big sur
stone house garden, writing what will become cloud poems
we walk out the traces of new buildings, rooms and pool
8 june
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bringing together Khlebnikov, numbers, great-uncle peter in Siberia,
Benjamin’s Jetz-zeit, promised land/borderland, the Korean DMZ
threads and weaving and unweaving
not entirely complete and not with the images that I want to include
but today there is a whole trajectory/draft for the book
it does feel like a very concentrated film
there is much to do – and I will return to the outdoors and nightsky to guide me
from readings: CAMILLO
‘signs and riddles’ veils, Camillo: “the oldest and wisest writers have had the habit of protecting in their writings the secrets of God with dark veils’
“revelatory imagery”
angels in dante’s paradiso HAVE NO MEMORY
undivided from God
“…no new object interrupts their sight and hence, they have no need of
memory since they do not possess divided thought” 84
the physical impression of images on memory
book burning, the story of racine and homer
if all memory is stored in my HD or ipod I’m a little worried about corporate
control of access (antiquity happens quickly in electronic time, would
need to pay and update to have access to your own memory)
Aristotle -- memory imprint on eye as on wax
“in flowers says Camillo ‘lies the secret of all secrets that it is not permitted
to reveal’
flowers ---- macrocosm -- leaves/roots --- microcosm
colonna’s circular island of Cythera } a garden
at center of book also as a garden manual used for Villa d’este.
Venus Grotto at Boboli gardens, botanic gardens at univ of padua
Theater --- inner sanctum at Cythera obsidian pavement = illusion
of sky (sea/sand at night, kiefer) hero thought he was walking into abyss
SKY FLOOR
camillo influence theatrical design of Sebastiano Serlio
Libro d’Architectura 1545 like a cosmos
anatomy theater at university of padua --- to look inside the body
the theater like a microscope/telescope (seeing place)
“Camillo describes an animate world in which the plants, rocks and flowers are alive, in sentient reception of heavenly influence’ for camillo ‘celestial streams’ operate on the earth from the heavens. These streams move through the very capillaries of the skin, of every single hair of man” 101
Ficino ---- Camillo Camillo’s “aim is one that intimately combines the principles of natural philosophy, astronomy, and numbers with mythology and language in a way that is markedly more systematic or ‘scientific’ than Ficino’
to look at heaven (we came out and looked up at the stars – dante)
--- Giordano Bruno
Camillo’s whirlpool ----- images from tidal wash
spiral movement for planets ----- abalone house
fluid heaven ---- pneuma animate fluid substance Cicero, Petrarch
whereas Pontano rejected mathematical models a poet who thought of planets’ movement as based on their own free will qualities such as Fortitude, Liberality, Beneficence
Pietro d’Abano 1306 professor of medicine had most influence on camillo “describes an animate world in which there is no division between the world of matter and the heavens” “The material substance of the stars is as much a part of our bodies as our bones: at an atomic level 112 blood flows through arteries = stars in skies lunar phases -- sperm, menstrual flow celestial streams veins in heavens as in body
Camillo – heavens like streams and rivers in hair beard eyes “celestial channels” contact with cosmic energy “the world lives” 115
image of “young girl with her hair raised to the heavens” based on Plato’s idea of man being a a tree upside down ‘since the tree has its roots below and man has his above’
UPSIDE DOWN TREE = HUMAN
renaissance early 1400’s - early 1500s
Copernicus De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
published 1543 Nuremburg “a magico-hermetic world picture” 117
“the
earth
being
movable” quote from Camillo 1550 addition of l’Idea de Theatro
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hybrid books --- architecture, garden plans, love story, astronomy, anatomy
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what book are you
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which brings us back to gardens -- the center of colonna’s island of cythera past the obsidian sky-floor to Venus in a maze of gardens which this botanical garden at Padua seeks to replicate along with camillo’s vision of flowers as the secret of secrets
as with a mandala – that opens to the larger habitat, world, universe where we are to live in present tense (not tense) all the work manifest
as though every garden is a mind
our own bodies
10 june
further revisioning Cloud Poems
journal notes
11 june
in fog: otter and young shoreline
12 june
composing stone-house notebook pages for our meeting
crossing through garden over water to reach hummingbird-wing structures think of Monet’s bridge and the way he inhabited and painted from his gardens
here you can walk over or swim in garden pool or watch the play of water along with flowering beds in relation to the sea
the hummingbird wing structures are now doubled to curve out to the sea and embrace the garden
