All One Horse

for

Levedi,

Kanthaka

and my Brother

One has it in mind to put together a book which when completed, reaching (for) completion, will consist of twenty-seven minor pieces of writing accompanied by twenty-seven watercolours. Twenty-seven, because it is as good a number as any and better than most, it contains the eternal nine, and this mind, seeking the Wondrous Mind on soiled paper, is still inked in with superstitions. When one is a blind ass walking on ice it is as well to count the number of steps and to imbue these with a saving grace, if not some frozen significance.

The book is called All One Horse. If you really must know, the title is culled from a Chang Tzu saying: ‘Heaven and earth are one finger, all things are one horse.’ This, by the way, also precisely indicates the contents, made up of a structure wrapped in themes and motives. Arguments of course are informed and/or illustrated by imagery or texture, or both. Images, again, depend on how far the horse of association can travel, as do textures which would be blank were it not for imagination — and there the finger goes galloping over uncharted regions determined by the life from which they echo forth. And life, the translation in other words, is nothing if not severable. The horse needs no rider.

One thing is as clear as the lotus having its roots in mud: in due time, well prepared but unexpected, like the opening of one eye, one will see the horned rabbit and the furry turtle crossing the nowhere mountain. The citation is from Hakuin’s Kaian koku go.

A. Uthor

Girona, The Year of the Ass

Le pouvoir passe par l’organisation des idées des autres, de la culture des autres.

ALBERTO CAVALLARI

Otherness is a powerful factor of distraction, not only because it continually disturbs us and wrenches us from our intellectual thinking but also because the very possibility of its occurrence casts a hazy glow on the universe of objects that are situated at the edge of our attention but can at any moment become its centre.

MICHELTOURNIER, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique

C’est tellement facile d’en glisser un peu dans le vagin! Avec l’anus, c’est une partie qu’on n’a pas le droit de fouiller. Alors on regarde sous les bras, sous les pieds, on leur fait écarter les jambes et tousser. Il tombe parfois un couteau…

A. NONAME

Era necessario che il futuro esploratore di mondi si liberasse dalla paura dell’assulamente diverso, e dall’impulso di morte che questa paura si portava sempre dietro.

GIORGIO CELLI, Sfida ai volventi

We have absolutely no doubt in our minds that what we describe is happening and has been happening in the manner in which we describe it as happening.

CHARLES REDMAN

When a thought suddenly arises it is known as ignorance.

From Ta-ch’eng ch’i-hsun lun

Misschien kan een van de Disparates een illustratie zijn van deze omkering, waardoor het vermoede duister achter de uiterlijke dingen het zichtbare duister tussen hun geschonden brokstukken wordt. De ets toont een paard dat zijn hoofd omdraait om de berijder, een vrouw in een wit kleed, tussen zijn tanden te grijpen. Dat waarop je eens hebt gereden verneitigt je.

JOHN BERGER, Het Spaanse Binnenland

Ne craignez point, monsieur, la tortue…

Leibniz as quoted by P. MENARD in Les problèmes d’un problème

Who wonster live frevva?

QUEEN