So, what is individualized in Clint Eastwood´s figure in this image I´d call - and here I borrow a phrase from the speculative sphere of natural philosophy - something like "the impacts of vegetal intelligence on human life." Part human, part plant he is depicted here as the both mythologically and medicinally complex Mandragora officinarum.
The terrestrial cephalopod editor has duly participated in the world's joy concerning the video and newspiece finally confirming that octopuses use tools. But this is not a newsblog and nobody needs further proof of cephalopod intelligence. What we would like to know more about specifically on the other hand is what cephalopods dream. Our contributor Ika asked yesterday whether there was a connection between this blog and research about cuttlefish dreaming. Yes I am sure there is only we knew nothing about it. A informative text on animal dreaming can be read here.
If somebody has some advanced empathic or chance method of imagining cuttlefish dreams, or just want to ascribe some of their own dreams to cuttlefish, please add them as comments here or email them to biographed dot poet at gmail dot com.
It was during the surrealist game festival 2007, actually the first morning of the festival, 16/7 2007. I was playing the old Mass-Observation game "dominant image of the day" with myself (just make sure to choose for every day what has been the strongest image that has presented itself to you during that day). The dream brought up another well-known surrealist game, "Before...after" (where two pictures are put next to each other, more or less randomly selected, and interpreted as being one picture of the before and one of the after)
"I open an album of pictures arranged as in the game "Before...after", possibly by Sasha Vlad. One spread has two portraits of Joyce Mansour. The "before" is a well-known image sometimes reproduced in books. But the "after" I have never seen; Joyce Mansour as a teenager (fairhaired, surprisingly), sitting in a rattan chair, comfortably but with a defiant air, dressed in a toga, with a small dog (terrier?) in her lap, attentively but seemingly critically looking to the left, towards what for some reason must be a theatre performance. I don't know why this image is so incredibly beautiful."
(Comment: I half-remember some joker once made a popsong based on a supposedly atmospheric picture of "René and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war". Now who wouldn't want to make at least a song based on this picture?)
During the following weeks I remember and seek out several different images of Joyce Mansour. While not at all being the two images in the dream, and probably not looking like them at all, I find the idea of having two other images stand in for them satisfactory: the first would be Gilles Ehrmann's portrait of Mansour, the second a "hommage to Joyce Mansour" by our friend Rik Lina. Before and after.
MF
(excerpts)
/.../
should we fine roll o fine
on our toes but
the sound is flowing
should we eat o fine
polish the ladder
polish the soil
eat the soil
dragonblood between the eyes
/.../
the institute for asphalt
and concrete
metal
and noise injuries
pink creeping magma
one mummified with the seriousness
nobody comes up to you
one mummified with wings
like red papers stain the air
before the butterfly
reaches for you
makrabet inschase
/.../
balcony under under
force syrup through the trunk mine
hands on the back just memories
of the sweat and others
birds the frame dung
the tree does not fend itself the sun
heaves itself
erso emno
chia so neytala
diàsa
yerkotha
nya peta
closer onto it
a wheelchair with her dog
she is travelling over lakes
the forest has a folded
paper under itself
and not even that
only loosely coherent
pleasures and shards
there is the bread the people
the suspension
sheep eating on site
places against time
like every new time knows
about lips
you have the sound in your mouth
close to the floor
the sound the mouth
smile as the street
teeth eyes
your mouth wants
nails in apartment windows
smile that the street
knows about eyes
was flying in the dream tonight
was lying in the dream flowing like
life
night
sees ones image
in pouring rain
giggles your hands
builds the city lips
makes thinner voices holes
THREE POEMS FROM Lösdrivaren #1 (2000) TRANSLATED
The green shoulder
Having made death itself scream
Is cut short with a sign
Looks down at its chair
The hands are taking the life of
A ball-played head of ice
All around the disaster
NN
Appetite for breath
Snake tongue
Breaths along the body
Features
Either ever seen them
not there right there
no warmth in that very body at the time
no ward in that very smoke
The doubt of iron
of sorrow and adrenalin
or menstruation blood
Old image
old cleft features
old deeply cleft features
MF
You warm wind,
throwing evil threads
in my unrest hung loose.
The silence that circumvents the whispers of lullabies
in our silent costumes.
Prevent the eye take the wet faces,
hiding the fragrance in the moisture of my mouth.
The child's eye eats itself into each nile of skin.
RK
