Welcome to Roger Lewin.com

 


Slant

Slant is how best it goes when it knows not wither or why it goes, truth or not ruth, entertainment or catastrophe, yet slant’s elusive as firmament’s first fire   was there a first photon or were all and awe then self-entangled, then, as now , caught in the net of nothing stretched impossibly to bear being beyond themselves, ah, light   yes light, this light, slant, makes sight and shadow the worrisome wisdom of our delight, the fierce fervor of our burgeoning fright as climate changes, so our climax, too   my self, illusion, to itself is slight and slant as well, star, lost in its own... read more

In Brazilian Portuguese

In Brazilian Portuguese the samba is the sonnet, lovely lazy lively lilt slipping through shoulders, hips, lips, toes, hands to be breath and so smooth how time flowers   Before there were any words, Jobim made sun, sand, sea, saudade, me, and the girl who was completely sound without need of  flesh, she of the slightest  stirrings  of our air   No knowing now, ever,  how samba means outside itself, except it lilts us  let go grip of grasping selves, dance with shadows sculpted from blocking light of this, this… life   ah, sway, syncopated, counting deeper sweeter than any beat,  more…less... read more

Envy

Envy is a pygmy with a blow gun shooting venomous darts.  Often these are words that take aim at the heat and try to stop it from beating. read more

Our Responsibility To The Dead

What is our responsibility to the dead?  Only the care of all that lives.  This is a sentiment that strikes me as strange but true, not one  that I would have expected to discover within my breast in my heart when I was younger.  It connects me with the ancestor worship that is so fundamental because we owe everything to our ancestors without whom we would not be.  The sun, too, is our ancestor, that young star by whose light we... read more

“The Russian Likes To Remember…

“The Russian likes to remember, he does not like to live.”  Chekhov

Living is fraught with uncertainty.  Living is fraught with peril.   Living is nothing if not a stew of ambiguities.  Living demands effort.  Living is work.  Living is always poised near the cliff of annihilation even on a sunny spring afternoon of a near ideal temperature.  Living is fleeting, always charged with the dynamic bodily necessities of tomorrow and the day after.  Living involves real other people who are endlessly disappointed and disappointing and who are never quite what they seem, so we are always shaking our heads over what poor judges of character we have been

I think that I may be more Russian than I have ever realized.

read more