11) Six portraits

A) Inflammable Pigments (Johannes Vermeer)
B) Naked Or Almost (Franz Kafka)
C) Recalls (Sappho)
D) Apt To (Karl Lagerfeld)
E) Portrait (Frederick Chopin)
F) Portrait (Francis Bacon)

12) Two Plays

1) Pina Bausch (a portrait)
2) Robert Wilson (a portrait)

Symbiotic Works

Werner Reichhold
Jane Reichhold

13) Preparing the Dark
prose by Werner Reichhold, haiku by Jane Reichhold

14) Watery Colors
prose by Werner Reichhold, haiku and tanka by Jane Reichhold

Inflammable Pigments
Johannes Vermeer

It's an arrival. Maybe the slowest part
of a journey from an outside-view

to an inside-shiver. The touch of a too close blue,
dry soil or the crackle of varnish years after

Vermeer left us alone with his longings.
Is there a painted structure only he has seen?

How did he link the light of his color to a hand
far reaching for a friend, a breakable glass?

Would his brush stroke inflame us more if we
visited, bare footed a freshly scrubbed floor?

Can we walk save into a room, a space of his?
Here, before a lead-framed window, I asks myself

if this girl is the one to whom I sent a letter long ago?
Is she still reading, concerned with how to answer it?

Why is the content of this message unimportant -
but wait, maybe it isn't? I try to read again, the paint

appears blurred around her feather, feminine.
Long touched and wetted often, the paper arches.

A woman, dressed much like Johannes' model,
in whom she visits herself, stays put at the show.

How does a painter make us think of silk that serious?
The viola da gamba's sound seems grounded.

For finding his kind of umber, Vermeer dug in Italy.
Out of a table's kilim, one hears some Turkish

sheep grazing. It is December in Delft. Market day.
Dutch women's skin smells as spicy as their laces do;

the loops, in their own quotation marks,
possessive. The hunter of his girl friend's ermine

may speak only Russian. The lamp oil seems to be
at loss and the last candle runs out of shine.

(1996, to enter Johannes Vermeer's show in Den Haag, The Netherlands,
the ticked had to be ordered 6 month in advance)

Naked Or Almost
Franz Kafka

lie about. Martyrdom, since
Franz Kafka intangible outlined:

we're born burning. His arrival links
a disposition to departure.

Preparing for slower comfort,
Milena and Felice exhale breath-power.

Winged to the weep of recommendations,
both bend over, bugs? Naked or almost,

in addition to lackadaisical announcements,
they exchange doubt and nail polish.

Laughing. it's a reappraisal of parts untouched,
unsettled, later named eventful

Guiltless like fog on windows,
fluid in drops, fluid without dripping.

Nerve gas, they barely use it, Chanel,
the atmospheric shade, fed on musk.

Is one bed's night solid of despair?
Is this part of a mask-maker's approach

to Bratislawa, beneath The Castle,
in A Penalty Colony, Eleven Sons?

Recalls
Sappho

In more of my lichen the wickerwork
is breathing air in and out. The body branches,

nest-molded and young, bend.
Green grapes, smell of Sappho, freshly picked.

Lesbos: song I swell we pass the gate of her lyre.
A most pleasant day irritates the blue waves

around my compass; the needle quivers
as if an unknown celebrates its occurrence.

She recalls, recharges the harbor's guest
and lost eyes, captured in her mirror,

defend their isolation; brotherly could be a strong name
if sisterly wouldn't be the softer foreplay at hand.

From one optional low swaying rowing boat
we join dolphins. The arc, the double-arc mythological

available among divers. On/off, behind a harpoon;
lingering through white corals, the haunt of that arrow.

Apt To

this is as if all charm is wishing
textiles to be lonely without Karl Lagerfeld.

His selection is for her acceptance but true,
the more undressing the less important Chanel.

Well styled carelessness. Devotion
to spare time's weather of changes.

A silk-choice may contradict the model, but:
materials chosen play the new owner's mindset.

One is of three transparent, three less
inches in width and doesn't know it thanks to Karl.

Apt; then scrutinizing the parallels:
how do others want to mingle in, partake

radically, since shy moderation ranges
mostly from a quivering give-in to give-up.

Price-structured. Price configures
its presence. One less button and

the place-marker is missing. A chain is preferred
to what a belt could tame with leather.

From both shoes the hats may learn:
a feathered step enlarges swings.

Even an older pheasant would enjoy this colorful
strongly organized dress and well, shriek.

for Karl

Portrait
Frederick Chopin (Les Études)

I
Have I come to

II
Those vibrations

III
Hands

IV
Chez Frederick :
a) Steel-stringed
b) The evening a weaving? No
c) Exercises
d) The body fir, polished black
e) A wing stopped half way up

V
Appointment's politeness

VI
Scheduled Sand
Crepes please
George

VII
Respectively

VIII
Elephants
Strolling to find water
They leave a sculptured scorch
Not to arrive fully
At the horizon

IX
Ivory
Bypassing a red tongue, trumpets
The long way to nervously searching fingers

X
Ornamental? Collaborative knowledge?

XI
Tolerance, incorporated

XII
The first paraphrase communicates winds
The woods calling openly for expansion
As if gently laying down sees us

XIII
Bind/ bound
Ladies, invitational entering the salon
cis-moll
Resonance under construction, seamless
One does hear him play figuratively.

It's a shore side project. A night sailor comes back home. He carries his transparency, lighted by Hyakutake's tail. Enjoyment, you may guess or the result of obtaining one's desire, the act of fulfilling one's desire. Voluptuousness. The Heidelberg man in London.

II (The interview)

- Are Francis Bacon's individually experienced vibrations at risk, let's say thirty years from now?

- No, columnist. They'll be seen as a defense against anything done before in cosmetic, well, artistic surgery. Skin was immature before he took it into the currents, through river rock and down a fall and up, a fall. From a landscape's rubbing against changing seasons all day all night long, his colors evaporate.

- Are evaluated

- No. Since his performances are backed on visual knowledge, representational remarks are absent across all of the works. His lonely period of no calculations caught the British island in 1960 by surprise, put it into the forefront of European movements; almost no ladies and gentleman have been used to (virgin colors, they don't mix further, just stick like those before leaving high school). Warmer tones override a cool concept, in place since his birth. Further south and abroad, the moistness of his brush has a hard time to interact with the outspoken interests of the rich or for those who deny bed and chair multifunctional purposes, well, presence

- Did he define his domain

- Yes, by ample energies. They seem to have a stubborn tendency to perpetuate one single DNA, which, deprived from natural shadow and natural light, have a compulsive effect on how one leaves common ground. Up in Francis' interior lingers a chill: it permanently lurks high into that sphere where participating in pleasure is a preference.

- Why are some visitors accusing Francis Bacon being that deep into what others qualify as temptation?

- Great paintings often cover nothing less than what a child knows better not to tell mom. They work your mind into theirs. Then, more vulnerable, you may sleep with insect larvae (a hopeless case for a fly swatter). Sue me sir, one can't get rid of pale spots in one's life and actually, bleak ovals are flying through most of Francis' paintings. One dares to elaborate the logic of his rituals; but it's hip high, even though one doesn't know up to who's hip (animal personality, persuasiveness?)

- One more question about Francis Bacon's art: Do you see death remembered, death as a subject, a motive; the hour one can't wait for, the stage we came from, first ash-colored than green; is painting/the painter in opposition to paint in tubes, to paint in half emptied canisters drying; do some need alcohol to keep the paint running more smoothly; is oil essential anywhere and do pigments protect us from rays, so his creations may regenerate a sick guy; is death one more pressure on the tubes; did his brushstrokes outline squares when others slip into graves; is Francis disclosing elasticity getting some kind of rubber into service for a slingshot, let's say to hit the spot from which you're already bleeding; with him, an authority is acknowledged (there is no other pharmacist giving you a drug and becoming that famous); do the members of the Queen's fleet feel especially sympathetic far away from home in hammocks; think he hears somebody knocking on his bed and that's in fact he himself and not a woman being split up by knowing all of this

- Yes. When the vision first met Francis Bacon, it wasn't convinced that in one body, on one artistic mind so much astonishment, display and shock could be installed. So years of patience have been asked first from him and then from the material to be accessible for the event. As the action sporadically undressed its meaning before him, he himself immersed. The vision retreated into the canvas, settling down an introspective layout. In a sense, his is an art where satisfaction is obviously inhabited, inherited by muscles. For example, if the Achilles tendon of a body stretches, all of its salivary glands give in and react simultaneously. Such men, moving through a painting, may eat for the main course and for desert red snapper. Accidentally framed, accidentally not framed, it makes a portrait.

Open.............scissors and you.......... the wide-winged

Act I
Pina Bausch's laboratory (this rehearsal is the actual performance).
The studio is filled with actors/ dancers learning from each other's life. Acting
about it.
How much can a gesture hold? Who's entertaining wit says the most of what is lost and yet remembered?

(Oh I, the long steel nail. Once, a carpenter drove me into huge boards building the stage. I'm a shiny metal point when dancers fly above me landing naked)

PINA BAUSCH:
Thanks for opening the gate of your legs, Tony. Right, the audience can move through. Each of you develops her/his own enlarged presence. Yes, today we're exorcising a calendar of herded motions. Turn a page. See the long pause? That's you, sleeping prepared with those preparing change.

Each shows Pina how, how shows Pina each, each Bausch shows

a kite
no visible pull
I the end of a string

curtain

Act II

The actors in a state of mind agreeing with their movements, though almost disagreeing. This takes about two hours to be exercised. We're watching the visible efforts. Everything that happened before and will happen afterwards is part of the audience's fantasies. So Pina's plan is saving energy.

The actors joining their mimics. As time goes by, everybody is trying not to interfere with each other's pain. Here is the niche, Pina Bausch notices, asking:
may I not correct you?

The costumes are adapted jokes made up during long try-outs.

An ongoing pause till one actress starts spelling the word leg only by her hands.

Los Angeles Indians' walk isn't narrow and hippie. It is supposed to answer questions of distance. It shortens information about finding water and acorns.

Dimmed lights. One half of the actors are dancing Questions for The Sun. The other half reflects individual answers. As it gets constantly lighter the bodies seem to be washed away till the outline of both groups are drowned unrecognizable in light.

(curtain)

Act III

The whole scenery in turmoil. Thirty-five actors seen in private activities, song and anti-song, film displayed 3-dimensional, light appears only in the form of gases, the stage turning around. Seasonal smell (here autumn) and a reasonable feeling occurs of not been invited to the show.

Five groups of dancers and actors simultaneously active, sometimes intermingling.

netball
if I could I wouldn't
turn to either side

slow motion
one called the fattest
naked on the ground

being almost
close enough to pleasure
rain

through a mask
the sweat of faces blown
one for several

(curtain. End)

ESCAPEE
Act I

Precomposed shapes of air. Is that what Robert Wilson thinks are the dancers in waiting? If he doesn't work, that's what is on his mind: blue as a presence. Even his suits are blue. Guests recognize it. The conversation earns its flow from the color of such a soothing approach (A painting of this rebel should be done in watercolor).

On stage, slow ocean time; our daily speed seems to be timed down. The spaces in front of us are reflecting the limits of movements inside of us.

steps..........one or more.......... the difference
step............the actor in direction of all ships...........sinking
swim..........one expects to hear............sandy grounds

ROBERT:
(Of course advising winds): More northwest
please, shark fins cut the horizon .
(Missing the full moon for extended white, he orders
36 more halogen lamps).

Flood. Flood lighted layers of inflamed skin
veiling the audience. With Wilson, light is becoming
a female power. You may bath in it.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, from all those speakers
one imagines the sound of marbles on a beach.

Breath in a stage of repetition.
Breath in a stage of speechless repetition.

(curtain)

Act II (ESCAPEE)

BANANA:
How slow, how thoughtful the monkey peels me.
Then this long joyous scratch along the back.
Full of fleas and other bites, there is an audience watching.

It's somehow like a war on TV. No haste, the bombing loosely composed with an instinct for keeping funerals out of sight

aflame
call from a minaret

the mouth on stone

molten

a camel's sand-print
into glass

Baghdad
the sleeper has two eyes

blinded

shock
a soldier leaves

his shelter burning

folded flag
stars overlap the stripes

without wind

(curtain. End)

Preparing The Dark

I
From a warm thought the texture. Room to serve,
or one may think, the server given room. Between
air and feathers

pillow coolness
always on the other side
of moonlight

II
Marble, if asked to reflect night or day, would it
stand up for both, slightly rounded as a column
with the ability to echo an oracle? Could there be
a temple visitor, smell of Chanel and more questions
to go in quest for toleration

night window
is that really how others
see me?

III
The post office desk closed. Time folded
in priority mail. No more licking on stamps.
In one corner of the clerk's dream a little wet
blue tongue. The guy who comes late to repair
the broken locker of a mailbox lost a screw.
Searching, he reads a postcard: ... just look
in the bookshelf, behind Poe and Pound,
it's a double action, loaded, on save

lighting the lamp
everything in the room
falls into place

IV

Always some fresh breath to inhale before
sucking the cola. Was it sunshine growing the nut,
rays of a red ball changing the mood? Is it a dissonance
alerting the senses as in opera when Isolde

persists on singing in Tristan's arms, dying on stage

stars so deep
constellations rise and fall
out of memory

V
Daylight collects, night repeats a name. Then,
apparently letting go, it holds it, hands it over
to a dream-face in which this person's chances meet
the limits of your own. This is night becoming a friend,
recognized as such. It's almost morning, there is
no noise, yet you're sure someone you don't expect
is passing by. The dark remains but marks, without acting,
white rings around a raccoon

swinging
the garden gate
day and night

VI
Repetition, with an almost cute affinity to the visible,
to the one so eager to visit or restless to be visited.
Why do male horns at the turn of our century still
make a lady's soft-lens photograph appear obviously
milky

calling the cows home
from the meadow comes
the moon

VII
Maui. On vacation, an encounter getting hot, but without
a tendency to make one feel superior. She looks up
to a lover, in her eyes the gloss of Mother Magma.
From a nearby volcano violence and the glow
of two flowers on her chest. As if wished for

near dusk
the parrot tries
to speak

VIII
You know that feeling on an airplane, the navigator's
voice announcing a turbulence. Unwanted, the sharing
of a neighbor's seat during a chicken meal; a book
bouncing around in a three-dimensional order till it is
unreadable

hole in the night
where the darkened houses surround
a blue square

IX
Remembrance of having spent a night temporarily inhabited.
Its destination unknown. We replay older telephone-conversations,
the sound occurs stretched, blurred. There is one laughter;
we still have trouble to identify who's it was or who's view of reality
allowed us not to be frightened at this time. We recall intense
atmospheric distortions

snowing again
in the winter night
a drift of stars

X
"You're right, dear Basho, what a difference it makes
to become an equal on a celestial journey. Linked
to a course which seems to leap out of sight between dark clouds,
it's an ever widening road at no rest as well as on no time.
Remember, you sent those grass sandals? How comfortable
they are! Am going to airmail a pair of Birkenstocks to you,
this kind is getting more elastic worn throughout all seasons.
Take my love, share it with Sora..."

looking back
for the bird I heard
mist

Watery Colors

It's not painful to wait for the noise of someone undressing.
The light-dimmer pauses. No sweet known against syrup.
Wasn't time always running between "help yourself" and
"get acquainted"? Hours with the cook, her treatment
of steam is balancing the soup. Spices, may I see tears -
almost a lake? How well tied is the boat's knot on the peer,
how much dream-work is used in hands splicing hemp?

at the end of spring
the bookstore lowers the price
for calendars

Suppose an embryo marks itself in the territories
of a woman's brain cells. Light is the subject.
Watery, the game about an entity distinguishes itself
as a single object. Trustworthy. 37 C, a little higher
temperature, then soon an obligation

hard to go
into sleep when the dart
what shape
is pure enough to call
food for the white dreams

It starts snowing in the name of winter, other ice is mixed
with chocolate. From going down meeting the warmth,
that thrill and this attachment. One laughter, then more.
Hunger, yes, but it is an apple, never been allowed to be
tasted, that stays with some oily smell on Cezanne's canvas

painting the kite
blue
the color of home.

Copyright © Werner Reichhold 1996.

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