Ruins.

It has been a week of waiting, the sort of unbearable waiting that puts every breath on hold. And it continues, bubbles over into the ‘weekend’ . . . Radu rises to every occasion that provides opportunities for sniffing.

And there have been comforts amid the unbearable, including but not limited to Gabrielle Tinti’s Ruins, sketches of spiders and cicada shells, Paul Valery’s Charmes, fireflies doing their thing in the evening grass, ebullient sunshine, delicious sandwiches, discovering that tears grow less salty the more they flow so that, finally, one gets to a point near freshwater trees (which is quite stunning).

Speaking of ruins, here is Tinti’s “Icarus”:

And the ruins of an Icarus in each of us. . . Wings destroyed. Only a block of feathers on the left, and the broken strap pulled across his chest. The direction of his gaze, downwards, lips nearly parted, a sort of fascination in the mouth’s expression as if to acknowledge what is absent in the place where he stands, frozen by fear and the desire to please those who love him.