newyorkette

^{The Bibliotheque Nationale, where I sat at the same desks and read the same books (marked with candle droppings sometimes), and perhaps dreamed the same dreamy dreams as Rousseau.}

Ever look through your old computer and find stuff you can’t remember writing? I found this in my medievel anthropology notes in the middle of some research about Hildegard of Bingen. I must have typed it into my computer at the national library (La Bibliotheque Nationale). Doctoral students spend most of their time wondering how and when they’re going to get into someone’s pants, never doubt that. The only difference between them and regular people is that they lace their daydreams with a bit of Latin. (And, well, regular people just don’t get nicknames like “Onan the Librarian.”)

(click the “read more” link to see the long lost doctoral-student-in-love poem)

(“Hildegarderas carolitinas”)

What are the four elements that slide around the insides of your veins?

Sugarwater,
wine,
milk
&
honey?

What happens when one of these humours begins to cause rainstorms in your brain… or when my heart begins to feel like sand pouring down inside an hourglass?

The moon comes out, as a quadrangle x-ray; shining night-dreams like a crown of ivy over your temples and your hair, which curls like the quivering fingers of a kiss in their humid gaze.
And the air murmurs soft wishes on your face.

(Homo enim caelum et terram in se habet, et forma una est, et in ipso omnia latent.)*

(Tonight, I glow like a fire-fly, hoping to catch your eye.)

*I don’t know where I got this, but I think it means, “Indeed man has within him both heaven and earth, where they form one entity, within which resides everything.”
If you doubt my translating efforts, I refer you to my famous, “per ardua ad astra” translation: “work your ass of and you’ll be a star someday.”

Posted Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 11:00 pm under art, literature & other distractions. Feel free to trackback from your own site. All images on newyorkette.com are the intellectual property of Carolita Johnson, and you must ask (and receive) express permission to use them or reproduce them in any way whatsoever.