Place as shell

This weekend I found what I think is a striking description of place. 

In a letter to Paul Celan the German-Swiss  poet Nelly Sachs writes:

"When great weariness besets me I think of Paris and Dresden, both shells for the most beloved of people"

(Celan lived in Paris while her great friend Gudrun, who had saved the lives of Nelly and her mother, lived in Dresden)  

from Paul Celan Nelly Sachs Correspondence

Sheep Meadow Press, 1995

Thinking of place as a shell has so many reverberations for me: something that grows on one, a membrane one pulls around one, something that precipitates and binds..thank you Nelly.

moving home

I have been away from here for awhile, moving home.

Sorting, discarding and giving away things, then packing 

everything up and moving it all to another place. 

I wish I was more like a snail.

the missing painting

‘The Death of Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau’ (1793) by David

being at a loss

In 'The Infinite Conversation' (Theory and History of Literature). Blanchot writes: "The book: a ruse by which writing goest toward the absence of the book." (p. 424) Why is this idea, the idea of absence, loss, something missing, so attractive? . Because it propels desire in all the ways of desire, because it has the shape of something of some of us. Is it a beautiful envelope of an idea?  I could say no more about it: I was at a loss. It worked as an aporia.

For some reason then I thought about the painting by David (1748-1825) 'The Death of Marat' (1793).

This was a painting of his friend Marat who had just been murdered in the French Revolution. 

Imagine painting the death scene of a friend, it is quite an act of love. 

I wondered if someone had commissioned the painting or if David had painted it off his own back. This is when I found something interesting.

David was commissioned to paint the portrait of his friend by a patron who requested that the painting remain faithful to David’s style in ‘The Death of Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau’. In January 1793 Saint-Fargeau was murdered and soon after, David painted a representation of a moment of his death, placing him as the first martyr of the French Revolution. 

The two paintings, Saint-Fargau and Marat (the two men) were to remain together as an informal diptych and were always displayed together until David's death when they were separated. ‘The Death of Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau’ has in fact gone missing or has been destroyed - there are contrary reports.

So, the painting of Marat has a missing piece, it is a painting that moves me towards and away from an absence. It is at a loss. It is not at home and by it neither am I.

making bread

Peppino Gino Mangravite's "Tomorrow''s Bread," 1939

Yesterday I kneaded two batches of pizza dough, but I need to make bread. I need to fill the house with the scent of making, as if we will stay here forever, as if everything is safe and solid and momentary and warm.

uncanny microscopic flowers

 

Seven miles I walk 

until your tracks are gone

there is no one to follow

and no reason to fall down

in the still place

of the ellipse

in the desert place

of the integer

in the exiled place

it howls

all clean bones

and uncanny

microscopic flowers

EOSnap of Murray-Sunset and Wyperfeld National Parks from Chelys

"The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable."

Charles Bukowski

('Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice' from here)