Baudelaire, on the figure of the flâneur · December 20th, 2009
“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of the birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world – such are a few of the slightest pleasures of the independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.”
Baudelaire, C. (1964), The Painter of Modern Life, New York: Da Capo Press
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May 17th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Exile
my country
gives calls you by your first name
the moment you turn your back
your heart squeezes
as at your first embrace
having come back from so far
if you ever
can’t find the way here to us
stop
and contemplate the mountains
you think you know
ask passers-by
why the fountain’s dry
where these paths go
that drop into exhausted commas
if ever
you come back from as far
as my daring takes me
we’ll walk together
cone day maybe
beside precipices
my lunar memory
has woven flying carpets
Guemar S.A., (2004), Nobody’s Perfect refugees writing in Wales 2, Swansea Hafan Books