Fyodor Dostoevsky:excerpt from The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Reading Fyodor Dostoevsky has had a strong impact on me. I felt compelled to make a pilgrimage to his gravesite in St.Petersburg, Russia. I did so on several occasions, just so I could have a have a little chat with my mentor. Here is one of the Photographs I took the last time I was there, and also one of my favorite quotes from the novel The Idiot. This is Prince Myshkin recounting an encounter with a man that was once led to a scaffold for a public execution…
“He was dying at the age of twenty-seven, healthy and strong; bidding farewell to his comrades, … There was a church nearby, and the top of the cathedral with its gilded dome shone in the bright sun. He remembered gazing with terrible fixity at that dome and the rays shinning from it: it seemed to him that those rays were his new nature and in three minutes he would somehow merge with them…The ignorance of and loathing for this new thing that would be and would come presently were terrible; yet he said nothing was more oppressive than for him than the constant thought: “What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to me - what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then I’d turn each I’d turn each minute into a whole age, lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted! He said that in the end this thought turned into such anger in him that he wished they would hurry up and shoot him.” (P.60-1)
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.
Part one chapter 5
Translated by: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
First Vintage Classics edition July 2003
THE SQUID
Squid Drying
THE SQUID
I ate dried squid
Feasted on it’s tentacles
Burnt them over my gas range stove
Then dipped them in mayonnaise
And I thought
As I chewed and chewed
How stupid the squid is
To jump into traps
Light being the only bait
Just like moths that burn themselves in the flame
The squid are caught and eaten
Must be retribution
For past life crimes
I thought
As I chewed and chewed
The stupid squid
Until the next morning
When I awoke
With sore gum’s
And teeth
Unable to move my mouth
Ahhhh
Then I realized
And bowed to the squid
My teacher!
Fishing for Love
Small Mouth Bass
In shallow water
Warmed by the sun
In a tranquil part of the stream
A shinny lure
Caught my eye
And I struck with force
And the lure lurched back
Ripping my lips
But it could have been worse
Had the hook set properly
The vicious fight for freedom
Or
Frying pan
I escaped this angle-her
Who has already caught her limit
They’re by her boots
A strand of blond hair
Threaded through their gills
Awaiting her recipes
I’m the lucky one
This time
And so I wait
For this season to pass
And her fishing license
To expire.
The Fishing Lodge
Remember
You told me
About the northern lodge
Where you worked for a summer
In the season of your beauty
As a fishing guild
Leading men
Remember
How you bated them all
Into falling in love with you?
And how angry you got
At the one
Who didn’t strike
At your charming lures
remember how he said
you were angling the shallow waters of attention
and all stops shinning
when the seasonal sun sets
remember?
How to steep tea
Steep by steep pictures on how to make tea using traditional Korean pottery