The condition of secrecy

The beauty of wormwood in just the vase in very fine company too in the form of Inger Christensen’s book on secrets, Hemmelighedstilstanden – translated into English as The Condition of Secrecy – brings me back in time to an investigation of what we make of our fortune and the ominous in it.

While looking at the ‘red cape’ surrounding the body of my fine vase, I thought about this secret: nothing is a choice, even when we seem to decide all sorts of things.

In her eighth essay in the book on chance and its upper hand, I get the feeling that we’re in agreement, Inger and I.

While shuffling some cards, all for chance and nothing for choice, I remember the time I spent with Inger at the Sanbjerg castle in Denmark in 2000, listening to her read her poems, incanting too to the numen in the omen.

I sink further into her words, while wondering if my vase is being possessed by the scarlet spirit of the cardinal Richelieu, the one that got me in trouble when I fell in love with all things cloak and dagger a long, long time ago.

Inger was great with questions. I wish she would pose some to me, because then I'd know how to answer what I would like to know per chance.

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Chance choices

I could say that all my works are about chance and choice and the difficult position we’re in when we forget which one is the most real. More explicitly, there’s my book on Choice & then there’s Tarot for Romeo and Juliet, the most cloak and dagger thing you’ll ever encounter.