Thursday, January 22, 2009

Adaptation


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I must be standing on a hill,
some way from the village.
I can see the vineyards and gardens,
thatched roofs. The stars adrift
in light cloud cover, almost golden
the rolling hills like
a tide about to wash in.
An explosion at the point of perspective,
searing the canvass,
what could have been a tree,
surely a spotlight in the sky,
a fleet of bombers and the hills
the head of a hammer.
Pardon my grammar.
It was a starry, starry night.

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the opening of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett:

A country road. A tree.
Evening.

Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before....

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from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

Here the young man fell silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside which they were standing, and spoke thus:

'This tree stands here alone on the mountainside; it has grown up high above man and animal.

'And if it wished to speak, it would find no one who understood it: so high has it grown.

'Now it waits and waits -- yet what is it waiting for? It lives too near the seat of the clouds: is it waiting, perhaps, for the first lightening?'

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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like how you have created so many pauses for thought, and I cannot notice this without also acknowledging how much time you must have spent dwelling with the thoughts-becoming....and their storytellers

this experience of dwelling then becomes my response to your invitation to look behind-beneath-within word(s)

I like 'what could have been a tree...' and the many trees I then leaned up against and looked up into...
meeting Methuselah
reconnecting with Søren
commiserating with the alcoholic poet....well now, there's a long drink...
hearing Don Mclean remembering Vincent
honoring the power of sadness,silence, stillness as starting points and \or intersections

a lovely adaptation

amazing to behold you here, beckoned and beckoning
with deep regard
Harlequin

Anonymous said...

Cousin Hopper

I like where you work

Shannon and Michael

Jon said...

Hi Harli...

Thanks for your comment and your adaptation... think there's lots of ways to interpret words and ideas... each one an explosion of new ideas and words... talk soon...

Shannon and Michael,

Thanks for dropping by the office. You'll find me here most days so if you ever want to say hello just leave me a note... (cricket!!)

Crow,

Thanks for the post you put up... actually the idea for the post came from some comments I found you had left on Bobb's site... about his post on the tree... and you had made the point that the world's second oldest tree was in Iran??? No?

I was looking at the Van Gogh print and reading around some Beckett stuff and a bit of Nietzsche... I'm guessing that you've read some of his writing? (for sure)...

Also in your post I see something of myself... maybe I see something of myself in the tree. I really like the way you knitted the idea into another story of a mountain... the forty days and forty nights... like how you let your words move on the page... as I've said before, the way you use ambiguity and emotion... still a big fan...

Got an idea brewing for a little project... will drop you a note soon...

BBC said...

If you are going to write things like that I do so wish that you would write something that made sense to me.

The trailer on the back is an old tent trailer that was pretty much gutted out and is just used for a gear trailer to haul all sorts of extra things.

If you would follow my blogs regular you would fucking know that. :-)

About everything I need to survive on is in it.

That tree with the moss on it is a Maple tree. They are not all that safe to camp around in the winter as they often break off, but I have little choice here being as they are everywhere in the campgrounds here.

But better to be killed by a Maple tree than a monkey that has lost it's marbles.

BBC said...

Can I have some of your magic mushrooms? LOL

Jon said...

BBC...

What's your mailing address? I'll send you a package!

BBC said...

"And it's you saying I'm the one that's incomprehensible..."

I'm not that hard to follow and understand, if you just read me daily.

Sure some of it is bullshit, but I can't be serious all the time.

My mailing address is
173 Avis Street
Port Angeles, Wa
98362

Which of course you would know if you had followed my blog for any amount of time. :-)

You would also know my phone number. Not that it matters, you can look it up on the internet white pages.

BBC said...

Jack and Jill............... Went up the hill.............They each had.......... A buck........... and a quarter.............When they came down............ Jill had............. Two fifty........... You can bet.......... They didn't go after water.....

Anonymous said...

thanks Jon!
i'm flattered...
am waiting... to read about this new project... to learn...

The Preacherman said...

Remarkable - especially for a Chelsea fan...;-)