'A BUTTERFLY AND AN OPEN SPACE

A butterfly, on the last submit
Of the dizzy way of taxing,
Forgetting the direction of dashing,
Looks down the broken pieces of blood-stained body.

On the empty open space without a drop of water
That would moisten a small heart brazed as a machine,
It was only the crystal light of the sea
That screened the eye-sight of the butterfly--

As if by a seashore of vacuum, between the silent graves,
In the season moving with the white tail of a gasping Z airplane--
Driven by the tide of phosphorus surging up like flames,
The white butterfly now silently flutters its weary wings.

On the whitish spot of future,
Does a beautiful territory wait there?
On a marked spot of the bluish runway
Does a flowery hope bloom there?

The old site from which
Already God and miracle
Ascended to Heaven--
The white butterfly toward a last terminal
Tries once again to challenge against its own myth.'

--Gyu-dong Gim, op cit

"Most tangible of all the gods that be,
O Santa Claus..." --the Hoosier Poet

Imagination = "as-if":
   Images = as-if sensations (usually visual)
   Story = as-if meanings (grasped intuitively)
      story connects images,
      images punctuate story.
Hierarchy of Images: Word (static). Moving. Changing. Changing rate of
   movement. (&c)
Hierarchy of Stories: Gesture (anecdote). Linear plot with protagonist
   (picaresque). Growth of a character (Bildungsroman).
   Simultaneous changing of several characters (19c "novel").
   Stream of consciousness. "History".
(Other kinds of imagination:
   emotional: as-if feeling this (empathy)
   intellectual: as-if true (speculation)
Their hierarchies...from a mood to a lifetime; from a statement to a system.

"Feeling requires an education through faith..." --James Hillman

"Napoleon...created Europe, which is neither a political or a geographical
entity. Europe--and this is why England has never thought of herself as
a part of Europe--is simply the area dominated by the ideals of French
literature." --Auden, intro to The Romantic Poets anth.

Sex with a stranger: watching a movie in a foreign language. Even if you
catch the drift, from moment to moment it makes no sense.

'The very worst fact is that clichés will fill up every empty spot in a role,
which is not already solid with living feeling.' --Constantin Stanislavski,
An Actor Prepares (1936; tr E R Hapgood)

Lost in the woods at a state park, i have had the experience of glimpsing
(as an ambiguous clearing) the right path, across perhaps a stream ravine...
& my relation to a sense of purpose now is, as one who has never known
what a clear trail is, & more & more is given those glimpses (--such
that even my art can seem at times an impediment, or part of my blind
turnings). But certainly no "path" i have heard of, resembles this one, either.

Listening to: early Joan Baez on Vanguard, the original vinyl.