As I looked out at the sea, I saw a black kite flying over the water, right next to the ferry. For a moment, while our trajectories matched, it seemed suspended in space, and we appeared to travel towards a shared destination.

Aegina. Figure from the east pediment of the Temple of Alphaea: Head of Heracles. #Photography from ‘Eternal Greece’ by Rex Warner and Martin Hurlimann (1956). #Sculpture

When I opened the windows, I heard the drumming of a New Year's procession from somewhere down in the streets. The birds on the opposite rooftop had fallen silent, and their black silhouettes appeared motionless, as if time itself had come to a halt.

Zoomorph B at the Maya site of Quiriguá in Guatemala. www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/readin...

Éliane Radigue (1932-2026) #nowlistening

Lying awake at dawn, I heard the birds outside, and I suddenly remembered hearing them many years ago. I thought about the people who were no longer in my life. In the distance, the birds kept singing as if there were no yesterday.

‘The seashores of Japan's Inland Sea.’ #Photography by Yoichi Midorikawa (1959).

Sea and sky with moonrise

My world keeps getting smaller, and the only remedy I can think of is to open myself as much as possible to what is left.

I have to believe that recovery is possible.

さて、どちらへ行かう風がふく Well, which way should I go? The wind blows. 山頭火 Santoka (tr. John Stevens) #haiku #俳句

Attendant Bodhisattva to the left of the central Buddha in Cave XVIII. #Photography from ‘Chinese monumental art’ by Peter C. Swann (1963) #art #sculpture

When I pulled back the curtains, I noticed moisture on the windows, a night's worth of breathing. There was my life, I thought, turned into a myriad of droplets, and I wiped it off with a tissue and threw it away.

You will be a part of the savor of the fruit. -René Char (tr. Cid Corman)

I had fallen asleep while it was still bright outside, and when I woke up a while later the room was dark. A faint blue light was seeping in from behind the curtains, and I wondered how much of it was the fading dusk and how much the glow of the city.

In a dream I saw Mount Fuji and above it, in perfect alignment with its snowcap, a planet and the moon. When I tried to take a photo, the planet had disappeared, and trees were growing on the summit.

Accessible but veiled.

I woke up in the middle of the night, next to the familiar wall. On the other side, I imagined a world with people and lights and tireless machines. But when I listened, I could hear nothing but the wind.

I keep it like it's torture Keep my body like a soldier #nowlistening

"At one time he imagined himself in hell, and all who surrounded him demons … A cat in the place was, at one time, a frightful object of apprehension and terror to him: he said her eyes were fire, and he could plainly see her intention to devour him." —A Constant Observer, Sketches in Bedlam

There was a light in the corner of my eye, and I turned towards it, thinking it was the moon. But it was someone else's window, brightly lit and even further away.

Portrait of Hottō Enmyō Kokushi, c. 1295–1315. Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1970.67

I woke up early and noticed the faint light on the ceiling above me. The pale echo of the window, the uncertain shadows, hardly more real than figures in a dream, an hour away from the birth of colour.

Roll the moon over my heart #nowlistening

"So far did delusion carry this man's fancy, that he actually believed he had neither eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, nor teeth."

"Each one of us is alone in the world … We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them." —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

The opening scene from Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo #cinema #film

また見ることもない山が遠ざかる The mountain I'll never see again grows distant 山頭火 Santoka (tr. Sato Hiroaki) #haiku #俳句

The voice of Salamat Ali Khan in Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar #cinema #film

Aerial photograph of Palmyra Castle, Syria, 1933 #found #photography

あてもなく踏み歩く草はみな枯れたり Aimlessly, I walk through the withered grass. 山頭火 Santoka (tr. John Stevens) #haiku #俳句

Walking past the window, I was startled by the sudden ochre of the outside world. Not long after, it had turned into a quickly fading blue as everything around kept spinning into night.

the consolations of insomnia

家を持たない秋がふかうなった I have no home; Autumn deepens. 山頭火 Santoka (tr. John Stevens) #haiku #俳句

Cy Twombly / North African Sketchbook, 1953

I had wanted to close the windows, but instead I stayed there, listening as the birds were drawing maps of the growing darkness.

Has the distance left to go become further away? #nowlistening