Monday, October 12, 2009

"Only So" John Bonanno, 1988, Acrylic on Cardboard with mirrors, 6" x 9" (approx.), $100



Ah! The Old Days! I found this one in a trunk of old work. I remembered it fondly if faithlessly.
The words I wrote (expand the illustration and try to read it yourself if you desire):

This entrance, this passage, is the very womb, the mother of Anubis.
Here is the threshold of the palace of the company of the gods, the very lords of heaven,
The spinners of the curtains of the false infinite crypt,
Each to each and side to side,
Presenting elegant true-hued wands,
Capped with their true signs.
They alter their noble array in the slow splendrous dance of the stars.
A sweet howl shapes these words:
"Thy candle hath burnt out.
The wick is drowned in a little puddle of wax warm as blood.
Thy flickering flame hath found this portal.
Lift this hasp. Build thine hand and put thee in my grasp.
Shape thee a face and turn it to me.
Let Ptahtenen and thee to squeeze new eyes to gaze on the edges of this form,
Which emanates not.
My body is naught but nothing manifest.
I am a facile aspect of the body of Nuit.
Only so. Only so."

From the 1932 film Vampyr directed by Carl-Theodor Dreyer

"A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers."
-Seneca (the Younger) De Brevitate Vitae, i. 18.

There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
-W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

"Hunger is the best sauce in the world."
-Cervantes, Don Quixote

"Hunger can explain many acts. It can be said that all vile acts are done to satisfy hunger."
-Maxim Gorky

"Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving."
-O. Henry

"Hunger knows no friend but its feeder."
- Aristophanes

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
-Matthew 25:35-40

"Where people go hungry, to say that man does not live by bread alone is too easily misunderstood as an argument in favor or starvation."
- Theodore Roszak

“If you offer your compassion to the hungry and satisfy the famished creature, then shall your light shine in darkness.”
- Isaiah 58:10

“And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger.”
- Leviticus 19:9-10

“God says to Israel, 'My Children, whenever you give sustenance to the poor, I impute it to you as though you gave sustenance to Me.'”
- Numbers 28:2

"It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest."
-Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"I saw a few die of hunger, of eating, a hundred thousand."
-Benjamin Franklin

"Hunger is insolent, and will be fed."
-Homer

"Anticipate charity by preventing poverty."
-Maimonides

“In eating, a third of the stomach should be filled with food, a third with drink, and the rest left empty.”
-The Talmud