Charles Baudelaire: Two De Profundis Poems

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI

O my sole love, I pray thee pity me
From out this dark gulf where my poor heart lies,
A barren world hemmed in by leaden skies
Where horror flies at night, and blasphemy.

For half the year the sickly sun is seen,
The other half thick night lies on the land,
A country bleaker than the polar strand;
No beasts, no brooks, nor any shred of green.

There never was a horror which surpassed
This icy sun's cold cruelty, and this vast
Night like primaeval Chaos; would I were

Like the dumb brutes, who in a secret lair
Lie wrapt in stupid slumber for a space...
Time creeps at so burdensome a pace.

(translation by Sir John Squire)


OBSESSION

You forests, like cathedrals, are my dread :
You roar like organs. Our curst hearts, like cells
Where death forever rattles on the bed,
Echo your de Profundis as it swells.

My spirit hates you, Ocean ! sees and loathes
Its tumults in your own. Of men defeated
The bitter laugh, that's full of sobs and oaths,
Is in your own tremendously repeated.

How you would please me, Night ! without your stars
Which speak a foreign dialect, that jars
On one who seeks the void, the black, the bare.

Yet even your darkest shade a canvas forms
Whereron my eye must multiply in swarms
Familiar looks of shapes no longer there.

(translation by Roy Campbell)

Yet Another Great Comic

Aptly titled "Found To-Do List"

from toothpastefordinner.com

Types of Relationships

Ever one to question the status quo, I was a year or so ago researching the anthropological history of intimate relationships, as well as the fairly recent (within the last few hundred years) origins of 'romantic love' as we know it, when I stumbled upon this chart somewhere on the web. I saved it then, but forgot to note its source. I looked for it again recently via google image search, but could not find it. Anyway, I think it says plenty about our limited perceptions as to what relationships can, could, and/or should be. If you have questions about any of it, don't ask me - I've no idea what a "delta-triad" or a "tertiary" is, only that they must have existed in some societies and cultures (and probably still do somewhere).

Let us all make 2007 a renaissance for learning and self-study... a new age of enlightenment.

Great Tom Waits Quotes

Tom Waits is no ordinary songwriter. He's probably one of the greatest American writers in American history - and partly because he has soaked up so much of it. The guy doesn't just reinterpret all things Americana, he's basically a walking Smithsonian. Here are a few of my favorite lines from his music, as well as another quote or two from interviews:

"Money's just something you throw off the back of a train"

"You'll be buried in the clothes that you never wore"

"My daddy told me, lookin back, the best friend you'll have is a railroad track"

"You can put all my possessions in Jesus' name"

"How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?"

"You know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk"

"Come down off the cross, we could use the wood"

"She's my black market baby, she's a diamond who wants to stay coal"

"I'll bet she's still a virgin, but it's only twenty-five to nine"

"The piano has been drinking, my necktie is asleep... And the combo went back to New York, the jukebox has to take a leak... And the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break... Cause the telephone's out of cigarettes, and the balcony is on the make... And the piano has been drinking..."

"Disneyland is Vegas for children" (interview in Playboy, March 1988)