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Chant du monde boréal
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CHRONICLES FROM ARCANIA

Preamble

Through Chronicles from Arcania, I shall attempt to share walks with you, this poetics from 60N, where I feel at one with our Earth, my sense of place so maritime.


Monday 12 April 2010

vagalam'

Strange morning fog

From yesterday's euphoria to the dampness of morning fog. Vagalam'...
I take it from 19th century French vague à l'âme, this undefined inner state of malaise, discomfort, type of melancholy... Peeping through my window, I watched greyness filling this world and thought of a better end to this spring break. A hooded crow perched on my neighbours' totem pole most of the morning. If I listen to shamanic wisdom, it is a sign of change and yet, back then, it looked so static. Here and then, a lone starling gathered nesting materials in secret... 
Now what's the connection with the picture above? I never really explained it when it was first published as a picture on the blog. Pure linguistics in a form of a word game.
Vague and lame in French mean wave. However, I was listening to Chopin on my iPod watching rollers that day and the great Polish master tainted what I usually feel as platitude when faced to the North Atlantic into his sense of melancholy. Hence Vagalam'.


And talking of iPod... 
I once chose this device to express two opposite states of emotions last month. Different type of verse to what I usually write. Healthy from a creative viewpoint and  well received at the Library on 26 March...


1.    Touch

asked to write about an object either taking pride/feeling guilty/angry from the viewpoint of that object.

i Touch

Slid ON and OFF in your pocket, I’m on stand-by.
all I feel is your finger tip, that gentle touch
right from your skin that connects you
with the rest of our secret world –
robin, blue bird…
pages, faces
where you can hide from loneliness.

out of touch

don’t even try to plug me in.
my icons froze
somewhere between 2 USBs,

I’m in that state, cold as a fish – I will need time to recover,
too many megabytes of pain,
today I will remain silent.

© Nat Hall 2010


Here comes the sunshine

The musician has changed.

And now fog dissipated I begin to smile again and even think of pushing it to Ninian once more before I make my way back to that headland in Lerwick...

4 comments:

  1. A lovely word, and a lovely image, Nat

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  2. vagalam' seems a fitting description of me these past days.

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  3. Thank you kindly, Elizabeth :)

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  4. Really, Kay?
    Well, i truly hope you now out of it :)

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