Prologue from Lives (A Novel)

It is night now.  And how well I know you.
There is a light near the horizon, but it is not the dawn.  There are more hours still to pass before the dawn.
It is warm here--and peaceful.  Like those nights when I rested my fingers on your flesh in sleep.  Like the rains that came swiftly from the west and looked upon our silent windows.  If you were here now, I would tell how unfathomable this world is, and how sadly empty.  But you are not here.
In the distance, when the wind subsides for a moment, I can hear the waterfall.  Or perhaps that too is only the sound of the wind.  So many memories confuse this moment--so many nights have combined themselves and become this night.  This night of wakefulness.  These memories soon to pass into the dark waters of time.  This life soon to be extinguished.
To begin this tale, any hour of my life would serve us equally.  For I know that each moment has the same weight as the next, and that each is as significant or insignificant as all the others.  That each of those moments was life itself--that there is no summation.
So let the beginning be ruled by chance--as all beginnings are ruled.  Let me say that it began here.  And while we pass the time, let us pretend that the truth was not otherwise.

— John A. Youril

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” -- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Absurdity

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity -- Albert Camus

Perspectives on Politics - Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

Perspectives on Politics - Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

Hieroglyph 10

We meet as if in a dream
And the silence here whispers of the morning
To bathe again in the dark waters of eternity
To rest and then to live
That is the cycle of our days
And that which is not in us is nothing at all
You are as ephemeral now as you have always been
A white cloud in the sky
A glimmer in my soul's tranquil pool
The dawn of destruction it has always been
The cold mornings of your sad withdrawals
But we are beyond that now
And upon this awakening we shall never again pass into dreams.

Spring #17

Spring #17

John A. Youril

www.jyouril.com

Hieroglyph 7

Now has the silence of all things been revealed
The dull inconsequence and litigious clash of fate.
The morning comes and the birds resume their bleak stuttering
The wind rattles the frozen glass.