
OO
or talk about a rapid read intake. I recall strolling through, catching the intriguing picutre, noting the direction of the walking figures (away from the text) and not immersing myself in reading the verbal text of the entry yet there is a feeling of overdetermination in the proximity of “catharthis” and “Cathar” that is semantic as well as sonorous. See Liz Lawley on the placement of images in relation to verbal elements http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/20/recalcitrant_reentry_into_reality.php
After reading Jill’s entry on Rafael Lozano-Hemmer the two-ness of the theme comes to the fore even more.
O
Anothor example of expressing a wish that gets a response by someone point to what is already there …. It is revisiting and re-interacting with a site that led one commentator to discover Anne Galloway’s shutter effect in the redesign of her site which picks up the shutters depicted in the background image.
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2003_10_01_blogger_archives.php#106668432761145628
Mum
It never occured to me that you would use those French newspapers I passed on to you to light such fires …