Mithologies by Roland Barthes

"One can easily see in a object at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is much more magical than life), and in a word a silence which belongs to realm of fairy-tales."

Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)

Photo by Sandra Saldanha (Louise Bourgeois' sculpture)

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

" When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

 when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like a iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field of daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When its over, I want to say:all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms,

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."

When Death Comes  by Mary Oliver

(from New and Selected Poems)

Photo above by Sandra Saldanha

( Satre and Simone Beauvoir's resting place)

Happy International Women's day!