#169 The Present

Most birds fly. Aero-
planes are almost
able to, achieve flight
only by manoeuvring
in the air as they
start to fall
out of it.

#168 La Page Blanche

Echoing
both science &
religion, Magritte
suggests there
can be no
such thing as
a blank page
since the
invisible is
everywhere
just waiting
to be made
visible.

#167 Reconnaisance without End

      for Márton Koppány & Nico Vassilakis

One should conceal
the fact that one
is an adept, said Mr
Behoover to his
Hungarian friend, &
that it takes an
endless supply of
lifetimes learning
how to become one.
Don’t advertise. Adopt
a slightly eccentric but
innocuous code of dress —
1920’s bourgeois with
its coats & sticks &
bowler hats is good —
then join a self-focused
group like Cloud Gazers
Anonymous where every-
one’s heads are lost in
them & no-one notices
if you forget your-
self & start to levitate.

#166 La Lumière des coïncidences

Optical efficiency.
The angles. The
candle is illuminated
by the woman's
torso. In
turn, re-
sponse. Refraction.
Light bounces
back. Angles
again. & curves
of shadows. A
scientific fact,
no coincidence.

#165 Threatening Weather (2)

Mainstream American theology—
a.k.a. "the spinach capital of the
world”—informs this picture of
Yosemite Fall; but the efforts
of humanity to liberate imagination
are found more in dance &
ritual than in the sadly artless
subtitles of theology. In the
tea room of the sky we sip
non sequiturs & sup on slices
of graffiti peeled from real
railroad cars. The weather
threatens. It’s what we came for.

#164 The Literal Meaning II

salon hair
gods false
trap death
bell door
rail guard
balance trial
idea bright
time prime
spectrum broad
room drawing
avant post
black token
drama high
fire forest

#163 The Literal meaning VI

It is the
body of
a woman,
drawn &
quartered

#162 The Golden Legend

Lapis philos-
ophorum—the
philosopher’s
stone. &. Loaves
& fishes. Miracles?
Legend? Every-
one is entitled
to their own
beliefs about
the stuff of life.

#161 The Castle in the Pyrenees

Each summer would
move to the house
up in the mountains. Sit

outside at night, de-
code the stars. Plan
journeys by them,

direction, distance. De-
scribe the places; fact,
fantasy. By day

would trace the travel,
to see what of what
we dreamt was real.

#160 The Flowers of the Abyss II

A curious eclipse—
traffic regulations now
require night to have
a bell that absorbs
light without refraction
fitted to it. Times past,
an event happened, we
rushed out & ran to it
in rampant schaden-
freude. But this is no
accident, is mechanistic;
so we stay within the
ice-blue interior of a bare
carcass of concrete &
play chase the dog or
describe Nigeria or clean
graffiti off the wreaths &
potpourri. Shorn of its
exits the sun is quiet.
Time stands still, bells
hang heavy in the air.

#159 The Flowers of the Abyss I

Hélas! tout est abîme
wrote Baudelaire—all is
abyss, a completely
automated world of self-
assembling machine-flowers
made possible by an
emergent form of video
expression. Each change
brings out new curves in
the shoreline; in the same
ambient space there is a
region where the perception
of the image is still affected
by the dead blue screen. A
message appears to say
there is a problem with
the file. All windows
bare the infinite to me.

#158 The Annunciation

Squeeze the symbolism
for all it’s worth. Olive
trees in an otherwise
barren & rocky land-
scape, the simulated
organ, the confessional
latticework. No real
people, not even foot-
prints. Wooden bilboquets
have turned into pawns
& vainly wait for someone
to move them. It’s a
sterile oasis in a forty-
day desert, which
someone once found, an-
nounced its discovery &
was famous ever after.

#157 Le Portrait

Dans les plus sombres yeux
se ferment les plus clairs

were the lines by Eluard
that caught Magritte’s eye.

#156 La Plaine de l’air

Even though the air
is an unstable
medium at best, the
tree, a plain text
ASCII file made of
everyday materials &
the common language
of commercial signage,
stands unmoved. Else-
where, the German
Army is entering Paris.