[...] Halloween

needs what we have today—a stir: not a gale
so constant and high but gusts that show up

out of nowhere, presences that are not there,
little twirls of leaves that scoot across the

street and then just wilt out, forms,
air-whorls that are made out of nothing

but that touch your face or rustle into the
bushes, whispering and hissing: all kinds of

cases where motion charges the show
and where motion gives its form away by

picking up miscellany and throwing it off, motion
the closest cousin to spirit and spirit the

closest neighbor to the other world, haunted
with possibility, hope, anguish, and alarm

so severe and lyrical

some interesting resonances:

And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

– Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air.

– Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The word “idea” comes from the Greek eidos which means to see, face, meet, be face-to-face. We stand outside of science. Instead, we stand before a tree in bloom, for example — and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet each other, as the tree stands there and we stand there face to face with it … This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these “ideas” buzzing about in our heads. Let us stop here for a moment, as we would to catch our breath before and after a leap. For that is what we are now, men who have leapt, out of the familiar realm of science and even, as we shall see, out of the realm of philosophy. And where have we leapt? Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we really stand.

– Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?

I never got on good
relations with the world

first I had nothing
the world wanted

then the world had
nothing I wanted

— Ammons, “Success Story”

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar,” to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.

— Shklovsky, “Art as Device”