Kings and Paupers "Go Drink Tea" In A Time of Collective & Personal Economic Decline

[Easter fireworks. Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo by Maria Cipriani. Click on the image to enlarge it]

The universe is forever falling apart --
No need to push the button,
It collapses at a finger's touch:
Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,
Hordes leap from the tips
Of your nostril hairs. Lift your right hand:
It's in your palm. There's room enough
On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing, the universe:
Here is all the strength, here the greatest strength.
You and the sparrow are one
And, should he wish, he can crush you.
The universe trembles before him.

- "Destruction" by Shinkichi Takahashi


Nothing can deviate from the fact of its own existence:
it is the perfect example of what it is. This is Suchness, and
Suchness is Empty.

- Lee Robertson


Remember when you're feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth...

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, cos there's bugger all down here on Earth!

- Monty Python, from "The Meaning of Life" movie

I want to sing out a few crazy ideas for I am a man of strange tastes and find ideas to be actually beautiful, sometimes stunning like fireflies lighting a dark path, flashing, disappearing and flashing again. Ideas melt quickly from concept to story, from story to music. I want to leave the reader with a little music, a little utterly unreasonable hope.

- Michael Ortiz Hill

Dear Dance. Christmas Eve 2014.  

Ohkeh Owingeh Reservation

Dear Penurious Pilgrim,

Ebb and flow...tides, moon...breathe...Trust, be in the daily minute with some joy and, if not joy, then with some good purpose to be present and just "drink a cup of tea"...Trungpa Rinpoche (Tibetan Buddhist teacher) and Sung San Sunim (Korean Zen master) used to say to their students when they lamented the slings and arrows of material existence (samsara) and of mind, "Can you just go drink tea?" My answer, silently in my head, is "Yes. With a shot of tequila on the side....grrrrrrr...." and then I chug-slug my shot of double espresso! Often. And life goes on...Things will change, are changing...we may have to rearrange ourselves in the universe which really does a "bang up job" out there and all around us, whole galaxies colliding with each other so who says it must be pretty cuz it ain't, not for the collisions and without insurance policies to cover all that. Witnessing this cosmic show we "oooohhh!" and "ahhhhhhh, gorsh dang, vur' pritty!" from our planetary perch we imagine is safe, secure and solid. HA! We, too, "but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" (Jack Kerouac).

Thus, be present, praise, pray - "You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid" - T.S. Eliot - raise a little Cain, and push your way into places which may not easily yield...one has a birth right to push, one must in order to escape the womb and once escaped we push the harder still to escape the memory of womby places and people which keeps us forever immature, undeveloped, sucking addictively at one or many spiritual "teats" but these are "winter teats". These keep one frozen, arrested, forever pulling at withered dugs promising salvation, enlightenment and surcease or wealth, health, good looks and power, while said promissory teats refuse to be let go of - "Thou shalt not wean!" - demanding suck while the "soma" (narcotic) fluid flows into mutual infantile dependencies between the dug and the dug tuggers.

These we must flee at some point to drink much stronger stuff, Life-as-It-is, bitter, dark, perhaps with a pastel finish, a little sweetness on the tongue but, taste as taste is and can, we can become fortified eventually, without need of regressive libations...a hero's journey sure...there are days, though, when just drinking a cup tea is a heroic act, affirmative, not a denial of but an assent to apparent, lived contradictions as such tea is made and drunk while "watching the sunset and feeling the samsara (suffering) of the world (Trungpa Rinpoche)," and small "graceless moments" become lovely (enough) from good/right uses/intentions. No magic solutions but profound alterations of awareness may (no guarantee) emerge within the crush of polarity, hands empty, heart broken, mind empty or full, tea cup or stronger brew nearby perpetually filling and spilling.

One reaches. In reaching we are aspirant broken gods imaging and informing other broken gods perhaps to no avail but avail we must, we must respond, and in our response inform, answer the appeal of samsara within the gods and selves, within the very cells, imaging our worlds, galaxies, universes...dreams of constancy are the constant. We must make do with tea and trust, eyes wide open, reserving full rights as creatures to protest and preserve our nests of mind and mortality, our dreams of being more-than-mortal coil spinning, too, hoping to somehow outlast dirt and hurt. 

Winter trail w/bench.  Bandelier National Monument, 

Los Alamos, New Mexico Christmas 2014

You are a unique witness (literally, with-ness) to that-which-is unfolding , your eyes and consciousness give it meaning by your witness and response. No guarantee of an easy ride but while you are cogent, eyes wide and with feeling function operative, bear witness tear by tear, prayer by prayer, respond/avail/advance, be with, and push, ADVANCE, when and where you can, and go brew and drink your tea. Tell a joke or two with the wife, get out some night in the coming weeks and look at stars (those which are not shy and allow themselves to be seen)...say to your self, "It's rougher where they are." Hear the crickets, the bullfrogs, perhaps the sound of wind over waves, smell pines and leaves...realize you are one of the wealthiest men in the universe in that, and this, moment...yet, and yes, we blink and loose that wealth, then we yet again open our eyes and there it all is, disarray, misery, aurora borealis reminding us and the universe "to be gay," to shine on brightly bearing the aboriginal burden of wakefulness.

Perspective and orientation make us alternately kings and paupers. The human experience is this-as-such in the suchness which "is a fundamental, intrinsic, or characteristic quality or condition" within and upon which, as Zen Buddhism poetically/alleviatingly paints it, "the Bird's Path" which unfolds/reveals each life into it's unique variant expression and deviation liquidly in quiddity as we each are invited/enticed to cultivate the witness in "king state" of mind/seeing (fullness) and evenly/equally, too, in "pauper state" of mind/seeing (emptiness), paradoxically the richer for the poverty and all the poorer for voraciously stuffing "the universe into our eyes" (poet Shinkichi Takahashi)...but there is no judge really of either state though the animal we are reserves just rights to complain at empty bellies, encroached territories, crotch urgencies, skin withers, fur falls...brittle goes the bone, so small the gathered human corners, so great the necessary mercies. We must not dishonor the animal we are with "spiritual" instruments designed to cut off our tails insistently singing false praise to "holy" denials and "sanctifying" trials to better or annihilate the brute and brawn of of our spinal existence...and yet...and yet we humanly discern variegating and variant states of mind, each discernment a gateway in potentia...these lived contradictory states "just are"- no fault of our own but of our stars and scars - the way things are. Just is. These states flee into other formulations, spinning vortices continuing, worlds coming into existence, worlds going out of existence, and so go their local gods as ours, too, expire minute by minute winking all the way, pointing away from themselves saying, "Hey, don't blame us (wink wink)!"...meanwhile, someone or something somewhere may now be looking down on your life exclaiming, seeing beauty in the majestic conflagration of human beingness, "and everybody goes "Awww!"

Sketch in art class by Tien Yi Ho

THEREFORE, HENCE FORTH:

"Make a joyful noise!" - proclaims psalmist King David - which is a vocation I can get with.

All this suchness to sing though it may not fill your belly though perhaps the heart swells into sounding, therefore, therein is one's right to PUSH! One may kow tow, or just be cowed, but if the universe is a Thou then one may bullishly assert, NOW! and advocate, even fight for one's birth right - some bread, a bed, a patch beside a stream or a doll house street, sweat-and-blood won, proclaiming a personal kingdom. It's all meat for cosmic forces "running the show." Best to bare the tooth when needed eschewing tempting teats. Now harken! there's laughter of rivers, earthly and cosmic, Milky or Muddy Ways somewhere to be heard. Hard to hear but it's there in our jokes within apparent linear absurdities, i.e. the requirement of Some(No)thing Some(No)where for such suffering, such stunning loss which human and perhaps other one's have sacred duty to scoff at, a reminder of free will though we spill down worm holes devouring our own tails/tales, middle fingers proffered, battered lips praising still that we have witnessed, yes, cracked, all this. And thus with a mortal kiss Love in the crush and crank is sealed.

Another job I endorse - useless kisses toward "a bliss beyond the fiddle." (Poet Rainer Rilke)

You Can't Get That Stuff No More

Meanwhile, endure. perdure, either orphan or, certainly,

Overture 

or Ordure 

does an orchard make from stone (peach), 

tomatoes reborn stray between rows and roses 

wilding in heaped woods yard-once'd, 

plankt-ruins' old stead close beside a wagon trail 

barely road/not road, availed centuries shovel-preserved, 

rough-used; 

blood rock, mud mortar,  

aviled red seamed redundancy 

over worked - bruised, 

hoof, foot, wheel 

splay where rose 

thoughts' flowers 

not stray—

remains a 

feminine 

pause, 

a braid of 

purple shade, 

rough pines, 

and poplar, 

one fruit tree still daring.

REPRISE: Genet By Accident - Faithful As A Pigeon: Of Divine, Her Mythopoesis, A Tribute To Jean Genet & "Our Lady Of The Flowers"

This essay was published October 10, 2017.  I republish it here because it is spring and "the sap's a'risin'" as is said in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.  To such sap comes "Our Lady" as sung to, of and for by Jean Genet.

. . . he sang to her gypsy songs that pierced her body . . .

"He may go far away, but he is as faithful as a pigeon." - Jean Genet

ENANTIODROMIA . . . best definition, or one of them, this by Jean Genet: "Her perfume is violent and vulgar. From it we can already tell that she is fond of vulgarity. Divine has sure taste, good taste, and it is most upsetting that life always puts someone so delicate into vulgar positions, into contact with all kinds of filth. She cherishes vulgarity because her greatest love was for a dark skinned gypsy. On him, under him, when with his mouth pressed to hers he sang to her gypsy songs that pierced her body, she learned to submit to the charm of such vulgar cloths as silk and gold braid which are becoming to immodest persons.”

Of Divne, such mythopoeisis: "Let her consent to be the frozen statue. But I know that the poor Demiurge is forced to make his creature in his own image and that he did not invent Lucifer. In my cell, little by little, I shall have to give my thrills to the granite. I shall be alone with it for a long long time, and I shall make it live with my breath and the smell of my farts, both the solemn and the mild ones. It will take me an entire book before I draw her from her petrifaction and little by little impart to her my suffering, little by little deliver her from evil, and, holding her by the hand, lead her to saintliness."

Searching for a passage from Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers (having left the worn out novel at home) a-googling I will go (sung in my best Elmer Fudd voice heh-eh-eh-ehhh), I stumble upon this too too short marvel with said quote, not the full passage I want but will do...of desire there is much to say, and more say than do though do is a fit for another shoe (I'm hunting wabbits Heh-eh-eh-ehhhhh) having been bred a fundamentalist fool from Bayou Evangeline moss to barnacled Baptist pier-ology dour deity, all toxin and lace such is Protestant grace poisoned with too much imagination-for-evil everywhere-in-everything, to convince a child of this so early on is such profanity, unforgiveable....

...when at 18 I came across Genet by accident, a freshman in a Christian college, Our Lady of the Flowers, non-virginal this Our Lady, the pox within broke out as did, some years later, with good analysis, I break down and into Genet-ian cadences, unbathed though sprinkled (not dunked but dipped in good Presbyterian fashion shallow baptismal fountain, a silver bowl is all it wuz-y) (comes eventually unsought "was found blind but now I ssss..."

Jean Genet's deep pool inundation of feeling and evocation "a cadence of veils and sweet cakes"...I came to forgive King David his Bathsheba moment for he once in his youth had but lost his heart and soul to Jonathan, loved him, even exchanged his underwear with him, it's in the Bible true, passion will out so David who murdered a Giant murdered one of his own, ended his best general for what the promise of vision of Bathsheba portended)...what is repentence for - grace all the more - robed in bodies, wants, desires from which we'll all expire while turning such to prayer and dare to live, exchange underwear and more - breath and the heart, the human heart, to teach that divine one there's more to heart than aerie light [makes no sense...just a fun thing to say..such is wabbit hunting].

I needed Catholic Imagination, that of extremes, of heaven, of hell, even limbo where one's toes and more are singed while aroma of Roses — Our Lady tinge noses, infringe upon our all too human suffering for re-evaluation. I found it soon enough in Harlem, in personal estrangement, the city kind, countering the country boy kind, which holds/contains/frames all estrangement, all extremes, a Catholicity most necessary where not only I am redeemed but by poetry and urban/machine sound and rhythm God is redeemed

Sketch portrait of Warren by Paul Brahms some years ago.

 . . . Jean's a saint in my world inner and outer, hiding out in my tower dorm room, the sleep room (such is dormition sleeping) secret communing and whispers, fogs engulfing the tower for weeks at a time, odd in Tennessee wind howl and, again, airee whistle as I moan shut in, enclosed on purpose behind bedsheets and shower curtain, between Holy Bible and Our Lady of the Flowers)(and Graham Green's The Power and the Glory but that's another story to come). . .

. . . an angel visited my little carcair (monk cell) a month ago, palpable beside me as I slept/wept on the pallet on the floor. I could only see the filthy hem of the heavenly once was white robe now gray and stained making me marvel and love all the more...never one for silk and such my desire tucked away till the day of my glad marry to come, had been, had been a thief indeed (Genet's Thief Journal), me, until undone by Christ and Buddha, warriors and wheelturners (chakravartins) both, ensuing for me a redemption of desire and the "dirty world upon my shoulders [and more] (Basho haiku)" -

body full bore to Manhattan then I came, Spanish Harlem replete with Roses, Florida Water, Siete Machos (men's colognes found in Latin America) and more, Puerto Rican/Domincan park bench dominos I would bike by down by the Hudson 3 am bound for Wall Street and Staten Island Ferry some kind of quiet, not mountain quiet that I had in Carolina, but that of early a.m. NYC streets, me tracking graffiti scripture on every train and station wall. I needed what I got, but did not know it too soon but never soon enough, I needed Catholic Imagination, that of extremes, of heaven, of hell, even limbo where one's toes and more are singed while aroma of Roses — Our Lady tinge noses, infringe upon our all too human suffering for re-evaluation. I found it soon enough in Harlem, in personal estrangement, the city kind, countering the country boy kind, which holds/contains/frames all estrangement, all extremes, a Catholicity most necessary where not only I am redeemed but by poetry and urban/machine sound and rhythm God is redeemed and enters, visionary company at last, once again, tracing, tracing (Hart Crane) into the broken world.

Catholicity and France and human gore produced Genet, the give-away grace, the reframe of guilt, blame, small favors of mourning, and such adoration as only parted persons, divided ones, can give. I was "not in Kansas anymore" unless it was a god and flesh storm tornadic with a froo froo instinct, little Toto, in the basket tucked, my anima/myself sucked up and away too into an Oz-y-man-dias such is an occassion for worship (worth-ship, what it means).

A black pentecostal church just next door to my basement room beneath West 142nd Street, the glad shouts, the sad earnest prayers, the tamborine and hand clap intertwine Latin beats, car horns, conga drums alive up the street on stoops all night, breaking bottles, tapping bottle caps on concrete sits young and old men bare-chested, sweating, cigarettes between drumming fingers or loose lips hand play/pound escape from day heat to river cooled darkness...new saturation/inundation for me, no longer the Christhaunted South or nation for that matter but a passionate parenthesis

of so much flesh, perspiration, desire, ejaculation, celebration in-the-face of large Orange Sky, the all night comidas place lively with taxi drivers, orange rice, pork all kinds and cafe con leche only 40 cents a cup...a place to escape one's self p.r.n., all that grease and men....

Enough evocation 1980 Bway and West 142nd and near...the cadence of Genet 1971 in my hand straight to heart, then/now, and now still inwardly wear him, angelic robe all tatters, stains - "I would be a monk but for the dust of the world on my shoulders (Basho)."

“Her perfume is violent and vulgar. From it we can already tell that she is fond of vulgarity. Divine has sure taste, good taste, and it is most upsetting that life always puts someone so delicate into vulgar positions, into contact with all kinds of filth. She cherishes vulgarity because her greatest love was for a dark skinned gypsy. On him, under him, when with his mouth pressed to hers he sang to her gypsy songs that pierced her body, she learned to submit to the charm of such vulgar cloths as silk and gold braid which are becoming to immodest persons.”

Rue art near Focces, Gers, France

"Do you know some poison−poem that would burst my cell into a spray of myosotis? A weapon that would kill the perfect young man who inhabits me and makes me give asylum to a whole agglomeration of animals?. . .Swallows nest under his arms. They have masoned a nest there of dry earth.

Snuff−colored velvet caterpillars mingle with the curls of his hair. Beneath his feet, a hive of bees, and broods of asps behind his eyes. Nothing moves him. Nothing disturbs him, save little girls taking first communion who stick out their tongues at the priest as they clasp their hands and lower their eyes. He is cold as snow. I know he's sly. Gold makes him smile faintly, but if he does smile, he has the grace of angels. What gypsy would be quick enough to rid me of him with an inevitable dagger? It takes promptness, a good eye and a fine indifference. And... the murderer would take his place. He got back this morning from a round of the dives. He had sailors and whores, and one of the tarts has left the trace of a bloody hand on his cheek. He may go far away, but he is as faithful as a pigeon. The other night, an old actress left her camellia in his button−hole. I wanted to crumple it; the petals fell on the rug (but what rug? my cell is paved with flat stones) in big, warm transparent drops of water. I hardly dare look at him now, for my eyes go through his crystal flesh, and all those hard angles make so many rainbows there that that's why I cry. The end.

It doesn't seem like much to you, but yet this poem has relieved me."

https://medium.com/@bbcradiofour/héloïse-letissier-is-christine-and-the-queens-she-loves-jean-genets-our-lady-of-the-flowers-d2aabffdae2e

You may read the novel online for free here:

https://archive.org/details/jean_genet_biblio/Genet%2C%20Jean/Our%20Lady%20of%20the%20Flowers/Genet%2C%20Jean%20-%20Our%20Lady%20of%20the%20Flowers%20%28Grove%2C%201987%29/page/n1/mode/1up

NIHILISTERINE, Comes in Multiple MAGA-Flavors of Hysteria - The Perfected Hat-Trick of Ever More Pathological, Surreal American Religion, With or Without Mandatory Lobotomy Called "Faith" (or Else)

NIHILISTERINE - Comes in MAGA-flavors (cheezwhiz n bacon fat!) too, denominations listed by the hundreds on the peel-back label - Messiah du Jour, the "Bleeder's Digest" Saccharine Condensed Version!! 

 "When a revolutionary spirit confronts his contemporaries, the violence of his contempt for banalities, for the dead weight of worn out traditions, for dead symbols as D. H. Lawrence called them, causes antagonism and resistance. Fear paralyzes understanding." — Anais Nin, from the Introduction to Antonin Artaud, Man of Vision, Bettina L. Knapp, First Swallow Press / Ohio University Press edition 1980, from the Preface, pg. x

The perfected hat-trick of American religion, fries on the side, is to disguise nihilism with variegated 2000 year old plus "brands" rife with the extreme chaos of archetypal MessianismS mugging groups all sizes led by one or more tyrants with "Charismatic Personality Disorder" who often confuse "intuition/psychic powers" for "religion" aka PROPHETS with a direct line to MANA which indeed is an equal opportunity "mugger" of any and all so read the fine print - wait, wait, there IS no fine print unless it's that of official Holy Writ, then, thusly the only safety is RINSE and SPIT and head for the hills), so

suffice it to bray, to point out the obvious, there are many many rivals (BORING yet deadly) NOW as there were in, say, ancient Rome as the millennia turned, all vying for "THE one and only Messiah" (cue Heinz 57 meg-millioned multiply squared) which, a major theme in the deemed to be "civilized world", again, "varietal" since "all deities are local viz Mid-East and surrounds, the bloody clown shows of (not so) ancient Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, et. al. (major roads connected these centers for trade and tyranny) massive city states proclaiming themselves Unus Mundus, Navel of the Universe, therefore ruthlessly ruling, serving the real deity, POWER (and will again if MAGOG, I mean, MAGA has it's crimson way),

alas, in the end, out's ITSELF, the POWER DEVIL (C. G. Jung's accurate name for it), shows its xenophobic dark side disguised as light and fluffy, always, and promises that everything (even concentration camps, book bannings and burnings, hyper-control of press and information, et. alI is ALL for the Universe's own good (humans presume to "know better" therefore their local variety deities also presume to "know better" so, hey, get with the anthropoidal-hemorrhoidal programs with their inevitable pogroms righteously enforced, weight their local deity upon others who do not "hold with" said deity and varietal, manifestly destined "plans". (which usually ends with locally and IN THE END with a apocryphal, apocalyptic destruction of the old world (NIHILISM, ANYONE?) for "good's sake" (thus even Deity does not solve but is conditioned to, and bound, by the opposites of Good and Evil...IT renders evil to preserve the good...OY? I'm ready for my close up, Mister Surreal (muddled and bloody as she goes).

American Religion has and will fail as they do throughout humanoidal bipodal hysteria, I mean, history. Religion is best, at most, served tongue in cheek, better than teeth biting cheek OUCH! with instructions to copiously RINSE AND SPIT. REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT. AMOR FATI.

We were forewarned by the infantile King Baby 

DJT, the Tyrannical Child

Only spits, never rinses

SAME AS IT EVER WUZZZZZZ.

Talking Head's Live (from the movie Stop Making Sense)
sSumzit up massively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGofoH9RDEA&list=PLke4g-fS3LOaaUgmHkFiQ8K9Bww8dfKTf&index=11

Excerpt from "The Lives of the Saints" 

by  Charles Wright

Randy Newman -  God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwC1HDaw6s8&list=PLNPGM2D7aODelXt213XD4VH1DNNhZLyDT&index=12

NOTE - and do your own research - There were 300 plus so-called messiahs along with many hemi- simi- demi- messiah wannabes in the first century and all of them were crucified. And there were many more rival messiah-like candidates of different religions. Mithraism, the religion, was the major rival to new Christianity. Worth reading of this Bull religion (god was a Bull), where the god was killed, rose again in 3 days. Rituals included killing a bull and eating the flesh and bathing in and drinking the blood.

Many many rituals/religions involved such rituals either literally or symbolically. Something there is in the oral, as in eating, drinking aspect of religions. Comparative religions, history of religions gives many accounts of such.

In fact, "adoration" - a word greatly, well, adored and meaningfully used in religions as well as secularly (I love you, golf, movies, et al). Etymologically adore: from ad "to" + ōrare "speak formally, pray" (see orator). We all know that "oral" is not just voice but eating, tasting, swallowing. Since human (and other mammalian life) depends on eating from birth to live, makes sense that eating and mouths figure very strongly as religious activities!

Adoration, The Deconstruction of Christianity 2 goes into "adoration", its meanings etymologically. Nancy expands those meanings significantly and deliciously especially in the word's emphasis on the mouth, its functions, literally and figuratively.

Brief review of the book here (from 2018, discovered the book by accident on Christmas Eve! - a major wheel turner for me):

"NOT theology here at all. Dis-enclosure of theological language, to break free of enclosed, calcified and deadly provincialism poisoning old and haunting new articulation/gestures toward sacrality...Jean-Luc will more than dis-enclose, he will blast the earnest reader without swag or chin-jut in your face tired old defiance as if shouting one's unbelief could rid sacrality from being itself once and for all.

Jean-Luc's efforts arrive at hard won sublimities of articulation which may at least hint at/evoke/appproach adoration, that which discloses the Excess, that Exceedingness, which is what all such talk and idea attempt to reveal but cannot since IT, God, is that which exceeds all knowing and understanding; all attempts at such are what petrifies/reifies God into murderous "idols."

The Western god-project holds an inherent nihilism which deconstructs itself as it goes along, splintering into surplus perpetuated by force, often violent, which could possibly lead to literal destruction of the planet. We find ourselves in that abject place now. Nancy contends that this place of abjection is exactly where a reawakening of the spirit is, or can be, must be:

"The form of spirit as it awakens is adoration." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Publisher's Note:

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion.

Google preview here:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Adoration/6JGUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

***

My brief review of "Adoration, The Deconstruction of Christianity II by Jean-Luc Nancy" refers to the inherent nihilism in .

NOT theology here at all. Dis-enclosure of theological language, to break free of enclosed, calcified and deadly provincialism poisoning old and haunting new articulation/gestures toward sacrality...Jean-Luc will more than dis-enclose, he will blast the earnest reader without swag or chin-jut in your face tired old defiance as if shouting one's unbelief could rid sacrality from being itself once and for all.

Jean-Luc's efforts arrive at hard won sublimities of articulation which may at least hint at/evoke/appproach adoration, that which discloses the Excess, that Exceedingness, which is what all such talk and idea attempt to reveal but cannot since IT, God, is that which exceeds all knowing and understanding; all attempts at such are what petrifies/reifies God into murderous "idols."

The Western god-project holds an inherent nihilism which deconstructs itself as it goes along, splintering into surplus perpetuated by force, often violent, which could possibly lead to literal destruction of the planet. We find ourselves in that abject place now. Nancy contends that this place of abjection is exactly where a reawakening of the spirit is, or can be, must be:

"The form of spirit as it awakens is adoration." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Publisher's Note:

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Adoration/6JGUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

***

APPENDIX (OR IS IT)

 

Design - Fabricate - Install: A Carol On The Difficulty Of Communion With The Ineffable In An Age Of Disbelief, Solitude, And Profound Anxiety

for Hank

“Poetry, alas, grows more and more distant. What commonly goes by the name of 'culture' forgets the poem [or distorts it into 'popular' dissemblances]. This is because poetry does not easily suffer the demand for clarity, the passive audience, the simple message. The poem is an intransigent exercise. It is devoid of mediation and hostile to media.”  - Alain Badiou, “Language, Thought, Poetry”*

NORTON'S "Postmodern American Poetry"

 arrives with a broken 

back & me with a limp

(a broken big toe) 

crossing East 7th street 

to Via Della Pace - the

Way of Peace Bistro

only to find a welder 

welding the lowest step 

there Rodriguez 13 the 

tee shirt reads & he is 

intent kneeling before 

searing incandescent 

single-pointed flame 

it's quick sparks pre- 

sently a hurting light 

startles, my entrance 

prevented by such kneel- 

ing the #13 the books & 

Christmas the Cross the 

candle-hand man the ab- 

sence/presence of light/ 

Light heavy in hand 

Let me pass he lets 

me pass/limp up 

the 4 steel steps 

push in to the Way 

of Peace take the 

usual place & settle 

rattled by icon & 

image pain of toe 

Pewter visions of 

what is not any 

longer there the 

wear of a half 

century not to com- 

pare that of 20 

centuries past what 

can last or come 

from all that so 

sit hard down 

upon wood get to 

the books at hand 

the known & the new 

mystery emerging 

from the white plastic 

sheath carefully 

packed 

Christmas any day 

heavy the book's

poetry

a flat hand sans 

candle holder 

feels good to

the hand & the 

man making 

Christmas joy in 

the Way of Peace 

remembering 

his first pair of 

Buster Browns 

brown shoes 

shiny as Christmas 

blisters on heals 

hurt to pop unlike 

the book wrapt 

clear of air filled 

pleasant to pinch 

shoes drenched 

with blood 

so feared the limping 

boy then now the limping 

man home from school 

(memory) the yellow 

bus doomy screaming

gull cries of carrion 

children jeer at bullied's 

tears how could such  

round-toed & brown

shining turn to catastrophe 

mystery felt yet 

unkenned

something needing 

study so ordered 

hold them (poems)

reverently 

now in hand & 

open book anywhere 

open it & read: It is 

a human universe & 

> I is a correspond- 

dent 

> The Innocence of

of children is not long

if ever

genuine 

it, something, 

dreaded felt 

as yet unknown

other

shines 

(bruised

shins or toe 

as yet untold 

but wailed 

woes 'thrown' 

world)  

forth from 

faces 

JUNG SAYS 'TIME IS AN ORPHAN' 

THRUST INTO A 

MEMORY SUCH 

IS A HEAVY DOOR 

sorting shattered 

ornaments each 

Christmas before 

the tree is trimmed 

the grim task to sort 

each broken globe 

glinting shards from 

the survivors (I AM 

ONE) so sad a mystery 

to me still remains 

how they do break in 

darkness stored in 

attic high untouched 

by light my hand 

the supple hold of 

green everly - I cannot 

toss them (pretty shards 

all the more beautiful 

because pitiful (I am)  

any-old-way away) so 

bear them to woods 

where the tree is yearly 

cut/coif-ed & so scatter 

them upon needles brown -

changelings into sparks -

resembling those the

welder makes just out

the door now kneeling 

as I have kneeled (once 

& do still) chub boy 

adrift midriff-ed betaken 

by betoken mysteries' 

brokenness's safe(r) re- 

turn to trees ever green 

though hard on toes & 

orphaned shards I now

adhere to a bard or two 

the goodfew ('Call me, 

Goodfew') of words & 

what of them of absence 

be made though presenting 

sleight of palms even 

Rodriquez 13 kneeling 

before fire/light 

Erotic stance w/ pewter

hands the welder removes 

his mask reveals a fine 

face w/gold teeth unbroken 

as ornaments were once 

& forever; Bro eats his 

sand-the world-wich 

blankly staring 

past his truck 

notice then the 

side of it says 

DESIGN - FABRICATE - INSTALL 

& I think -

the history 

of religions is this, 

just, only the sign 

reads Modern Steel 

(NOT Postmodern 

as it now should be 

to be precise & true 

to the age bereft) located 

on Stagg Street thrust once 

again into Christmas - deer 

& such - though Celtic too - 

Cernunnos snorts from forests 

rough deeply into green mown 

fields where sits beside 

a full silver stream an 

orphaned god abandoned 

carved upon stone with 

bronze (before steel) but 

still (the god is) stone 

fearing it is no longer 

real yet sentinel to 

'an archaic authority' (Kristeva) 

I AM ONE, BUT OPPOSED TO MYSELF' (JUNG) 

orphanspeak from 

orphanmouth tries 

Rodriguez 13 sandwich 

done kneels again mask 

in place again showers 

more the steel step 

single-pointed flame 

so hurtingly bright 

reflects back to it- 

self but unopposed as 

is night sometimes op- 

posed by me such stars 

sparks upon a steel 

black step above I fear 

to take that one so 

whistle in said dark 

a friend to nothing 

much but a friend to 

sparks such are whist- 

les in the lurch the 

stretch of mind not 

disregarding toes & 

a nose for pain 

The nail of my toe 

is purple beneath 

with blood congealed 

there/no place to 

go though my foot 

takes it to & fro 

back & forth the 

ugly nail an eye 

blind scarlet as 

the fabric in my 

brother's poor 

church behind the 

empty wood (Beauty)  

of Cross the pewter 

hands (make too much 

of them the mind says)  

indicating that 'light 

is or can be found 

there in 'absentia' 

Black tape it began 

with black tape it 

began & so too ends 

the tale of a nail 

swollen misshapen 

each step a hurting 

forward keeping a man 

awake Christmas & all 

& being or striving 

to be a poet I do not 

care at all any longer 

(a lie) so wrap my 

injured toe blood eye 

& all in electrician's 

tape feels good there 

& not to see it screaming 

there seeking surcease 

& so seeking I 

open the thick 

tome of a half 

century America 

blood & steel 

misshapen god 

so misshapen 

citizens with 

miscreant tongues 

reel but with 

feeling snort 

paganly into 

the green hope 

in spite of all 

that has gone 

before in spite 

of Christmas 

even once a year 

other holy days 

gone, too, wild 

for gelt 'all melt 

& maya' I too 

spill into the 

the covers the 

heavy book & 

open it up it 

always now 

opens to its 

(all our) 

broken back 

the poem there 

at the breech 

HOWL 

as did 

I/we all (just 

to remind) when 

the blue water 

broke to nuclear 

flame over an 

elegant place 

as did the now 

faceless orna- 

ments break 

into armaments 

& my/our own 

wooden burden 

for blades dropped 

(& falling still)  

hard upon as 

did/does the mid- 

(mad) century drop 

fall into this 

new one while 

Robin Blaser 

sing-songs from 

the room of the (my)  

(our) living the (my)  

(our) in-breathing 

breathing out - 

'The clown of dignity sits in his tree. 

The clown of games hangs there, too. 

Which is which or where they go - 

the point is to make others see - 

that two men in a tree is clearly 

the same as poetry''- Robin Blaser 

'Oh say can you...' (fledging parapl0gic) 

WARREN 'CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY' 

SHOUT (to the server, Marco Saint) : 

'Arctic honey! ...mouthing the root... 

garment crow...declining preacher...' (John Ashberry) 

Bring me the check! 'because I was flesh' 

(Edward Dahlberg) ...'because I have had 

to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, 

or fell like a white stone from heaven. 

'In woods & mountains I roam' (Jung) in 

Christmas world that limps a black taped 

toe pointing a way fore/aft the heft of 20 

bereft centuries so great a fall 

DESIGN - FABRICATE - INSTALL 

the subject matter 

is not new & not 

the sorrow old as 

the first cave bear- 

ing first fire in 

human hand the ex- 

piring artist torn 

from blank sky to 

an expectant wall 

a herd there a de- 

claration - one day 

we too will fill the 

earth as hooves have 

done & capture sun & 

be done over over done 

& so come to such edge 

of ruin masked BUT 

(unexpectedly) OPPOSED 

(because of thumbs)  

TO OURSELVES & THE 

PLACE THAT HOLDS US 

STILL THAT MATERNAL 

NOW ABJECT & STILL 

UTTERING STILL 

WRITING BEYOND 

CAVE & CENTURIES 

TO CONFRONT SAID 

ABJECTION: 

Kristeva: 'Writing 

causes the subject 

who ventures in it 

(abjection) to con- 

front an archaic 

Authority, on the 

nether side of the 

Proper Name' 

Rodriquez 13 

the welding machine 

explains nothing to 

a black toe joyous 

still for the post 

delivered by a 

feminine hand 

Maria Saint of the 

blue & the gray 

each day become 

Christmas 

shards 

erotic hands 

not 

withstanding 

the pewter man 

the absent Cross 

can know of Saviors 

by our loss the cost 

the price of the 

ticket the hieratic 

gesture the certain 

madness a folie 

given Its head 

Let me then work 

my poem (all of 

them) around in 

furtherance of 

what can be said 

without such drama 

of centuries & 

to come Lines end- 

ing in Stillness 

which is not Death 

but Vast from 

Which each comes 

then returns 

(self/myself) 

in 

to 

Image - 

Sky - 

Expanse - 

Singular Branch 

& Many - 

Plenty Are 

Stillnesses 

Advances Even 

In The Rot The 

Dissolve From 

Clot Toward What 

It Is Or Was & 

Always A Proper 

Name-Enough For 

Me - 

STILLNESS 

I am taken with 

Such at Which 

I stare which holds 

my gaze with shades 

of It & of Itself 

that is, is a death 

(or like unto it) - 

Stillness unbreathed 

or in need of It 

(Breath) now, having 

been only once (Rilke)  

who (It seems) be- 

comes relents known 

form though (It is)  

returned or re- 

rested to Itself 

beyond Christmas 

and yet and yet 

the kneeling boy 

in the evergreen 

the shattered orn- 

aments gleam the 

needles' net a 

permanence enough

**

Dan Bern - Wasteland:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaN1VfmI3Io

But, to end on a positive note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGc0INwOgw8