"You ever get the jitters?" he asked me.
"Sure, every morning after a pot of coffee."
"You believe in intuition?"
"Sort of. I think there are cues your unconscious picks up on that you are not consciously aware of. I don't think it is mystical, just knowledge. Why? What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure. I just have this weird feeling I'm in trouble."
"We all know that one. Sometimes you just have too many balls in the air. You've exposed yourself in too many places. You've said things you wish you could take back. It all begins to add up. Unconsciously, you're working out the odds. At some point you know without knowing that Vegas is betting against you. You've put it out there, you've made your bets, and it doesn't look good. You know you can't take them back and you don't have anything left with which to hedge. All there is to do is wait. You want to close your eyes 'cause you can't bear to watch. Only it isn't a card game or a roll of the dice. It's your life. You've been bold and careless, you think. It doesn't look good. All you can do is ride it out."
He nodded, but he wasn't there.
I went to Spain with a guy who had a serious girlfriend. While we were there, he was fooling around with a girl who he used to go out with. One day when he called home, his girlfriend knew all about it. He didn't see it coming.
Sometimes your dead and don't even know it.
Oh I thought I was the only one in the whole world who played those odds....
ReplyDeleteHey -- I opened a book this morning, looking for inspiration. It is a book called Impressions of Ukiyo-Ye, The School of The Japanese Colour-Print artists by Dora Amsden. It is a gorgeous hand bound book (with hand drawn brown branches on the inside covers and think brown string as binding) from 1903 that I found at a yard sale.
Anyway the first image is a of a crow:
Surimono!
A Crow Stealing a Sword.
This sword is a famous heirloom of the ancient
house of Genji, descripbed in the old
romance known as "Genji Monogatori"
which I did read in translation more than once or twice.
Crows and Swords -- a good friend of mine was telling me about Six Circles and a Dewdrop -- Zenchiku
everything is connected.
Hey, Lisa, there's the hat.
ReplyDeleteand what a fine hat it is ... 19th C silk...
ReplyDeletethe images conjures up things.
it's the riding it out part that makes me cringe...
ReplyDeleteThe pictures you've posted yesterday and today are haunting me because they remind me of something but I can't for the life of me remember what it is...I'll keep looking until it comes back to me.
I seem to remember a Jerzy Kosinski paperback cover from the '70s. Was it "The Painted Bird"?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNo, not the painted bird but that is a great cover. You'll probably think me strange but I finally realized what it was and it is the self portrait of Peter Paul Rubens.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.peterpaulrubens.org/Self-Portrait.html