23 Comments
User's avatar
Jeremy Marks's avatar

I appreciate the tight rhythm here, and the way you work the Latin into these cadences. I felt the walking movement as I read. Lovely, Sylvia. 😊👏

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Mm, thank you! I don't know where the words came from after the opening "went" lines...They served as a literal my warm up mind cadence as I sat down after coffee this morning. The rest is history. Fluid-like....the forward motion of steady and sure footsteps holding hands with words. I'm glad it feels as such. 😌

Expand full comment
KV's avatar

Fluid-like indeed! This seeps straight into my soul

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Thank you my sweet friend! Good to see you here! I’m glad you felt it, too. 💖🌞

Expand full comment
Samantha Lazar's avatar

I also appreciate your key. I know so little Latin. The layering of meaning, the sound production, your delivery—stunning!

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Thank you Samantha! I always debate whether to leave the magic of the latin to remain secretive (like a spell) or to reveal the secrets for understanding...but I want readers to be welcomed into my space and feel at home here, despite the foreign renderings which might not be so familiar. I have also been recently adding the translations into my writing to follow with the rhythmic lines of meaning (like my most recent "Ab Igne, Voluntas" to give more of an understanding. I find it working really well for the flow without taking away from the poem. (insider info 😉0

Expand full comment
Samantha Lazar's avatar

Magical

Expand full comment
Peter Whisenant's avatar

Hearing you read this, I feel like I've stepped into an Edward Muybridge photographic sequence. You give us the mechanics of motion. I'm also beginning to suspect you know a thing or two about voodoo.

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Well, Peter, you’re enriching my life by being here with me and commenting. The difference between Eadweard Muybridge and me is his was an effort to stop time, mine is an effort to keep moving through it and exploring it in ways others wouldn’t necessarily consider or have the words to describe. But I’ll take that as a massive compliment. Funny enough, maybe he and I share more in common than I realize. His birthday is the day after mine…. Similar minds maybe. 🤔 And thanks for making me laugh! I assure you I don’t know voodoo…😏

Expand full comment
jared mulhair's avatar

the buildup! the release!

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Thank you!!! I guess I have a way of working that angle. 😏 Appreciate you being here, Jared. 🙏

Expand full comment
Nazish Nasim's avatar

'Where there is scent, there is soul’—what a haunting and beautiful thought... It makes me think about how smell roots us in memory, in the body, in time itself. Stunning work, Sylvia. And hey, hello, fellow Jungian. I have the most profound literary crush on C. Jung too. ❤️

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Beautiful, right? I have a special affinity for scent/smell. I have quite a heightened sense of it. I have a poem called Knowing // Gnosis here that is about our sense of smell (in a way). I posit a question about it as I ponder such things on life and gnosis...and I love to combine philosophy in my writing in layered ways with spirituality. I find it fascinating how many philosophers wrestled with the ideas of spirituality (often being quite spiritual themselves) while putting it into perspectives that were perhaps more widely "accepted" in an effort to teach us and the world about it. That's my take on it lately, anyway. And I guess I find myself doing something similar while contemplating science (a little), philosophy, alchemy and spirituality. So they all find a home in much of my writings.

I deeply appreciate you taking the time to ready my work as I know it can be quite a commitment. I find myself always so easily lost in reading good work and time just flutters by......

Expand full comment
Nazish Nasim's avatar

Scent is such an intimate sense—so tied to memory, recognition, and even a kind of unspoken knowing. It makes perfect sense that it would weave itself into your exploration of gnosis. And I love the way you frame philosophy as a bridge. .There’s something alchemical about that in itself. And so easy to get lost into. Are you also Jung's fan or are you more Freudian? Frankl?

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

To be honest, Nazish, I find I can relate to pieces of almost all of these great philosophers. When I was younger I was very much into philosophy but my path began to grow in a different way the more and more I began to explore spirituality and religions. Specifically alchemy, so I do very much love Jung for the way he developed ideas of alchemy and then I also love the layers that Freud presented. But even further back I loved Heraclitus and Plato's work...which leads to Jung and his "refinement" of that all. For many years I didn't think about philosophy as much as I have been now since I am very deeply practicing aspects of Sanatana Dharma and Sikhism/ Hinduism. In that is where I am finding myself going back to all of the love of philosophy I once had (with heavy emphasis on alchemy).

Expand full comment
Nazish Nasim's avatar

I very much loved Jung a while back until I read Frankl, and it seemed that for all of Freud and Jung’s carefully constructed deductions about the impact of early childhood, individuation etc, the focus on meaning in Frankl’s work dominated - atleast for me.

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

I should go back and refresh my memory on the specifics of Frankl....really I'm an obsessed researcher (of soooo many things, too many things) that some of this is buried so deeply into the recesses of my brain that I need a jogging to bring it all back to the surface again. **rubs hands together with big smile**

Expand full comment
Nazish Nasim's avatar

I understand :) . We should totally get together sometime. Whenever you find time. Much love ❤️

Expand full comment
David Kirkby's avatar

Ooooh

This feels like Punctum Part 2.

The inner journey continues......

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

Ahhh, Dave. I was just commenting on this in Punctum. The two poems were written back to back, Day one Punctum, Day two Coniunctio. And I'm sure this won't be the last of it all. 🌞

Expand full comment
David MacGregor's avatar

I know a lot of words

I don't pronounce right

Now here are a bunch of others

Pronounced with tender diction

As I tip toe through the Tulips

On Chypre

After getting off the boat

From Ancient Greece

Expand full comment
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A's avatar

This is the sound

Of a swooning love song

Sung and strummed by one

Weathered Italian gentleman

Just me he and his Chitarra Italiana

Expand full comment
David MacGregor's avatar

Excuse me while I

adjust

the brim of

my Borselino

Expand full comment