There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. 

In disciplined silence, it opens. 

With wandering talk, it closes. 

Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī

مولانا جلالالدین محمد بلخی

A traveling life... For we are blessed.

You are in your body

As a plant is in the earth

Yet you are yes the wind.

-Maureen Mclane from "peony"

Burning Man 2014

Old plum tree bent and gnarled

All at once opens one blossom, two blossoms,

three, four, five blossoms, uncountable blossoms..

Whirling, changing into wind, wild rain, 

falling, snow, all over the earth. 

Zen master

“On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food. She would put handfuls of earth in her pockets, and ate them in small bits without being seen, with a confused feeling of pleasure and rage, as she instructed her girl friends in the most difficult needlepoint and spoke about other men, who did not deserve the sacrifice of having one eat the whitewash on the walls because of them. The handfuls of earth made the only man who deserved that show of degradation less remote and more certain, as if the ground that he walked on with his fine patent leather boots in another part of the world were transmitting to her the weight and the temperature of his blood in a mineral savor that left a harsh aftertaste in her mouth and a sediment of peace in her heart.” 
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“...memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.” Isabel Allende

"...being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.." Octavia Butler

 

"I am caught in love's web so deceitful,

None of my endeavors turned fruitful,

I knew not when I rode the high blooded stead,

The harder I pulled its reins the less it would heed,

Love is an ocean with such a vast space,

No wise man can swim it in any place,

A true lover should be faithful till the end,

And face life's reproached trend,

When you see things hideous, fancy them neat,

Eat poison, but taste sugar sweet"

-Rabia Balkhi 

First Persian Poetess, born in Balkh. 

Murdered by her brother. 

Her last poem written on the bath wall in her own blood. 

Two sided musings upon the synesthesia passed between the hearts of flowers in love.

Album Review- "Balkh is a new name too, but no wonder I haven’t heard of them before: this is their first release. Balkh is a duo of Eriijk Ressler and Doriandra Smith and each side has a fifteen-minute piece of music. Quite a curious bunch of loops here, mainly from ‘voice’ sources, maybe taped off the radio, but for all we know this could also be from old vinyl. It doesn’t make a piece of sound poetry, nor radio art, as a narrative of some kind doesn’t seem to be part of it. Maybe, to a certain extend, I was reminded of the earliest experiments carried out by Severed Heads, certainly on the B-side here. The whole thing reminded me of an 80s cassette anyway: made with the easiest means – loops of voices – without many electronics and such like, but the end result was quite captivating, certainly if you had a drink or two this can have a nice hallucinatory effect on the listener. Another winner." Rafa Segura http://modisti.com/14/vital-weekly-925/

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.. Nothing outside you can give you any place.. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. -Flannery O'Conner

from lovely days, hence past..

I Am My Own Scarecrow
- a fragment from the film: Dislandia (released in 2005)
by Brian M. Viveros / Eriijk Ressler
music by Brad Southard

Now available from Readymades Tapes - Quality Since 1893: balkh Pulling The Branch Of A Tree / Nodding Off While Out To Sea c30 [rt-qs'93022][balkh001] Cassette edition 33 "Eriijk Rêssler and Doriandra Smith present their first release as Balkh to the Readymades Tapes - Quality Since 1893 roster. A ritual of psychedelics based on repetitions of sounds and phrases, moments and minutes, marking time by locking it into place and viewing it's many angles. Two side-long Desert and Mountain Meditations on First Snow and New Moon."

http://readymadestapes-qualitysince1893.blogspot.com/p/catalog-ordering.html

Of subtle threats and smart pantsuits..

Dwellers of the Azure Height

Soundtrack: balkh

from the January 2014 recording "Dwellers of the Azure Height"

Radical right turns..

Oranje Corduroy ◎◎◎
Recorded 23_Feburary_2014