tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40908733384847464132024-03-13T13:17:54.304-07:00Warren's Words
Here - some compensatory graces, some well meant but inclement hallelujahs - Warren FalconWarren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.comBlogger128125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-53109407960368471012024-02-06T13:58:00.000-08:002024-02-29T20:42:23.538-08:00REPRISE — The Abject Ones, Six Falling - Nightingale Confesses Into Straighter Teeth (Originally published October 9, 2010)<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;">Misbegotten moon</span><br style="font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;">Shine for sad young men</span><br style="font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;">Let your gentle light</span><br style="font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;">Guide them home again</span><br style="font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;" /><br style="font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica; text-align: left;">All the sad young men</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EJiiwwaqq40/TLHjpO0QojI/AAAAAAAAATQ/XW5ipaGRcHE/s1600/Hart+Crane-before-The-Bridge.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="color: #333333;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526448515251741234" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EJiiwwaqq40/TLHjpO0QojI/AAAAAAAAATQ/XW5ipaGRcHE/s400/Hart+Crane-before-The-Bridge.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 269px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 200px;" /></a><span style="color: #333333;"></span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #333333;">Poet Hart Crane, Brooklyn Bridge visible, present, which </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #333333;">he </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #333333;">lauded </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica;">in his magnificent poem, The Bridge.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></div></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>Originally published October 9, 2010</b></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b><br /></b><span style="color: #333333;">The term Abjection literally means "</span><leo_highlight id="leoHighlights_Underline_0" leohighlights_keywords="the%20state" leohighlights_underline="true" leohighlights_url_bottom="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsBottom.jsp?keywords%3Dthe%2520state%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" leohighlights_url_top="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsTop.jsp?keywords%3Dthe%2520state%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" onclick="leoHighlightsHandleClick('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseout="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseover="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" style="-moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 150); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); color: #333333; cursor: pointer; display: inline;">the state</leo_highlight><span style="color: #333333;"> of being cast off." In usage it has connotations of degradation, baseness and abasement of spirit.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">"...descend and of the curveship lend a myth to God."</span><span style="color: #333333;"> - Hart Crane, from "To Brooklyn Bridge" </span><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EJiiwwaqq40/TLJBKks85sI/AAAAAAAAATY/4fp2CojK4OQ/s1600/The+Six+Falling+Ones.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="color: #333333;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526551342643734210" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EJiiwwaqq40/TLJBKks85sI/AAAAAAAAATY/4fp2CojK4OQ/s400/The+Six+Falling+Ones.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 246px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 200px;" /></a><span style="color: #333333;"><div style="text-align: center;">The boys, six falling: Tyler Clementi, Raymond Chase, </div><div style="text-align: center;">Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg</div></span><br /><span class="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174" id="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174yui_3_16_0_1_1527148461868_77849" style="color: #444444; outline: none;"><i><span class="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174" id="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174yui_3_16_0_1_1527148461868_74613" style="outline: none;"><span class="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174" id="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174yui_3_16_0_1_1527148461868_74614" style="outline: none;">The sons of delight now shave their bodies. - </span></span><span class="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174" id="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174yui_3_16_0_1_1527148461868_74615" style="outline: none;"><span class="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174" id="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174yui_3_16_0_1_1527148461868_74616" style="outline: none;"><span class="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174" id="ydp7e338636yiv2631178174yui_3_16_0_1_1527199505529_19040" style="outline: none;">Mason Cooley</span></span></span></i></span> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;"><span><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;"><span>"He sought for his beautiful body<br />and encountered his opened blood<br />Do not ask me to see it!"</span> - Federico Garcia Lorca*</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica;">"The Ballad of the Sad Young Men" [lyrics are below this essa]:</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mq1WEqFrI4" style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica;"> </a></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mq1WEqFrI4" style="color: #333333;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mq1WEqFrI4</a><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">My Dearest Val,</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Even the pigeons on my stoop are silent now.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">One mourning dove coos tenderly for these who have taken their own lives publicly on our behalf, for untold scores gone before them with broken hearts enraged, no more to engage the unpersuaded world which, one of them, one of the public ones, in spite of murmuring wharves, in spite of amorous dark alleys bitter in the pitch in the hateful American Twentieth Century, Hart Crane, wrote before his leap from the ship beside the phallic curve where Cuba meets the lisping sea, took his tongue away which sang to us of chill dawns breaking upon bridges whose spans still freely splinter light returning hungover from night wharves' grottoes and denim grasps, World Wars' industrial embraces crushing every man, and now another one abandons his fingers and fiddling, o scattering light, takes flight from ledges to edge close to an embrace no longer forbidden—</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">And so it was I entered the broken world to trace the visionary company of love...</span><span style="color: #333333;"> - Hart Crane</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">I am at the "Way of Peace Bistro," not your favorite place I remember—unkind to queens and "Miss Things"—but the server whose cousins are the famous Wolf Boys in Jalisco, Mexico, hirsute himself, gives me free double espressos for very large tips, of course, and it is not as populated here on Saturdays with the braying brunch crowds, their hammers for pinkies poised...besides, the server just yesterday came out to me in my confessional booth here at the perpetually wobbly table in the far corner at the cracked window rocking with Hart's un-confessed bones wrapped in soothing silt which he now dreams to be his silken pall. Life is indeed strange above the veiled bottom. I do receive confessions here p.r.n. ("as needed," in medical jargon) and at my other, now, confessional spots, the usual cafes I weekly haunt for chasing down dreams, waves, receding horizons...why, I wonder, is each window where I sit cracked?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">I am the itinerant priest who sits at meager feasts. Suffering "congregants" (servers, busboys, cooks, regulars forlorn over their starfish and soup), when their fellows are removed to basement or kitchen or groceries, come to me, ask about a dream, confess to some anguish or other, ask what should be done or undone. I consult espresso foam, open the nearest book willy nilly to see what advice or wisdom might be gained from that Eternal Logos sustaining us all here straining after some meaningful thing to keep us going when Hart and those too recent others obey some impulse to place at last the final period, reifiying the punctuate though unrepentant ending of this too too long run-on sentence of hate. One hopes this period holds fast, that Logos/meaning is somehow, plates of starfish with fork and knife beside, true or truing, at least.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">One serves where needed. And when. So come unto me you </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">"sad young men...All the news is bad again so kiss your dreams goodbye."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Here at my confessional I can only plead mercy upon the gay boys of late who have jumped from bridges, hung themselves, cut, sliced, diced their sad and abused compulsive hands, exploded hearts, leaping dears, eyes ablaze in thrall of antlers, trembling flanks strong to fly decrying the violent hunt which always ends with a death, bequeathing these chopped bits to me and those others like me who remain at table, plates before, to stare at what is there to be later scattered, sown, those pieces in and for Love-without-name or, if named, is still a stain upon confused local deities, their wide-eyed supplicants, but there is no stain upon the promiscuous sea. The compliant sky is not confused, neither is all that is between confused, allowing birth and blessing, passing of all kinds in all manner of motive and motion. But in the human world, distressing, there will be more boys, more men growing up as from the very beginning where earliest enmity mythically grew strong before shoes, before hearts were capable of breaking before turgid theological floods spilled blood of brother by brother turning witness stones toward silence, echoing lamenting Federico:</span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;"><br />Do not ask me to see it! I don't want to see it. I will not see it!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">But I, but perhaps we, who remain to plant these petaled parts of these unwitting scapegoats whose eyes are milk now forever, we must bar sentimentality, must move toward genuine knowing which comes from the long hard stare beyond Milky Ways at the way things still inexorably are. Was it Fritz Perls who said, ''Nothing gets better (or changes for the better) until it is what it is"? But gay folk know what the "is" is of the matter...it is the others, too many of them, who don't (or won't) know, who willingly refuse to see "what is" in order to reach beyond the collective "Nazi/NOT SEE-solutions" of heteronormative culture/religion.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Perhaps even in the deepest fault of the ocean that very visionary company in league with stuporous pigeons, a mourning dove, me here who remains, not-yet-remains, tearful over my espresso looking for signs, finding only an endlessly fracturing rainbow, remembering, too, the murmuring secrets of wharves and co-mingled breath—that very visionary company traces all the sunken ones, the jumping ones, those with other means for departure by their own hands empty now of demands for love.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Here I sit with </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">my</span><span style="color: #333333;"> arthritic living hands still demanding, remembering full of past and present griefs the Violin with a cut throat in a youthful suicide note I once wrote years ago, hidden, hiding out, refusing to shout my rage and despair to almighty </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">"Nothing But":<br /></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">Do not hear nothing but the cabin walls,<br />do not hear nothing but the late summer roses<br />petal by petal leaping from the still too white trellises,<br />leaping pinkly, redly, memory to breezes,<br />overwhelmed by trellises snagged with cut sleeves.<br /><br />But not me. Not yet. I don't want to see it! I will not see it.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">I wrote it all on the mute page—the Violin refusing to sing, in love with García Lorca, the goring horn of the Bull, the destined </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">cornada</span><span style="color: #333333;">, each and all appalling, commanding me to write during long nights working at the facility where the mentally ill wandered with me, the keys ironically in </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">my</span><span style="color: #333333;"> hand, in the yellowing hallways with even more ironic EXIT signs brightly RED above the locked doors, silent companions somnolent but for the jangling joke of keys.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Still, I have now these better days in </span><leo_highlight id="leoHighlights_Underline_1" leohighlights_keywords="the%20village" leohighlights_underline="true" leohighlights_url_bottom="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsBottom.jsp?keywords%3Dthe%2520village%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" leohighlights_url_top="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsTop.jsp?keywords%3Dthe%2520village%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" onclick="leoHighlightsHandleClick('leoHighlights_Underline_1')" onmouseout="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut('leoHighlights_Underline_1')" onmouseover="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver('leoHighlights_Underline_1')" style="-moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 150); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); color: #333333; cursor: pointer; display: inline;">the Village</leo_highlight><span style="color: #333333;">, broke or near to it, with eggs and beans, cheap but edible things. An epicurean after all, I do luxuriously head to the Polish butcher shop nearby to gather meat but not any of the young butchers want to be gathered, too Catholic, for Poland is "passing strange" with bad teeth, fingers stained with nicotine. Or is it rust from cast-off Iron Curtains, or the Blood of the Acetylene Virgin?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">...but back to the meat...I get my meat, cook my greens, have good-enough feasts for garlic and the right spice make grander the demanded abstemiousness of current coinage. I steal my pleasure during eats in my dirty yet happy apron with a good aria on the radio to salt my food with tears, a blubbering fool beside his one low watt lamp, darkness too too comfortable like a pooch or cat at feet. What is that bleating in the darker corner? I shall wait for daylight to see what it can be. And if I can, I shall free it from its trap and in doing so perhaps free me from all this, all this witnessing as life demands I must, of young ones setting themselves "free" because they are forced to do so by collective psychopathology now rendered even more effective and efficient via </span><leo_highlight id="leoHighlights_Underline_2" leohighlights_keywords="technology" leohighlights_underline="true" leohighlights_url_bottom="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsBottom.jsp?keywords%3Dtechnology%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" leohighlights_url_top="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsTop.jsp?keywords%3Dtechnology%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" onclick="leoHighlightsHandleClick('leoHighlights_Underline_2')" onmouseout="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut('leoHighlights_Underline_2')" onmouseover="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver('leoHighlights_Underline_2')" style="-moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 150); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); color: #333333; cursor: pointer; display: inline;">technology</leo_highlight><span style="color: #333333;">, via internet, emphasis upon the "net," where the ills set free from Pandora's Modem have only begun to be revealed.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">But I shall use that "net" and my still goodly paper and goodly pen to dim whatever ill tides there are and to come, as they surely will in spite of low wattage. I'll jangle keys on the night watches, reading my mystic books, making my prayers with roamers of wards and wharves glancing up considering bridges, edges, silty bottoms. The tides are here even now. But right now I wish to sing a lullaby in protest to those hurting departed, even to those coming ills, that I may sing innocence dumbly back to those who may come ashore again more gently having forgotten enforcing depths insisting them toward resistant yet resolved embraces...</span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;"><br />...So breech then, waves. Feet first. Heads in the brine. I shall keep time on your wrinkled toes sticking up from the sand, play peek-a-boo. Then while you sleep I shall harvest gently, place them firmly in that old woman's shoe with "so many children she didn't know what to do."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">She may yet have learned what to by now. I haven't.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">I remain bitter. Abject, too, from the senseless loss of cast off young men who could not endure the flame, the rust, no fault of their own, who leap blasted from bridges, forced by killing human edges, who are broken open within and by hateful, fearful others forgetting, if ever had, those restorative burning constancies of a Mother's loving hand upon them.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">I have placed their names and images upon my altar beside García Lorca's portrait, and Hart Crane's young face, an image of a sweet Christ holding a lamb </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">in perpetua</span><span style="color: #333333;">, and the yellowed newspaper clipping from Spain of the Matador's death, all who have joined or will join Hart becoming ghostly visionary company. They now remain forever chaste not having lived long enough to be wasted, to be emptied loving deeply out into Love for more, endlessly bleeding out as Lorca, a </span><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic;">corrida</span><span style="color: #333333;"> of laurel encircling his head no longer remembering but only one sound, guns exploding outward, extending, bullets, petals, one by one beyond the wall where he stood before the obedient squad stunned, "how young and handsome are the assassins' faces." Obedient to projectiles and projections he flew backward into the restraining wall, his brave shadow and blood, then fell, a last poem frozen upon lips but for circling birds, spirits, carrion or both, arriving after the blood wedding. I believe he fell hard, for life demands it as does death which will continue its duende.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Reduced to foolish whispers, restoring moments, patient hidden gods, human hearts and bodies remove themselves from the potter's wheel too early broken, too tired, too alone to try to shape love from Love from the tiny shard, the remnant bone of the ancient mastodon, the last one, dreaming within each heart of that Love which all Nature yearns for.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Inherited brood of brothers wherever you may sway remember to be gay for all the gray afternoons in this sad but forgiving confessional while not forgetting mine and the cock's quarrel with life in the booth by the cracked window near the corner of 7th and Second.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Trembling,</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Nightingale</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">****</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-weight: bold;">The Ballad of the Sad Young Men</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Music written by: Tommy Wolf</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Lyrics written by: Fran Landesman</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">(best version sung that I know of is by an aged Mabel Mercer, hard to find it now)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Sing a song of sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Glasses full of rye</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the news is bad again so</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Kiss your dreams goodbye</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Sitting in the bars</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Knowing neon nights</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Missing all the stars</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Drifting through the town</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Drinking up the night</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Trying not to drown</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Singing in the cold</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Trying to forget</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">That they're growing old</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Choking on their youth</span><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Trying to be brave</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Running from the truth</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Autumn turns the leaves to gold</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Slowly dies the heart</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Sad young men are growing old</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">That's the cruelest part</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Seek a certain smile</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Someone they can hold</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">For a little while</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Tired little bird,</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">She does the best she can</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Trying to be gay for</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">her sad young man</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">While the grimy moon</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Blossoms up above</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Play at making love</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Misbegotten moon</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Shine for sad young men</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Let your gentle light</span><br /><span style="color: #333333;">Guide them home again</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">All the sad young men</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333;">**</span><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><b><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">How It Was I Came To Be What I Am - A Fable by N. Nightingale</span></b></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For 'Spider' Bottas</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They would argue over tides</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Who bade me come into the world.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">One said, Six o'clock.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The other, No, twelve.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I was born at the thirteenth hour</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All the while mother arguing, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not the time but a little spell, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">While father argued it was death, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You are dying and your child, too, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Is dying. You have been poisoned.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It was full moon and high tide, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The hour of birth.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All arguments yielded to the tide's.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The moon lit up the stadium </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Of their gripes while I was </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Born amidst their sweeps at</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Each other, the nurse neglecting</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">To wipe me free of blood and salt</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Being drawn into their strife.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He was born at day, one said.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">No, at night, and he is a she, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Said the other. The nurse, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Speaking truthfully, said, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Cleaning me at last, No, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You are both right. The child</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Is he and she, a hermaphrodite</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Born of two days labor, its head</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Out of the womb the duration.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Ruination! father cried.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Fame, mother sighed.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Both right, the nurse agreed, </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Of these fables are made. </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Then father tossed me into the sea.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The nurse saved me who later</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Became my lover, hiding my </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Sexes with a four leaf clover.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">**</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: helvetica;"><div class="c-feature-bd" style="border: 0px; color: black; line-height: 1.3; margin: 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="o-poem isActive" data-view="PoemView" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Little Black Boy by William Blake</span></b></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">My mother bore me in the southern wild</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And I am black, but O! my soul is white;<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">White as an angel is the English child: <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">But I am black as if bereav'd of light.<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">My mother taught me underneath a tree <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And sitting down before the heat of day,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">She took me on her lap and kissed me,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And pointing to the east began to say. <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Look on the rising sun: there God does live <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And gives his light, and gives his heat away. <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And we are put on earth a little space,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">That we may learn to bear the beams of love, <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); clear: both; color: #484848; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); clear: both; color: #484848; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice. <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Thus did my mother say and kissed me, <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And thus I say to little English boy. <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I from black and he from white cloud free,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And round the tent of God like lambs we joy: <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">To lean in joy upon our fathers knee. <br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">And be like him and he will then love me.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">**</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">3 Am Kingfisher Sonata</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">for V.R.Cann, 'of the Serpent born, of River's Disease'</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">I am, down to a man, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">the most wrestled and</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">creased of seasons' </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">unceasing ardors.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">I am established upon my worn and wagging throne. </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">I remain open all night. Preponderant sinners, their </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">mendicant amusements such are these fractured </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">pearls, are wanton for dark bottoms, sea bed renewals, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">though for many here any bed will do - </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">no work on the morrow.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">I suffer the happy travails of indigent whithers, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">a later paramour whose eyes do what thighs </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">no longer can. Young men stray in the redder </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">door and, thank god, are easily distracted, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">thank god, the erotic slights of hand, thank</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">god, the scented smoke, the velvet-covered </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">mirrors drooping unnoticed; they depart the </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">happier minds touched more than diminishing </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">crescents of flesh. </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">I remain a magician's </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">hat, hand and arm deep, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">it's pit of cyphers ever </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">grasping, so desperate </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">for retrieval.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"> </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, dimming eyes skim shades, browns, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">blacks, skin shine a wonder too long stared. </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Love yet naps undisturbed, at peace in my </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">admonished gaze; pastoral fold's redolent </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">loam <span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">in-breathes such sleeping geography, </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">it's spell, </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">its throat tenderly bared too great </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">to disturb </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">with a hungry touch.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eyes are wiser now <span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">allowing breaths little </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">swallows, </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">murmurs </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">overfly </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">nippled </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">minarets, </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">sinew, hair; </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">salt mines below <span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">crystallize sweat </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">beckoning </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">craven </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">tongues to aftertaste </span><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">rejoinders, sweet.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">Life, dear Barcelona, is sweet. </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">One endures long enough to break through thunder, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">a taut belly, a smooth place for lips to land. </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">One may reach a 'Pure Land' which has no logic, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">the tedious seasons of long life endured.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, one gathers names of each</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">joven* <span style="font-style: inherit; text-indent: -1em;">prince passed beneath loving, </span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">yes, arduous hands.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Again, upon Kingfisher's wings I blow these kisses, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">this music, your patient ear awaiting the purist pearl, </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">for you were once the bequeathed, escaped girl </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">without fear of oceans, this one between us which </div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">now must be overflown to reach you.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">N. Nightingale, Empress of Contrails</div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">**'young' in the Spanish tongue</div></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><div><br /></div></div></div><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBI5HVIwFw6_RSISY9labFmlQoUZhwHtGpRVg8yykm5UpjfxjxzJOVZ2ouqhoum6cPnNUlKRykQuYVooV5E8i-MyTM3EaK4noYYDfyrsS90Mrer1qMkB5JqkLRo7RU3JIvdQek8CtvJnQyn7E6qr0prb4_QzwCGZ-m3yD1TB58EmoNSOKnWy_U3C0wuGg/s849/13659020_10208221946559768_1092384945176566195_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="849" data-original-width="849" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBI5HVIwFw6_RSISY9labFmlQoUZhwHtGpRVg8yykm5UpjfxjxzJOVZ2ouqhoum6cPnNUlKRykQuYVooV5E8i-MyTM3EaK4noYYDfyrsS90Mrer1qMkB5JqkLRo7RU3JIvdQek8CtvJnQyn7E6qr0prb4_QzwCGZ-m3yD1TB58EmoNSOKnWy_U3C0wuGg/s320/13659020_10208221946559768_1092384945176566195_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: center; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Sketch by Paul Brahms.</div></div></div></span></div></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-11043805267741793552024-01-30T17:21:00.000-08:002024-02-01T20:20:48.117-08:00"Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come" - Carl Jung, Da Free John, & the Dreaded-Gomboo<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvm5SaoZVHATZpuMVevJUBgdBsq7BcrijjZmIChc8L_kz9zdIevO-MaV1tPnBWfzshgb-aCsmsu_7JnTvt6MW-YHpf5wKur5EQlhiHB-kNRdDp4-WZHXg4ABeSUKJ7DYZjtAvfHZCWjT1q9tg-iKXPX8jgkGYK5O7L72k_cXRQ5uN0cs_gnNTqXKA1B4/s896/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-30%20at%208.12.20%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="572" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvm5SaoZVHATZpuMVevJUBgdBsq7BcrijjZmIChc8L_kz9zdIevO-MaV1tPnBWfzshgb-aCsmsu_7JnTvt6MW-YHpf5wKur5EQlhiHB-kNRdDp4-WZHXg4ABeSUKJ7DYZjtAvfHZCWjT1q9tg-iKXPX8jgkGYK5O7L72k_cXRQ5uN0cs_gnNTqXKA1B4/s320/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-30%20at%208.12.20%20PM.png" width="204" /></a></div><span style="text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: left;">"Have you got the Boo? The Dreaded? The terrible Gom? Have you? That's what I thought! Tell me true- have you got the Gom-Boo?" - Da Free John</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px;">I used to read these two paragraphs by Free John (he of many names) below (last two of this post) to students in a counseling training program...much laughter was had, but seriously serious stuff.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Now the very Free-with-his-"junk" Da-funct Da-Abi-Doot Da Da Da Whisk Broom BAH never did any personal shadow work evidenced by his scamming manipulations of others consciousnesses in his harems of followers, he was evidentially, utterly mugged by the Shadow, the archetype of Power, what Carl Jung calls "the Power Devil" such as that which/who tempted Jesus in the desert as his ministry was just beginning; Jesus resisted all the enticing "magical passes" and impressive miracles to gain power over the world where, if performed and demonstrated them, all would worship and follow him. </span></p><p><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Free John is a glaring example, one of very, very many, entranced by those powers of archetypal psyche (very very tempting they are) so, as usual, too too often in (especially in) "spiritual" groups one or more followers ( branded as a "faction") carry the shadow of the religion, crypto-religion (alphabet soup) and mostly adulterated "sacred" techniques offered. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">[NOTE: the SHADOW WILL OUT, especially with groups that identify as "spiritual". Forewarned is four-armed (yes, FOUR armed KALI who defends and protects!!) so one will turn the volume down on naivete and "innocence" or learn all too often the hard way (Jung did point out, "God is a trauma." I add, "Live and burn. Live and learn = Blues School).]</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiQreHcGWnVuuEPtrVX2x4L18sgDsRrtVC4WuTPIPMtC1eQyKOCqR8fYaTAww3sy8X0QYEpMnKJ5EObgTKQpvvOHmuti_8dWSY52OxQ-z-g-Vt1yIJz7RtJxYZSfHGx99moHzMFVH5RQlJGWoDE3kyh6EyIGOY20TiWtj9uDaN7eXm4Ty512TCxFZtzPM/s2048/233495070_10222035362406531_1280233358740484397_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiQreHcGWnVuuEPtrVX2x4L18sgDsRrtVC4WuTPIPMtC1eQyKOCqR8fYaTAww3sy8X0QYEpMnKJ5EObgTKQpvvOHmuti_8dWSY52OxQ-z-g-Vt1yIJz7RtJxYZSfHGx99moHzMFVH5RQlJGWoDE3kyh6EyIGOY20TiWtj9uDaN7eXm4Ty512TCxFZtzPM/s320/233495070_10222035362406531_1280233358740484397_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike American uber popular Spirituality LITE aka New Age, New Thought, Scions of Mind, et. al (so very "spiritually"entertaining),<i><b> individuation</b></i>, Carl Jung's term for addressing all dimensions of the psyche, especially the personal and collective unconscious as he lays out in his vast corpus of writing describing what he calls <i><b>depth or archetypal psychology</b></i>. Jungian work is NOT for the faint of heart</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">and, importantly, it is NOT an elaborate "spiritual" entertainment (though it can easily turn into such when one accesses archetypal energies and mistakenly thinks that one has "arrived" due to "magical powers and developed psychic abilities, et. al. OY. NO. Satan's temptations to Jesus were thus such perceived to be "miraculous" powers and one must be spiritual if one can access and wield them. Clearly not so! </span></p><p><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>Thusly,</i></b> an extended quote by Jung is called for here before the entertaining Free John quote which enables us, invites us each and every, one and all, to have a good healthy shadowy laugh of recognition that Da Free Junk enables us to acknowledge that, yes, we do, we all got the Dreaded Gom-boo, the Imaginary Illness that Religion Seeks to Cure (brilliant that Fra Yonks uses humor to impact us and hip us to Da D G Boo...but here's Jung (extensively. I personally do not think that it IS an imaginary (as in unreal)diseasae but is <i>Imaginal</i> (a la Jung and the archetypal energies mediated by the Imaginal level of the psyche):</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">“I am not a man, neither am I a god, a goblin, a Brahmin, a warrior, a merchant, a shudra, nor disciple of a Brahmin, nor householder, nor hermit of the forest, nor yet mendicant pilgrim: </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">"Awakener to Myself is my name.”(Jung, Vol.14, p.90)</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">" . . . One cannot be too cautious in these matters, for what with the imitative urge and a positively morbid avidity to possess themselves of outlandish feathers and deck themselves out in this exotic plumage, far too many people are misled into snatching at such “magical” ideas and applying them externally, like an ointment. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls [ψυχή, psychi, anima, animus, seele, saiwala, saiwalo, aiolos, sila, anemos, pneuma, anan, anhelare, rih, ruh, psychein, psychos, psychros, physa; Jung, Vol.8, pars. 663-664]. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world—all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth—the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better! "</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Jung continues:</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">"I have no wish to disturb such people at their pet pursuits, but when anybody who expects to be taken seriously is deluded enough to think that I use yoga methods and yoga doctrines or that I get my patients, whenever possible, to draw mandalas for the purpose of bringing them to the “right point”—then I really must protest and tax these people with having read my writings with the most horrible inattention. The doctrine that all evil thoughts come from the heart and that the human soul is a sink of iniquity must lie deep in the marrow of their bones. Were that so, then God had made a sorry job of creation, and it were high time for us to go over to Marcion the Gnostic and depose the incompetent demiurge. Ethically, of course, it is infinitely more convenient to leave God the sole responsibility for such a Home for Idiot Children, where no one is capable of putting a spoon into his own mouth. But it is worth man’s while to take pains with himself, and he has something in his soul that can grow. It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference. (Jung, Vol.12, par.126)"</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">End ofJung Quote</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The above views are my own, for what they're worth, from my direct experience in various flavors of "spiritual groups" (I'm done with all that now), was traumatized in and from those groups,</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The wreckage in spiritual groups is part of a very old old ancient story that plays out daily in groups all kinds, secular and spiritual, with ugliness and trauma ensuing while the self-identified minister or guru or other, the leaders (a faction, as well, but they don't think so - so Danger Will Robinson, whereof the named self appointed psychopomp remains, so they think (if they fall for their own act which, actually, IS what they do) without any fault or shadow or culpa whatsoever."</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">If one feels compelled to partake of what is offered by guru, teacher, shaman, et. al, then best to "take the money and run" with such, critical thinking active and ON, knowing that there may be some gold to gain (teaching, etc.) while one should assume also assume that "spiritual" folks have vast amounts of "shite" too.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">And shadow always gets projected back and forth. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It's all part of the Dreaded Gomboo, Incorporated in multifarious facets. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">SO, here are two hilariously orienting transcribed paragraph of the Da Da Dobby Abi Doot Da Doot Da Doodle Do Doot (Lou Reed chorus chittering on in "Take a Walk on the Wild Side) for mostly Western (inheritors of Western religions and multivarious permutation) spiritual seekers:</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Master Da: If you want to "get religious" in our time you must first decide that you have the Dreaded Gom-Boo. Then you go to Doctor Pope, Doctor Church, Doctor Jesus, Doctor Mahatma, Doctor Mahatmaboo, Doctor Gombooananda, Doctor Gomananda-Booharaj. As soon as you get the feeling that you have the disease, you start to look for religious answers. Ask most the people around you how they got involved with this Way of Life, and they will describe some symptom or other of the Dreaded Gom-Boo. The Dreaded Gom-Boo led you all here because you were looking to be cured of the heebie-jeebies, the hopefull Three-Day-Thumb-and-Finger Problem, the terrible jiggly meatedness! (Laughter)</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you telling me that you think God and Truth are supposed to be interested in curing you of the Dreaded Gom-Boo? Is that it? It is about time you realized there there is no cure for the Dreaded Gom-Boo! The Gom is terrible! The Boo is terminal! And this is what you've got, right? I thought so! I could see symptoms as soon as you came in here. Have you got the Boo? The Dreaded? The terrible Gom? Have you? That's what I thought! Tell me true- have you got the Gom-Boo?"</span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">You may read Free John's Boo book at this link:</span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/dreadedgombooori0000adid/mode/1up" target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/dreadedgombooori0000adid/mode/1up</a><br /></span></p>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-73628086799418505982024-01-06T14:03:00.000-08:002024-01-06T17:38:26.719-08:00AVISO - BORN TO BE SCRATCHED - Brief Stray Blots on Complexes and Clotted Character, Grief Muscles, Symptoms and Symbols "Writ on the Skin" Toward Meaningful Dys-Ease<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">AVISO - NOTICE</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpsllMYawIHyeSE-XEgSIgDWnl0_L8YRuUkfDjkhgD7SQgQxdiJI3We6EnkFKEjWr5YNhH9GalUI3biOflSpsAnTf2163Un2n_3sIrXD__6vw9fZBjWiVhu-6Vfg4pP3pcwMbLALp1yKb9eB4Gi4WMvcbPMWf5uuLMo_fcxijsMQQzLqDMaD8reGEEhqA/s730/p1030614-800x405.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="730" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpsllMYawIHyeSE-XEgSIgDWnl0_L8YRuUkfDjkhgD7SQgQxdiJI3We6EnkFKEjWr5YNhH9GalUI3biOflSpsAnTf2163Un2n_3sIrXD__6vw9fZBjWiVhu-6Vfg4pP3pcwMbLALp1yKb9eB4Gi4WMvcbPMWf5uuLMo_fcxijsMQQzLqDMaD8reGEEhqA/s320/p1030614-800x405.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;">[Click on images to enlarge them]</div><div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><a href="https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Darwin/Darwin_1872_07.html" target="_blank">"Grief muscles. (Haz Clik)"</a> - Charles Darwin</span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">"A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">for the privilege of kicking you once." </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"> - William Faulkner</span></span><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">Complexes, like mules, are stubborn. They have a job to do. They form us, shape us, give us character, the word etymologically means " scratches upon a surface" thus we are all born to be scratched, scarred, and from such character is born. My tee shirt reads " BORN TO BE SCRATCHED" " BORN TO BE SCARRED". We describe landscapes and faces/bodies as " having character" and so complexes are landscapes, <i>we</i> are landscapes shaped by the shaping land, dirt, clay, mud, sand from which ancestral complexes were, still are, born, and borne generation to generation, person to person.</span></span><br style="outline: none;" /></div></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">But mourning's that "thing", not hope, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314" target="_blank">"with feathers", to argue with Miss Dickinson</a>, at least this heavy-winged thing is part and parcel, tissue and fabric to my very being from earliest childhood - not playing the victim here but telling mule-ish facts, born into violence, into sorrow of mother and father at war with each other in the redneck, theologically regressive/dys-tarded primitive white south, my mythology unfolded and unfolds still though I am hard surrounded by concrete asphalt and steel where the wheel infernally drives literally everything in fabled northern island metropolis.</span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"></span></span><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">So, there. Etiology of my persistent skin rash begins in history, ancient history. The body, a body that I am, that I as Warren Ego inhabit, has its inexorable history and mythology genetically attributed and distrubuted cell by cell, dermis extremis, meat sack slackening but inevitable principled processes chemical and alchemical dry me out into blown-aboutness.</span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"></span></span><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">But I can sing. I <i>will</i> sing of such till I can sing no more.</span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"> </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"> </span><br style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;" /><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">Scratch as scratch can and down to a man, or sand, </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">whichever</span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"> </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">comes first or last or both, I will give voice </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">and image </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">to</span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"> </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">the hard scrap, mule-kick mother, bearing </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">two mule </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">names, who in a dream proceeding her death </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">intentionally, </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">willfully escapes my grasp via mulish </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">jack-</span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">ass </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">buck-kick </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">sends me flailing from her into <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">the </span></span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">ongoing </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">stretching </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">aridity of invidious </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=human+desert+in+latin&client=safari&sca_esv=596275536&sxsrf=AM9HkKluchpjNpNM5f6SuCyAOcTu90ROgA%3A1704588025807&ei=-fKZZbD1MMWmptQPn-WxmAg&ved=0ahUKEwjw1ZCehcqDAxVFk4kEHZ9yDIMQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=human+desert+in+latin&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiFWh1bWFuIGRlc2VydCBpbiBsYXRpbjIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRirAjIIECEYFhgeGB0yCBAhGBYYHhgdMgoQIRgWGB4YDxgdSO4nUABY9yFwAHgBkAEBmAG4A6AB2BqqAQoyLjE1LjMuMC4xuAEDyAEA-AEBwgIPEAAYgAQYigUYQxhGGPkBwgIKEAAYgAQYigUYQ8ICERAuGIAEGLEDGIMBGMcBGNEDwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYgwHCAg4QABiABBiKBRixAxiDAcICDhAuGIAEGLEDGMcBGNEDwgImEAAYgAQYigUYQxhGGPkBGJcFGIwFGN0EGEYY9AMY9QMY9gPYAQHCAgQQIxgnwgILEAAYgAQYigUYkQLCAhEQLhiABBixAxiDARjHARivAcICChAjGIAEGIoFGCfCAg0QABiABBiKBRhDGLEDwgIOEC4YgAQYxwEYrwEYjgXCAhAQABiABBiKBRiRAhhGGPkBwgIIEC4YgAQYsQPCAggQABiABBixA8ICJxAAGIAEGIoFGJECGEYY-QEYlwUYjAUY3QQYRhj0Axj1Axj2A9gBAcICBRAAGIAEwgINEAAYgAQYFBiHAhixA8ICCxAAGIAEGIoFGLEDwgIFEC4YgATCAgYQABgWGB7CAggQABgWGB4YCsICCBAAGBYYHhgP4gMEGAAgQYgGAboGBggBEAEYEw&sclient=gws-wiz-serp" target="_blank">homo solitudinem</a> -</span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">"button, button, </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">who's got the button?</span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">how without a mother?</span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">how without a button? - Michael Bottas </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">She escapes to fauna, florae, vine-arbored </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">densities, </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">massive </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">hedged green-green <i><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sauvage#:~:text=sauvage%20(plural%20sauvages),uncontained%2C%20anarchic" target="_blank">sauvage </a></i>riot tangle </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;">careen </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">plummet </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">plumbs into born anew*1 as such (or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=suchness%C2%A0&client=safari&sca_esv=596275536&sxsrf=AM9HkKliuXcrs0PUQ0DNNM-7xWVfKRdr2A%3A1704590440918&ei=aPyZZZPYN6yEwbkPoIWEwAM&ved=0ahUKEwiTrN-djsqDAxUsQjABHaACATgQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=suchness%C2%A0&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiCnN1Y2huZXNzwqAyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDILEC4YrwEYxwEYgAQyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAESMgaUABY_RFwAHgAkAEAmAGcAqABnAqqAQUyLjYuMbgBA8gBAPgBAcICChAjGIAEGIoFGCfCAgQQIxgnwgILEAAYgAQYigUYkQLCAgsQLhiABBixAxiDAcICDhAAGIAEGIoFGLEDGIMBwgIREC4YgAQYsQMYgwEYxwEY0QPCAg4QLhiABBixAxjHARjRA8ICEBAAGIAEGIoFGEMYsQMYgwHCAhAQABiABBiKBRiRAhhGGPkBwgINEAAYgAQYFBiHAhixA8ICCxAAGIAEGLEDGIMBwgILEC4YgAQYxwEY0QPCAggQABiABBixA8ICDRAuGIAEGIoFGEMYsQPCAicQABiABBiKBRiRAhhGGPkBGJcFGIwFGN0EGEYY9AMY9QMY9gPYAQHCAg4QABiABBiKBRiRAhixA8ICBRAuGIAEwgIIEC4YgAQYsQPCAgoQABiABBgUGIcCwgILEC4YgAQYxwEYrwHiAwQYACBBiAYBugYGCAEQARgT&sclient=gws-wiz-serp" target="_blank">suchness</a>?)</span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">or so </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">much </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">underscored </span><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">verdancy </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">does insist hinting </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">moistures,</span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia; outline: none;"><br /></span></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj23cUrHwI7g4PMAc-NOtgz0qXrZIKQYfZ6UVlWOKJpfxbq4vofbLMywvUaNsuNrfOJvHyDCRwX5chEwKD833eic3HiwFGJVG64LZx1EoEop8bbOVQAl5UeK7ZDkK9rtdvwHF8_hG18wE6s6l2OeRNJBq6zmNJQDcn3H7XjKBkZWbFEVcvgH5D619rwdhY/s277/Beware.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="277" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj23cUrHwI7g4PMAc-NOtgz0qXrZIKQYfZ6UVlWOKJpfxbq4vofbLMywvUaNsuNrfOJvHyDCRwX5chEwKD833eic3HiwFGJVG64LZx1EoEop8bbOVQAl5UeK7ZDkK9rtdvwHF8_hG18wE6s6l2OeRNJBq6zmNJQDcn3H7XjKBkZWbFEVcvgH5D619rwdhY/s1600/Beware.jpg" width="277" /></a></span></div><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">buoyant, perfumed,</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">some thing beyond eye or thigh </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">the weight that Forever really is <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />or we feel it is, the bone feel, that <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />ever-so-slow-curve calcium makes <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />down, down, years of it sinking <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />and then we wonder our own being's</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">but rumor of thunder on Distant Mountain, <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />fire there, we are stutterers pegged massive <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />revelations, special effects parting waters, <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />walking sticks into serpents, bread rain and<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />and on and on and some wheres </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">we remember we ought to altar so we <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />relent even if it's the first and last and<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />only one of the heart but not only that<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />but the aged body parts once so primary, <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />the sagging breast, the sinking </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">balls, </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">withered skin still the longing there and <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />everywhere mere parchment now and <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />how we may then finally wonder about <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />religions of the Word, what gets written <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />where, once and often, on stone then <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />eventually vellum/skin, and bark too in <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />treed lands </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">So lands a Shining Stranger perhaps one of many <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />bends low forever writes with his finger in the dust, <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />but the word in the end may us an altar make as <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />hearing fades and the tongue thinks </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">"it's only water'' and </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">"can a man control 'is tongue?"</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">- it's Biblical</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">the question answers itself </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">a riddle: </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">''never, or rarely'' </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />like my mother dying, rasps</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">''What's this all about? <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Whatever. I'm ready to go''</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">as if she or any of us can really decide <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />that but will's a holy thing, asserts even <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />in the face of obstinate Absolute </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">that "Other-Than" is also truth and down <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />to a woman and man</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;">we get to argue, </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />''I decide''</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xarqdHQcx9FJXxPtRSCjCbUDBDTHfPh_xAqSTPpMYvNgJydHe83BnudFRrMIqSKBnWlX1wee1BqHHfH8_vkadJ1vmm4gEVT2GZXirwEKljcS8nlNLTby046I6aHBvtf0uc2qPi2aUQkGKCWdML7ZAuAsx9dXcvFr83U04wVk0rKqtynh_p_lsmBJKds/s821/16864513_10210150461731442_8924254427359136116_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="821" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xarqdHQcx9FJXxPtRSCjCbUDBDTHfPh_xAqSTPpMYvNgJydHe83BnudFRrMIqSKBnWlX1wee1BqHHfH8_vkadJ1vmm4gEVT2GZXirwEKljcS8nlNLTby046I6aHBvtf0uc2qPi2aUQkGKCWdML7ZAuAsx9dXcvFr83U04wVk0rKqtynh_p_lsmBJKds/s320/16864513_10210150461731442_8924254427359136116_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mother - Rehearsing the Bardos</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">September 10, 2016</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">She passed December 23, 2016</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2njME8AYmxAb2al4GSou4uh5LKjDq4T1ZBHvqqsuG-uzPORsUyaJQCWwPVVBWnEHcf01tgFWN696H0Gzwoi3cixG-_xDITYL6Lv6eAtZ6Th6-3B-np_t54MtGUfTeAGMWT7niTEcvkJrdpcm347ljlo6sNebuzWfLPQUtGIVbvzeNv9pr1Px7LZhA10k/s1486/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-06%20at%204.55.32%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1486" data-original-width="1066" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2njME8AYmxAb2al4GSou4uh5LKjDq4T1ZBHvqqsuG-uzPORsUyaJQCWwPVVBWnEHcf01tgFWN696H0Gzwoi3cixG-_xDITYL6Lv6eAtZ6Th6-3B-np_t54MtGUfTeAGMWT7niTEcvkJrdpcm347ljlo6sNebuzWfLPQUtGIVbvzeNv9pr1Px7LZhA10k/s320/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-06%20at%204.55.32%20PM.png" width="230" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Portraits of grief muscles at work accompanying</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Charles Darwin's <a href="https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Darwin/Darwin_1872_07.html" target="_blank">The Expression of Emotions in</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Darwin/Darwin_1872_07.html" target="_blank">Man and Animals Chapter 7: Low Sprits, Anxiety,</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Darwin/Darwin_1872_07.html" target="_blank">Grief, Dejection, Despair</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><h1 style="background-color: #feeeff; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24pt; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right;"><br /></h1><div><br /></div><div>===</div><div>Footnote:</div><div>*1 Carl Gustav Jung said that plant life is the most innocent life form.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-29835682644088453312024-01-02T18:07:00.000-08:002024-01-02T18:07:54.474-08:00The Exquisite Angelology of the Ego, The Idea of Pear Tree - Great Nature's All Our Infirmity <div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgh9VQoVwi9b3K6YVfAfRPkIzGZJEfgsvJnsgIXlyunemhHnrue64yVc6ZsTYAgaVKa6XnMUevjrrTPIxi_QxBK3BbDnLQKwbpvvnnY30XYC-8TrbpBG8x74e4EGZ6LckxDomDbbRqSgUaCLQl3JkOgC5mn_2_W3rl1uGP95FTWG3a3BNY26T54FsMeJk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="600" data-original-width="402" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgh9VQoVwi9b3K6YVfAfRPkIzGZJEfgsvJnsgIXlyunemhHnrue64yVc6ZsTYAgaVKa6XnMUevjrrTPIxi_QxBK3BbDnLQKwbpvvnnY30XYC-8TrbpBG8x74e4EGZ6LckxDomDbbRqSgUaCLQl3JkOgC5mn_2_W3rl1uGP95FTWG3a3BNY26T54FsMeJk=w268-h400" width="268" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">An overripe pear fallen from a pear tree covid19 summer 2020 </span></div></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"warrentining" in New York state Adirondacks.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Archetypal psychoanalyst, astrologer, cabalist, and writer Charles Ponce's phrase "the exquisite angelology of the ego", I take from his astounding essay, "Paracelsus and the Wound", the wound being Great Nature, Her Reality, and how most of human civilization and philosophy has been efforted/designed to overcome or transcend Her, meaning finitude, decay, and death...I <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>quote extensively here since he, Ponce, minces no words though they, like he is, are poetic, evocative, and re-orienting. And sobering. Very. A KATSU as in a zen slap meant to evoke instant clarity, what the French call, "éclaircissement" - from éclaircir (“enlighten, clarify”). </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And, human, all too human, I never knew what "éclair" means but now I know and so I prefer clarity and enlightenment to be filled with "dark chocolate".</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The opening few sentences are my own from my blogspot essay on Pathological Happiness (don't get me going!!):</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Great Nature runs riot upon and within that which we can project some 'thing' (I like the German word for 'thing' - DING), some ding called "happiness" ('happy', meaning 'happen, luck, an eventing') but without a doubt the crushing dissolution, the decay and ending, is Nature's way, Her insistency, despite all our reification of wishful metaphysics - "for these subtleties must concretely be" we choose to believe in understandable desperation. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ponce writes, and rights us, reorients us much and necessarily toward the ongoing immediacy of Existence, of Nature in Her appeal, in Her drive for attestation in each and every living ding:</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">...we rebel essentially against the autonomy of Nature, the natural breakdown of Nature, the need of Nature to relax into itself, even to collapse into itself in the way that trees retreat into themselves with the advent of Winter...We turn away from our bodies in illness and death not because we have resolved the issue of the wound, but because it is far easier to think of an afterlife, far less fearful and painful to surround ourselves with the good feeling that we may not only escape this life in one psychic piece, but that we will no longer have to concern ourselves with our physical humanity...This approach to death robs us of our tie to Nature, strips us of our humanity in favor of an exquisite angelology of the ego. It allows us to slip past the experience of the mystery: that the body is indeed a great temple which moves slowly towards a breakdown and dissolution. The alchemists knew this: that the soul cannot fly, cannot be released from the vessel until the body is broken down, dissolved, and even putrified. When you read the alchemists you will discover that this breakdown and dissolution is the beginning of the Great Work, and that without experiencing and seeing, watching and attending to this momentous operation--keeping the fire of heart and attention at the proper degree--nothing happens. The soul does not fly, the subtle body is not created, nor is the imagination which is the soul's experience of itself open to eternity. It is this focus on the body and the wound in both life and death that leads to the sacred marriage of the alchemists. Paracelsus stressed, "The eternal is a sign of the dissolution of Nature, and not the beginning of created things, and the end in all things which no nature is without."</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">..A true medicine and counseling should therefore be one that addresses the immediate, the body of things and the body, for if we really wish to enter into the eternal, see the universe in a grain of sand, we must in our imagination understand...the soul's expression of itself through body, and that woundedness, disease, and the putrefactio of our humanity are for us in the West ordained as the focus of a yoga that sees in these sufferings the gods we have rejected." </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">- Charles Ponce, from "Paracelsus and the Wound", Working the Soul, Reflections on Jungian Psychology, pgs. 25-26.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In a personal letter Carl Jung wrote in response to a man who was overly identified with the spiritual and had a very problematic relationship to his body, nature and the social world of work and relationships. The man had written to Jung for advice and these two lines by Jung made me laugh when I read them since I, too, have been very much like the man in the letter. I love Jung's advice which goes well with Ponce's making sense of alchemical experiments and texts:</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You barricade yourself from the world with exaggerated saviour fantasies. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So climb down from the mountain of your humility and follow your nose."</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or snout. Sprout one if you don't got one. Slither, crouch, slouch stump and slump toward your own Bedlam-ahem and give Nature Her Due. She's gonna get it anyway.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At a crucial point in my own Jungian analysis where I very much was like the man in the letter, I had indeed, hesititatingly, painfully, begun to incarnate, own instinctually, to necessarily dis-identify with transcendence, "spirituality" (all kinds). What I needed for wholeness/hold-ness sake was what Jung calls an enantiodromia, "the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development." I was out of balance, out of Tao, and needed to land, even go underground to retrieve the wounded reptilian part of my self.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hard work. But "dromia" happened....I dreamed of being in a dark swamp in pitch darkness far from a city which faintly glowed behind me in far off distance. I knew that I had to keep walking in the darkness, in swamp marsh, mud, thicker. Afraid? YES. But I HAD to do it. At some point I thought I saw to lights ahead of me in the distance which gave me hope and a conscious place to walk toward. As I approached closer the two lights got smaller, bright but smaller. Not a town or outskirts of one. The lights were close together and were peering! at the edge of a thicket, eyes bulging at the water surface. Terror! But the eyes were wide set apart by at least 6 feet or so. I realized that what I was walking toward was a massively large alligator, not a normal gator at all but I knew intuitively that this was "the god of Gators." Fascinated. Entranced. I decided to wake up out of the dream after this close encounter. As I was coming up out of sleep and dream I heard a voice, the voice of the GATOR speaking to me, counseling me "to step less lightly upon the world."</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Much more to say but this dream put a coda to the years of incarnating, becoming human. And then the difficult work of living consciously with the alligator in an openly run by gators human world.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Theodore Roethke's poem, Infirmity, a new "scripture" for sure complements Charles Ponce's text. Much more commentary is needed when taking, as a preacher does, two texts to explicate and find a third ding, a synthesis derived from the two but no time here to do so...let Roethke have a say. I think Paracelsus and Ponce would acknowledge this poem as an alchemical text reflecting what they "have been at and about" in their incarnations:</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Infirmity</b></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In purest song one plays the constant fool </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As changes shimmer in the inner eye. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I stare and stare into a deepening pool </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And tell myself my image cannot die. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I love myself: that’s my one constancy. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oh, to be something else, yet still to be! </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There’s little left I care to call my own. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Today they drained the fluid from a knee </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And pumped a shoulder full of cortisone; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thus I conform to my divinity </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By dying inward, like an aging tree. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The instant ages on the living eye; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Light on its rounds, a pure extreme of light </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Breaks on me as my meager flesh breaks down— </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The soul delights in that extremity. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blessed the meek; they shall inherit wrath; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’m son and father of my only death. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A mind too active is no mind at all; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The deep eye sees the shimmer on the stone; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The eternal seeks, and finds, the temporal, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The change from dark to light of the slow moon, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dead to myself, and all I hold most dear, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I move beyond the reach of wind and fire. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Deep in the greens of summer sing the lives </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’ve come to love. A vireo whets its bill. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The great day balances upon the leaves; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">My ears still hear the bird when all is still; </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">My soul is still my soul, and still the Son, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And knowing this, I am not yet undone. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Things without hands take hands: there is no choice,— </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Eternity’s not easily come by. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When opposites come suddenly in place, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I teach my eyes to hear, my ears to see </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">How body from spirit slowly does unwind </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Until we are pure spirit at the end.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">**</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />CODA to go with the pear — </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">A poem written for Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser some years back, </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The "Idea of Pear Tree"</b></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">a pear tree forgets only itself as </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">an audacity </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">limbs recall themselves </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">appear to reach </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">one cannot see them </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">reaching </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">they may be silent but </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">we cannot know that toward </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">later sweetness they yearn </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">then seed a still dirt around </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">content to lie down </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">the idea of "pear tree" </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">reduces to all sparks </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">yet </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">no illusion of darknes</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">hastens the pear </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">but O it tastes</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div><br /><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-38637264419019122882024-01-01T13:30:00.000-08:002024-01-02T17:06:11.378-08:00Of Self-knowing Vs. Personas Of Self-Realization, We Are Also I Vs. The "Exquisite Angelology Of The Ego" - [REPRISE WITH A NEW PREFACE] <p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJxVh8YFhyphenhyphenUmbfnZK-HF5Yi32SxwiwJjrYaR-Q_wTSCLbMuJvABOeiBMW_Rwl524efzLN24b3Oa38av6SZllrDuKkFuUMMLar5YX7iT2kHs6Kjh7z_n0v1ctFI3c3QVQPjIVQfS_qS8gg6YJISQUoUwRmVrsvphbgRLWhoCg5KiGsyVJD1H3hMPfPg74/s3648/IMG_4990.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJxVh8YFhyphenhyphenUmbfnZK-HF5Yi32SxwiwJjrYaR-Q_wTSCLbMuJvABOeiBMW_Rwl524efzLN24b3Oa38av6SZllrDuKkFuUMMLar5YX7iT2kHs6Kjh7z_n0v1ctFI3c3QVQPjIVQfS_qS8gg6YJISQUoUwRmVrsvphbgRLWhoCg5KiGsyVJD1H3hMPfPg74/s320/IMG_4990.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">inclement hallelujahs </span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;">latencies of disintegration</span><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;">ancient slopes of containment</span><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;">gnomic marginalia</span><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia; text-align: start;"><div style="background-color: white; text-align: center;">trace the grace-note of reprieve </div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">PREFACE TO A NOW ALMOST 13 YEAR OLD "CRI DE COEUR" SANS "CURE" </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"</i> . . . <i>to break through the seductive constellations of human order . . . " - Michael Heller</i></span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72);">for Joan and Maria yet again:</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">First came the seen, then thus the palpable </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: georgia;">- Ezra Pound </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">The kingfishers! who cares for their feathers now? - Charles Olson </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNzZ5j6cO6w6uXpYQd0eSMYgD_gek6ijjXTuJDgroBC3pIiZQJYLxyRZwDxSsZsQiYwRgz975dTZyoTC5QXTjUcA88hLHMP2rx9tWmwSmd1ocrxUJsXmGgjS30oIoPfcSX5oZgqruyISPlBf_p6Nfg4EmpW9URS3h0ETtGxSVFLtRWace9rhIGmUuPs2o/s736/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-25%20at%2011.36.03%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="736" height="53" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNzZ5j6cO6w6uXpYQd0eSMYgD_gek6ijjXTuJDgroBC3pIiZQJYLxyRZwDxSsZsQiYwRgz975dTZyoTC5QXTjUcA88hLHMP2rx9tWmwSmd1ocrxUJsXmGgjS30oIoPfcSX5oZgqruyISPlBf_p6Nfg4EmpW9URS3h0ETtGxSVFLtRWace9rhIGmUuPs2o/w320-h53/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-25%20at%2011.36.03%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">(auto subtitles from youtube late-night screen-grab </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">random</span><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"> surrealist word crappage)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>Of bull-riding, bull-fights, the old religion</i></b> vs "the exquisite angelology of the ego"....a letter to one of the scapegoats (out of three) upon happening upon this essay, my having forgotten it completely but timely, I'm guessing, for January 1, 2024, a year where more and more blood, human and otherwise, shall be shed for imagined-to-be-sacred causes:</span><p></p><div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>An early (now almost 13 year old) essay</b></i> then writ fresh from the a New Age seminary-led blood-letting of whom were deemed to verily be an "unholy trinity". This morning, watching the bullfight clip I filmed in Mexico just prior to the letter officially firing us, I think, "of course, how could they NOT fire us" since, at least for me, my "religion" is "of the vales", the underworld journey without which there would be no awareness of light at all. And the New Age bull-shit (rather than <i>bull fight</i> or <i>ride</i>) is indeed an <i>"exquisite angelology of the ego" </i>(Charles Ponce's surgically precise phrase)....we were fired the year that Carl Jung's <u>Liber Novus </u>was published and made available to the public...now reading it through 2023 and on in to 2024, I realize that my little essay below was synchronous to the Red Book - implication, no, EXPLICIT, is the descent, the ASSENT to descend into the human realm and beneath, into Hell realms, to journey as did Carl Jung and others into that place where is no place but place after all, where faces must be torn away to replace with more durable and pliable masks that reflect/convey encounter with said depths (depths go up (we speak of "deep space") <i>and</i> deep down, most religions avoid the "deep" dimensions (theologian Paul Tillich is very helpful about this (<a href="https://usuaris.tinet.cat/teo_alli/forum16/docs/depth_existence.pdf" target="_blank">click here</a>) their preferring the upward, transcendence (that fantasy), some (any) upward vertical without ceiling or end; the horizontal, the surface upon which most life lives (so it appears) indeed requires blood or equivalent life fluids - at birth/hatch/fledge and at death, the ever-giving edge that hedges all us we in the end (whether shed or not - "Blood is, as Jung says, as Edward F. Edinger explicates, "is LIFE"). </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thus the shedding of it, blood. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"In the Beginning" - blood sacrifices, burning flesh, Cain slaying Abel because Abel "disobeyed" God's demand for agricultural offerings, HE wanting fallen fruit (interesting to note too that the "Fall" came about by Eve's eating the suspect and evil fruit from the "God's Set Up Tree" apparently "all about humans fleeing innocence and then the eternal flaying in finitude). Instead, Able offered animals as sacrifices, burning flesh to raise mouth watering aromas up and up to "heaven" where deity is teased and satiated because, surprise surprise, Nature IS APPETITE, DESIRE, HUNGER. So what's new is God's/Transcendences new found nostrils and appetites for life, blood, all creatures great and small (with a side of Apple Sauce?). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">A quick sum to the question (</span><a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/cain-abel-story-summary-analysis.html#:~:text=In%20the%20story%20of%20Genesis,in%20anger%2C%20Cain%20kills%20Abel." style="white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">click here</a><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">) as to why Cain killed Abel:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"In the story of Genesis, <span jsaction="click:sKUsF" role="tooltip" style="outline: 0px;" tabindex="0"><span class="c5aZPb" data-enable-toggle-animation="true" data-extra-container-classes="ZLo7Eb" data-hover-hide-delay="1000" data-hover-open-delay="500" data-send-open-event="true" data-theme="0" data-ved="2ahUKEwiFoZTN8ryDAxVFD1kFHcELCwkQmpgGegQIFxAD" data-width="250" jsaction="vQLyHf" jsname="d6wfac" jsslot="" role="button" style="cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" tabindex="0"><span class="JPfdse" data-bubble-link="" data-segment-text="Cain and Abel" jsname="ukx3I" style="border-bottom-color: rgba(4, 12, 40, 0.5); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px;">Cain and Abel</span></span> both present offerings to God. Cain brings fallen fruit off the ground as an offer, while Abel brings the firstborns of his flock of sheep. According to the story, Abel's offering is deemed worthy above Cain's, and<span style="background-color: white;"> in anger</span>, Cain kills Abel."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Eve's little dietary restriction, first of countless many - don't eat of that particular fruit - her doing so, opened the Commedia of material existenz, of incarnation and the birth of human consciousness (which is really what the story "tells")...from "apple" to "burnt flesh" - meat and blood offerings, death takes care of (for a bit and a bite) the voraciousness of Deity. Via the teeth we evolve as does deity which means "creative and de-creative consciousness."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Some years ago, a'wash with Emily Dickinson's music and brilliance, this "ditty" came in her, I hope, aspired, cadence and humor:</span></span></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; line-height: 31.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Regarding The Apple's History, A Theological Trifle - After Emily Dickinson</span></h2><p><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"It's good for the breath!" </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: georgia;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">With this she tempted Adam to death.</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Properties of the apple are renowned since </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">their eating made it a greatly frowned upon thing. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Still, it is not without its lovers. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">But for an apple's charm we would live boring lives, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">never a fling or two to alarm the pear, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">and we all know an apple will never harm </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">a teacher's pet, its fables to lure </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">the imagination, that Golden One's </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">strength to subvert us to the core. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Let's eat the jelly of sin and tell it! </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">William Tell's a good shot! </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Let's split the Apple in the pot </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">and stew it for Eve's sly. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Even so our breath is sweet. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Tis the tart one of death </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">from which we'll all die.<span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span> </span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">Tis also true, though paradise is lost, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;" /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;">something is to be gained with apple sauce.</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"> </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #484848; font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72);">*</span></span></div><div><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thusly. Nature. Death. Bulls, sheep, goats, endless offerings on man's altars to GREATER (and TERRIBLER) POWERS-ERS. and sweeter breath - intimations thereof</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The fantasy of transcendence, and sweeter breath - intimations thereof, foregoes (or tries but fails) descent, inevitable, actually demanded-by-god descent, <i>what god apparently could not then do but was compelled by desire to try, so did?</i> It's ambivalent as all symbols are which is why they, symbols, convey mystery which <a href="https://terebess.hu/zen/katsu.html" target="_blank">KATZ</a> (focus/refocus) the brain, human consciousness trying to parse, to gather up some discriminated whole-r understanding of existenz per se as well as archetype.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">SO. There will be blood. Until there will be blood no more (<i>that</i> fantasy).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeiGrG1OilJdbkhdPqaiYXZvoufUeVlE1brYsiPD7B0wrqyduImSeq1TOM7RsKN6zrBNlfahFfGm0wfEYD797r779SzkdQoTsr__5Iq03EBiEI7MxfnAB66RMfDtc0B1Jz1TIcOFDEJy3QggbsoJskDlZKpafQdwRvl-6Pd9zAl82JJY4JvCnVKwX00KA/s1074/20230618_141242_HDR_(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="976" data-original-width="1074" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeiGrG1OilJdbkhdPqaiYXZvoufUeVlE1brYsiPD7B0wrqyduImSeq1TOM7RsKN6zrBNlfahFfGm0wfEYD797r779SzkdQoTsr__5Iq03EBiEI7MxfnAB66RMfDtc0B1Jz1TIcOFDEJy3QggbsoJskDlZKpafQdwRvl-6Pd9zAl82JJY4JvCnVKwX00KA/s320/20230618_141242_HDR_(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div style="text-align: center;">On with the boring </div><div style="text-align: center;">center line endlessly </div><div style="text-align: center;">dividing though broken </div><div style="text-align: center;">on purpose suggesting</div><div style="text-align: center;"> a way to veer. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">No guide needed here. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Fear is the drive shaft, and </div><div style="text-align: center;">longing turns the wheel. </div><div style="text-align: center;">- Norman Nightingale</div></span></span><p></p><div class="page" title="Page 7"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xmesSgzlZ9ipHZJAYXFCQnztD2BRk1MQAhjwLoFSnQfcnloyCqBj7mY0EYr0AL_KQ8G8LWPYlIhmlv3_KOrn500Ac2LdTRM9WAuACwFLasAtiz4IVmJaSSl04mkg_7mf1yO56dq7KWCknA_EFfjomz0l4GzfDZWueNiDB-XRiOo3ATMe2jB5GprixKM/s688/17%20-%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="530" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xmesSgzlZ9ipHZJAYXFCQnztD2BRk1MQAhjwLoFSnQfcnloyCqBj7mY0EYr0AL_KQ8G8LWPYlIhmlv3_KOrn500Ac2LdTRM9WAuACwFLasAtiz4IVmJaSSl04mkg_7mf1yO56dq7KWCknA_EFfjomz0l4GzfDZWueNiDB-XRiOo3ATMe2jB5GprixKM/s320/17%20-%201.jpg" width="247" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"PERHAPS A STABLE order can <span style="vertical-align: -2pt;">only </span></span></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">be </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">established on earth if </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">man</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia; vertical-align: -2pt;">always </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">remains</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="vertical-align: -2pt;">acutely </span><span>conscious </span><span>that</span><span> </span><i>his condition is </i></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>that of a traveler.</i><span>"</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>- Gabriel Marcel, from </span><b><a href="https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homo-viator.pdf" target="_blank">Homo Viator</a></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p></div></div></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyhow. </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Beyond</i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> "Skim-inary Cloud-Cuckoo-Land" now. Beyond more like "be" than "yond" but </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">yonder</i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> I am (cue </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_qMKcV_Rnw" style="white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">"way over yonnnnn-der"</a><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">) which implies some movement, minor/major s'all a brindled wager (cuz all/us/we are some hue of colored earth), a journey (not yet the gurney one hopes) </span><b style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>thus</i></b><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> I love Gabriel Marcel's characterization of the human experiment, rather than cogito, ergo sum, is homo viator - man the flyer, man the traveler, man on-the-way (I hear Paul Simon sing, "taking my time but I don't know where").</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Not either/or but, as Jung emphasized, the "side-by-side" - the complementarity of apparent (that's the word) opposites - they appear as opposites but consciousness intuits </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">synthesis</i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">, the third thing (Carl Jung calls it the essential </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">transcendent function </i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">arising from and expanding the wholeness (hold-ness) implicit/nascent in apparent opposites aka <i>thesis</i> <> <i>antithesis</i>). </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyhow. Was googling my name in order to find a particular poem and top of the list was the blogspot link to this my long forgotten essay writ while the blood and the wound was still fresh and painful.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I still "hold with that" which I have writ. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">I offer spit and vinegar to the sanctimonious <i>ethereals</i>, necromancers - these two paragraphs below are from the <i>essay as snarl snarl,</i> they underscore the obvious whether one likes it or not, blood thickens the clot, I mean, plot:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">"There may be more to me and thee, O Mercurial Verities between How-and-Now Cows, </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">than the undertaker's shovel and the deep blue sky and sea <i>but I am a soul man</i>, partial to soul, to space, to time, to locale, at more than a lover's quarrel with the world and very much at quarrel with spirit and entire "congregations of vapor" (Shakespeare). This argument is ongoing as it should be, at least for me. What follows here below are extensive quotes from thoughtful, clear-headed and compassionate writers who rediscover and sing/argue in the face of the bypassers (as are we all, truthfully, us "hopefully transcending ones") of and for the nobility inherent in suffering Creation and Her creatures, including humanity, as part of living and dying into and out of conscious existence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I begin with Alan Watt's: "Man has to discover that everything which he beholds in nature - the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean's depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets - has its counterpart within himself. He is not, then, at one with himself until he realizes that this "under side" of nature and the feelings of horror which it gives him are also "I". - The Wisdom of Insecurity, Chapter 7: "The Transformation of Life", p.111."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPA_zPPJ8ZfpmJ7NkTe8PvM-5COsyC_5El-ZoM43YLiLLXmUhKohORTDMoDwFVT0Ej2BjxeyakZyXgkYHK6xfmchxwLXfLC54PkOrhlX5YXXyaLVwJKessWajFOCJtASaqddevYwNR2vO1XZEz9bFMjp4f7Agfoyqa1C0WH_pGn3dlkofZnLJLmc0FfUQ/s534/essays_faceofrimbaud_four-383x534.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="383" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPA_zPPJ8ZfpmJ7NkTe8PvM-5COsyC_5El-ZoM43YLiLLXmUhKohORTDMoDwFVT0Ej2BjxeyakZyXgkYHK6xfmchxwLXfLC54PkOrhlX5YXXyaLVwJKessWajFOCJtASaqddevYwNR2vO1XZEz9bFMjp4f7Agfoyqa1C0WH_pGn3dlkofZnLJLmc0FfUQ/s320/essays_faceofrimbaud_four-383x534.jpg" width="230" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"AH! I am so forsaken I will worship at any shrine </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">impulses toward perfection." - Artur Rimbaud<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Photo of the poet.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Archetypal psychoanalyst, astrologer, cabalist, and writer Charles Ponce's phrase in this essay's title, "the exquisite angelology of the ego", I take from his astounding essay, "Paracelsus and the Wound", the wound being Great Nature, Her Reality, and how most of human civilization and philosophy has been efforted/designed to overcome or transcend Her, meaning finitude, decay, and death while intuiting their opposites, or, complementarity, at least in mind/thought as well as creative art and culture of all flavors.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ln07HofPErQb8M_vkj-2XcEbUvKt957KhFc2bY1pkfh_jKmtXnEhr3UJVSLsDiAdi6JkHy571tOv4r2yfNBYiSVvFF-JCoTdMjqwYUpfc_jVoTQ5iAKRmwR-ci9whvWXONUOWfsSeWN14IxnluC2-afw5iM-Kfhaw00SEGvFeq-MqX_sK7NxDQr1S3I/s3648/IMG_7702.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="2443" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ln07HofPErQb8M_vkj-2XcEbUvKt957KhFc2bY1pkfh_jKmtXnEhr3UJVSLsDiAdi6JkHy571tOv4r2yfNBYiSVvFF-JCoTdMjqwYUpfc_jVoTQ5iAKRmwR-ci9whvWXONUOWfsSeWN14IxnluC2-afw5iM-Kfhaw00SEGvFeq-MqX_sK7NxDQr1S3I/s320/IMG_7702.jpeg" width="214" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">An over ripe pear fallen from a pear tree covid19 summer 2020 "warrentining" </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">in New York state Adirondacks.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I shall quote extensively here since he, Ponce, minces no words though they, like he is, are poetic, evocative, and re-orienting. And sobering. Very. A KATSU as in a zen slap meant to evoke instant clarity, what the French call, <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">"<span style="caret-color: rgb(112, 117, 122);">éclaircissement" - </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">from <i>éclaircir</i></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> </span><span class="mention-gloss-paren annotation-paren" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">(</span><span class="mention-gloss-double-quote" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">“</span><span class="mention-gloss" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">enlighten, clarify</span><span class="mention-gloss-double-quote" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">”</span><span class="mention-gloss-paren annotation-paren" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">)</span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122;">And, human, all too human, I never knew what <i>éclair </i>meant but I prefer clarity and enlightenment to be filled with "dark chocolate".</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The opening few sentences are my own from my blogspot essay on <a href="http://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2009/03/of-roethkes-spinning-and-monk-at-home.html" target="_blank">Pathological Happiness</a>:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Great Nature runs riot upon and within that which we can project some thing called "happiness" ('happy', meaning 'happen, luck, an eventing') but without a doubt the crushing dissolution, the decay and ending is Nature's way, Her <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">insistency</span></span>, despite all our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">reification</span></span> of wishful metaphysics, "for these subtleties must concretely be" we choose to believe in understandable desperation. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Charles Ponce writes, and rights us, reorients us much <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">necessarily </span></span>toward the ongoing immediacy of Existence, of Nature in Her appeal, in Her drive for attestation:</span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"></span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: black;">"...we rebel essentially against the autonomy of Nature, the natural breakdown of Nature, the need of Nature to relax into itself, even to collapse into itself in the way that trees retreat into themselves with the advent of Winter...We turn away from our bodies in illness and death not because we have resolved the issue of the wound, but because it is far easier to think of an afterlife, far less fearful and painful to surround ourselves with the good feeling that we may not only escape this life in one psychic piece, but that we will no longer have to concern ourselves with our physical humanity...This approach to death robs us of our tie to Nature, strips us of our humanity in favor of an exquisite </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" style="color: black;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">angelology</span></span><span style="color: black;"> of the ego. It allows us to slip past the experience of the mystery: that the body is indeed a great temple which moves slowly towards a breakdown and dissolution. The alchemists knew this: that the soul cannot fly, cannot be released from the vessel until the body is broken down, dissolved, and even </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" style="color: black;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">putrified</span></span><span style="color: black;">. When you read the alchemists you will discover that this breakdown and dissolution is the beginning of the Great Work, and that without experiencing and seeing, watching and attending to this momentous operation--keeping the fire of heart and attention at the proper degree--nothing happens. The soul does not fly, the subtle body is not created, nor is the imagination which is the soul's experience of itself open to eternity. It is this focus on the body and the wound in both life and death that leads to the sacred marriage of the alchemists. Paracelsus stressed, "The eternal is a sign of the dissolution of Nature, and not the beginning of created things, and the end in all things which no nature is without."</span></span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #fff9ee; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"></span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: black;">...A true medicine and counseling should therefore be one that addresses the immediate, the body of things and the body, for if we really wish to enter into the eternal, see the universe in a grain of sand, we must in our imagination understand...the soul's expression of itself through body, and that </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" style="color: black;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">woundedness</span></span><span style="color: black;">, disease, and the </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">putrefactio</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"> of our humanity are for us in the West ordained as the focus of a yoga that sees in these sufferings the gods we have rejected." </span></span>- Charles Ponce, from "Paracelsus and the Wound", <span style="color: #444444; font-style: italic;">Working the Soul, Reflections on Jungian Psychology</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">pgs</span></span>. 25-26.</span></div><div><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">**</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A quote from a letter by Carl Jung to a man who was too identified with spirituality and transcendence, so much so that he could not live in the reality of material, natural existence. I will put the entire letter at the end of this essay:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTr7u7t5pp7mSWgU-5qvc3z7DJoRbNhEY5uJ9-1-fdDVESHfQ6RkgRyE8jQWYyTL-TIygYA4IXW_GLX35xzP-qzIKEeK_D12amwF2NImVlLYm35FJ52Xxf4kY8qzosgtflH48su5o-qCik9kajL2N6u4olo-N23rHBYqezpnOY1qf8_jsOFkZw7_RaRLI/s1192/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-01%20at%203.43.30%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="1192" height="48" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTr7u7t5pp7mSWgU-5qvc3z7DJoRbNhEY5uJ9-1-fdDVESHfQ6RkgRyE8jQWYyTL-TIygYA4IXW_GLX35xzP-qzIKEeK_D12amwF2NImVlLYm35FJ52Xxf4kY8qzosgtflH48su5o-qCik9kajL2N6u4olo-N23rHBYqezpnOY1qf8_jsOFkZw7_RaRLI/w320-h48/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-01%20at%203.43.30%20PM.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Click on the photo to read it easily)</span></div></div><div style="outline: none;"><p style="outline: none;"></p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: start;"><p style="outline: none;"></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;"><div class="ydp66de723eseparator" data-setdir="true" dir="" style="clear: both; outline: none; text-align: left;"><span style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i>"Follow your nose"</i></b> - the animal instinct we have still intact. Love it. The better to smell and tell shoit from peanut butter especially in New Age Kyron Koo Koo Kool-Aid Kandy Sugar Land,</span></span></div><div class="ydp66de723eseparator" data-setdir="true" dir="" style="clear: both; outline: none; text-align: left;"><span style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyhoo. January 1st. Must confess to massive dread for this year aahead, POTUS election nearing as the slavering savage MAGA right smells (as it wants) literal blood.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bull religion is deadly serious confusing archetype/symbol for reality, here-nowness.</span></div></div></div><div><p><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">May have to offer up a pigeon or 4 on the roof, try to appease the insatiable need for killing and in such sanctify (of fortune in men's eyes) the killing for heaven's sake. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yeah, right.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I shall conclude this assay with a poem writ a few years ago:</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not the Moon but the Poem</span></b></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #444444;">"I'll make a broken music, or I'll die."</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span>- Theodore <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Roethke</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Seeing the moon whole could mean </span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">madness, now or overdue, for the supreme </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">vanity of daring to eye-gulp the whole swiss cheese. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Please gods and moondogs </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">the effort pays in insubstantial ways, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">makes a life, gives it focus but employs for life times: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">spilt milk</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">one milk tooth </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">a throat charm </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">against seeing but </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">not the saying.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It troubles me that I can't get it right. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not the moon but the poem. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">CODA</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">James Wright says, "Men have the right to thank god for their loneliness."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kenneth Patchen says, "We can lie here with the angel if we like."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXMWSdQ5gUIrSkW6WcTgHk0OyGXM5ijHbWXyDKIsVHgkAcQnKrIsuh3qhcYxcV_pDTc0z6u_YUfJp5B02iHjNjQXVO95qLUog_ncg4GqKuK9WPLNv_qyGp3IGRw_fb-EyWaQs5TFcYYdvUD1B8HRT_OgQ8PRuiKWjZUb6E3F0GNbMgGrz5tZXqrGKKM_Q/s564/Screen%20Shot%202023-07-01%20at%207.55.02%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="564" height="85" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXMWSdQ5gUIrSkW6WcTgHk0OyGXM5ijHbWXyDKIsVHgkAcQnKrIsuh3qhcYxcV_pDTc0z6u_YUfJp5B02iHjNjQXVO95qLUog_ncg4GqKuK9WPLNv_qyGp3IGRw_fb-EyWaQs5TFcYYdvUD1B8HRT_OgQ8PRuiKWjZUb6E3F0GNbMgGrz5tZXqrGKKM_Q/w400-h85/Screen%20Shot%202023-07-01%20at%207.55.02%20PM.png" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">Goodnight moon. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">C. G, Jung's letter quoted in part in text above. Here's the entire letter (click onto it to read it better):</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvM7lzn9r7BoSnERn76ea5yVUf7Tay8sSMxIQ04XVXhg81wdYgELobFWRZYrO8l_t-sCC8dkR40CBRNYbWcJCR4oZR4XWcJtTFyj_Rpgnpv168j5BOtoNHBTZ-pkZeE_IKI9IY7491XyW6SIUHFkbXooe_8VczUHLuD9vvqmw6oI0jt0UgPst_9WKI23c/s1174/318935242_10224615499508346_1530081888972835636_n.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="966" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvM7lzn9r7BoSnERn76ea5yVUf7Tay8sSMxIQ04XVXhg81wdYgELobFWRZYrO8l_t-sCC8dkR40CBRNYbWcJCR4oZR4XWcJtTFyj_Rpgnpv168j5BOtoNHBTZ-pkZeE_IKI9IY7491XyW6SIUHFkbXooe_8VczUHLuD9vvqmw6oI0jt0UgPst_9WKI23c/w329-h400/318935242_10224615499508346_1530081888972835636_n.jpeg" width="329" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Going to play solo setar music (click onto the link just below) performed by friend Nima Janmohammadi, seek sooth and soothe, dream of a lost milk tooth, resist regression but find toned espression (as in espresso-ession), find an undulant groove to lay myself down within/upon break meat trance if but for a bit before the bit tears the jaw, the harness jerks the mane, the head, to inevitable paths, ancient Rider on the move: </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwh3is67FRI&list=RDEM42VC3mBXv59QOjhS1HSguQ&start_radio=1" style="background-color: #ead1dc;" target="_blank">Nima Janmohammaddi Solo Setar Nava سه تار نیما جانمحمدی</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLdIKK8rAZ_Am8REuFBgUyefOaiEyVsQuD4f2imHq3-XLTGcMIKX8F0JaA1AKh9fToGg2yP10dPbbSwbR46P6i10LpR5O4kVedPYdvI939y7Gi4yZmUCrTXZhiuUaTbsPVEqkSX9T_YHAdHl1OXbz3ktjFInXg5ICW9t053EEz-3A4_uePsIfQkQuvTkI/s1142/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-27%20at%202.08.45%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="1142" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLdIKK8rAZ_Am8REuFBgUyefOaiEyVsQuD4f2imHq3-XLTGcMIKX8F0JaA1AKh9fToGg2yP10dPbbSwbR46P6i10LpR5O4kVedPYdvI939y7Gi4yZmUCrTXZhiuUaTbsPVEqkSX9T_YHAdHl1OXbz3ktjFInXg5ICW9t053EEz-3A4_uePsIfQkQuvTkI/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-27%20at%202.08.45%20PM.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">2023 and 2024 pondering each other.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Santa Fe Gallery "Glass Doll</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Published by Warren Falcon on January 1, 2024 at 1:30 pm</span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b>===================================</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 class="date-header" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; padding: inherit;">Saturday, February 6, 2010</span></h2><div><span style="letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; padding: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of Self-knowing Vs. Personas Of Self-Realization, We "Are Also "I" " Vs. The "Exquisite Angelology Of The Ego", And Zorba's Angry Human Cry</span><span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: bold;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2010/06/exquisite-angelology-of-ego-and-zorbas.html" target="_blank">CLICK HERE TO GET TO THE ESSAY AS PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 2010</a></b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxwdv-XKVDpnaO8WluW4nuQ20GeFZ5fOsg4dHufzF9reLUDUQJSltHcvkNfMLuB_vH6W0E5EHAodnEJMN0ZHA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br />for Joan and Maria. Compadres du "Mal"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">I pose you you're question: </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">shall you uncover honey / where maggots are? </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">- Charles Olson </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">myself </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">the intruder, as he was not - Robert Creeley </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">Sooner or later everybody's kingdom must end </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">...And if my hands are stained forever </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">And the altar should refuse me </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">Would you let me in, would you let me in, would you let me in </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">Should I cry sanctuary </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;">- Bernie Taupin </span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px;" /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">[<span style="font-weight: bold;">Prologue</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">WARNING</span>: If one is appalled by bull-fighting then <span style="font-weight: bold;">DO NOT</span> view this video as it shows the ancient and still living graphic "face off" of life against death, in this specific case a famous old Mexican Matador, "El Pana" (The Buddy) battles Death in the form of a bull whose name I did not record at the time I went to this bullfight in Apizaco, Tlaxcala, Mexico in January 2008. The graphic bloodletting in the video, of the old religion's clear awareness of the struggle between chthonic nature (the bull/unconscious) and uber-nature (human conscious/egoic/rational), is deadly honest depicting the sacred life and death struggle that <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> existence and thus the attendant and authentic religious rituals of the "fight", the uniform, tight fitting, revealing the genital/animal/chthonic biological man, bright symbolic colors, the choreographed moves of the matador and his attendants in response to the bull (having the "mind of the Bull"), the various espadas (swords, short and long), the stylized killing of the bull, the removal of the ears which are offered to some beautiful maiden in the crowd who tosses her hat or scarf or shawl to the victorious one who then kisses it and tosses it back to Her, and then the feeding of the poor, the bull as an offering. <br /><br />The fight, of course, is within the body and soul of the bull fighter, the primal man at war vitally in between his chthonic, instinctual masculine (represented by the bull) and his conscious, rational/moral/intuitive self. Whether one approves of bull fighting or not both the bull and the matador are priests enacting in powerfully enfleshed religious drama what occurs within the psyches and bodies of every human, woman and man. The bull prefigures Christ whose body and blood are eaten ritually in the eucharistic "communion" rite, a rite where death brings the god palpably/powerfully to one's self, of the Church which wisely incorporated this pre-Christian rite into itself in order to compete and win (it did) against its rival religion 2000 years ago, Mithraicism, a religion in which the god in the form of a bull is killed, its flesh and blood ritually imbibed in essence to incorporate the raw instinctual self into a more conscious vessel, human awareness. <br /><br />In America we have this rite available to view in professional bull riding and many rodeo events. Rather than killing the bull, the bull is "killed/defeated" by the human who "conquers/subdues/kills" the bull by riding it, gripping the rope behind the bull head with one strong hand, the other in the air, for 8 very long seconds, the rope/hand link attaching and revealing one's intrinsic animal connection to <span style="font-style: italic;">and as</span> the bull. As we know symbolically, the hand in part represents the conscious will of the ego thus the gripping hand consciously attached to the biological/un-thought/drive-ridden animal unconscious, the human consciously submitting to the struggle and torture of enduring the conflict within and outside of oneself, bull and rider one and yet differentiated by the hand, the will, conscious intention. <br /><br />To attend a bull riding event is an amazing opportunity to see the "old religion" of pre-Christian Europe (and its equivalent in other primal cultures) viscerally enacted before one's very own eyes (and guts or "bowels" in the Biblical Old Testament sense, the bowels being the deep seat of all human emotion and felt knowing perhaps clearly understood in the often heard and stated "I know in my guts this is true" or "gut knowing"). The opening rituals are essentially religious, both man and bull equally sacred - a brightly lit auditorium arena is suddenly plunged into darkness thus silencing the collective distracted crowd, then sudden deafening explosions of pyrotechnics, flames and sparks shooting up from hidden barrels in the arena below, blinding, Damascus-like spotlights strike a circle in the aromatic sawdust pitch, then flaming letters ignite "announcing" the beginning of the ancient "Mass". One can smell the bulls, the piss and manure already the incense prior to the opening rite. Enter the sacred dramatists, men, bulls, acolyte attendants and, most importantly, a clown/acrobat - the Trickster - chittering and skittering alone on the arena edges or magically appearing and disappearing out of barrels imitating and mocking the bulls, the riders, the audience, the God(s), which is worth the entire price of admission. <br /><br />I am certain that most people attending the bull riding spectacle are not at all aware that this is the ancient Mithraic religion enacted (somewhat altered via cultural flavoring). I was amazed during my first attendance when, after all the dramatic religious ritual and "introit", a <span style="font-style: italic;">Christian<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span> minister prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ! and this in a secular and surprisingly tolerant New York City Madison Square Garden filled with multi-ethnic people of all faiths or no conscious faith at all! I instantly "got it", that the Lord Jesus Christ in this context was/is the sacrificial bull-god, Mithras, the sacrifiical Lamb in Christianity retroactively the Mithraic bull whose sacrifice may not only appease the bloodthirsty, justice obsessed though unjust Himself, primitive, chthonic, evil side of God depicted clearly in the book of Job in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. These blood religions remain NOT for the secular or theologically "liberal" (read "Lite") faint of heart. I highly encourage one and all to attend and "get a grip" once again on blood mysteries, Nature, life as it is and the sacredness revealed in the battle in and before one depicted in the video above and in what I am describing of professional bull riding's secretly (ancient) religious event (click or copy and paste here for my recent poem depicting a similar event, albeit highly personal, depicting a growing awareness of the requirement of life to continue life by killing, or read it below at the end of this essay: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cleaning-fish-on-good-friday-1963/<br /><br />In the Western secular world these events are called "sports" - even the bulls are called "athletes" - but all sports are religious events whether participants and observers are cognizant of this fact or not. Sports are archetypal enactments of the conflict between the opposites, thus the fans (fanatics) are religiously (psychologically) gripped in the games between ultimate good and evil - our chosen side is always always "the good guys" and our opponents are always always always "the bad guys" - but if one is thoughtful, informed and aware that the other is indeed "also I" (one's own evil, shadow) one can see the archetypal religious drama unfolding and authentically, humanly participate in authentic worship withdrawing projected shadow and integrating/assimilating - trying to - the regathered shadow content, consciously allowing and embracing one's own instinctual, animal and human nature. The operative word here is "consciously".<br /><br />After the bull fight in Mexico as after the bull riding events in the US I and my fellow "worshipers" find a Spanish or Argentinian restaurant and truly toast to the bulls, the matadors, the holy rites, and enjoy red meat and red wine, a celebratory Passover/Eucharistic event, knowing that all too soon we, too, shall be what is in the cup and on the plate, unworthy meals, ah, but what majesty to be conscious of all this! And Nature's palette is not as discriminating our human own. She wins in the end. The squirming worms, alimentary canals as are we all, eat their fill or the winds/waters scatter/muddy our cremated dust, with or without kirtan, mantras, prayers and chants, while Great Nature's cycles continue until our sun goes nova and then...and then...the ongoing dance of colliding galaxies, "former Indras all..."<br /><br />Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer and poet, tiller of the earth and of human consciousness richly writes of participating in planetary yet personal Life and Death cycles conveying the sacred found in the above and other rites of living close to "what is", to Life, to Nature, to Death. The conscious consenting to, arrival of and struggling to hold within himself the awareness of Life's demand for blood, for Death, is actually more truly "transcendent" - meaning, <span style="font-style: italic;">transformative</span> and not bypassing at all - than all the ostensible "non-violence" of the sincere yet curtsying "peaceful ones" with all their well-intentioned though merely imitative "spiritual-tourettes-like" expostulations of "love, light, peace and blessings". Give me a bull, a Berry, a "god-blade" any day and any pray within and up from the steep and the depths:<br /><br />The Fearfulness of Hands That Have Learned Killing<br /><br />The fearfulness of hands that have learned killing<br />I inherit from my own life. With my hands from boyhood<br />I formed the small perfect movements of death, <br />killing for pleasure or wantonness, casually.<br />Manhood taught me the formal deadliness<br />of hunter and farmer, the shedding<br />of predestined blood that lives for death.<br />Only marrying and fathering lives <br />has taught me the depth of ruin,<br />and made me feel the quick in my hands the subtlety<br />and warmth of what they have destroyed.<br />And still I have killed for pity, and felt open<br />in my mind the beautiful silence, the sudden<br />ridding of a hurt thing's pain. I<br />am dumbfounded at the works I have accomplished<br />at the bounds of mystery, seeing it flow out<br />red and mute, matting the hair of my hands.<br />The skill that is prepared in me is careful<br />and terrible. There is no life I can think of<br />without sensing in my hands the answering power.<br />I shall not go free of the art of death.<br />- Wendell Berry, <span style="font-style: italic;">Openings<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span>, pg. ll.<br /><br />In conclusion to this prologue to what follows below, I quote Jungian analyst and writer, Peter O'Conner (thanks to Tom Dybek for introducing me to O'Conner and this passage) who speaks clearly and accurately, in my experienced opinion as a guilty participant, of the current tendency to bypass necessary recuperative, integrative work via "spiritualities" (escapes/bypasses) of all kinds:<br /><br />"In the present times my personal view is that there is an ever increasing tendency to pursue 'self-realization' without struggling with the more painful task of self-knowledge. The proliferation of instant gurus has facilitated the defensive fantasy that self-realization is possible without the more painful struggle of self-knowledge. All that is in fact achieved by such instant and painless 'self-realization' is <span style="font-style: italic;">a persona of self-realization.</span>, a mask or ego-image of it, but not a psychic reality. Hence the first real stress or upset that occurs to such people with a persona of self-realization sees that so-called realization crumble into depression or explode into anger. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Jungian viewpoint is unequivocally that self-knowledge is the path to self-realization..." </span>- Peter O'Conner, Understanding Jung, Understanding Yourself, Paulist Press, 1985, pgs. 71-72.]<br /><br /><br />********************************************<br /><br /><br />I begin with the antidote to spiritual bypassing...NOTE: the experience of God or the Self can be a trauma. In New Age "all-too-sweet-and-Lite" lenses this experience is misperceived as suffering brought upon oneself by "bad core beliefs", negative thinking. There is an unwillingness and/or incapacity to see this dark aspect and experience of the Sacred in spite of past and current evidence of many people who report this alchemical crushing, dissolution and refinement. This denial is childish ego inflation and hubris insisting only upon one side of the Sacred's being and experience, gentleness, sweetness, light, and denies the experience of God/Self/Beloved as a ruthless the "black light", as the "Refiner's Fire" purposely disorienting and afflicting an individual in order to re-orient the individual into a right relationship of ego to the Self. Thus Sufi mystic and poet Hafiz's poem as a clear antidote and compensation to "spiritual bypassing":<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Tired of Speaking Sweetly<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><br /><br />Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,<br />Break all our teacup talk of God.<br /><br />If you had the courage and<br />Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,<br />He would just drag you around the room<br />By your hair,<br />Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world<br />That bring you no joy.<br /><br />Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly<br />And wants to rip to shreds<br />All your erroneous notions of truth<br />That make you fight within yourself, dear one,<br />And with others,<br />Causing the world to weep<br />On too many fine days.<br /><br />God wants to manhandle us,<br />Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself<br />And practice His dropkick.<br /><br />The Beloved sometimes wants<br />To do us a great favor:<br />Hold us upside down<br />And shake all the nonsense out.<br /><br />But when we hear He is in such a "playful drunken mood"<br />Most everyone I know<br />Quickly packs their bags and hightails it<br />Out of town. <br />- The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky<br /><br /><br />easy sleep<br />easy rest<br /><br />easier to be an animal<br />than not - Jerome Rothenberg<br /><br />All the time I pray to Buddha I keep on killing mosquitoes. - Issa Kobayashi<br /><br />Outside of this Heart there is no Buddha<br />This Heart is the Buddha.<br />Outside of this heart there is no Demon<br />This heart is the Demon. - Huey Nin, the 6th Patriarch in the present era of <br />Dao lineage is credited with this quote.This quote was later expanded upon by <br />other Buddhas in the lineage of Dao to include the bottom two lines.<br /><br />"Man is an animal who feeds upon transcendentals." - Raissa Maritain<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Spiritual bypassing is a<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span> manic defense against depression and death, a denial of the realm of "pathos" - suffering in existence - from which the word "pathology" is derived, the path or pattern of suffering in being. Great Nature runs riot upon and within that which we project to be "transcendence" but, without a doubt, crushing dissolution, decay and ending is Nature's insistent way despite all our reification of wishful "happier" metaphysics - read "escapes" - bypassing inexorable existential givens. We choose to believe that these spiritually flavored subtleties of Imagination must concretely be true given understandable human desperation in the teeth of facticity, of throwness feet first or head long into the maws of life. Searching for transcendence long sought and hard fought for in the all too human act of artifice, art, alchemy and religion, in the depth cry toward surcease and significant if but momentary peace of mind and body, I no longer wonder that some are wont to take holy vows who, tipping Cosmic Cows (or piercing murderous bulls), cloak themselves in Blessed Silence, a long breath out-sleeved.<br /><br />There may be more to me and thee, O Mercurial Verities between How-and-Now Cows, than the undertaker's shovel and the deep blue sky and sea but I am a soul man, partial to soul, to space, to time, to locale, at more than a lover's quarrel with the world and very much at quarrel with spirit and entire "congregations of vapor" (Shakespeare). This argument is ongoing as it should be, at least for me. What follows here below are extensive quotes from thoughtful, clear-headed and compassionate writers who rediscover and sing/argue in the face of the bypassers (as are we all, truthfully, us "hopefully transcending ones") of and for the nobility inherent in suffering Creation and Her creatures, including humanity, as part of living and dying into and out of conscious existence.<br /><br />I begin with Alan Watt's: "Man has to discover that everything which he beholds in nature - the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean's depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets - has its counterpart within himself. He is not, then, at one with himself until he realizes that this "under side" of nature and the feelings of horror which it gives him are also "I". - <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Wisdom of Insecurity</span>, Chapter 7: "The Transformation of Life", p.111.<br /><br /><br />Charles Ponce, Jungian/archetypal astrologer and psychoanalyst, brilliantly writes, arights and reorients us very necessarily toward the urgencies and immediacy of Existence, of Nature in Her appeal, in Her drive for attestation as She is. I quote extensively here for it is a much needed compensation to the overly-inflated and hysterical spiritual bypass which is most certainly the manic "happy" newish religions and and bipolar (manic-depressive) culture of contemporary America):<br /><br />"...we rebel essentially against the autonomy of Nature, the natural breakdown of Nature, the need of Nature to relax into itself, even to collapse into itself in the way that trees retreat into themselves with the advent of Winter...We turn away from our bodies in illness and death not because we have resolved the issue of the wound, but because it is far easier to think of an afterlife, far less fearful and painful to surround ourselves with the good feeling that we may not only escape this life in one psychic piece, but that we will no longer have to concern ourselves with our physical humanity...This approach to death robs us of our tie to Nature, strips us of our humanity in favor of an exquisite angelology of the ego. It allows us to slip past the experience of the mystery: that the body is indeed a great temple which moves slowly towards a breakdown and dissolution. The alchemists knew this: that the soul cannot fly, cannot be released from the vessel until the body is broken down, dissolved, and even putrified. When you read the alchemists you will discover that this breakdown and dissolution is the beginning of the Great Work, and that without experiencing and seeing, watching and attending to this momentous operation--keeping the fire of heart and attention at the proper degree--nothing happens. The soul does not fly, the subtle body is not created, nor is the imagination which is the soul's experience of itself open to eternity. It is this focus on the body and the wound in both life and death that leads to the sacred marriage of the alchemists. Paracelsus stressed, "The eternal is a sign of the dissolution of Nature, and not the beginning of created things, and the end in all things which no nature is without...A true medicine and counseling should therefore be one that addresses the immediate, the body of things and the body, for if we really wish to enter into the eternal, see the universe in a grain of sand, we must in our imagination understand..the soul's expression of itself through body, and that woundedness, disease, and the putrefactio of our humanity are for us in the West ordained as the focus of a yoga that sees in these sufferings the gods we have rejected." -- Charles Ponce, from "Paracelsus and the Wound", <span style="font-weight: bold;">Working the Soul, Reflections on Jungian Psychology</span>, pgs. 25-26.<br /><br /><br />Ernest Becker: Sensitive souls have reacted with shock to the elemental drama of life on this planet...this bone-crushing, bone-drinking drama in all its elementality and necessity. Life cannot go on without the mutual devouring of organisms. If at the end of each person's life he were to be presented with the living spectacle of all that he had organismically incorporated in order to stay alive, he might well feel horrified by the living energy he had ingested. The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties full of pigs, and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening. To paraphrase Elias Canetti, each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good. -- Ernest Becker, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Escape From Evil</span>, pg.2<br /><br /><br />Guillermo Arriaga (transcribed from in interview): "...So I said, "I am going to be a boxer...so I began training hard and hard and suddenly I have a pain in my chest so I say, "It's nothing, a torn muscle," and so I began again and again, training, training, training, and I went to a doctor and say, "Yeah, you have a torn muscle." Wrong. I have an infection in my heart so I went to a cardiologist and he said, "I have good news and bad news...the good news is that you are not a hypochondriac. The bad news is that your heart is completely swollen and that you can have a heart attack maybe today, maybe tomorrow, I don't know. So you have to go to bed NOW." And so I say, "Fuck!" And so I watch my hands. I say, "My hands may be the hands of a corpse tomorrow.They will not move anymore tomorrow." So I make a commitment to caress the skins I have to caress, to beat with my hands those I have to beat, and to build something that will survive my hands," and that's when I began to write furiously without stopping and I have my studio full of skulls, not real ones but of wood, stone...and every time I get tired I say, "Arriaga, you are gonna die. You have to do something with your hands."<br /><br />So until now I have caressed the skins that I have to caress, I haven't beaten people that I like but I don't want to be violent anymore, and I have been writing since then. Thus, a personal fight against death...so I have two thoughts about pain--the first, the worst thing you can do with pain is not using it. You cannot waste pain. Another one is that pain is inevitable but suffering is a decision so I use pain for writing and every time I have pain I try to keep it and use it in a certain way...<br /><br />I personally believe that Death doesn't present once, it presents daily and I always think that Death has a giant tongue that licks you. For example, this [rubs his thinning hair] is death licking my hair and says, "You thought you were okay? Well, there goes your new look." And, uh, cellulite in women and tits going down, it's like Death licking and, you know, we men (makes a gesture of an erect penis deflating), is like wop! wop! wop!...and when you lose someone you love, a woman, you are carrying the corpse of someone you love inside you...<br /><br />They say that dust is skin flakes and I believe that every time<br />we wipe the dust we wipe the corpse of who we were at that time..."<br /><br />-- Guillermo Arriaga, acclaimed Mexican writer, in conversation with Paul Auster at 2007 PEN Writer's Conference, has written screenplays, Babel, Amores Perros, The Three Burials of Melchiades Estrada, 21 Grams, and more. Here is the weblink to hear the entire conversation:<br /><br />http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/auster_arriaga.mp3]<br /><br /><br />Alexis Zorba: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die?<br />Basil: I don't know.<br />Alexis Zorba: What's the use of all your damn books if they can't answer that?<br />Basil: They tell me about the agony of men who can't answer questions like yours.<br />Alexis Zorba: I spit on this agony!<br />-- from the film, Zorba the Greek, based upon the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis of the same title<br /><br />**********************<br /><br />My poem, <span style="font-style: italic;">Cleaning Fish On Good Friday,1963<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span>, mentioned in the prologue to the essay:<br /><br /><br />Fate, then, heavy in a boy's hand<br />hoists dead weight to a nail on a tree.<br />His knife scores firm flesh yielding<br />beneath freshly limp gills - there is an<br />instrument made just for this, pincher-pliers<br />for catfish skin - he grips and tears,<br />uses his weight down-stripping smoothly<br />bare to such luscence little ribs of roseate<br />flesh.<br /><br />Only the overly large head, the ugly face<br />whiskered within gilded monstrance,<br />remain pure to form, thin-lipped and<br />mocking, restrained by depth pressures,<br />sustained on surface trash, dead things<br />that sink down it's treasures.<br /><br />Tenderly sing, then, to a nail,<br />to a boy's blood catechism -<br />hands, minds, are meant<br />to be stained, mercy's quality<br />unstrained neither by will nor gill.<br />Scavenging flocks gladly fill their<br />gullets inhaling entrails tossed<br />in supplicant bins.<br /><br />In unison Gregorian they scream.<br /><br />**A catfish when brought to shore barks, a rasping, barking discharge of air.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-13493250900062914022023-12-28T19:31:00.000-08:002023-12-30T16:20:35.231-08:00An Unexpected World Previously Suspect, Definitely Infected, Then Definitively-Enough Inspected Via Prose, Psychology aka A Former Christian Consciously Reclaiming the Primal<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxd3gfKl326zNj_ATfkcd-j-obLjyyCab6M_BW3i2p5eQSich1GkhKAxxT7OsxSWvZgGxdQv8yUDJ0Zb1KTIGkkrKs5lqEnE0JCkevJl0GHxr5TcmJunKIBxdXc6fP0zTLDD50MQ21bYVkpxoYyyuehlvaH9DpHnCuOh8y4Di9gZhK7Ii_TdcAI1jjqD0/s824/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-25%20at%209.56.49%20PM.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="560" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxd3gfKl326zNj_ATfkcd-j-obLjyyCab6M_BW3i2p5eQSich1GkhKAxxT7OsxSWvZgGxdQv8yUDJ0Zb1KTIGkkrKs5lqEnE0JCkevJl0GHxr5TcmJunKIBxdXc6fP0zTLDD50MQ21bYVkpxoYyyuehlvaH9DpHnCuOh8y4Di9gZhK7Ii_TdcAI1jjqD0/w273-h400/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-25%20at%209.56.49%20PM.jpeg" width="273" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">A World Unsuspected: Portraits of Southern Childhood edited by Alex Jones, 1987.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">The gift that keeps on giving - one of my most favorite Christmas presents ever - besides the ultimate which was the utterly unexpected and dreamed of telescope my father got me for Christmas 1966, I believe. There's a photo of it and me near Cape Canaveral with Ellen Collins from my journalism class. Dad drove me and some journalism class students (about 7 in all along with my younger brother Richard) to Florida to watch the launch of either Apollo 7 or 8. The launch was seen from where we were for only 8 seconds or so because there was pouring rain and low clouds. But NASA in its weather wisdom was go for a launch. Suffice it to say, 8 seconds of fire and smoke and a mocking distant and distancing rumble was sloppy seconds. So it goes, or went. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn't realize it then but Ellen was "sweet on me" but my head then was in the stars (obsessed with astronomy) and Jesus mud (pervades the air down South) and up mine own frightened arse so much so that infatuation of hers, Ellen's, with addled me "went over like a pregnant pole vaulter."</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyhow, the telescope rules for childhood/teen gift, and in adult-enough Christmas this book A World Unexpected: Portraits of Southern Childhood, an anthology, was given to me by an older brother in 1987. He and I, exiles from the South, and childhood in specifics too numerous to recount here, were voracious readers and aspiring (well, I was aspirating) writers and, with physical distance out of the South, post Nam where he was a chaplain's assistant, he had Philadelphia and a radical Jesus (Nam woke him up out of the Calvinista haze/craze), and I had my own self-exile from the "Christhaunted Landscape of the South" (Flannery O'Connor's very accurate summation of the infernal sump "sodden toward corn pone" (sorry Mr. Eliot), and tons of books, poetry, and some long enough employment at psychiatric places, institutes, mental health centers, half-way houses, juvenile detention centers, etc. to know, rather, to have repeated confirmation that I was "a lost fart in a catastrophic whirlwind" (a dream of my father as a massive hurricane covering the entire Gulf Ocean almost hitting the USA Gulf coast where he was born); all the psychiatric jobs were therapeutic for me, I felt that I was a patient or resident the entire time only I had the keys to the wards and could come and go. Thank you sweet Jeebus. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZLC1HdvN3ium2ZKbBwnfxF6uW_jm6IcCM63G49v5YP6l166MsII9muxsKR49gwD-2l-LtEu5-k9xEIRO3aen2hKp7VS_NPJQI5lSmC5hXNIUdUTVkaWx7S7JJ0vcGZhIKBohhzHZezb3wsUWWLAQuUwIOK9FqRPLTyz59t_4RtBjdIHxShoFsS67Kl5w/s1288/WF_Z8.tif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1288" data-original-width="718" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZLC1HdvN3ium2ZKbBwnfxF6uW_jm6IcCM63G49v5YP6l166MsII9muxsKR49gwD-2l-LtEu5-k9xEIRO3aen2hKp7VS_NPJQI5lSmC5hXNIUdUTVkaWx7S7JJ0vcGZhIKBohhzHZezb3wsUWWLAQuUwIOK9FqRPLTyz59t_4RtBjdIHxShoFsS67Kl5w/s320/WF_Z8.tif" width="178" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Telescope and Moi at Cape Canaveral, FL for Apollo Launch. 1967</span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">So, I fled the expected catastrophe of the South (but not of myself) to the unexpected world of New York City, arriving NOT without projections, all positive, the first being that there were months of piled and piling snow! Within two months I began Jungian analysis which was one of the primary goals of getting to NYC. I had discovered Jung while in high school, senior year, only two paragraphs in a high school psychology textbook, laughably paltry offering that book was in retrospect, surprised that there was a class called psychology back then, but I got what I needed from the class and the book - two paragraphs about Carl Gustav Jung, complexes (he coined the term) and archetypes (he renewed and expanded the word's meaning and usage). BINGO.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Time passed. Then there was a woman (still best friends), I'll call her Evangeline, who strayed into the Christian college I then attended in Tennessee early 1970's; she arrived from NYC for only a year then fled! I am convinced, no, I know, that she wound up there, predestined!, only to meet me as my "Anima-as-Fate" (sorry Ellen Collins) and gave me, ushered me (chastely) into, the projected and hopefully to be gained or at least cozied up to "world of art, literature, jazz, culture, et. al. and international culture" available out one's door in NYC. A one woman missionary who by just being herself with me was graduate school level (for me, probably kindergarten) education. Gertrude Stein? WHOOO? John Coltrane? WHOOO? Henry Cowell? WHOOO? and on and on. Virginia Wolfe? (I did know Edward Albee's play from high school but had no idea that who Virginia Wolfe was a real person).</span></span></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA5X07z-zfeQOvz4ZcFZZquYyfPqgmYC0lKAzeToyqyq58XMHI0CKDAmMoZMJP4y7hNPIIBIa5-C1OR7uMKKJBb6nUePf_Eg95qTD5EpEy0VutXnOBbga5rDsOh_sRmLqliu8H1dC45mw94q0XghMvG_qZQ9qSIfhqWumYrL5NB1fAG1o3Po4WIVlczpg/s752/Warren%20Cov.%20Col.%201970.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="418" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA5X07z-zfeQOvz4ZcFZZquYyfPqgmYC0lKAzeToyqyq58XMHI0CKDAmMoZMJP4y7hNPIIBIa5-C1OR7uMKKJBb6nUePf_Eg95qTD5EpEy0VutXnOBbga5rDsOh_sRmLqliu8H1dC45mw94q0XghMvG_qZQ9qSIfhqWumYrL5NB1fAG1o3Po4WIVlczpg/s320/Warren%20Cov.%20Col.%201970.png" width="178" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Moi. Freshman in college. Green, how I want you green. Fall 1970.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">One day Evangeline mentioned Carl Gustav Jung after I had mentioned a dream that the night before, a big dream, apocalyptic, shook me to the core, a tidal waves washing over the tall mountain that the college was located on; in the dream I could only watch that massive wave coming closer and closer, then feel the college trembling, hear the oncoming roar, screams. I rushed to a refrigerator in the college kitchen in hopes to somehow survive the wave. I opened the fridge door only to see one of the then "most spiritual" women students of the college hunkered over frozen raw meat stuffing her face like a starving animal, a wild look in her bulging eyes. [NOTE: as a Christian one is told not to feed the appetites, not to desire "the flesh"....in retrospect my Anima was ravenous to feed! my instinctual self was deprived (I was terrified of those instincts), for godssakes and zooks, I was 20 years old!].</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Evangeline asked me if I had read Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections [almost wrote "Desire"]. No. I hadn't, wrote it down in my journal then and there and later headed to the college library to see if it was there. NOT. So hitch-hiked down the mountain into the city to a shopping mall that did have the book. I purchased 2 others that had a big impact then and there and ongoingly, Fritz Perl's 2 books on Gestalt Therapy, his autobiography, "In and Out of the Garbage Pail" (that "pail" being the Freudian unconscious - place of repressed gunk and stank and DESIRE - and his "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim" which, upon reading, was immediately useable in that I could dialogue with dream figures, complexes, etc. and actually gain some real ground, at least a sand bar (after the tidal wave dream) to wiggle my wolf claws in).</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">So. Time progresses back to me newly in NYC, out of the South and I</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">With the anamnesis that is psychoanalysis, memory is supreme, with dreams giving narratives beneath ego memories and narratives of life experiences, and so the South and I were slouching (no Bethlehem in sight) "on the Jungian couch" (Zurich WAS in sight, sorta) - my analyst sat at one end and I at the other - not a Freudian couch situation though there was plenty talk of early childhood, parents, clan, community. Sex, sure cuz John Calvin ruled and still rules the South (and makes existentialists out of those who have fled, Calvin and Camus, nanook nanook, abandon all hope for an ongoing lifetime of theological rope-a-dope having grown "an arm to box with God, the odd odd assortment of them, variations on a theme evolving/devolving, distorting perfectly marvelous words like "grace" "renewal" et. al. into weaponized (a word used too much these days) self-hatred as the flavour du-jour Western Deity tormented and teased.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">My analyst, Bertine (not her real name), was patient enough with me. I now feel badly for her since I couldn't figure out shit from peanut butter then - am a bit more nuanced now - jar of jam nearby for frequent assistance. It didn't register to me when with her that she had studied and trained with both Gordon Allport AND Carl Rogers. After some years of clinical practice she trained to become a Jungian analyst (9 years of training!).</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Poor Bertine. Had to put up with me, my acting out but not knowing such as not showing up for sessions (and not paying for missed sessions). Last minute cancellations. Again, not paying for the missed sessions. I think she knew I'd probably bolt in rebellion, etc. Blah blah. God bless her. I was hard work and didn't know it. Had no idea, really, what therapy sessions were about, the rules, expectations, etc. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">So, not quite yet fired by Evangeline, 1987 and Christmas, and A World Unsuspected happened which confirmed that I was not the only basket case out of the South and "so-called" Christianity which is as predictable as the violence it does to countless hordes, "soul murder", what a very helpful to me book calls pathological Christianity - which presumes there is it's better alter - but I'm not interested though my psyche has this obstinate, obdurate Christian part that I've had to learn to live with, make room for, along with many other parts that "don't hold with that Fundamentalist stuff", in other words, I've had to expand a sense of self, have had to allow for its inevitable pushing the perimeters beyond the "official ones" sanctified by sect and society. All this from my learning that the Psyche indeed contains worlds" and, like Whitman, I, me, Warkles of the Wasteland, contain worlds...the trick is not to get inflated over the largeness that ego is but a part of (vitally since ego = consciousness). Dreams are part of that largeness as well as personal narratives which offer new thread lines from previous narratives which are not forgotten or rejected but included as the narrative life continues on.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Time presently presents NOW ellipses....</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">....So, every Christmas I make sure to reread parts of Alex Jones offerings of various Southern writers mostly from the second half, some from last third, of the 20th Century.</span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdzwWUIJ_XGjYhHlX21gIkgBM4Nic8G1LwzL4cuWJwgQWd7A76I5bywSkP18y9qikqJ-spQg_0GAu4rWYYak0bTNosmigcqNG9LEp9ENRCOXNqtIYGWXUyXJKKucf6nMttj1W5olluYtDPMKUC1ei5hTkSDDuNZaggGyQEZY0DJhPpUawYLNft2f_J0aI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><img alt="" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="560" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdzwWUIJ_XGjYhHlX21gIkgBM4Nic8G1LwzL4cuWJwgQWd7A76I5bywSkP18y9qikqJ-spQg_0GAu4rWYYak0bTNosmigcqNG9LEp9ENRCOXNqtIYGWXUyXJKKucf6nMttj1W5olluYtDPMKUC1ei5hTkSDDuNZaggGyQEZY0DJhPpUawYLNft2f_J0aI=w310-h400" width="310" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">First page of Padget Powll's "Hitting Back"</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Two screen grabs (grabbed from the book online) are 1) ofo William Carlos Williams from whence the book title derives, and then the opening two paragraphs of Padgett Powell's autobiographical accounts of Southern childhood. And a photo of me near Canaveral, my bro on the right. I have a photo of me and Ellen with the telescope, me grimacing but now sure why. I'll search for that. But that gift from my father - "fear was my father, father fear"— Theodore Roethke - was, looms still, massively, conveys that he actually did "see" or "get" and support a vital part of who I was then and now. And this was a man of his generation without a psychological bone in his body. I'll call it, intuition. And picked up enough that there was love after all. But the Hurricane was too big. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">And if Perls and others are correct, that one is everything in the dream then, gulp, I too am that Hurricane. I too am that Tidal Wave. I too am that violent Deity of the West. I am that young "spiritual woman" (who later committed suicide). Makes me sit up straight, alert. Check with her in fridge and see if I've at least consciously fed her, satisfied her, quelled her terror, made her confident enough that I can manage catastrophe, develop capacities to do so, not perfectly...and not hide out in the fridge or Christianity or alternative bastions.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">NOTE: I once did a gestalt and became that tidal wave and was AWED by "my" POWER, the physical sense, and learned that I had to ground and let that power flow....great stuff, psychology. Saved my life. Does so still. Not pushing it though. 2 paragraphs, anima-as-fate and exile, new territory of "the couch" and reframing the fridge, the meat, and on and on.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Did I mention Moby Dick? Melville? how that White Whale and I had, and have, ongoing business. My inner Ismael and Ahab, that real "god-man figure", Queequeg? NO? Just did. All that for another account.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Here's a link to the book online...not sure it's still in print :</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/worldunsuspected00harr/page/14/mode/1up">https://archive.org/details/worldunsuspected00harr/page/14/mode/1up</a></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFsu9Qc-92TTSzm1eg4Ol8GFTRolx1_CniOGDuzXKySMDTvCjvf_9iJ-TGqCuDbx9TfNNnyc4Ru4h0ChtuV6GhjJgEk7TyohyphenhyphenVO_cAVbhDf4YpoVDY3LY1on3gHcsHEB20PJi7ufYAj2cLDi5dodGLb48j8UMhuPvfT-pHzXpJvLTabVMfS08zj_AebPw/s2682/IMG_6559.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2306" data-original-width="2682" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFsu9Qc-92TTSzm1eg4Ol8GFTRolx1_CniOGDuzXKySMDTvCjvf_9iJ-TGqCuDbx9TfNNnyc4Ru4h0ChtuV6GhjJgEk7TyohyphenhyphenVO_cAVbhDf4YpoVDY3LY1on3gHcsHEB20PJi7ufYAj2cLDi5dodGLb48j8UMhuPvfT-pHzXpJvLTabVMfS08zj_AebPw/s320/IMG_6559.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Waiting out covid treks. Dirt road edged in green. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">And me, myself and hobblegangers.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Early spring 2020. Keene, NY</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO3Q-veLMKmPkIWrocQXLsLVaT77gbv32Ck6uxLVzdEcJTztHB6OJHrvjfhVktLT8k3cDT_L8E09tmnxZRDl5pKpBdZZIo3fOLAO5MZ3l-bj_QIT8NxBeKBn4BDOWLqT78_JeM6yvq-2Y2mxCqiCt1m5yYl_k6-4pvjlWnMpz4rmsz3cPdLdOgRieb4aI/s2736/IMG_6884.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="2736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO3Q-veLMKmPkIWrocQXLsLVaT77gbv32Ck6uxLVzdEcJTztHB6OJHrvjfhVktLT8k3cDT_L8E09tmnxZRDl5pKpBdZZIo3fOLAO5MZ3l-bj_QIT8NxBeKBn4BDOWLqT78_JeM6yvq-2Y2mxCqiCt1m5yYl_k6-4pvjlWnMpz4rmsz3cPdLdOgRieb4aI/s320/IMG_6884.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">"Warren-tining" summer 2020. Keene, New York.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Life, dear Barcelona, is sweet..</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">One endures long enough to break through thunder, </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">a taut belly, a smooth place for lips to land.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">One may reach a Pure Land which has no logic, </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">the tedious seasons of a long life endured.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Still, one gathers names of each joven prince</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">passed beneath loving, yes, arduous hands.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">Again, upon Kingfisher's wings I blow these kisses, </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">this music, your patient ear awaiting the purist pearl, </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">for you were once the bequeathed, escaped girl</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">without fear of oceans, this one between us which</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">now must be overflown to reach you.</span></span></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-3774470335449659612023-12-12T21:20:00.000-08:002023-12-12T21:33:10.245-08:00First Prolegomena To All Future Resistance - More from "Pissoirs Du Mal —Journal Des Les Moineaux (Urinals of Evil — Journal of the Sparrows)" by Pere Bleubols<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbMYQjYRl1KVIDpHVDCdFf4VMwHNtTPJiz2ezDqGSVU2dlb5TzrfOoV0OopUE71m_t8zaWPIA0ui_ai1u1VwSBnjtwOCEv135wNB0eBZjGmmq5E2L5rkC28fRxZuGfd3MM4p9uSQzjfi44XxSQ_rveQeO1ooaWNP8l7ilN5qN0wq8l6BdNL802u8zaLgc/s960/Hotel%20meets%20construction%20DF%20@%20night.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbMYQjYRl1KVIDpHVDCdFf4VMwHNtTPJiz2ezDqGSVU2dlb5TzrfOoV0OopUE71m_t8zaWPIA0ui_ai1u1VwSBnjtwOCEv135wNB0eBZjGmmq5E2L5rkC28fRxZuGfd3MM4p9uSQzjfi44XxSQ_rveQeO1ooaWNP8l7ilN5qN0wq8l6BdNL802u8zaLgc/w320-h240/Hotel%20meets%20construction%20DF%20@%20night.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Media noche de Distrito Federales, Mexico City, Mexico, December 2008</div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br />"It is night and now do all sleeping fountains wake." --<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span>Zarathustra</span>, in <span>Nietzsche's</span> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Thus Spake Zarathustra</span><br /><br />A Rule to break: Let sleeping dogs lie. -- <span style="font-style: italic;">Folk saying</span><br /><br />A Rule to Follow: "Now, gods, stand up for bastards." -- Edmond, in <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">King Lear</span> by William Shakespeare<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: 28.799999237060547px;">N</span></span></span>ow enter Diogenes Teufelsdrochk (taken from Thomas Carlyle's nom de plume for his satire, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored)</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Diogenes </span><span>in Greek means<span style="font-style: italic;"> god begotten</span>. </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Teufelsdrockh</span> translates from the German as <span style="font-style: italic;">donkey dung"</span>.<br /><br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">God Begotten Donkey Dung blinking awake from sleep</span>) "Damn those fountains! Can't a man sleep for godsakes? Burbling away all night while silent by day!! What was the dream?...ah...yes...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br />here</span></span><table border="0" style="height: 178px; width: 481px;"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><br />in</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />this</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />dream</span><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td><td><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: 20.799999237060547px;">I</span></span></span> have fallen out of heaven. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Yea, verily, I have been thrown out by the very deities I tried to play footsies with who acted like they wanted it and then offended angels perceiving me a human rival tossed my fleece socks down upon me as an afterthought. Not a kindness, mind, but an insult to socks and sockitude and what they do. Still, the hurt is and was immense here now hanging on at the familiar perimeter, the Fenetre Fence, recompense for my offending hubris. And all I did was suggest! In the concrete world of Heaven suggestions are creations, coagulate accretions taken for fundamentals. There there is no poetry. No art. A fart becomes instantly too, too solid. Becomes reality creation. Becomes <span style="font-style: italic;">manifest</span> and a curse upon Heaven and Earth for we are tempted to think that whatever is thought is a hard thing. This is a temptation. One of the worst and is an idolatry most foul.<br /><br />It is the human imagination which is most truly, profoundly creative, with subtleties upon subtleties unfolding, infolding. Resonances unending. Effulgent, ever indulgent in proliferation of World and worlds and gradations never fading except into pastel shades hinting in visual whispers, <span style="font-style: italic;">"There is more...</span>"<br /><br />Whereas Heaven, Nirvana, icey and cold, is mute. Dumb as a box of hair. Hard as a brainpan.<br /><br />Overtones and resonance. I tried to bring these to Heaven, along with my socks. Besides, my feet are warm, and Theirs? The Deities'? Cold as purity. Unyielding and smooth as plaster, all shape and shine yet no heat. No warmth at all. There is no place for feet in Heaven. Thus the angels, those feathery toadstools forever floating, all flame and flicker with not even a flint of spark in them, they are symbols perhaps for something Other-than-Matter supposed to convey something of Beyondness to us down here, solid substantial makers of something out of existence in the abjection and the abstraction, imaginations on real fire heating real flesh reaching into and warming many dimensions but let's not do that thing which Heaven does, reify and therefore deify and turn everything stone cold in a second and then call it religion, spirituality.<br /><br />So much for Heaven's Spiraled Gate where all my life entire I all-too-humanly, always overwrought, have waited looking through the bars, a dumb ox in human form stubbornly staring in, yet again not having learned that once inside the Gate and amongst the Heavenly Company it is not at all as it appears to be from the outside despite the aroma of saffron and sage, myrr and milk.<br /><br />The roses there have no pricks. But let me tell you, pricks will out!!<br /><br />The rose petal, the gossamer wide skirt of the appointed (usually <span style="font-style: italic;">self</span>-appointed) pope, or popette, at first billows invitingly as container and sustainer, the very breadth and breath of wisdom, o the power and the glory (dost thou know that <span style="font-style: italic;">glory, gloria</span> etymologically means, reputation? There is much shadow in this but tis disguised by millenia of angels, bloody footless featherdusters, descanting "gloria, gloria in excelsis deo". There's Ego in Heaven after all with such need for singing, nay, insistent repetitive shouting, of Divine Reputation. Boasting, it is. And very unbecoming of Deity...) but, soon, soon, all too soon, the Shadow slithers forth from beneath the Skirt revealing that even Paradise in its heights cannot escape the Law of Compensation and thus that which is in the depths, the repressed and scapegoated Shadow, veritable Lucifer, o'retakes the wings and belfries, even the shade beneath the Throne, O Rorschach, and some one or two or a group become It's emissary and thus the ancient drama of the conflict within God, spread out and played out amongst humans, continues unabated and, until Carl Jung, remains mostly unconscious or, if explained, is rejected as false because the belief is that God, the god-image, is perfect, whole, unblemished and complete. The All Good UH-OH.<br /><br />Exuent Diogenes Teufelsdrochk.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span>[</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">An interjection here from Harvey Cox regarding New Age capitalism's desacralization of the authentically sacred; he is addressing the commodification of Asian religions - but his critique most certainly resonates with Christianitys and the hourly, countless "flavours du jour" unleashed upon the world (of course, "for its own Good") — OY! OY! - by profligate Protestan-tisms which have adulterated and reduced Martin Luther's "the priesthood of all believers" (which attempted, still does, to readdress Catholic doctrine that only an ordained male priest can mediate between God and humans) to what very truly a monstrous "beasthood of all believers" each armed with a Bible proclaiming their interpretation of said Holy Book to be the "one and only true and absolute" "revealed personally to each and every (no matter the Babel/Babble shouted and battled)" so REPENT! yada yada, yada yada ya DA!</span>:</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguOQzb_Jmx5XfSzsz_9-G1Pofcvd2JtN7h0e7o6HqIzA_3bjHknDe_gkZrBQKDZE41M3F8mvhoDP28IurmVN-9bEk_sc-2wr1gvzrOCe8-rkdDJp01j7GKlDEx4n0Qn2VEHpo1zX7LD1LMSNrOXO-tSxKU_b_Pb5fkekf6LGDFoy1LM3U5W963BCpGkvQ/s1496/Screen%20Shot%202023-10-31%20at%203.22.33%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1496" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguOQzb_Jmx5XfSzsz_9-G1Pofcvd2JtN7h0e7o6HqIzA_3bjHknDe_gkZrBQKDZE41M3F8mvhoDP28IurmVN-9bEk_sc-2wr1gvzrOCe8-rkdDJp01j7GKlDEx4n0Qn2VEHpo1zX7LD1LMSNrOXO-tSxKU_b_Pb5fkekf6LGDFoy1LM3U5W963BCpGkvQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-10-31%20at%203.22.33%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqitTt7yCn-l4RRNArSMWgoGZa6dHcfo41baFZAIS-qslogdo6U7z2b371ES7YokmRt42z4OSfaFEwcSM-5dwhE-_X26_r9rdPGScAwJUMmgXea1zZSHQPGMK6pb-RPWdN5JfnMETypMLD1VYiOlLKIRCW4lftAM4nlyRnC5iQIEVNamc9rnWKGKtHIM/s1478/Screen%20Shot%202023-10-31%20at%203.23.02%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="1478" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqitTt7yCn-l4RRNArSMWgoGZa6dHcfo41baFZAIS-qslogdo6U7z2b371ES7YokmRt42z4OSfaFEwcSM-5dwhE-_X26_r9rdPGScAwJUMmgXea1zZSHQPGMK6pb-RPWdN5JfnMETypMLD1VYiOlLKIRCW4lftAM4nlyRnC5iQIEVNamc9rnWKGKtHIM/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-10-31%20at%203.23.02%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWJlieA3UMQrXpr78EFckNigFpCwm3Jtpzs93t_QGvN3DOa9dsXg3_QnGHti_HYVaYMpSGNWBCDlHjsvI4R_Ektk2xZCIsLI9WhNtPzfUNP7s6Natjr2slG-B7bp8RSwn1yPhSjC8gAXK_K4OKbHkfr1QxBCXCJPVRGaOVAwSfatFeAVJke205C5N8_wE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="1463" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWJlieA3UMQrXpr78EFckNigFpCwm3Jtpzs93t_QGvN3DOa9dsXg3_QnGHti_HYVaYMpSGNWBCDlHjsvI4R_Ektk2xZCIsLI9WhNtPzfUNP7s6Natjr2slG-B7bp8RSwn1yPhSjC8gAXK_K4OKbHkfr1QxBCXCJPVRGaOVAwSfatFeAVJke205C5N8_wE" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifJuP1dtb_2x5LgTNKirJC8MLH9DdXycdMKeJcYfPdB6QJWn8ZhdtqKvIMiN-lTkV-wCux0jyS2uH3OVZCUJs-QdW7tzPWCOwD-tH8b6bH7pCKmdKhZXcs6_fVOEW_eWcRzJNoTIeMUPQ2fZw6PXAYQ2IoEaGJjSnAVQycIXtOK8BgonMjx42SR7JsR80" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1496" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifJuP1dtb_2x5LgTNKirJC8MLH9DdXycdMKeJcYfPdB6QJWn8ZhdtqKvIMiN-lTkV-wCux0jyS2uH3OVZCUJs-QdW7tzPWCOwD-tH8b6bH7pCKmdKhZXcs6_fVOEW_eWcRzJNoTIeMUPQ2fZw6PXAYQ2IoEaGJjSnAVQycIXtOK8BgonMjx42SR7JsR80" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div>"If there is any fault to be allocated, it lies not with the victims [of commercialization of spiritualities] but with the buyer-seller nexus within which the new Oriental religious wave is marketed. Despite what may be good intentions all around, the consumer mentality can rot the fragile fruits of Eastern spirituality as soon as they are unpacked. The process is both ironic and pathetic. What begins in Benares as a protest against possessiveness ends up in Boston as still another possession. Dark Kali, the great and terrible destroyer, whose very glance can melt the flesh of the strongest warrior, whose slightest breath can stop the pulse and paralyze the soul, finds herself dangling from bracelets with all the other charms. </div></span><div></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br />No deity however terrible, no devotion however deep, no ritual however splendid is exempt from the voracious process of trivialization. The smiling Buddha himself and the worldly-wise Krishna can be transformed by the new gluttony into collectors' trinkets. It was bad enough for King Midas that everything he touched turned to gold; the acquisition-accumulation pattern of the new gluttony does even more. Reversing the alchemist's course, it transforms rubies and emeralds into plastic, the sacred into the silly, the holy into the hokey...(a) changing of the gods into consumer software..." —pg. 134, <strong><em>Turning East, The Promise and Peril of the New Orientalism</em></strong>, Harvey Cox, Simon and Schuster, 1975.<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">]</span></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Ak4gD8DmFHs9vL3BwtNT7feZohSesTIqK7tP5VuGsymeuEwr-9doZ_OOcIOy5zCBuksumxXAauLWC1hArpGGIojgradGTWUyxFKnlCxvUofnUTMk70GhWNJPQgjKXlEIiBwb59EnAvzHWrcQ45zVetZhIpvnsJsFSCABcIykN1CSP2OLQJJo2aognWE/s2736/IMG_6803.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="2736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Ak4gD8DmFHs9vL3BwtNT7feZohSesTIqK7tP5VuGsymeuEwr-9doZ_OOcIOy5zCBuksumxXAauLWC1hArpGGIojgradGTWUyxFKnlCxvUofnUTMk70GhWNJPQgjKXlEIiBwb59EnAvzHWrcQ45zVetZhIpvnsJsFSCABcIykN1CSP2OLQJJo2aognWE/s320/IMG_6803.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Mountain weather near the Hermitage </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.399998664855957px;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">Le Cav de L'Autodactyl somewhere in</span></b></i></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.399998664855957px; text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-family: times;"> remote Adirondacks</span></b></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div>All photos by Warren Falcon<br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-40908416697920442612023-12-12T09:36:00.000-08:002023-12-12T16:03:48.997-08:00Reprise of "From Kansas-to-Other-and-Altar-wise, Personal Experiences and Observations in a Mexican Curanderismo Clinic - Part One"<div>NOTE: I am republishing my first blogspot essay published February 1, 2008. What follows does not include my lengthy introductory remarks in the original written and published fifteen years ago. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sad to say that curandera/healing woman Bety Ramos of Oaxaca, Mexico died in the winter of 2013<b> </b>after a diagnosis 3 years earlier of brain cancer She had surgery which removed a tennis ball size tumor from the right lower quadrant at the back of the brain. I met her only a few times after her surgery which greatly changed her vibrant and wild personality into a sweet, radiant gentle presence. <br /><br />In my years of work with her she would often ask me to "see" if there was any cancer in her body, she was extremely intuitive from her curandismo work with dreams, cartas, "seer" abilities and so, in retrospect, must have intuited the cancer some years ahead of her actual diagnosis. I never "saw" cancer in the abdomen area which she was always pointing to when asking me if I could detect cancer. The cancer occurred in her brain, alas. When I work as a curandero I will often enough "hear" pre-cancer Bety participating in my work with the person I am with. She was loud, direct, blunt, took no prisoners and her bedside manner was "not for sissies"...her humor and compassion were evident and abundant. Her adoration of the divine deep and authentic.</div><div><br /></div><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div>Part One</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8fbzKfa2FB1s7MIQfN7ntQU6l0oBc2x8FzCzjo41RfAWFzwftbmTF8lfp3KbJuLAyZSWJDXRbYON-Z7XT_tJ2_VD1n12MG04iF2eBzgd2KhueIAeUCSbF_HjEebJMZeJjPyXNuWt4DLgwGYn2GCy9bRM14mdJMoTAwroTG1wydbsDhNiBMi-ZFNfaBAQ/s1244/Screen%20Shot%202023-07-25%20at%206.00.12%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="928" data-original-width="1244" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8fbzKfa2FB1s7MIQfN7ntQU6l0oBc2x8FzCzjo41RfAWFzwftbmTF8lfp3KbJuLAyZSWJDXRbYON-Z7XT_tJ2_VD1n12MG04iF2eBzgd2KhueIAeUCSbF_HjEebJMZeJjPyXNuWt4DLgwGYn2GCy9bRM14mdJMoTAwroTG1wydbsDhNiBMi-ZFNfaBAQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-07-25%20at%206.00.12%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">Bety Ramos, curandera, taking a break on the patio </div><div style="text-align: center;">just outside her 'templo' (temple).</div><br /><br />When I step into the curandismo (healing) clinic door a woman looks up from her tarot cards where she sits with a distressed young woman. I ask for Bety. She shouts to Bety who's not in the room that a man is here for her. Bety shouts back, "What?" "A man is here to see you!! a gringo!!" I hear a toilet flush, a door quickly creaks and in runs Bety literally pulling up her pants and trying to fasten them while trying to reach for me as she runs toward me. Laughter, hugs, kisses. She jokes about needing a good man, a good tall gringo (she's about 4 feet tall), and then, suddenly quiet, grabs my hand and pulls me to the enormous altar which has at its center a statue of the angel Metatron, often called Santa Muerte in Mexico and other Latin and South American cultures. Metatron is draped in a red royal cape, wears a crown and holds in one of its hands a small globe of the planet along with pesos, dollars, photos of supplicants/healees and ribbons of various colors with amulets pinned to them and in the other is a sickel for harvest, an implement of the Divine Will.<br /><br />Bety quietly says, "Salute Metatron who brought you here." I stand before Metatron with Bety who makes the Catholic sign of the Cross as do I (a lapsed and wounded protestant from the American South!). We both pray before the altar which is loaded with smaller statues of Metatron along with other icons and images among burning candles of various colors and sizes. The wall behind the altar (a kind of small bleecher) has many images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Jesus, Mary and various saints. Above the altar is an image of the Eye of God (see photo of the altar) which is an eye in a clear pyramid with a circular aura of golden flames radiating out from it denoting the omnipotence, omnipresense, and omniscience of the Creator, It's power and the glory over and within all in the flames presumably spread throughout the universe and, most importantly, immanating from this altar and in this space in Southern Mexico. I experience the energy from the altar as a wave as I begin to feel a great calm upon entering the clinic.<br /><br />I give thanks to Metatron and the Eye for this safe journey to Mexico and to Bety. I ask for healing as my past year has been difficult, a year of living in the harsh piecing penetrating gaze of the Eye in its judgemental aspect, an Eye which demands to reveal what has been concealed, an Eye which easily mugs individuals and groups who sit in harsh and hysterical judgment over self and others in unconscious identity with that Eye of God archetype. I ask for awareness of my own identification with the archetypal Eye.<br /><br />I ask for opening of heart, mind and body to accept healing and to allow healing energy to move through me. I ask for the growing capacity to hold my contradictions of both instinctual (unconscious) and conscious nature which are by very nature in conflict. I acknowledge that I no longer strive for perfection in any Judeo-Christian sense or New Age or other transcendent systems' sense seeking to annihilate and war with agressive instinctuality and the primal parts of my self. I also acknowledge that I no longer seek to be "spiritual" (interpreted here as "Eye of God" identified and thus inflated and destructively dangerous) which often exacerbates the internal conflict and self hatred via identifying with either one or the other side thus driving a further wedge in the creaturely divide that I/we all are. I seek to expand and embrace all parts of me that can be embraced and "welcome at the table,"especially the parts which will not be rehabilitated, baptised, sanitized or sterilized by some good spiritual agenda, program, process or other.<br /><br />Jungian analyst, Edward F. Edinger likens the instinctual side of humans as protoplasm. Protoplasm are primary organisms possessed of innate drives to survive and thrive on fundamental life levels. He speaks of this protoplasmic nature within humans as concupicense, lust, and the desire/will for power-over and autonomy. He speaks of the naturalness of this protoplasm we are and of it's conflict with the also natural rational-conscious creature we are. The human challenge is to live with both while growing consciousness onward within and through this conflict of the opposites. Each person partakes of this necessary ongoing evolution of consciousness. My personal journey has most certainly seen this and thus standing before this strange and powerful altar whose central icon is a skeletal angel draped in a red robe holding a sickle overlooked by "the Eye of God" which is way beyond the cultural paradigms of my community and education speaks to the conscious protoplasm of me growing/evolving difficult and necessary transformations of awareness with consequent impacts upon worldview and lifestyle. Aware of such impacts I have arrived at a very different location internally and externally. While in Bety's clinic, to echo Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, "I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto." Bety, Metatron and "the Eye" attest to that. And the burning at my third eye. Bety is a seer and thus works with that third eye of her apprentices.<br /><br />This sense of place or change of place, from an inner Kansas to Other and Altarwise is essential to human experience. I read somewhere (and am still seeking the source of the quote) that "more than food, shelter, sex and companionship orientation is the most basic instinctual need of humans." Laurens van der Post in his eloquent biography of Jung says that stone age people, "the people of the First Light," felt at home in and always experienced a feeling of being known by the universe. I quote, "They (the stone age people) gave out [a feeling]of utterly belonging to life and time and nature...I found that even though they themselves may not know much, they had no doubt of being fully known wherever they went." (pg. 102, Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post). I will add here that requisite to becoming and being a person "of power" in the don Juan/Castaneda sense, the magical sorcerer/shaman sense, is this experience and assumption of "being known" and at home in the universe. Thus the archetype of "the Eye" in its dual aspect which sees and knows in its piercing fierce seeing and in its embracing, compassionate, locating gaze. This experience of "being known" is an arrival, an acquisition from deep inner work and, often enough, from harrowing life experiences. I believe that the interest of many contemporary Westerners in shamanism, curandismo and other "ancient techniques" and their worldviews is motivated by and from this primal need for orientation, for being known and to know experientially one's place or home in the universe and to know the universe and it's manifestations as a Thou which is, as Martin Buber says in his book, <b>I and Thou</b>, an experience of all of creation and creatures as persons/Thous, not as objects or Its. A "person of knowledge" is known by the universe and knows a sense of place in it. Thus the exact appropriateness of the Eye of God over Bety's altar. Everything else upon the altar is mediation, each icon, candle, amulet, prayer ribbon or card mediates and manifests this presense and glory of God-as-Eye in material creation.<br /><br />A few observations on altars in Mexico<br /><br />I spend alot of time in cathedrals, churches and chapels when in Mexico for the Catholicism there is infused with the old gods and old religion. On this recent trip I began to see that the main altar is a totem pole of power and function. At the bottom, or near to the totem pole altar there is usually some image/statue of Mother Mary, then Jesus, then the Holy Spirit then highest at the top either a masculine image of God the Father or a mandala circle, in its center is "the Eye" like the sun with golden rays radiating out all around presumably over the entire altar below and suffused within all the lower images. The images are not leveled in terms of greater or lesser power and importance so much as depictions of levels of function and states of being in relation to the whole which is crowned by the radiating Eye/Sun of God omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient over and within all that is. The Virgin of Guadalupe and other Marys one finds throughout Mexico, Central and South America with Her placement at lowest or lower level closest to the material plane reveals Her mediating function for us and "all creatures here below" to the Power and Glory of the Burning Eye of God for "who can stand before It and live?"<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Temptations of Power</span><br /><br />In my prayer addressing this "Eye" of which Metatron is a function or aspect (and there are various colors assigned to Metatron indicating further differentiation of it's functions in the universe, a red, a black, a white and a yellow so far as I have encountered in my studies and travels in Mexico) I ask for any healing energy which comes through me to be helpful for others and to most of all not make the mistake of what Jung calls "inflation" which is when one becomes identified with an archetype. This is an easy temptation and a powerful one to succumb to. When the ministry of Jesus Christ officially began after his baptism he retreated to the desert to fast and pray and there was confronted by what Carl Jung calls "the power devil," for the three temptations Jesus confronted were temptations of power, or hubris, the greatest sin in Greek religion which is inflation or pride from being identified with the gods.<br /><br />In regards to the temptation and appeal of shamanic, sorcery, spiritual power Jungian analyst Donald Williams in the first chapter of his excellent book, <b>Border Crossings, A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge</b> (Inner City Books) speaks directly to what drew "Carlos" toward don Juan and sorcery and concludes that it was among other things the temptation to power. Williams says:<br /><br />Carlos, like most of us, approaches the path of knowledge with questionable goals, unexamined assumptions and little self-understanding. Carlos's psychology is worth examining because it dramatically colors the atmosphere and progress of his apprenticeship, and because we may find much of ourselves mirrored there: lack of self esteem, preoccupation with power, fear of intimacy, preference of information over knowledge, inability to trust his own experience, extreme dependence upon reason and finally, ignorance of his own best qualities ...initially the focus for Carlos is the acquisition of power, not self-knowledge. The destructive aspects of the power drive or complex are that self-knowledge takes second place to self-aggrandizement...(page 15/16).<br /><br /><br />What I have found most refreshing in my work with Bety is her lack of self-aggrandizement, her very humanity, her earthiness (her penchant for vulgarity and hilarity and celebration of body life), her relationship to here and now, and though she is a commanding individual who takes no prisoners when doing her healing work and consultations one does not feel an unintegrated unconscious power complex in her or her work. The "power devil," as Jung speaks of it, is most certainly consciously "at her table" though obviously her language and worldview is not that of Jungian psychology nor of any personalistic psychology on the market. And though confident in her work and in her view that she is "battling principalities and powers" of human and non-human origin, and in this she is fierce, there seems to be an implicit humility especially since she makes no attempts to broadcast nor hide her humanity and personal issues. The very word "humility" is derived from the Latin word for earth and dirt, "humus." Bety is certainly dirty. The often wild laughter heard in the clinic attests to some off-color joke told or delighted surprise when Bety gives a client one of her most frequent prescriptions, "Mas, mucho mas chaka chaka (sex)," a prescription most welcome by most of her clients!! Bety is powerful in her work but from my experience of her through the years she is not inflated with the "power devil" which will indeed tempt all on the path of knowledge and power.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Often Public Nature of Bety's Healing Work</span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizyWuCQByKCMOT1FtHBXRvXgfKOg-5Dk9APlGY4Aw0k17KxH6-E7eWUbtPajPaOpsQPrt7eEBPmCegbIYt4lgZVL66r6XqO1m4OVxKS_w9hbraJjbUUP58QWzJaGBOhAITfVsw5ALjNmaREzAfr2kZJD-WNoq2AT7pVDa6a2v3U2c6_vP_47C_lJCu8n0/s1250/Screen%20Shot%202023-07-25%20at%205.59.03%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="920" data-original-width="1250" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizyWuCQByKCMOT1FtHBXRvXgfKOg-5Dk9APlGY4Aw0k17KxH6-E7eWUbtPajPaOpsQPrt7eEBPmCegbIYt4lgZVL66r6XqO1m4OVxKS_w9hbraJjbUUP58QWzJaGBOhAITfVsw5ALjNmaREzAfr2kZJD-WNoq2AT7pVDa6a2v3U2c6_vP_47C_lJCu8n0/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-07-25%20at%205.59.03%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Archangel Metatron also revered as Santa Muerte seen ubiquitously throughout Mexico. </div><div style="text-align: center;">Bety and me at her altar.</div><i><br /></i><br />Almost all healing work at the clinic is done publically. Many clients sit in chairs or stand around awaiting their turn and are witness to Bety and her assistant's work from tarot reading to limpias (cleansings) and other techniques offered. There is often a spontaneous group participation of observers and healers interactive and dynamic which also seems to be a feature of shamanism and curandismo--healings take place in "the marketplace" as public events. I have a recording of a Huichol healing woman working on someone and you can hear that there is a crowd gathered around, car horns hooting, laughter and conversations, children crying and calling, dogs and chickens scrambling, all is hustle and bustle as the sacred occurs/awakens/is evoked in the profane space of the crowd. There may even be incense but all takes place without veneer or masks of "spirituality." If a client requests Bety will work with them privately in another room. She also does home and business visits to cleanse and bless. She will work with an individual in their home if requested. I am most partial to private consultations not only out of my own training and education as a counselor and healer but also due to my introverted temperment. Working at Bety's always is a push for me beyond my training and temperment into uneasily open and public practice.<br /><br />Bety teaches apprentices hands on since much of the healing work at the clinic is done with the hands. Energy passes are used to extract, smooth and cleanse internally and externally. This is always a part of any consultation with Bety no matter what the presenting problem of a client is. The assumption is that bad energy is at work and must be cleansed thus the hands are used in pugalistic mode as part of healing to fight against bad energies and spirits. The hands also have other modes of healing for extracting, soothing, smoothing energies, etc. which I address in more detail in the account of a specific client Bety and I both worked with further on in these notes.<br /><br />Here is an example of the above from my recent trip. After my somewhat self-conscious prayers at the altar (people watching me, curious at the gringo) I caught Bety up a bit on my year since I had last been with her, her clients laughing at my awkward Spanish and tales of weal and woe with them often commenting in a kind of call and response to details of my account and Bety's comments. When I reported to Bety how much my monthly rent is for my new apartment in Manhattan a collective gasp loudly erupted with attendant head and tongue-wagging about how preposterous and impossible it must be to pay such money just for shelter. Tributary discussions ensued about why so many Mexicans would risk life, limb, loneliness and jail to go to the US to pay such obscene rent. A long discussion with me, Bety and the crowd followed. At some point after I reported more tales from the other side north of the border we both got busy, her assistant already at work, with her clients who were patiently and noisily waiting in the waiting areas. My personal tales and the warmth and familiarity of my relationship with Bety served to warm clients to me, a stranger until my tales, some of which were eager to work with me along with Bety as partner, guide, and teacher.<br /><br />In apprenticeship one observes what Bety does, listens to her explanations as to what she is doing, and then works with a client while she observes and gives feedback. Since I have studied with other healers I share with Bety what I have found effective most of which she readily incorporates into her own work. This eagerness to learn from others reveals one who is continually researching and growing, one who has not "arrived."<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Use of Everyday Objects for Healings:</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Graceless things grow lovely with good uses."</span><br />(from a poem by John Tarrant)<br /><br />In keeping with the marketplace aspects of curandismo everyday, profane, things are made sacred by conscious "good uses." Eggs, fruit, seeds, herbs and spices, ribbons, candles, cloth, rocks, gems and other everyday ordinary objects become sacred tools for healing (holding the holes and wholes and the stormy dialectic of the two together). Here briefly are some of their good uses in curandismo as I've learned it from Bety:<br /><br />Eggs or lemons or limes (I've used walnuts in their shells!) will be passed over the body of the healee in order to absorb and extract illness, bad energy, bad spirits, etc.<br /><br />Ribbons have various uses as prayer ties (you see these in Catholic churches and chapels throughout Mexico) and as focusing devices for universal healing energy to come through when they are laid out in patterns according to colors appropriate for the malady to be cured.<br /><br />Candles are charged with healing energy and prayers for the intended care and cure of a healee present or not.<br /><br />Coins of various values are combined with herbs, spices, images, and other substances and sewn into a pouch to be worn or placed on an altar or wherever the curandera instructs to bring about many things, for instance, fertility of self or fields or animals or business as abundance.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Limpia</span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZh6SSKjK4bW8Cvn08nFH8Cyac4X8jRlBD9862OGbidPdk3tqg5mDsJJB6B6kdZngfq1v2swDbf-4fEU2d6ixLnjJzUzW-EiUfZMGgfnC81ibdmECTj38kREL5apkKHYgJ2N-Bs3tWtqODuvvYjl4JvVTLXnBLvl5EZcNzUb4U1nlsIO4Qnvj3F0PGiI/s293/Bety_Z3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="293" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZh6SSKjK4bW8Cvn08nFH8Cyac4X8jRlBD9862OGbidPdk3tqg5mDsJJB6B6kdZngfq1v2swDbf-4fEU2d6ixLnjJzUzW-EiUfZMGgfnC81ibdmECTj38kREL5apkKHYgJ2N-Bs3tWtqODuvvYjl4JvVTLXnBLvl5EZcNzUb4U1nlsIO4Qnvj3F0PGiI/s1600/Bety_Z3.jpg" width="293" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriNvnrpZ0wbeTYs7EZWax8CDs2Msdlpqq8J5-qyMs0haOjM6KkZPqSX173bLwS5F6HEGXy2mMmzpKLneW4UXih1oxuuMYNhTPaRrB3MbQxNbZqoVQ2dteNIxr7c8KwSgwN8oBTiqltMttNPFAE64LM-1njacFmSD-y-4oQKgH1TLDJ1jNvO_rXdZCOp0/s293/Bety_Z5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="293" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriNvnrpZ0wbeTYs7EZWax8CDs2Msdlpqq8J5-qyMs0haOjM6KkZPqSX173bLwS5F6HEGXy2mMmzpKLneW4UXih1oxuuMYNhTPaRrB3MbQxNbZqoVQ2dteNIxr7c8KwSgwN8oBTiqltMttNPFAE64LM-1njacFmSD-y-4oQKgH1TLDJ1jNvO_rXdZCOp0/s1600/Bety_Z5.jpg" width="293" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Oscar in the limpia fire circle. And after he's left it - it is purified by the pentagram and more fire.</div><i><br /></i><br />Probably the most requested form of healing is the 'limpia' or cleansing. Many clients drop in regularly/weekly for a limpia or before a special occassion (a wedding, graduation, new job, etc.) or surgery or a major life passage. Many will come for a cleansing after a negative event. A dramatic event, the limpia almost without fail impresses the body, mind and psyche regarding healing, commitment to healing and the very possibility of healing of even incurable conditions. Grand theater, the limpia space consists of a circle about 4 feet in circumference made of seeds, spices and herbs, cone incense, flowers, combustable minerals (alum), and ribbons of various colors (often of the chakras). It is prepared and opened every morning upon Bety's arrival. After her prayers to Metatron and "the Eye" she cleanses this circle with further prayers and fire incorporating western wicca practices of widdershins, crossed machetes, and a glass of water with white flowers arranged in a pattern near the the water and the machetes. Bety ignites the flower circle by squirting denatured (camp stove) alcohol from a bottle and striking a match. She draws a pentagram with the alcohol in the center of the circle which also serves to cleanse and empower healing energies represented by the pentagram. Tremendous vortices of flame usually erupt from the mixture dramatically roaring and turning reaching up into the space of the room toward the smoke darkened concrete ceiling. The circle is now a special power spot which attracts, focuses and magnifies healing energies. It accumulates more power and energy through consistent use in the same spot. Once the flames are out an assistant prepares the circle for the first client. It is fed through the day with more sacred ordinaries (flowers, seeds, etc. afore mentioned) with each individual limpia.<br /><br />Prior to entering the circle for a limpia Bety or an assistant has already done an initial cleansing with hand passes over the body and energy field of the client. Bety likens this to applying alcohol to an area before surgery. The fire is the real surgery. The client is then invited into the center of the circle and instructed not to look at the fire as he/she bathes. Alcohol is squirted copiously around and upon the flower mixture, a match is stuck and with a resounding explosion the flames burst hotly up. The client vigorously scrubs the body with hands while Bety or an assistant shouts out areas to be washed as each healer outside the circle is seeing the areas and the energies to be cleansed.<br /><br />It is very hot in the circle (believe me!!), the flames licking closely to one's body. Quickly and invariably a large and whirling vortex/pillar or more of flame emerges which is interpreted as the area where the bad energies are departing. With more alcohol the curandera draws a pentagram at the vortex to feed it and encourage the departure and transformation of the energies expelled in the cleansing. At some point the flames dampen and the client is instructed to step out, back toward the circle, as another large pentagram of alcohol is drawn in the center of the circle with more high flames and vortices to cleanse the circle of any remaining energies. (See the photograph several posts below of a client in a fire circle).<br /><br />A new feature added to the limpias since my last visit in 2006 is the use of contemporary technology, the cellphone (Bety has three!!) with which several photos are taken of the circle as the final flames die. Each photo is examined for images of bad energies representing what needed to be healed. These photos serve as an intuitive scanning to determine further treatment if needed and to indicate whether more limpias are needed. (See photos below of a limpia).<br /><br />Usually a series of three limpias in three consecutive days is prescribed. One is instructed not to bathe after each healing therefore by the end of the third day one's body aroma is quite ripe which may be enough to repel any further bad energies!<br /><br />Personally every limpia I have had has always been dramatic and effective in that a profound trance state occurs during and afterward which Bety increases with energy passes and other techniques after the flames (I'll describe some of these in more details in the coming account of one of Bety's cases I participated in working with in January 2008). The energy passes served to magnify, fortify and seal the positive healing energies evoked and focused within the client. A profound sense of peace often accompanies this part of the healing. I have witnessed at least 50 limpias since I have worked with Bety and have experienced probably 20 myself. Each client appears to be in an altered and deeply relaxed and peaceful state sometimes during and definitely after a limpia. There is a separate waiting room where one may retire to to rest and regroup before one enters back into the profane world of everyday life.<br /><br />Part Two will be published here in March.<br /><br />In Part 2 I give a specific account of the initial day of a three day healing involving a fifteen year old young man active in the infamous ubiqutious violent Latino gang known as "Salvatrucha." Bety actively involved me in the work with this young man without much warning. I assumed he had come to Bety just for a card reading as his concerned older sister had badgered him into accompanying her to Bety's for her help in his dangerous situation. I give account only the first day in order to give a flavor of the seriousness of issues with which Bety works and the real human stories that come into her clinic. In this account I give more details of her card reading technique, hands on healing, and the fire circle. Strategizing with the client, his sister, Bety and myself was also an essential part of what would be called in more Western conventional terms a "treatment team" with a "treatment plan." </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>Click here for Part Two:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2008/02/">https://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2008/02/</a></div><div><br /></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-202741846707892562023-11-30T16:45:00.000-08:002023-11-30T16:45:26.588-08:00Requiems for a Spider - A Series of Covid19 Quarantine Poems<div class="phPageTop" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; padding: 20px 20px 0px;"><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKYLdgIQf828_tNgGuNoKcQOhXN1oRwkcGHRo3t8iYGPIVQ3SzCGKo97dB7mq22TysfwXSYE6gtx-zrKnf0-XZeYfe3STEqi_kR9DovqeqqF1q1B8hqqczhrdI_rLdILqnIhFRfnB4iPSwpTybNUKiriPdL5wZaXukJZTVQ_I6Hap4oApSNxx1irHO8WA/s3602/IMG_5024.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2700" data-original-width="3602" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKYLdgIQf828_tNgGuNoKcQOhXN1oRwkcGHRo3t8iYGPIVQ3SzCGKo97dB7mq22TysfwXSYE6gtx-zrKnf0-XZeYfe3STEqi_kR9DovqeqqF1q1B8hqqczhrdI_rLdILqnIhFRfnB4iPSwpTybNUKiriPdL5wZaXukJZTVQ_I6Hap4oApSNxx1irHO8WA/w320-h242/IMG_5024.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>Barn door plank. Keene, NY. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> March 26, 2020.</div><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal;">[Saturating in William Carlos Williams, Carl Rakosi, </span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal;">zen and zen poets of yore </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal;">- imagists galore - these </span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal;">efforts in remote mountains upstate New York 2020]</span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">'But if it ends </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">the start is begun' - William Carlos Williams *1 </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">the fragility of the web </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">infused </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">penetrates spaces *2</span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">to engage a spider </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">where </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">once were roses </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">becomes a geometry which </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">indeed </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">a spider is </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">its shape, that is, a </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">spider </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">at web's edge, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">waits </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">or is it </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" />2<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">Newly dead </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">I swore you </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">to a would-be </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">cloud </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">bore you to the lowest boulder </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">I, too, soon to be shroud </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">you lived silent enough to be </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">ignored </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">so passing, yours, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">calls attention </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">well deserved </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">pity or verse? </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">both in one? </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">the Worst </span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;">3</span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-weight: bold; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="phPageDetailsTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; position: relative; width: 522px; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">bidden, it bore </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">not a grave </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">but a door </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">where is no need to knock </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">its life grokked </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">it is no longer </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">there's no mock in </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">it tho </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">as it was and now is </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">all that is not </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">never </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">was its business </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">but its was only to </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">obey </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">That which bade </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">spider </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">poet </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">maker </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-weight: normal;">it made </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal;" /></span><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 31.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">all praise to the Bidder </span></span></h2><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;">4</span></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: arial;">Reading William Carlos Williams "Spring and All " </span></i></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: arial;">- these efforts/echoes made</span></i></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Requiem <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">the tactility of the spider <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />bemused <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />concentrates skies *2<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">a web <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />it <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />was <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />there strung <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />and <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />purled <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />pearled between limbs <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />beneath trunks amid <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />fiddle ferns spun <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />between brittle sticks <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />there mute legs <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />somehow click <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />tho no ear hears <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />but <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />trembles <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />feels <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />which are ways <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />of knowing <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />but work they <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />unwinding <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />beneath faint stray leaves <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />each strand somehow <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />sticks <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />echoes catching where <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />spider <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />tufts sough <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />a <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />brief <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />webbed kingdom <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />such sleights <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />do filaments trace <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />alone with the Alone</span></div><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; line-height: 31.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></h2><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 31.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">***</span></span></h2><div><span style="font-family: arial;">*1 early lines by W. C. Williams in his book Spring and All</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">*2 & *3 are riffs on lines by Williams from Spring and All</span></div><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 31.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLIPOHeR6jR7iVwrlT3bD4y_SQzs5dFs8OObtAfaPV9LKsONFHEtF-cX6iN-CXommiQrK9BRmFhVBu9USyg5jjbQQbyihS1wojMH9n16StRoNocsSaaAXdCE2tAE3yRJan4TcOX815J6QZnD1Zd5VyWmZviyIaPa3Ft7BtZDhLhDqjdhqhKbO_RxDi2E/s2719/IMG_4996%204.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2719" data-original-width="2071" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLIPOHeR6jR7iVwrlT3bD4y_SQzs5dFs8OObtAfaPV9LKsONFHEtF-cX6iN-CXommiQrK9BRmFhVBu9USyg5jjbQQbyihS1wojMH9n16StRoNocsSaaAXdCE2tAE3yRJan4TcOX815J6QZnD1Zd5VyWmZviyIaPa3Ft7BtZDhLhDqjdhqhKbO_RxDi2E/s320/IMG_4996%204.jpeg" width="244" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"> Decades past, an uncleaned mirror in an </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"> abandoned barn. </span><span style="text-align: center;">Vague me a few </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"> weeks </span><span style="text-align: center;">into covid exile in Keene, NY, </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"> March 26, 2020</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></div></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-67679850806418529632023-10-28T14:20:00.007-07:002023-10-28T16:03:50.130-07:00TRICKSTER 2023 - The Roller of Big Cigars n More - A Dia(for the)Tribe - Up Close and Hoi Polloi-sonal OR The Projective Spew from Here (I mean, Veer)<div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1l90r2v x1swvt13" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r9ij:" style="padding: 4px 16px 16px;"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u" style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: -5px;"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: block; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjiyH2VWFcH9i9hkPuz8vpZ_DaEWKDZxf_1pf2MZsyqYjaWE5VSb0thgShdtWEaYDxGnYmuor-4rOoOdhU4QPYs8Ar-7QTEuSH-OzZ5wFUlN8Q9tLoc7rOf6j2lXVFn19sMSfvQcdUVxXvaPPL8jrKcZlSOCCLOWGAf2h0vGkt0mYCpnlMqW1XdKdhHI/s2048/1502731_10201945932343335_114310703_o.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1855" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjiyH2VWFcH9i9hkPuz8vpZ_DaEWKDZxf_1pf2MZsyqYjaWE5VSb0thgShdtWEaYDxGnYmuor-4rOoOdhU4QPYs8Ar-7QTEuSH-OzZ5wFUlN8Q9tLoc7rOf6j2lXVFn19sMSfvQcdUVxXvaPPL8jrKcZlSOCCLOWGAf2h0vGkt0mYCpnlMqW1XdKdhHI/s320/1502731_10201945932343335_114310703_o.jpg" width="290" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Uh // Oh</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now You've</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">DONE IT! </span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">get me outta here! Bail me</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">out of the WORD OCEAN</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I wish to God</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> never seen your face</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Nor heard your lion tongue</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">—Philip Whalen, Poet, Zen Master</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Because we are partial beings who yearn for total states." —Michael Eigen</span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>Tis the season Trick</i></b> or Treat but Trickster season is year round 24/7 now daze and blights. Trickster is hyperactive and hypernormal life-and-media-wise thus we become inured to Its presence and power in individuals, groups, and events and so slog as slog (or slug) slog on as one can, another "Day in the Life" aka "I read the news today oh boy...." Tricksters too are turned into heroes (aka hemi- semi- demi- quimi- gods, icons, symbols) and, humans gripped by archetypes, in their worship assist in bringing (bingeing on) chaos and regressive conditions which evoke fear in collectives and thus </span><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; white-space: pre-wrap;" tabindex="-1"></a><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); white-space: pre-wrap;">trickster becomes CONTROL, makes demands, insists one way over any other, etc.</span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Remember all those scary dark clown sitings around the world the year Drumpfen-ogre starting beating the political bushes in 2015? no accident at all all those sitings, synchronicities were, or tried, to prepare the national and world collective for a very dangerous emergence which had already been happening with the likes of Reagan, Bush, W/Cheney, so very many, too very many (when one looming one is enough to wreak havoc for now and generations ahead). Good to remember that Trickster, too, is teacher. Hard lessons the better learned, we can hope, but human nature is slow to grock and clock and turn inner wheels of conscience collectively for the better which happens individual by individual which each have a "salting" effect.</span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My favorite prefaces by Carl Jung are from his book published during the World War (WW1), Two Essays In Analytical Psychology. The first edition sold out so fast (to his great surprise since it was about his psychology) that there was a rushed 2nd book with a new preface. Here they are...Jung could be, no, he IS, speaking to us now in 2023 in the absolute madness that humanity is. Click onto each preface to enlarge for easier reading.</span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Preface to first edition:</span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgewAB2iJV5Z4OMkFViJ6ybBSsN8hZ5rHT3m7na3MCVx77KFjUguimBf7Y9URZoBenVfEH1SWEejKgsoN5VKXluUvEDFfhyp74B3R9esFxlqOrLxyMQlIr4GfcptViB0vQaPaTJ4ArXBdtRK-XmYV-Xv7iovt7j9D_QkPleD9_JXpZuUs3Trg1irtcm0M0/s830/thumbnail-3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="830" data-original-width="802" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgewAB2iJV5Z4OMkFViJ6ybBSsN8hZ5rHT3m7na3MCVx77KFjUguimBf7Y9URZoBenVfEH1SWEejKgsoN5VKXluUvEDFfhyp74B3R9esFxlqOrLxyMQlIr4GfcptViB0vQaPaTJ4ArXBdtRK-XmYV-Xv7iovt7j9D_QkPleD9_JXpZuUs3Trg1irtcm0M0/w309-h320/thumbnail-3.jpeg" width="309" /></a></div><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A paragraph from the second preface:</span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Z9hxaED6eyXZHApzLsc-D9F2daPHo7hpI1lWMxQrBG2-vuGDzSiYmTD73tcI7bLZP7oYFQNKxyB611pTJr74pH8GXXJqBaEIx0Lj8Di_imolmIshxCuHsY2PQv3r4JalhNFPQkJU4tXqxPLz4lMamz5CrV1Y3mIJPke4YRXfYSrObg_6KXW_5unP0kI/s704/thumbnail.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="584" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Z9hxaED6eyXZHApzLsc-D9F2daPHo7hpI1lWMxQrBG2-vuGDzSiYmTD73tcI7bLZP7oYFQNKxyB611pTJr74pH8GXXJqBaEIx0Lj8Di_imolmIshxCuHsY2PQv3r4JalhNFPQkJU4tXqxPLz4lMamz5CrV1Y3mIJPke4YRXfYSrObg_6KXW_5unP0kI/w333-h400/thumbnail.png" width="333" /></span></a></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: center;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">SELAH.</span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(38, 40, 42); color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #484848; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><i>The chaos in congress on</i></b> the GOPathic side - killer clowns/tricksters all (or most). This new (but straight up from Sheol's central casting) dark clown, now speaker of the house is dredged up from millennia of evolution of consciousness via religions as collective alchemical containers boiling, diluting, refining, reducing to essence (archetype), energy, that can and will be used for good and for ill. Now we have to witness cold, calculated Newspeak and Orwell squared by thousands openly plot the destruction of democracy for that same old "alpha ape" dominance over all paleo- palaver. Good name for current G(oon)OPaths, the "Pale0-(with a zero at the end)Palaver. aka "Excuse me Mr. Speaker, MTG, Gaetz, et. al, it's time to get your knuckles trimmed and yet another brow and forehead lift."</span></span></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1l90r2v x1swvt13" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" style="padding: 4px 16px 16px;"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u" style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: -5px;"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: block; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKHOuFxb8hE4oDHcUUgq5MG3iP50QnJXgwwXA_7_yx7Me79PZ0DX7FZOzZV6dWJijbeP-4GIw5IxnkaKw8bCNSjALzo658YN1e8wiyffG_ub8RhPr6A8SM8CdbBIhqcpQ6gyccuArr9jYrEJ7omBBVr9Ke17N_sATClPHrTYngXsOdZbX3dMWCPO8_oDI/s3648/IMG_3472.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="2736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKHOuFxb8hE4oDHcUUgq5MG3iP50QnJXgwwXA_7_yx7Me79PZ0DX7FZOzZV6dWJijbeP-4GIw5IxnkaKw8bCNSjALzo658YN1e8wiyffG_ub8RhPr6A8SM8CdbBIhqcpQ6gyccuArr9jYrEJ7omBBVr9Ke17N_sATClPHrTYngXsOdZbX3dMWCPO8_oDI/s320/IMG_3472.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The good news, never soon enough though, is that the Trickster tricks Itself, is subject to Its own "medicine" and undoes and is victim of Its willful compulsive chaos. Thus, hopefully, we are witnessing the unfolding of this dynamic with the Trumpster Trickster, MAGA, UnEvengelical herds. Bad news is that the Lumpish Mara (means "bitter" in Spanish) Sluggo is/was "dreamed up" as repping the collective consciousness of the nation, of "we the people." Not good, ID/IT. Not good, that. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Take the time now, Halloween, Dias de la Emerging up from the Psyche "Haunters" (archetypes) to locate your own private inner Joker (reference the movie with Phoenix), your inner Drumpfen-nee-gator, et. al., so many examples. Jung calls such "shadow." On practical level, "alter-ego" nuances, better (there is more than one, Virginia) serves to bring shadow (where it always is) on the ground, the floor, quote the Craven, clevermore to be confronted, personally owned, and at least taught table manners. Just kidding about the latter but, hey, it's a place to start. Shadow (and all archetype/Alters given personal faces) gets projected onto other people, groups, places, things, activities and/but the the shadow (as we all really know but ignore or deny or pie in the sky with religion or substitutes thereof push and shove which is alpha which is 'ain't') is within, "archetypes are, Virginia, genome" thus all us we are "stranded" DNA-wise, and/but shows up with faces, personalities, and ever variating levels of abs-consciousness. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And, Virginia, we can't help but project all that, SPLAT on others' walls, wormwood and gall (and all for their own good, of course). Seems to be a prominent, nay, dominant, rule of thumb (mine's bigger than yours) of human consciousness aka what the brain does with or without our consent. Perhaps a nuance on Sartre's notion of all us we our "throwness" into existenz. But he's openly mocked these days because, one, he is not manic and, truth be told, our American (perhaps world cultures all) extoll what is called "pursuit of happiness" when it is actually "mania" split off from "just what is" (I refer you to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism - most accurate sum of all; and to image of the Crucified One who, says appreciative Jung, teaches us to "endure" the givens while fluffing up heaven behind the Dys- mise en scènes from which meaning is somehow wrung, wrenched, somehow turning the Cultural Wheels all historians/artists 'r' their (wheels) paparazzi mit loud raspberries as commentaries, thusly Stevens makes mostest scents:</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Call the roller of big cigars,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The muscular one, and bid him whip</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Let the wenches dawdle in such dress</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As they are used to wear, and let the boys</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Let be be finale of seem.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Take from the dresser of deal,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">On which she embroidered fantails once</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And spread it so as to cover her face.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">If her horny feet protrude, they come</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">To show how cold she is, and dumb.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Let the lamp affix its beam.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">AKA Emperor as Alchemista.</span></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Ah! I am so forsaken I will worship at any shrine impulses toward perfection."</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">—Artur Rimbaud</span></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy-NJ6w5AnIGodYpmB2vqtQUZudqs2LmraC5lLNYowPNuzkaIIxKYXkqOIobWZO2NRrSnLyVoZiDwWw_ny6Vfb_vFnpkYb6T-Y-JeWtj71s6yUcM0vwPo1wMdJoCVyzzvcSSK-95SIuw0EjoFU0oTOAqDM3SYrBDfZW9E7snMrmjGealD5g94b9W9uCyQ/s1526/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-26%20at%2011.45.02%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1526" data-original-width="1090" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy-NJ6w5AnIGodYpmB2vqtQUZudqs2LmraC5lLNYowPNuzkaIIxKYXkqOIobWZO2NRrSnLyVoZiDwWw_ny6Vfb_vFnpkYb6T-Y-JeWtj71s6yUcM0vwPo1wMdJoCVyzzvcSSK-95SIuw0EjoFU0oTOAqDM3SYrBDfZW9E7snMrmjGealD5g94b9W9uCyQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-26%20at%2011.45.02%20PM.png" width="229" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Le poet maudit" -gift that keeps on giving</span></span></div><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Thusly, dust off your copy, too, of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. And dust off your volumes of Jung which are his "Answer to Freud", Jung's offerings being complementarity to Freud's reductive, darker views , thus I call Jung's oevre (in homage to Meister Freud), Civilization and Its Mys-(as in Mystery/Mystic) and Myth-(as in archetypal)Contents.</span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And, just a recommendation though academia has a new pair (and more) of vernacular shoes (all the pomo French and others, all the now ontotheo- talkers, and the never dull neo-neo-still-gravy after all these jeers Marxistas cum Baristas vis WAKE UP PLEBES! </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And dust off your Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (aka how the heroic human endeavor to grock death began (terminal clock is ticking even on the unvierse?), aka how culture and its bliss-contents took, and still takes, shape, how nature (or genome) in us appears to have telos, trajectory which is dependent, or so it seems, upon individuals (and their groups the world and ages o're) and choices made from genomic menus and what shows up in space and time, what presents on and beneath our dining room tables (or trays or lunch bags). </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">On the Lazy Susan be's Civilization as Condiments to Sweeten the Musky Briny Liver to be eaten or plucked at by daylight, O Prometheus, bringer/gifter of Fire aka Civilization aka Eliade's The Raw and the Cooked - we homo serpitudes appear to be about the cooking of the "givens of existenz, the crude-it-tay tays. Just the facts, mam, or just the fractals, mermaid, or just the Jeez un 'bama' Crackers, Mother, and so on. Tis all jists for the mental mill. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Sir Arthur Edington has the last word here tho I calculate at least thirteen ways of looking at what he says. BTW come Halloween I shall dress up as the good professor, professor sez</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Something we know not what is doing we know not what." </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And I'll add, "but we know it is certainly doing some thing, whatever that is." </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="color: var(--primary-text); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Humans are about the "whatever".</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text);"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text);"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Whatever.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text);"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2NScTBjoy4fb8S_QzorOnPomTUXfXKZkvDrOnOZ4p4SdrSifMhxNSbwuSwtnyM8Gc0Ch5_-FYrUrGdFD8Uck25OKIoCLJwzIjSEIQ3XdvGRr9n-E8wYbGNk3Fyy3QzDWv6UvkzcUbJXl2CGH5YPoFEflhPPRXwFG6zX1sd0bFKeGv40bcmtcQMB1BT4/s2719/IMG_6275.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1680" data-original-width="2719" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2NScTBjoy4fb8S_QzorOnPomTUXfXKZkvDrOnOZ4p4SdrSifMhxNSbwuSwtnyM8Gc0Ch5_-FYrUrGdFD8Uck25OKIoCLJwzIjSEIQ3XdvGRr9n-E8wYbGNk3Fyy3QzDWv6UvkzcUbJXl2CGH5YPoFEflhPPRXwFG6zX1sd0bFKeGv40bcmtcQMB1BT4/s320/IMG_6275.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text);"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: times; text-align: left;">[All photos by Warren Falcon except, of course, the photo of Artur Rimbaud. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #20124d; font-family: times; text-align: left;">Poem below by Falcon, as well]</span></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">On with the boring </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">center line endlessly </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">dividing though broken </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">on purpose suggesting </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">a way to veer. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">No guide needed here. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">Fear is the drive shaft, </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">and longing turns the wheel.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: var(--primary-text); text-align: left;"><p class="phContent phcText" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; white-space: normal; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS74s83old2fdXbtvLpj2iy2CRb1-MGtpaFfFhXllKg6C0CHMnVfQbPf_gdzexG2Gg7eqilXLqSYnhyjp176fali294Og-6FZy4cGgu3Es54r2wcTGksTU0mByZMZcVCue1ZhupvM8L22Jyuv-Fb0iBKf8ew7G0nesWUKtdLSSoUn6Y6ub5lRpN1zSbrA/s653/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-05%20at%208.05.10%20PM.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="653" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS74s83old2fdXbtvLpj2iy2CRb1-MGtpaFfFhXllKg6C0CHMnVfQbPf_gdzexG2Gg7eqilXLqSYnhyjp176fali294Og-6FZy4cGgu3Es54r2wcTGksTU0mByZMZcVCue1ZhupvM8L22Jyuv-Fb0iBKf8ew7G0nesWUKtdLSSoUn6Y6ub5lRpN1zSbrA/w320-h320/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-05%20at%208.05.10%20PM.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span><p></p></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-88919072105996608142023-06-04T23:21:00.047-07:002023-07-28T18:43:39.001-07:00So Inherently Hearers - Agonies/Paroxysms Upon Happiness & Other Diminishing Returns - But Seriously Folks - The Loooong Edition Incorporating Parts One and Two<div class="separator" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFOkf71u-XAMLFf8ylkg6FE0acEzXEubGR9BCjgWfyi0C9QyhN-WfDPDHz_4gtDVZnX7zf7g7bMG-q8t1kugQE3pS8uTR0gTqqYbKKZAlwOt2-7FV1nKcITFbf2E6nRj-aBQY0sGf8oxf7WTn6VwdgivVnWV-owfu5Gch76ec7liHtnO8KRFox7ohP/s1932/1400Christopher-Wilmarth-Untitled-1987.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1932" data-original-width="1400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFOkf71u-XAMLFf8ylkg6FE0acEzXEubGR9BCjgWfyi0C9QyhN-WfDPDHz_4gtDVZnX7zf7g7bMG-q8t1kugQE3pS8uTR0gTqqYbKKZAlwOt2-7FV1nKcITFbf2E6nRj-aBQY0sGf8oxf7WTn6VwdgivVnWV-owfu5Gch76ec7liHtnO8KRFox7ohP/s320/1400Christopher-Wilmarth-Untitled-1987.jpg" width="232" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Christopher Wilmart, artist</span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">[<b>NOTE:</b> This essay was originally posted May 5, 2008. I have recently edited it now fifteen years later. I'm sure to work on it some more but will publish it anyway as is. Doing so pressures me to get to the rewriting and editing since I know some few other eyes may be reading it (for which I am grateful). <b>ALSO NOTE</b> that you can click on the photos to enlarge them]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /> "Not because happiness really exists,<br />that premature profit of imminent loss."<br />— from "The First Elegy" of The Duino Elegies (DE throughout the rest of the text) by Rainer Maria Rilke, pg. 73</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />"...that life is real only in proportion to its difficulty."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">—page 103, DE by Rainer Maria Rilke<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">"We live in an old chaos of the sun."<br />—page 70, from "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens from<br />The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.<br /><br /><br /><b><i>Recently, upon his entering</i></b> my office, a male client collapsed onto the couch loudly lamenting the pain of his existence, the meaningless struggle to continue to go on living while trying to make art and a decent monetary wage when every effort seemed to die still-born upon taking acts to create and relate authentically to himself and others. In his early 30's the powerful daimon of his life, the inner tyro/tyrant, the Elan Vital (vital life force), his Essense tormented him in an agonizing whirlwind of compulsions, drives of creativity, powerful Urges so strong in him manifesting as relentless sexual desire and an unending preoccupation with the creative act, his art and all living in between lived in the context of the Demand. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">This Urge calls to him, appeals to him NOW to be made manifest, incarnate, a Thing, an object which exist arriving from creative/destructive acts. That he can barely contain and canalized this force of nature within and around him appealing to him for response surprises and exasperates him in his violent swings between grandiosity and self-hatred, between feelings of being gifted and feelings of being tremendously lacking and inadequate urging him on in varying degrees to creativity and destruction, artistry and addiction, expression and compulsion, a veritable agony and ect-tomy ('ect' means "to cut out/to cut away, to remove") with fleeting simultaneously exhillerating and exhausting ecstasy which does not stay but opens, alas, greater chasms of emptiness and hunger within him thus compelling him on to more graspings at the elusive happiness he seeks. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Contemporary psychology might say my client is bi-polar, or an addict, or more than a few other descriptive diagnoses. I would certainly pay attention to such in order to be present with their "array" of symptoms and provide a better hold, or context, for us both to work together in. As a Jungian I also know that his symptoms, behaviors and compulsions are soul (the Greek word for "soul" is "psyche") expressions and I seek to understand them as such, expressions from and of soul which need to be attended, tended to. I listen beneath and above and between the words, the wild hurling, the deep hurt to hear and bear witness to soul/psyche speaking, screaming, presencing through the person I am with. <br /><br />He sprawls splay-limbed upon the therapy couch, hands opened stiffly straining toward me and the ceiling for some surcease and succor pleading for the answer, the secret, the key, the code, the scientific/mental/spiritual formula which, when possessed at last, will cease his ongoing circulating torments, the daimon will be finally be appeased and satiated, his existence will then flow happily into an eternal spring, summer and autumnal bounteous harvest of creativity and contentment, passion and glowing reputation, of sexual, artistic and professional satisfaction. And lots of money. <br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">And there will be no more winters!<br /><br />He longs to be as a poet friend wrote in a poem of his youth, "crotch happy and dog dreaming."<br /><br /><br /><b>Carl Jung and His Daimon</b><br /><br />To understand what I mean by my client's daimon I refer to Carl Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the last chapter titled, Retrospect. Written just a few years before Jung died he is looking back over his life and reflecting:<br /><br />"I have had much trouble getting along with my ideas. There was a daimon in me, and in the end its presense proved to be decisive. It overpowered me, and if I was at times ruthless it was because I was in the grip of the daimon. I could never stop at anything once attained. I had to hasten on, to catch up with my vision. Since my contemporaries, understandably, could not perceive my vision, they saw only a fool rushing ahead.<br /><br />I have offended many people, for as soon as I saw that they did not understand me, that was the end of the matter so far as I was concerned. I had to move on. I had no patience with people--aside from my patients. I had to obey an inner law which was imposed on me and left me no freedom of choice...<br /><br />...A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon....The lack of freedom has been a great sorrow to me...Perhaps I might say: I need people to a higher degree than others, and at the same time much less. When the daimon is at work, one is always too close and too far. Only when it is silent can one achieve moderation.<br /><br />The daimon of creativity has ruthlessly had its way with me. The ordinary undertakings I planned usually had the worst of it—though not always and not everywhere."<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">—All quotes are from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the last chapter, Retrospect, Vintage Books, 1963.<br /><br />Not only explicitly creative people have a daimon. Every person alive has a daimon but not every person consciously relates and responds to it (rather, many deny, ignore, repress or project it - "just get out of my awareness!". Yet the daimon persists and insists often by showing up in dreams, nightmares, symptoms, sickness, addictions, events, places, other people in order to call attention to its presence which demands attention, relatedness, and action for it has urgent business with each and every. It calls to us. Heeding makes a big difference in how one lives with it ongoingly.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglR3dnIqz9qwVuOIRwgrhHYrCEXZPywbPVVtbu9ZQaRpzHwWbzkH4E8TdNjX4Cdx3wUZr6k3qd1QVdb5K8b0zuydy4elj5-kFy9tbKIA_OBYsNlmhmlMUKvH1HFeYTpS1uvjda4xg81kAuuTsUmrBFyoooBIuOV7nnSSUICU-b48iS2QW9wts8hop_5CM/s1989/IMG_6640.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1249" data-original-width="1989" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglR3dnIqz9qwVuOIRwgrhHYrCEXZPywbPVVtbu9ZQaRpzHwWbzkH4E8TdNjX4Cdx3wUZr6k3qd1QVdb5K8b0zuydy4elj5-kFy9tbKIA_OBYsNlmhmlMUKvH1HFeYTpS1uvjda4xg81kAuuTsUmrBFyoooBIuOV7nnSSUICU-b48iS2QW9wts8hop_5CM/s320/IMG_6640.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Daimon has two faces. One is enough.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Mythologist and scholar Joseph Campbell speaks of "refusing the Call," that inner urge or voice or tug which manifests in a person's life which has in it the "entelechy," the unique essence, of a person, and the tendencies, the telemetries of their personal myth of their life story. Some individuals can damper the daimon to such an extent that it is a tragic loss for they never respond to "the Call." If one does respond to the Call, the urge, the Drive, there is no guarantee of success but in the responding one lives life "in the teeth" of existence and goes one's own authentic way of individuating. <i>Individuation is the goal of Jungian psychology</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Jungian analyst and writer Edward F. Edinger explicates some of the depth meanings in the word individuation in these paragraph from his monumental book, Ego and Archetype, Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche [p. 163-162]. [Click on the texts to enlarge]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG2upaR_3dXrgnaRX3xIb3ChFKXfRFMVGLMDbdZzHTBB01s03kyeCKW8W3stqGxBxEyOGU7vBcslg0Jefttm95-35FYgihIhb7CEKuoYzH-U5xAhyQA9-R7YJlmbDRKZk4pVgjYwyXxwJMx57L1SxudtAmDB0Dsofz95DfjR1BvHZR-DhD0MXazovG/s1034/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-06%20at%208.05.58%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="1034" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG2upaR_3dXrgnaRX3xIb3ChFKXfRFMVGLMDbdZzHTBB01s03kyeCKW8W3stqGxBxEyOGU7vBcslg0Jefttm95-35FYgihIhb7CEKuoYzH-U5xAhyQA9-R7YJlmbDRKZk4pVgjYwyXxwJMx57L1SxudtAmDB0Dsofz95DfjR1BvHZR-DhD0MXazovG/w320-h203/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-06%20at%208.05.58%20PM.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfq8hIcTl08e4TpuFJy3YZk4q4m1lxYTBJSmVpspXPJuHaahlLtmuqxTWIrO2HyxHioSDd9nigyjbDJGfah3swxzoR4t5wxJ5NlrZh9ALz3NovJ8nxqAWwmzOr232HAsTZS8NXuuLoAPw_3ZjBFT1FCFxgWf4QFKFm_ENx4mcSB6F1qcElAyw1jy6q/s934/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-06%20at%208.06.36%20PM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="776" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfq8hIcTl08e4TpuFJy3YZk4q4m1lxYTBJSmVpspXPJuHaahlLtmuqxTWIrO2HyxHioSDd9nigyjbDJGfah3swxzoR4t5wxJ5NlrZh9ALz3NovJ8nxqAWwmzOr232HAsTZS8NXuuLoAPw_3ZjBFT1FCFxgWf4QFKFm_ENx4mcSB6F1qcElAyw1jy6q/w334-h400/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-06%20at%208.06.36%20PM.png" width="334" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">Reductive, personalistic psychologies (Freud and post-Freudian therapies and their spin-offs, body oriented therapies and others) attend to personal history looking for historical causes of suffering and much can be learned and possibly changed in the individual from these approaches. But they see only symptoms and not the symbolic nature of them. I certainly utilize personalistic approaches and their insights but my primary hold is Jungian. I understand symptoms to not only indicate personal history and causations but also seek the symbolic, the archetypal material which locates the suffering in a greater continuum of purpose and meaning. Jung has said that we take too much responsibility for our suffering. He calls it our "god almightiness," our inflated view of ourselves as masters of our fate and captains of our soul. His entire life was set on discovering and verifying the transpersonal factors involved in every individual's life as evidenced in dreams and other material. Like Job, Jung found that much of our suffering is inflicted by forces greater than ourselves through no fault of our own, archetypal forces, God, Gods, Goddesses to use theological language . Understand that when Jung uses theological words he uses them psychologically and not metaphysically. He speaks of "god-images" for these are records of humanity's relationship to and evolving views of god experiences depicted in images (visual, verbal, rituals, dance, etc., constitute images of gods) throughout human history. That there is an innate factor within humans which is religious-by-Nature is proven by Jung's lifelong researches. <br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Of Daimons, Character as Fate, Jung's Words on Failure, Errors, and Mistakes</b><br /><br />When I speak to my clients of their daimon, explaining what that means in psychological terms, many feel tremendous relief to know that their sufferings in part are not merely or necessarily from defaults, wounds, complexes created in infancy and childhood (though that is certainly "on the map"), nor only of flaws of character and morality. Their struggles are more, shall I say, Biblical in the sense of the Old Testament story of Jacob having a long night where he wrestled with his "eesh", often translated and mostly understood as an angel but this force or tyro is more akin to the daimon Jung describes. It, like Jacob's eesh, is driven and can at times be violent, heedless of the individual's personal life and obligations. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Jung at times refused his daimon's demands reminding it that he had a family, clients, friends, needed to recreate and rest, etc. He needed to be ordinary, human all too relievedly human. From Jung we learn that one can consciously resist the daimon without refusing its Call to grow and create. One must develop a conscious relationship to one's daimon, a real relationship, push and shove, tug and pull for if one doesn't recognize it and therefore project it outward upon, people, places, things, activities, then one is guaranteed to get mugged by the daimon which will use any means necessary to get attention and expression, more importantly, integration into conscious personality.<br /><br />It is important to understand that the daimon needs us as much as we need it. Each individual is a vessel, the eyes, hands, arms, feet, body action, thought and expression of the daimon. This force of nature is amoral in character and is what James Hillman calls a "psychic insistency." Since psyche means soul it urges and insists on being lived, developed, evolved, expressed and in such expression serves the <i>sacred</i> mysterious power within each individual which Jung calls the Self. Here the word <i>sacred</i> does not mean only sweetness and light but also struggle, darkness, pain, primal/primary emotions, and the Shadow both human and divine (yes, Virginia, the divine has a shadow, a shadow dimension and expression). The Shadow is sacred. Sacred does not exclude or shut out any part of human nature or Nature. The struggles to be and the courage to be, to borrow existential theologian Paul Tillich's expression, entails conflict, growth, setback, and at times failure. Failure does not necessarily derive from inadequacy and flaws, faults and defaults. There is also Fate. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">And Fate is part of character. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span>In the following transcription, in the last informal talk he ever gave in the United States, J</span><span>ung speaks eloquently of failure, of error and mistakes. Some of his address is worth quoting at length here:</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />"Jesus, you know, was a boy born of an unmarried mother. Such a boy is called illegitimate, and there is a prejudice which puts him at a great disadvantage. He suffers from a terrible feeling of inferiority for which he is certain to have to compensate. Hence the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, in that the kingdom was offered to him. Here he met his worst enemy, the power devil; but he was able to see that, and to refuse. He said, "My kingdom is not of this world." But "kingdom" it was, all the same. And you remember that strange incident, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the Cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body.<br /><br />We must all do just what Christ did. We must make our experiment. We must make mistakes. We must live out our own vision of life. And there will be error. If you avoid error you do not live; in a sense even it may be said that every life is a mistake, for no one has found the truth. When we live like this we know Christ as a brother, and God indeed becomes man. This sounds like a terrible blasphemy, but not so. For then only can we understand Christ as he would want to be understood, as a fellow man; then only does God become man in ourselves.<br /><br />...And so the last thing I would say to each of you, my friends, is: Carry through your life as well as you can, even if it is based on error, because life has to be undone, and one often gets to truth through error. Then, like Christ, you will have accomplished your experiment. So, be human, seek understanding, seek insight, and make your hypothesis, your philosophy of life. Then we may recognize the Spirit alive in the unconscious of every individual. Then we become brothers of Christ."<br /><br />--pages 97/98, from C.G. Jung Speaking, chapter "Is Analytical Psychology a Religion?" Princeton University Press, 1977.<br /><br /><br /><b>Individuation, Hillman's Force of Character and the Pathologizing Soul,</b><br /><br />Life with the daimon is meaningful, painful at times yet does not exclude happiness, joy, ecstasy and bliss but these are impermanent states of being, expressions of a spectrum of emotions from light to dark, all vital parts of human experience. The goal, says Jung, is not happiness (not excluding it either; Jung's laughter was renowned and it is said that sometimes strangers would follow the laughter they heard to see just who this person was so capable of such laughter). The goal is individuation, the individual's awakening to the fact that there are two centers in the human psyche, the ego and that other which is greater than the ego, the Self, that central organizing, ultimately mysterious factor/force from which the ego emerges. The ego serves the Self and the Self is served by incarnating uniquely and consciously in each individual. The daimon serves this process of the individuation of the person and the further evolution of the Self, too. The suffering of individuation then is not only human suffering but also, profoundly, the suffering of the Self, of God.<br /><br />James Hillman, founder of archetypal psycholgy, writes about the daimon extensively in his book, Force of Character. The word choice of force is accurately chosen for the daimon is indeed a force and most of us are forced to grow and develop in areas and ways we would never volutarily choose. Note my explication of the word character in the paragraphs below regarding Gabriel Marcel. You will see how Hillman's title is very fitting to his elucidation of life with the daimon and its affect upon our character. Jung's account of his life with the daimon clearly describes the painful impact of its force and power on a person's fate and face. Hillman speaks of psychology and science as well as religions' attempts "to get the upper hand on fate and therefore to constrain the soul." (page 59, The Blue Fire).<br /><br />In his book, The Blue Fire, Hillman says that "of its nature the soul pathologizes. That is to say, it gets us in trouble, it interferes with the smooth running of life, it obstructs attempts to understand, and it seems to make relationships impossible. It also makes us see perversely." Understanding and accepting this tendency of the psyche/soul to pathologize, to make trouble and obstruct, can relieve us from the burden of total responsibility. Trouble, to paraphrase Hillman taking this from Jung, his teacher, is inherent in the psyche/soul. Jung goes on to say that we humans take too much responsibility for our ills and unhappiness. Rather, Hillman here again, pathologies are the soul's meat and drink. The gods and goddesses, all, "come to us" unbidden from within the soul yet much of magic, science and religion throughout history, and even more presently, are designed to "work on the gods rather than recognizing their workings in us. We reach too far, missing the daimones that are present everyday, and each night, too. Plotinus said, "It is for them to come to me, not for me to come to them." <br /><br />In a sense, says Hillman, there is no cure of souls for the very nature of soul is trouble, pathologies, gods, goddesses, daimones who do come unbidden, who traumatize us while we egocentrically think it is something we have or have not done or something that is done unto us which creates the trouble. While not absolving humans of responsibility, Hillman's insight derived from Jung frees us up to take ourselves on one level less seriously all the while seriously playing the game of life. Recall Jung's reputation for amazingly delightful, joyous laughter as mentioned above. A sense of humor, often dark and delicious full of the fractured, frought, fierce, fumbling and frail can assuage <i>mal humours</i> in the most awful situations. Gallows humor: the soul is there. I'll speak at much greater length below on response and responsibity, of an imperative in the "trouble" of the soul, and of the daimon which seeks and demands response.<br /><br /><br /><b>Lunching With the Daimon - <i>To Become Is To Be Referred</i></b><br /><br />Just a few hours before my distraught client arrived for his session I had been in one of the local cafes, my "second offices" as I refer to them. That very morning I had lamented like my client similarly into my dark and bitter espresso and my journal. I am at least 20 years older than my client with more living and writhing tithing blood and flesh to the daimon under my ever expanding belt. I, too, wrestle with the daimon of perpetual insistencies, compulsions, demands to create, to express, and to rest in afterglow and everglitch for awhile from its ceaseless grip. Yet when I do find a bit of quiet, a parenthesis in the high pitching sea of its scratch and scream for my attention, I find that I miss it and do not quite know myself when out of its searching gaze and searing grip. I find that I miss the teeth and tear of it, of creating and the created, dare I say, of the Creator, that primal force within, behind, beneath, and yet separate from all things (see Kaballah for centuries of excavation of this paradox of the hidden and revealed Creator in and in between the imaginal gap between Itself and the creation. Many thanks to Shirah Kober Zeller, with whom I was most privileged to study, for her brilliant teaching of kaballah and insights from psychology regarding the imaginal <i>gap, the thin space/spaces, wherein the "god of contradictions and contractions" reveals, and in such revelations, is awe-full;</i> confusing as such may at times be, there is also a great <i>release</i>, a giving in to, and falling into and between, the gap, that mystical grasp of paradox on a deep soul level]. <br /><br />Happiness is often experienced as a cessation, or stilling, of powerful destructive/creative forces. W.R. Bion and Michael Eigen's insights here are invaluable regarding these "destructive/creative forces" insisting, presenc-ing, rendering, in the ongoing psychic/soul life of individuals). Such cessations are a relief to say the least! at last! - happiness = relief from suffering, a blesséd release as mentioned just above. Such are not the imagined to be integrative experiences that soul longs for after all; rather, they shock, <i>are</i> shocking, a kind of trauma, yet such are an essential experience in the process and progress of individuation. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Carl Jung, from his own experience, no tongue in cheek with him though he is and can be cheeky, wrote that "God is a trauma". As did the Sufi poets, Old and New Testament poets, and poets of all world traditions from ancient of days to the present, these poets are <i>renderers</i>, having been rendered out, and in, and then again, know this drive and longing in the midst of conflicting, crushing life for some mirroring, windowing, winnowing, wooing, winning, containing, and sheltering Other/other who <i>will</i> make meaningful our days and daze by any means necessary (but gently, o gently, we pray). When one is rendered one sur-renders (which etymologically reduces to "rendered out" as when one slow cooks meat to "render out the fat"), one assents, gives in, relents to be emptied out where one waits, prays, if one has the will or strength to pray, "without hope" which, by the way, is authentic prayer. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Poet T. S. Eliot, partially quoted above re: wait without hope, movingly writes about this rendered out, emptied out state,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">When I and that Other/other inevitably fail and disappoint, the longing and urging increases, the compulsions, repulsions, expulsions, propulsions and impulsions repeat in their wrenching yet rendering dialectic of an intuition which hints at some essential and existentially present and sustaining meaning within this "old chaos of the sun." The daimon is never happy. The daimon is not content with "the Answer," "the Secret," "the Key," "the Code," "the Encounter of Encounters," "the Scientific Method," etc., yet these are not false but are, rather, fingers which point toward some ever elusive yet Real Thing which we hope brings us into more authentically creative and satisfying existence. In a journal note Thomas Merton writes, "My heart yearns for its Referent." The daimon yearns for its Referent, too, and refers<i> us</i>, burns and yearns us toward each our Referent — </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">To become is to be referred. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">"Shall I say that yet again?" echoing poet T. S. Eliot again from the Four Quartets. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">"I shall say it again": To become is to be referred.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span>Between the daimon and ourselves there </span><span>appears </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span>to be no referee though Reference aplenty.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Is This A Private Fight or Can Anyone Join In?</b><br /><br />As I write of the struggle with the daimon and the daimon of struggle, I am minded of the ever impactful Bill Moyer interview with Joseph Campbell where Campbell tells a story of a drunken brawl involving many people in a pub in Ireland. Campbell is illustrating the healthy need to get out into life and grapple with it, to not be a victim of and in life, but instead to join in the fray of it and <i>throw some punches</i>: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">"A man walking down a street near a busy and popular pub saw someone pitched headlong through the pub door into the street. Excitedly the man ran into the establishment filled with bedlam, found one of the battered and bleeding brawlers, and asked, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">"Is this a private fight or can anybody join in?" </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">There is something about rising to the battle, the struggle, and taking delight in it (as best and as busted as one can). A good fight is a good fight. Did not St. Paul encourage those of the new Christian religion "to fight the good fight?" St. Paul was one who knew the daimon well. Jung writes movingly of Saul of Tarsus who became Paul and how in following his daimon (Jung calls it libido, not sexual libido (as Freud confines the term) but powerful demanding life force), he at first "obeyed" it by persecuting the new Christian sect. Had he not followed the daimon he would never have had his life changing mystical, and violent, encounter, he was blinded by his vision, with "the Christ" on the road to Damascus. Thusly, involuntarily, Saul became Paul and thusly he and his daimon almost single handedly (I am exaggerating a bit here but his is a god of exaggeration) founded and shaped the early Christian church, and still does, for better and worse - it is helpful to remember here the gap between the dynamic and rendering opposites - to the present day.<br /><br />Thus in the cafe, post-lament into my journal while the perplexed-at-my-dour-look server delivered yet another double espresso, in the soul-ache I waited, staring at the street traffic, full of the question, the perpetual question of meaningful existence in this indubitable erstwhile veil of tears, world woe, weltschmertz, pain, disappointment, and sorrow. I puzzled, too, on the pleasure I feel in pondering, floundering, and viscerally experiencing the question - I note here how easy it is to exaggerate but in this I serve that Great Exaggerator/Exasperator, emphasis on 'aspiration' as in the sense of "aspire" and, but seriously folks, its homonym cousin, "asperate" as in "</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: times;">the accidental breathing in of food or fluid into the lungs" as well as "</span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41); color: #212529;"><span style="font-family: times;">to make rough or harsh" as in being roughly and harshly "manhandled" by the demanding daimon.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 37, 41); color: #212529;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span>German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet urged a young poet in the midst of his suffering the pangs of mental and physical existence to not seek answers too quickly but, rather, "to live the questions" for in them one deepens contact with Mystery, grows familiar with and facility with <i>not-knowing</i>, staying awake and attentive<i> in the gap</i>, a <i>staying</i> (and staying-</span>put if one can even move at all) which can individuate one (revisit Edward Edinger texts above), or does potentially though there is death in each hard question and one can indeed die in them. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Thus the great need for a Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Carl Jung, James Hillman, so many others, as well as there being culture, the arts, teachers all kinds, and on and on, to provide containing <i>but not confining</i> hold for the questiones, the sufferer who is after something <i>real</i> - a popular song sings "just give me one <i>real</i> thing - that <i>real</i> is a sense, an intuition, a sensation, a meaningful coincidence, that vibe or hint felt, often unseen (yet projected upon), and so one sorts, and sifts (as "soft sift in an hour glass" - Gerard Manley Hopkins) and in so doing unexpected gifts are gained for the hard-press of one's measure being taken and, yes, the taking full (impossible but we do, we will, we must) good measure of the Measurer, impossible, I know, but we do, we will, we must while wide-eyed or blind as was Saul "killed"/waking into Paul and adhered to God Almighty as then kenned. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">And, importantly, all things being <i>equalish</i> (smile), there is play, the playing, in the never redundant "fields of the Lord, and, yes, there is the insistent joining in on the fight.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">But seriously folks...<b> </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">The playing, the fighting, the questioning are deeply serious and can, may, and <i>do</i> take a toll, some folks do not make it, the sufferings too great, too overwhelming, and one becomes comfortless. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">Jungian analyst, David Rosen, in his book Transforming Depression speaks of commiting <i>ego-cide</i> rather than suicide which is final and resolves nothing that the individual's soul is painfully birthing into being or trying to. Parts of self, ego parts, die by ego-cide, by consciously diving into the questions wherein the potential for some rebirth into presence with just what is, the givens of huma</span><span style="outline: none;">n </span><span style="outline: none;">existence in a material and mental universe, may <i>happen - </i>the etymology of this word is shared with the word <i>happiness</i> in that both words are related to 'luck, chance' (see etymology below this text), thus there is in living, and dying, in the question of existence, the potential for luckily <i>happening upon,</i> by chance, Presence, and ways to be present with Being and Becoming in the face of non-being, and Death. Presence happens. It is an event in which for it, presence, to happen one must literally show up, be, be there and, yes, often, enduringly so as in Samual Beckett's play Waiting For Godot - wait. The very pondering and feeling of these questions and notations-in-the-waiting, rather, glyphs toward ever changing and evolving meaning and experience of meaning can bring a kind of fullness, a kind of pleasure, dare I call it happiness derived from perceiving oneself being articulated in the inarticulate pains and strivings of the heart, mind and body framed and formed in and by the lived questions and the yearning for the Referent of the heart. </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><b style="outline: none;">Homo Viator, With-ness, Scaracter, and Human Exigencies</b></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;">"What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going. I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going over." —Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche, (tr. R. Hollingdale, Penguin. 1984, p.44<br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">Gabriel Marcel, Christian existentialist of the last century, says that rather than being homo sapiens, human <i>knowers</i>, humans are <i>homo viators</i>, humans <i>on the way, passing through</i>. I recalled this as I sat with the espresso cup in my shaking hand remembering Marcel from my Calvinist Christian college days and the attendant agonies of questions there in them, of reading his book <i>Homo Viator</i> and finding from it some nascent ways to begin to crawl, baby step, limp, back into my skin, given permission at last to be someone "on the way" traveling, trevail-ing, unraveling and unveiling while the elusive self, the witness I was/am observes it all. Witness means with-ness, being-with/with-being in existence, being with the questions, being with self and with others, and, after the coffee shop self-session, being with my unhappy client. </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">By living the questions on the way to being, while becoming, one bears witness to existence in all of its spectrum of agonies and glories. We are shaped by what we must bear with-ness to, by what we must be too much with, misshapen (how it feels, how <i>we</i> feel); </span></span>this shaping forms what is in psychology called <i>character, </i>etymology of which literally means "scratches upon a surface." In other words, <b style="font-style: italic;">scars, </b>as in <b style="font-style: italic;">scar-acter.</b> </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;">American poet, Wendell Berry, in a poem titled, The Sycamore, eloquently dignifies <i>scaracter, </i>describes it making, in this poem:</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 34, 40); color: #1d2228; outline: none;"><div class="yiv9213835175ydpe2b3b39fyiv9101101381MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><b style="outline: none;">The Sycamore</b></span></div><div class="yiv9213835175ydpe2b3b39fyiv9101101381MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></div><div class="yiv9213835175ydpe2b3b39fyiv9101101381MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;">In the place that is my own place, whose earth<br style="outline: none;" />I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,<br style="outline: none;" />a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.<br style="outline: none;" />Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,<br style="outline: none;" />Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.<br style="outline: none;" />There is no year it has flourished in<br style="outline: none;" />that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it<br style="outline: none;" />that is its death, though its living brims whitely<br style="outline: none;" />at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.<br style="outline: none;" />Over all its scars has come the seamless white<br style="outline: none;" />of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history<br style="outline: none;" />healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection<br style="outline: none;" />in the warp and bending of its long growth.<br style="outline: none;" />It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.<br style="outline: none;" />It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.<br style="outline: none;" />It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.<br style="outline: none;" />In all the country there is no other like it.<br style="outline: none;" />I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling<br style="outline: none;" />th e same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.<br style="outline: none;" />I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,<br style="outline: none;" />and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.</span></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;">This tree <i>is</i> character unique to its scarring, accidents, gnarls, lightning, Berry profoundly orienting poem describes ourselves on the way to individuation, we are in the weathers (and whithers) of that process, bearing the scars of being come by honestly merely by taking flesh, drawing breath, wherein there is no year we have lived in that has not harmed us -</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;">Testament. I am here. I was there. I got here from there on the way. </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times;">Homo Viator. Aviator - Flyer. Traveler. Trevailer. </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">"</span><b style="outline: none;">Was I too glib about eternal things?" —Theodore Roethke</b><span style="outline: none;"> </span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">With Marcel's book I could begin to own my young dispair and the pathologies which are my soul as a result of Marcel's salvific insight into what he calls human exigencies. Existence is laden with exigencies which means urgencies, demands. These push, haul, explode me out of complacent Hallmark card, spiritually materialistic patchwork confections of pirated spiritualities, techniques, psychologies and formulas reduced to glib and psycho-sanctimonious presentiments and presentations regarding being here in existence in the external and inner world. When I understood then though barely but enough, enough, and remember now that in the very fabric of conscious human existence are exigencies, urgencies, demands, I knew that I could then continue to more authentically explore what was then nascently and now more clearly apparent regarding my personal Vocation, that of being a man on his way, a wrestler with those exigencies, personal, social and transpersonal, making and exacting their demands from my mere existence. As Rilke says in the Nineth Elegy, "Being here amounts to so much, because all this Here and Now, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely concerns us." </span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">Here in Marcel I discover and recover again and own the exigencies, the urgings, the demands of being and becoming. In the exigencies I discover what Marcel and others call "the appeal in existence," "existence as appeal." There is a demand, a Call, an Appeal in existence and to exist is to be and to be in the appeal. In speaking just now of my sense of personal Vocation, Calling, from the experienced arrival of Marcel's human exigencies I recall that the very word Vocation has the word voice in it which implies that there is a calling, an appeal, a voice which evokes one's authentic nascent and evolving self which requires a continuing response to That which is heard. Again, Vocation is to be called and to hear and act in response from within that evocation one is ongoingly becoming. Rainer Maria Rilke eloquently describes this hearing and this response</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">Voices, voices. Hear, O my heart, as only</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">saints have heard: heard till the giant-call</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">lifted them off the ground; yet they went impossibly</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">on with their kneeling, in undistracted attention:</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">so inherently hearers...but hark to the suspiration,</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">the uninterrupted news that grows out of silence.</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="outline: none;">We are so inherently hearers of the exigencies, the uninterrupted appeals of existence. And in hearing the appeals we must respond. For me that hearing and response led and continually leads me in my ongoing unfolding vocation of being a man on his way in the adventure.</span></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><br /></span></span></span></div></div></div></div><div><div data-setdir="true" dir="" style="color: #222222; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><b style="outline: none;">Existence as Response</b><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" />Here F.H. Heinemann, existentialist philosopher and writer, in his still timely book Existentialism and the Human Predicament published in 1959 speaks to this urging within existence for human response. The last chapter of the book is called, Respondeo, ergo sum; translated it means, I respond, therefore I Am. Because this speaks so much to the question of being which includes the problem of pain/happiness I happily quote extensively from the book. </span></div><div data-setdir="true" dir="" style="color: #222222; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div data-setdir="true" dir="" style="color: #222222; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;">NOTE - Heinemann was a philosopher of the earlier to mid-20th century and one of the more accessible and readable ones. It the reader is not used to reading philosophy it may be a challenge due to the various philosophies the technical terms and issues they address. If what is below is too much then read the first paragraph for the basic thrust of Respondeo, ergo sum; upon first reading this passage an inner wheel turned within me that Heinemann's existentialism is of tremendous compassion and presence with what is, response implies relationship, the primacy of relationship as I and Thou, as I and It. The Hopi Native Americans in North America have a word which happens to complement this attitude/stance of respondeo, ergo sum, <b>hakomi</b> which means "Where do I stand within these realms?" The question is one of orientation and presence, being consciously awake, aware, engaged in the here and now inwardly and outwardly, awareness of both at once and where they meet, where they depart and so on. Here's some Heinemann:</span></div><div data-setdir="true" dir="" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: #e9d096; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">"...I formulate the first principle as Respondeo, ergo sum...I am in so far as I respond. I arise on all levels of my being (body, sense organs, soul and mind) only by responding. Man comes into being by an act of response; his evolution consists of interrelated and complicated acts of response. As long as he is alive he responds...Man's position in the Universe is unique in that he, as a responding being, becomes answerable for his actions. This is the moral aspect of his freedom. Respondeo, ergo sum now means that I am in so far as I accept responsibility for my actions...Finally, our key-symbol (Respondeo, ergo sum) allows us to understand religion. Man is the only being able to respond to stimuli outside the "world" of animals. Man alone responds to God, speaks with God, and prays to God. This fact gives us the clue for understanding religion and the mystics without forcing us to admit the claim of the mystics to experience ultimate reality. The hypothesis of religion is based on a specific type of responsiveness of the spiritual center of man to the Transcendent, i.e. to powers transcending the sphere of sense-experience. Religion is not based on a feeling of dependence (Schleiermacher), nor is it "the knowledge of the Absolute in a finite consciousness" (Hegel). It is based on a response to the Absolute which has the power of elevating man above the misery of earthly turmoil and redeeming him. What matters is the manner in which we respond, not whether God answers or not...</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">This is the paradox of the human condition. Living in complete insecurity under the constant menace of annihilation, we experience the unreliability of human institutions and the instability of all finite objects. In our dispair we are inclined to doubt everything, even God's existence, of whom we cannot and shall not make an image [Heinemann is certainly NOT a Jungian. See my words above regarding Jung and the "god-image" in the section, Carl Jung and His Daimon.]. But at the height of our suffering, when everything seems to break down, suddenly we find ourselves confronted with an unconditional request [the appeal, the exigency, the daimon's drive -- Warren] which we have to answer. In such moments we experience God ['God' here meaning that from and in which we derive Ultimate Meaning for existence, our existence, not necessarily a metaphysical being which ontologically exists--Warren], and we learn that it is we who have to respond. We have to find our affirmation, which as a personal truth becomes objective if in very fact it be the right answer to the transcendent call [appeal, Rilke's "uninterruped news" -- Warren] in this specific situation. It is we who have to do those actions without which the eternal Light cannot conquer the forces of darkness...</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Existence is a subjectively-regulative idea; for it brings unity into the chaos of our personal experience...as a general imperative it says, "Your responses shall be existential!" "Within all spheres of our being you shall act in such a manner that you exist in and through your answers!" "Reply [to the appeal, the exigency, the daimon] with absolute responsibility in the face of God!" "Answer so that you mirror the Universe in your specific way from your point of view!"...Existence as appeal is therefore preserved...the postulate to become existential in thought and action concerns everybody. An existential philosopher is one whose thought is action. Consequently he exists in his action-responses and in these creates himself and his world. He lives up to Fichte's statement: "Philosophy is a transformation, regeneration and renewal of the spirit in its deepest root: the emergence of a new organ and, with it, of a new world in the flux of time.""</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">--All quotes are from the the last chapter, Respondeo, Ergo Sum, in F.H. Heinemann's, Existentialism and the Human Predicament, Harper Torchbooks, 1958.</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><b style="color: #222222; font-family: times; outline: none;">Harkening To The Suspiration</b><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Paying my bill at the cafe I returned home more oriented in a "new/old world in the flux of time." I felt full not only from my meal but from my outpouring woes into the journal and the subsequent waiting and musing and refusing to be easily or quickly comforted. The session hour arrived and in spilled my client as reported above. I was concerned but recognized the synchronicity of his outpourings, the themes similar to mine, and thus I sat open and disposed to him keenly interested in just how he and I would be together in his very real pain regarding his apparently meaningless struggle to live and create. I sat on my urge to report that I had just been writhing around the same issues a few hours before and thus have I arrived regarding soul pathology, daimons, Rilke and "living the questions," (I know that I would have punched someone in the teeth if they had spouted "live the questions" to me in the midst of my experience of what D.W. Winnicott accurately describes as "unspeakable agonies and primitive terrors"!), powerful destructive/creative forces, ego-cide, Godot, waiting, homo viator, witness/withness, scaracter, human exigencies and their demand for response, respondeo, ergo sum, and inner and outter voices which appeal to us and when heard and responded to evoke in us Vocation along the way. I sat on all that. I tried to be present, being with and for him in his great pain. I did not seek to make him happy nor to increase his suffering. I let him empty and go on emptying himself into the space we were in, in the space which I try to become, empty, open, present. My verbal responses were minimal. I deepened my breathing in order to become present in the ground of being and to ground myself solidly in the space we were together in. He emptied. And emptied more. Then grew silent. Exhausted. He relaxed though he was not required to relax. He lay on the couch and breathed. I said, "That's right...let the couch hold you. Don't hold on anymore...let go and let yourself be held. Feel the support of the couch. And just breathe." And he did that. And I breathed, too. And silence filled the space, deepened the space of him and me. </span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">I offered no solutions or formulas and kept the Rilke books on the shelf. Some other time perhaps. We booked the next appointment. When he left I pulled the Duino Elegies from the bookshelf and read these words:</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Fling the emptiness out of your arms</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">into the spaces we breathe--maybe that the birds</span><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">will feel the extended air in more intimate flight. --page 21/22</span><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">O homo viator. Aviator. Flyer. Man on the way,</span></span></div><div style="color: #222222; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;">my client, may it be that he "will feel the extended air<br style="outline: none;" />in more intimate flight."<br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" />"Voices, voices. Hear, O my heart, as only</span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="color: #222222; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;">saints have heard: heard till the giant-call<br style="outline: none;" />lifted them off the ground; yet they went impossibly<br style="outline: none;" />on with their kneeling, in undistracted attention:<br style="outline: none;" />so inherently hearers...but hark to the suspiration,<br style="outline: none;" />the uninterrupted news that grows out of silence." --page 23<br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" /><br style="outline: none;" />Selah.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurUHxhANY03xc_hwYbAjJXQoiobvSeM-YDCs_wIVQXAcU3YzDPqir8oIyTAojgP2aDtVx__OaqfXaEW9MV-EDfrjzOHI1dPz-J4JX-of1D-0JNT8VdEM7jD4zykchYcg5GtatP9rWDeINHdwajWlA4vuoVc6kcnB6sMMBoVjw0Q1U4Kqr2jRfX-xJ/s3648/August_batch_2015%20265.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurUHxhANY03xc_hwYbAjJXQoiobvSeM-YDCs_wIVQXAcU3YzDPqir8oIyTAojgP2aDtVx__OaqfXaEW9MV-EDfrjzOHI1dPz-J4JX-of1D-0JNT8VdEM7jD4zykchYcg5GtatP9rWDeINHdwajWlA4vuoVc6kcnB6sMMBoVjw0Q1U4Kqr2jRfX-xJ/s320/August_batch_2015%20265.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">London as seen from the London Bridge August 2015</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">CODA</span></b></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">We live in an old chaos of the sun,<br />Or old dependency of day and night,<br />Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,<br />Of that wide water, inescapable.<br />Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail<br />Whistle about us their spontaneious cries;<br /><br />...And, in the isolation of the sky,<br />At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make<br />Ambiguous undulations as they sink,<br />Downward to darkness, on extended wings.<br /><br />--page 70, from "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens from<br />The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span>--------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />ETYMOLOGY:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hap">hap</a> <a class="dictionary" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hap" title="Look up hap at Dictionary.com"></a><br />c.1205, "chance, luck," from O.N. happ "chance, good luck," from P.Gmc. *khapan (source of O.E. gehæp "convenient, fit"). Meaning "good fortune" is from c.1225.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=happen">happen</a> <a class="dictionary" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=happen" title="Look up happen at Dictionary.com"></a><br />c.1300, happenen "to come to pass, occur," originally "occur by hap" (see <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hap">hap</a>); replaced O.E. gelimpan, gesceon, and M.E. befall. First record of happenstance is 1897, formed from happening + circumstance. Happening in the sense of "spontaneous event or display" is from 1959.<br /><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=happy">happy</a> <a class="dictionary" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=happy" title="Look up happy at Dictionary.com"></a><br />1340, "lucky," from hap "chance, fortune" (see <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=haphazard">haphazard</a>), sense of "very glad" first recorded c.1390. Ousted O.E. eadig (from ead "wealth, riches") and gesælig, which has become <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=silly">silly</a>. O.E. bliðe "happy" survives as <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=blithe">blithe</a>. From Gk. to Ir., a great majority of the European words for "happy" at first meant "lucky." An exception is Welsh, where the word used first meant "wise." Used in World War II and after as a suffix (e.g. bomb-happy, flak-happy) expressing "dazed or frazzled from stress." Happiness is first recorded 1530. Happy hour "early evening period of discount drinks and free hors-d'oeuvres at a bar" is first recorded 1961. Happy-go-lucky is from 1672. Happy as a clam (1636) was originally happy as a clam in the mud at high tide, when it can't be dug up and eaten.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=exigency">exigency</a> <a class="dictionary" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=exigency" title="Look up exigency at Dictionary.com"></a><br />1581, from M.Fr. exigence, from L.L. exigentia "urgency," from L. exigentem (nom. exigens), from exigere "to demand" (see <a class="crossreference" href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=exact">exact</a>).<br /><br />Webpage for the above: <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=h&p=2">http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=h&p=2</a></span><br /><br /></span><br /></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-86003879324672266482023-05-23T17:32:00.047-07:002023-06-03T17:44:01.528-07:00Epimetheus** Looks Back - Upon Gazing at a Photo of Sixty Year Old Me from My Now Being Seventy One<div class="separator"><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div class="ydp7396f983page" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.399998664855957px; outline: none;" title="Page 5"><div class="ydp7396f983layoutArea" style="outline: none;"><div class="ydp7396f983column" style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">"So abandon all hope ye who enter here. Best to veer away unless willing </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">to risk some secure rumored footholds of logic, meter, measure, rhyme, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">sanity. I'm with old Ezra's humbled fife and thrum, 'is repentant, haggard, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">niggardly self in ripe and rife old age, beyond chastened, crumpled yet </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">and yes but for a tongue and pen still at and in't, the wiser for 'is sins </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">n schisms/"</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">- from text below</span></div></div></div></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; font-size: 15.399998664855957px; text-align: justify;"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">**Epimetheus is Prometheus' brother. Name of Prometheus means "sees ahead" "forward seeing" "future sight" whereas Epimetheus means "looks back" perpetually</span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">[</span><b style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">NOTE: </b><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">This site has utterly defeated me. The text page for writing, indexing, etc. is utterly inconsistent and one part of the text will extend into the right margin edge, another part will be hard left but then make a space between lines of the text, text can be of a completely different font and size arbitrarily imposed by whatever fractured algorithm insisting upon making essays on this, instead of being pleasure and ease, an exhausting and defeating task. I curse the AI gods or lazy controllers of the did-jots and spit-tittles of composing and posting for such a torture, may you be bitten by a thousand fleas....To the very rare reader here, thank you, and welcome, I apologize here for the sloppy pastiche layout that is the site's cyber-no-brain's fault, not mine. I literally spent hours of agony just trying to make it as presentable as I could but to no avail. Entonces, I admit defeat because ecce homo, and not AI. I am flesh, blood, bone, think and snot but not necessarily in that order (I bray, I mean, pray), I am not abstract coding, rather the only code I got is DNA and DNA will whip AI's</span></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"> <img border="0" data-original-height="757" data-original-width="452" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge2mLY2gSmhscGxDc063Thg8svhHXHvztmAShmz_DEGgH1ayyhRLzZwtPLWwyTr_B5WGp_RA7a4KMbEnnBzJCBkrfi0q7e5BFC1tIDOTDR0WW0b4Fxf1XGda4Kp04WRHLo83M_0k4x3GqFnq-N4Tht-3rC2iv_G6TRqXbLuMt0H1zMS4RQ7pA68k3k/s320/313267998_10224311697753492_7224200604735085753_n.jpg" width="191" /></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">the 'god-image' of this site -</span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">any familiarity of that/those</span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">of Western "Syphiization "is</span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"> accurate]</span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">non ass in and out of any space and time corridor. </span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Code is no victor here though I admit defeat. William Blake has it right, "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." And Carl Jung has it right too, though many many will call him heretical, and he would admit it and without shame, Eternity is in utter need and dependency upon creation, humans particularly, to unite the opposites of IT's N0 Self within each ourselves and in so doing mitigate and perhaps some far time in the future (if future there is) IT, will also become more whole since IT is split too...there's a danger in such uniting of good and evil but that's another essay for another time and perhaps on some other site with less budgy-fudgy-excre-mental-bytes-but-bloats all the more with rank Kubricks, I mean, HAL hubris.</span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">All images are my own unless otherwise credited. All texts/poems are mine unless otherwise credited</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">]</span></div></div><div class="separator"><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitHqKpHqM0W2bJbmW_pQhrUNQTie6LZG8uOy58EvvT_QI8UMuLADdRgg59KHzEHN8RAxokcjtDxVq84pLD4MlOwEN37MBGbAvLpnPbKr5q77NHE_0_rfqMq80cf7GMIuy15Wl5OOCcze44ey0phFQ6YKldhcWU05OLQq6dgqf2W9RLB8CV8KOh0FXl/s887/529508_10201691787509873_2126636140_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="887" data-original-width="793" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitHqKpHqM0W2bJbmW_pQhrUNQTie6LZG8uOy58EvvT_QI8UMuLADdRgg59KHzEHN8RAxokcjtDxVq84pLD4MlOwEN37MBGbAvLpnPbKr5q77NHE_0_rfqMq80cf7GMIuy15Wl5OOCcze44ey0phFQ6YKldhcWU05OLQq6dgqf2W9RLB8CV8KOh0FXl/s320/529508_10201691787509873_2126636140_n.jpg" width="286" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Photo taken in 2013</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Tis a Selkie, not a selfie. A decade ago in the Adirondacks, wood stove flue over my left shoulder. My zennish days more or less or not at all, my NOW AND ZEN SOME days, my zen teacher a proponent of Wrecking Ball Zen which explains the glazed right eye and the intense left, bereft of self or no-self. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72);"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72);"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"... to begin with a swelled head and end with swelled feet..." - Ezra Pound</span></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72);"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">From the journal then:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ENTRY 13:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Sensei tells me: It's undertow that matters.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Me: I am stumped. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ENTRY 14 (Caught in the undertow mind m-utterances)</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">One adjusts. Continually. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">The persona is adaptation </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">appearing to be solid but sleep reveals the neutrality </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">of the animal. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Dreams tell us otherwise </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">when we remember them as it takes an ego to witness, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">to remember. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">They reveal that we are </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">caught up into something so much greater than </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">flush and stir. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">It's a wonder we make do </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">as much as we do and still call ourselves by name, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">a species of animal, 'homo sapiens'. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I regret self pity. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I'd reject it if I could but it adheres, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">last resort of old coots born honestly </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">into it no matter the copious Mercurochrome baths, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">the smelling salts obviating the needed nipple. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">The stippled trout I nightly catch, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">pink insides turned out by blue blade </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">kept beneath the pillow, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">baits me with the riddle </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">again and again. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Something about a stand of trees, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">a man carving some bark, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">what breath is for. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ENTRY 23 More's the muddle w/th' not so subtle </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">nuance </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><i>there's </i></span><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">no undertow in a puddle" </i></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><span>aka Han Shan 9th century </span><span>Chinese poet:</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><i style="background-color: white;">"Who will lend a dipper of water</i></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><i>To save a fish in a carriage rut?"</i></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Today the Market reports a run on Mercurochrome. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Birth goes on. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I am for rebirth. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">A dirth of days makes me suddenly Hindu, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">foregoing gurus and bindu point. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I've made my own here,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">one foot well into 'Cracked and Crank', </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">the drunk tank a memory </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">worn out. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Doubt is my companion. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Love, too. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">No remorse here. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Buys me time, aftershave and </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">loads of underwear for the trickles ahead. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Thank the gods for all that. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Oh. And one last good cigar. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I'm switching to Groucho Marx Zen aka</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"You sed th' woid, you got th' VOID."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="171" data-original-width="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRvOHqOWfxHEWkMCxMwla6UzLjEeMmfsdSccIzw4QyZ_Ej2aBfF1mLb7Lg8AiiD1EQUfw-KHwnH6AtJrO_2y0MMkmK_QFanZ9WftWLCbF0fo-EAlMWGnEY8m3o8dT6HiVDomdwJEtowDQciROr3s2iPcAhFISZ3hpU3o_mpMS8tAKsrh9picbMon4/s16000/Unknown-4.jpeg" /></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ENTRY 2635 - Years on in still at zen. Nothing broken. Nothing to mend...and yet...and yet...</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqNBkIAhXP1BKZwpyWnAFn_XecJ95nj41ePCoEFO-yyU-Pv8aIDnFg02paOnsCW9nTpteVXYaEeVmHw7sDONQjq_94EIsBqW6LNyR6jt8w_s4spoiotkqcPwgyAIJxxPTq1-V2vsgLwZ1tzM3po2a5kmirihiynQ-mfiEaePb1GVOKe5N8RFHWSnba/s1526/Screen%20Shot%202020-02-13%20at%206.10.08%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="86" data-original-width="1526" height="18" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqNBkIAhXP1BKZwpyWnAFn_XecJ95nj41ePCoEFO-yyU-Pv8aIDnFg02paOnsCW9nTpteVXYaEeVmHw7sDONQjq_94EIsBqW6LNyR6jt8w_s4spoiotkqcPwgyAIJxxPTq1-V2vsgLwZ1tzM3po2a5kmirihiynQ-mfiEaePb1GVOKe5N8RFHWSnba/w320-h18/Screen%20Shot%202020-02-13%20at%206.10.08%20PM.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; text-align: left;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Ramana Pajama, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Coda Pagoda,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">rolled outta bed, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">sat. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Sang,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"No more sensei." </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Epimetheus looks back</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it?" - from The Iliad XXI by Homer</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">...but it's late and I've been under-slept, much distressed, stretched through veil and moan, though I dreamed last night a sweet not-dog/yet-dog sleeping upon a burning log most inviting. I see now it is a sacrifice that has consented to such and thus is resolved, at peace, surrendered to gentle flame, to rules of the human consciousness game, and/but I want to secure its comfort and safety though Fire winks at me and says, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I got this covered.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">So.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">What to do? </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Out of my league as creature alone, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I demur to Fire.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Am awaiting further instructions. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Marinating in petrol. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Negotiating </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">with Combustion Union </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">even as I </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">speak or spark, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">whichever comes </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">first which will </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">inexorably of course </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">come last then </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ashes to ashes </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">and the mourning</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">a thousand </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">or more books unread, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">not understood.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Tou jours </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">mon ami, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">mon frere</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">to rhyme </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">with fire</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">and sireling.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie0HU4-kUkF0T09RQAyxMKpezYWg4N00zIdf48DtbeprvkIXmGHQ6qdqimIjTihoj5q4RqY7tgpSh2VjZtypKND8ll2lf8_ptdJZ6xHYh93_Fvo4vgmf-t9140zSAd9vbTaiRPs7flVNLmFUpnTKmcnva4-XF8t-s0nKirLazLwrjH2ELxxm1Qp4Rj/s1080/thumbnail-13.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie0HU4-kUkF0T09RQAyxMKpezYWg4N00zIdf48DtbeprvkIXmGHQ6qdqimIjTihoj5q4RqY7tgpSh2VjZtypKND8ll2lf8_ptdJZ6xHYh93_Fvo4vgmf-t9140zSAd9vbTaiRPs7flVNLmFUpnTKmcnva4-XF8t-s0nKirLazLwrjH2ELxxm1Qp4Rj/w320-h240/thumbnail-13.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Me during covid "warrentine" 2020 upstate New York</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ENTRY 2637 - Sensei's 7 years dead now, the "sitz path" continues unsure, it proceeds still, path-enough</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">SENSEI'S PARTING SENTIMENTS </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">Where have they gotten too </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">these graces clumsy on their feet? </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">They've fled, easy wings balletic </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">toward ocean or other, black, they </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">bob low over white waves, confuse </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">themselves for sails or Van Goghs </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">or Cezannes, even Twomblys, and </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">so steady they do go away, or de- </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">pending on time of day and slant </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">of sun, they may wobble or appear </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">to do so when things, even birds, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">are bent, mirage-podge-and-puddle, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">trajectories and intent, fused in- </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">stincts, prevailing, so weaving they </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">have went, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">their patience with the city spent. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-family: sans-serif, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;" /><span face="sans-serif, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">They're fled. Gone. </span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWH-cDSO7wWYUMWfVnyIu_0LZYrPHPAisPEbETEjZaruTVdAwEdK6LDO4An8dlJGpBSWF9tkjsDzB0GHb6Atpk57JIM_ei2U8sr8h9W_ud2mk_Z4_jRdI3kiTC-UMIy3-T6V0e9GcCvOOlznqIcfqbIOs0CpAR3DJPQLjJLtxLqfaDZ0qD27TH4BMV/s1547/311958868_10224169793645978_3597336406424620359_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1547" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWH-cDSO7wWYUMWfVnyIu_0LZYrPHPAisPEbETEjZaruTVdAwEdK6LDO4An8dlJGpBSWF9tkjsDzB0GHb6Atpk57JIM_ei2U8sr8h9W_ud2mk_Z4_jRdI3kiTC-UMIy3-T6V0e9GcCvOOlznqIcfqbIOs0CpAR3DJPQLjJLtxLqfaDZ0qD27TH4BMV/s320/311958868_10224169793645978_3597336406424620359_n.jpg" width="223" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">tell me now </span></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">glass-handled knives </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I'm not clear where we started</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />between the rain <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />whose throat is blue <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />like a wild fern is clear </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I am sad when I see you</span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">your letters arrive fat <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />swollen with human form </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">they fly out from my palms </span></p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">look around you</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6fqm0vS3aBZ70SAXzrm2FP_EPQ0ZHk7Ws8FR5DvL9JUiWqFJalGyVg0oBV_1bavK_wchmUgnxzf-bi63mb9ZS4iWt1gyWtQbupJSD_qvMnaWJDS5ybGWgnNmrJEM4RS9CHMR2ZYnn_MYjCKRVJnOtqW2ZgMzL9j5Wyt-zqh_sS1LbcnicJAAhelO/s3540/IMG_0310.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="848" data-original-width="3540" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6fqm0vS3aBZ70SAXzrm2FP_EPQ0ZHk7Ws8FR5DvL9JUiWqFJalGyVg0oBV_1bavK_wchmUgnxzf-bi63mb9ZS4iWt1gyWtQbupJSD_qvMnaWJDS5ybGWgnNmrJEM4RS9CHMR2ZYnn_MYjCKRVJnOtqW2ZgMzL9j5Wyt-zqh_sS1LbcnicJAAhelO/w400-h96/IMG_0310.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">The distant gazebo of that small <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />town wears white lights garlanded </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">round, and snow. A boy without <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />gloves reads alone. </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">He is no fool who takes his time and <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />place to know.</p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">I rediscover you a gift here still as <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I have in good counsel curtsied and coughed </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">often enough, my own hand to my own groin<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />to discover a fissure again, again to repeat, </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">that you are tissue essential still and <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />fabric to my own particularity upon a hill, </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">a house, one fence above a stream and rails, <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />a blinking boy turning wet pages knowing that </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">you or someone similar, only a few years <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />ahead, already familiar, dwells inside </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">compels his reading just before sunset <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />squinting at words beyond and past the </p><p class="phContent phcText" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); float: left; line-height: 25.600000381469727px; margin: 0px; padding: 20px; position: relative; text-align: start; width: 620px; word-break: break-word;">fence and the stream, the train late, <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />footprints dark blue in the patient drift.</p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></span><p></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6BPFXQdgmstZ9nVvuktve5U-Ii2_ioBzk6_Tg6Akj8s1WoW976Wk5n7zhDFqwtWWGcQ_ZB3GVkl7kv1boRNWlXgVm63p8ncj4EZVvfUplJTifjsC83Y03q3yWxWxI-49Sq-cT4f8iDjN0VhKeb9bQoj_CRxZNbf-9ve10mPI81waVaRZnBYL7_DbC/s3556/IMG_1325.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2050" data-original-width="3556" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6BPFXQdgmstZ9nVvuktve5U-Ii2_ioBzk6_Tg6Akj8s1WoW976Wk5n7zhDFqwtWWGcQ_ZB3GVkl7kv1boRNWlXgVm63p8ncj4EZVvfUplJTifjsC83Y03q3yWxWxI-49Sq-cT4f8iDjN0VhKeb9bQoj_CRxZNbf-9ve10mPI81waVaRZnBYL7_DbC/s320/IMG_1325.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="page" title="Page 2"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">ENTRY No longer counting - see ZERO praise below - after thoughts, setting-away zen, begin again - arrivals, departures three years after the Quarantine (Warrentine) Journal, Quetzal dreams as koan:</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">again, for sensei, and George E. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">afterplay, and fore, for, foregoing lookingbacks ahead, familiar dread bed head pillow play dreamed the dead analyst returned blind to me, kind faced, staggered as if dizzy and holding onto walls, face turned toward me then walled he through a door into clouds white, nevermind the triteness of image, I felt love, relief, received his blessing after all the failing him and me and what ever the Self requires of me/not-me. Again, yet, arrivals, fretted departures, never say 'not' nor 'never' so unfolds mind-tries three years after:</span></p><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">"Who turned us around like this, so that we always</span></span><br style="outline: none;" /></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">do what we may, retain the attitude</span></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">of someone who's departing? Just as he, </span></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">on the last hill, that shows him all his valley</span></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">for the last time, will turn and stop and linger,</span></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">we live our lives, for ever taking leave." </span></span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Duino Elegy 8</span></div><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Thusly,</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"Mark the first page of the book with a red marker. For, in the beginning, the wound is invisible." - Edmund Jabes</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"Toot Toot Lovers! Bag of bones coming through!" - Richard Hugo </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"We happen to live at a moment that is going to get worse before it gets better. The world went inside the internet and became the world...a poem may not conform to your worldview, your tastes, or what you think a poem can be. I often hear students get exasperated if a poem stretches the bounds of what they think poetry includes." - Sean Singer</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(77, 81, 86); color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"There is another world, but it is inside this one." </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">- Paul Celan: </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"I don't believe in the other world ...But I don't believe in this one either unless it's pierced by light." - </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Anna Kamienska</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"There isn't any one correct way to write poetry. Poetry is a word like love: an endless confusion of different things all warped into one word because no vocabulary of discrimination exists." - </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Jack Gilbert</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1PvH9faSxxAbAY1AB0yK8BaRuG8Ah7jeYns8Z-FiDdMofzwpvbeNobB6XnRetaD-KiD0BmMiyc6U3rfspFbaeEK7n_rtfxOKTkaywbSaTLJZLiBXHlYTEzT4o_iZeRs2e_VWOXLacBe6mIVQnyGDSJ_kVtFCTfENbPQ6XHKckPbEj_regBrrAzUQd/s954/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-28%20at%2010.34.30%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="140" data-original-width="954" height="47" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1PvH9faSxxAbAY1AB0yK8BaRuG8Ah7jeYns8Z-FiDdMofzwpvbeNobB6XnRetaD-KiD0BmMiyc6U3rfspFbaeEK7n_rtfxOKTkaywbSaTLJZLiBXHlYTEzT4o_iZeRs2e_VWOXLacBe6mIVQnyGDSJ_kVtFCTfENbPQ6XHKckPbEj_regBrrAzUQd/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-28%20at%2010.34.30%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Old now, haiku </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">easier on the breadth:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Road gets narrower </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">eyesight dims, </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">even signs wave</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Basho's ghost </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">guides with ink,</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">HERE NOT HERE</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Can't ever cross </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Rainbow Bridge</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Beneath it, though, </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">a billet of mist </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2403" data-original-width="2096" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikUesh2X60xMAkgMTmsJGCXGHako6cR6ZaqnZC2GuyNrJn7AZFqYYxTuFreUsTQA2B_gu3YPClzSbbrsO2sJnl5xlJx1wabzT5Jb_ospmPDiyZrPSpTb90r7GVTPrc8KJc647qAVaRzDsXnl8bbPdPE5XqLoqQtQTXcgPBChulP5ob1dkLKT-9MHoz/s320/IMG_1217.jpeg" width="279" /></span></div><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">On the other hand,</span></p><div class="ydp7396f983page" style="outline: none;" title="Page 3"><div class="ydp7396f983layoutArea" style="outline: none;"><div class="ydp7396f983column" style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: justify;"><div class="ydp7396f983page" style="outline: none; text-align: start;" title="Page 3"><div class="ydp7396f983layoutArea" style="outline: none;"><div class="ydp7396f983column" style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">me, just to be clear at another outset, to set it out, to lay out or in </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">what follows, is to follow, rather, I follow IT, lay it out as IT and how </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">it plays and wants to say, perhaps its stay - which now all below as </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">they go-and-go, are excerpts, patches from poem after poem, a long </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">roam, a life time roaming of them toward rumored HOME, more the </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">homing devices, words, than settling, planting one flag for everything, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">impossible to do as things, even words do fray down to string and </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">filament fly loosened eventually strand by strand (as do I, me) in </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">fate-wind, and thus the pastiche ensues, unwinds/unravels on purpose </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">not to my own end but to poetry's ends (plural) in creating, destroying, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">reconfiguring worlds of possibilities plural. And from below bellow </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">scraps filched from whole poems that doubt their legs capacities to </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">stand on their own aka poet Robert Duncan's declaration that</span></div><p style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">'language, words, make meaning, I don't...'</span></p><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">So what's below is no rural romp or tread and though most readers </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">dread having to participate in the reading of such, having to use their </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">heads and more, better, use their ears without fear of noise or nonsense, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">then let the lazy forego their efforts here and head off to church or </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">collective shrine or club or circle and so </span><span style="outline: none;">'knit one pearl two', don the </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">harder shoes that force a straight unyielding </span><span style="outline: none;">path to (or so it is thought </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">and hoped) chaste and bidden conformity to believed to be 'received </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">revealed' paths of doggerel and sentimentality.</span></span></div></div></div></div><div class="ydp7396f983page" style="outline: none; text-align: start;" title="Page 4"><div class="ydp7396f983layoutArea" style="outline: none;"><div class="ydp7396f983column" style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">Or, alas, early 19th century exiled American poet's proclamation </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">propounding to 'make it new' all the while living in classical Europe, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">is now, early 21st century, 'the old soft shoe' boogie bougie of those </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">new penners currently blowing in the wind, the Bestseller genies </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">s</span><span style="outline: none;">prung like Athena from Zeus's noggin fully formed Jack n Jill </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">Horners patenting both thumbs and plums having believed that </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">they are progenitors of both. But I'll be plumbed, forego the curd </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">topping the pie but stick, rather, a nether in an eye to scrie or effort </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">something wanting to show itself though shy or disguised to throw </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">readers off petrified 'tried and true'. Ask not for whom the tell bolls,</span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">it bolls prithee (which is a fun thing to say 'slythy-ly') .</span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">If the reader is a free bleeder and curious about the flow and where </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">it goes or takes one then have some fun and fuddle, let red matter </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">puddle in the mind, the ears, at least one, the better ear the bad one </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">cuz then one must squint an eye try to hear, must effort to ken what's </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">to be be heard that matters in the dim dumb hum haw hem 'to wit, to </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">woo, to whom to what will 'draw flies or better' if it can (or can it) or </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">draw curiosity that begins and ends in further quests such are questions </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">behest that one at least not tarry too long but scurry or surrey forth </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">in whatever meter one finds is adequate to the moment. </span><span style="outline: none;">There is no </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">certainty here, capital C, so run away to yer barnacled </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">BIG BOOKS </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">HOLY WRIT yer RECEIVED THINKs. A tinker's damn </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">from me to thee. </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">With humor, old and newer meanings both, risk </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">laughter at what Allen </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Ginsberg calls 'shapely thought' and of course </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">'unthought' that can </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">open to mystery though the masses are horribly </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">afraid of all that! </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">There's plentyuh old mystery to be had easily and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">so cheap (tho stale) </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">at The Dollar Store with or without a steeple or </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">shrine or other tell-tale </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">once was symbol now reduced (and on sale) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">for only a sign, the spark </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">that was once in the totem fled or dead matter </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">tho nostalgia goes far </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">enough for most.</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">Still, wonder can shew even in an image of Jesus (choose holy man </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">or woman or symbol) apparition-ing on burnt toast.Now THAT I'll </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">take seriously for I could never worship a deity or sacrality that has </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">no sense of humor, one what can still fun us with rumored visitations </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">in the juub juubs and baubles, from Babel to Babble (how many </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">denominations are daily born, each claiming sole authority?), </span><span style="outline: none;">veritable </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">spawn of further holy wars.</span></span></div></div></div></div><div class="ydp7396f983page" style="outline: none; text-align: start;" title="Page 5"><div class="ydp7396f983layoutArea" style="outline: none;"><div class="ydp7396f983column" style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><br /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">There is some rhyme here below too, some poems, though rhyme's </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">now long verboten in mod school of poesy forgetting that it, poesy, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">still 'surely hath its posies' aka Ernest Dowson with whom him too </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">I am and 'have been faithful to thee, O Cynara! ' fiddle dee fiddle dim </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">dumb. He died of debauch. But I am the more abstemious preferring </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">profligate torrents of words and what surds may jell even if but for a </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">moment or just plain even if.</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">As a boy my daily chore was to dump food scraps and other </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">trash-could-rot into large mulch piles to use for father's gardens. And </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">to dig in the dark dense layers for fat worms with which to fish. From </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">this early boyhood chore, the fishing too - a worm on a hook fathomed </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">into unseen depths for a hopeful forkful revelation of fin and flash </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">cornmeal battered, a vocation long emerged into verges with disregard, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">and dys-regards, effort taken with reading oracular shards glyphs for </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">meaning or leanings toward such that one could take for meaning even </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">if arrived at by other than expected, received and baptized means.</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">So abandon all hope ye who enter here. Best to veer away unless willing </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">to risk some secure rumored footholds of logic, meter, measure, rhyme, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">sanity. I'm with old Ezra's humbled fife and thrum 'is repentant, haggard, </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">niggardly self in ripe and rife old age, beyond chastened, crumpled yet </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">and yes but for a tongue and pen still at and in't, the wiser for 'is sins </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana; outline: none;">n schisms/</span></div></div></div></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" style="text-align: start;" /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjejfLef6ywaLWZnYZ2PzotYTgVTHchIDR3biRDKE5TDpVnHVNTHlyLyYOsFJKPKpmBd7P4P9rPcrI6gaz2GZT31alPeDbMvbMuiwuPkxoY9up8B7fSAiEbEWRg6WVgWBwcylGggSsXnqsL6O7rdNFH9RIXn_ClH8d24-Z-83R-ukPkYgZPsKalVYte/s839/12607.jpg" style="background-color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="839" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjejfLef6ywaLWZnYZ2PzotYTgVTHchIDR3biRDKE5TDpVnHVNTHlyLyYOsFJKPKpmBd7P4P9rPcrI6gaz2GZT31alPeDbMvbMuiwuPkxoY9up8B7fSAiEbEWRg6WVgWBwcylGggSsXnqsL6O7rdNFH9RIXn_ClH8d24-Z-83R-ukPkYgZPsKalVYte/s320/12607.jpg" width="267" /></a></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><div style="text-align: center;">Head of a shouting man - Matthias Grunewald</div><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">from <b>Pisan Canto LXXXI</b> by Ezra Pound </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">"What thou lovest well remains,</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">the rest is dross What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell, What thou lovest well is thy true heritage<br />What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.<br />Pull down thy vanity, it is not man<br />Made courage, or made order, or made grace,</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry,<br />Pull down thy vanity,</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.</span></p></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 6"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">'Master thyself, then others shall thee beare'; Pull down thy vanity</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail, A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,<br />Half black half white<br />Nor knowst'ou wing from tail</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Pull down thy vanity<br />How mean thy hates</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Fostered in falsity,<br />Pull down thy vanity,</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity, Pull down thy vanity,</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">I say pull down.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">But to have done instead of not doing this is not vanity</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">To have, with decency, knocked That a Blunt should open</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame<br />This is not vanity.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Here error is all in the not done, all in the diffidence that faltered..." </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">- March 25,2023</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcMiFDnm1Cd-Z3Aeui2ozb0ZzifvE7wxjJiNqpstRycfPi8UuVJ9DhpSmCZcyrjrsAftOg4ajQhzqyaPT5aQGAp5SgEKhmZlw_bOAbDJr8LHw_qBdIwO23iWaOCGfcsKQztavbdedCqy0ySv54NmgODLaHaVmG7dhMF-8tXd5p1O3H_5eyONCkKmL/s1296/Xmas_Santa_Fe_2014_Pt.2%20938_Z1a.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1296" data-original-width="835" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcMiFDnm1Cd-Z3Aeui2ozb0ZzifvE7wxjJiNqpstRycfPi8UuVJ9DhpSmCZcyrjrsAftOg4ajQhzqyaPT5aQGAp5SgEKhmZlw_bOAbDJr8LHw_qBdIwO23iWaOCGfcsKQztavbdedCqy0ySv54NmgODLaHaVmG7dhMF-8tXd5p1O3H_5eyONCkKmL/s320/Xmas_Santa_Fe_2014_Pt.2%20938_Z1a.tif" width="206" /></a></div><div class="column" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Deer Dance/Fire ceremony, Ohkay Ohwengeh </span></div><div class="column" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">reservation, New Mexico</span></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #666666; font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-align: left;">Entry - Exuent - Fluent yet Flatulent - 04/23/2023</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #666666; font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;">My words here are not intended, nor are they able, to exclude what Word-oriented, </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #666666; font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;">revealed religions of 'the Book' have brought to us and advanced, but now, next 2000 years, the creative struggle will be to conjoin meaningfully polygamous images of psyche into compressions (es-pressions, as in espresso) and ex-pressions (pressed out) by and with word and Word which have tendencies toward monotheism, one true meaning only, which results therefore, can't be avoided, into a heavy-handedness in terms of a perceived/derived one and only Absolute. Ironically, the Arabs discovery of always heavy Zero - which, to me, is the only Absolute of merit - gave birth to a multiplicity, diverse, perverse, all the more irascible yet embraceable, maddeningly erasable, while growing arms beyond counting, the better to carry the unforgiving densities.</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Count them (or try) we must; for congenital compulsions such are calcifications - spirit, soul, life in the body - are gripped in the teeth of the world; beatific, we perceive ourselves to be in the image of deity. Still, we can believe we are 'safe' within these calcified 'absolutes' - o here is the 'burning bush' - or we can risk the profligate ramble which is consciousness, a fire still burning, an intuition in each image that there is more here than meets the eye or thigh or deities as imaged. We all look, or try, beneath the skin of things - under what is presented, or within it - for that half-guessed/hinted at and/or 'felt sense' that there is MORE beyond the barred nerve, more and 'other-than' the shock of a chrome bumper-bent world careening, aware that within all is here-a-Presence, all images and words assuming that Presence - the Arabs gift of the non-alloyed Zero unmeasured by mass, a better name for god depending on thermal history's twisting vector or ghostly mirage, if any are to be had - the base in spite of or within the Metallic Matrix of the blacksmith heart hammering verdigris, chambers, ventricles, into shape, Newton's grave conjugations, living time solidified, hardened, stiffening Presence into dilute renderings of base metal, and chaste Frida Kahlo, her canvases chasing plutonium wire unaware, bears the blunt end of Presence at the end of the Aeon of the Fishes still barely beyond Bronze Age's just sharpened edges fluted, pre-Christian Mexico preferring obsidian ones hacked, chipped, scraped upon hard flint. Frida, volcano born, turns into conjugal vessel, Quetzal plume conjoined to Serpent skin rebirthing extensions of crash, a returning God, boat and horse delivered from the red beard of the bloated sea confronting yet one more deity requiring blood.</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="page" title="Page 6"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566773949121538002" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EJiiwwaqq40/TUEnaaZJp9I/AAAAAAAAAV8/tNTwmlWlaPs/s640/thebrokencolumn.jpg" style="display: block; height: 399px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" width="481" /></div><div class="column"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Frida Kahlo. The Broken Column</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><div style="outline: none;"><div style="background-color: white; outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">ENTRY Unexpected - Presumed To Have Fledged, Upon Witness Days, Asynchrony Of Swallow Murmurations In Christmas Season - A Gnoetic Poetic of Eye to Ear and Back Again into Adoration</div><div style="outline: none;"><br /></div><div style="outline: none;">"The spirit as it awakens is adoration." - Ludwig Wittgenstein</div><div style="outline: none;"><br /></div><div style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;">murmur - (A) to make the sound 'mu mu' (old Greek) </div><div style="outline: none;">or 'mumu', to murmur with closed lips, to mutter, </div><div style="outline: none;">moan... (B) to drink with closed lips, to suck in...</div><div style="outline: none;">-Liddell and Scott, Greek-Engish Lexicon,1897 ed.</div></div><div style="outline: none;"><br /></div><div style="outline: none;">"when the attentions change</div><div style="outline: none;">...even the stones are split</div><div style="outline: none;">are rive..." - Charles Olson, from The Kingfishers</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">So ensues the Murmuration moan, , </div><div style="outline: none;">wind mutter the winding matter bebothered </div><div style="outline: none;">of Swallows</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none;">NOTE: ASYNCHRONY OF SWALLOWS</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">which is a-synchrony, just to remind =</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">absence or lack of concurrence in time</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">In other words, no rhyme scheme</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">or known reason though presumptions</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">occur in observation of patterns that</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">such are the habits of nature to assist</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">drawing conclusions which are surmises</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">which are in the end and beginning </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">always "unhatched eggs" or, better,</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">words as eggs</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">**</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(all praise) and what marvelous </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">vapor is life restive (as are days)</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">in thousand undulate congregations </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">no need for a falconer after all </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">when Chaos a daze of a Sunday </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">evening seems to know something </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">so falls into </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">purple fields </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(O Friend, remember) </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">edged by sheer snow peaks where </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">sheep surefeet know no fear of </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">heights and there do dung and </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">play fearless or at least pretending</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">not to fall in their waking dream </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">which is the thing -</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">concavity curves </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">in a dead hatchling's sparkless </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">eye reflecting dead eggs' perfect </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">forms soft brooded upon as </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">one might brood one in hand</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">pondering which is the better </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">off the flown lone one or the </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">ongoing knot which can also</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">denote an egg - unhatched or</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">not or clotted everyly or other- </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">wise - is all surmise who knows </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">what is the thing joy's winged</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">malingerers in sudden annunciate </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">thunder a flashy entrance as </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">Swallows do so flash as flash </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">can and (it </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">Awe) may last along awhile </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">if </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">memory </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">serves </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">is glad </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">one's self </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">to have </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">hatched </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">and fledged </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">see what </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">glory can </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">be made </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">and had </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">at edges </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(earth's </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">clearly domed </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">the shape of </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">eyes makes </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">it so) </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">and one knows or someday will </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">in lighter or heavier bones scry </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">the effort was/is made at all </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">as self portraits which may </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">or may not be the actual </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">who/whom we perceive </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">as selves to be we </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(one feather </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">at a time </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">necessary dreaming </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">of</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">air) being adhered to dirt </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">so verily molded by known </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">and unknown forces within </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">which we make or </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">so we think </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">choose </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">but nevermind but </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">no </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">let us </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">return to mumur to suck in </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">sounds through and behind </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">lips and be naturally moved</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">bothered to somehow care </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">which with heart we indeed </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">do hard swallow. </div><div style="outline: none;"> </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">One bird elder </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">once said to me</div><div style="outline: none;"> </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">my being newly </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">fledged and flung</div><div style="outline: none;"> </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">me at her knobby wither-knees </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">admiring her mustache and tooth </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">told me to observe and note </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">one or three do-re-mi's or more </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(to better feathered choirs with) </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">so try at least to sing it, IT, </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">even if choking on what cannot </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">as yet be chewed/swallowed </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">IT being our </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">being-in </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">being-for </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">being-with </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">or without </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">craw or claw </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">but IT, bliss?, </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">eventually might if not understood </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">or withstood or notwithstanding</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">words thoughts ideas -</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(throw in image which </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">is not spare aspire or</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">parenthetical but a must</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">so is) </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">in other </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">words </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">and perhaps</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">all birds</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">perhaps arrive land perch alight </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">a lift-off life time of chew and choke </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">then with some digestive orientation </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">from and of such sing of 'ossible</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">bone-tones some parsings or </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">other some conjugant choralling </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">which may/might ascribe flight</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">night daylight the usual things </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">so granted for taking so often </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">misspoken or under sung, we </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">being always flung trying yet </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">to cling to what cannot be </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">undone but forever always </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">clotted until we indeed do fly </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">no more in mind or breeches </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">and inevitably come </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">(completed?)</div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">to full glottal stop </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">presumably fledged </div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div style="outline: none;">utterly</div><div style="outline: none;"><br /></div><div style="outline: none;"><br style="outline: none;" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_yHmoHkJGdIgwL3TpKkr-ip3IhZv5-rq9_DGefcdm2wbc-7eTZYWqB6YSFNZJkWsXXRZ8HDrbVIlmcTap51xjc9Wu1RhZOc_QutIdwureFTLEUJZM_NzvbtWQflho2sFZcEsmmIEPQyNkJS45dBf6GzTSlnUunh_h-uLF_jQkBYx5YOb_BlYztnN-/s2211/IMG_3242.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1655" data-original-width="2211" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_yHmoHkJGdIgwL3TpKkr-ip3IhZv5-rq9_DGefcdm2wbc-7eTZYWqB6YSFNZJkWsXXRZ8HDrbVIlmcTap51xjc9Wu1RhZOc_QutIdwureFTLEUJZM_NzvbtWQflho2sFZcEsmmIEPQyNkJS45dBf6GzTSlnUunh_h-uLF_jQkBYx5YOb_BlYztnN-/s320/IMG_3242.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;">Christmas Eve, Village of Focces, Gers, France 2019</div></div></div></div></span></div><div><br /></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-30690982823399514112023-05-23T09:42:00.004-07:002023-05-23T20:22:37.124-07:00Post-Almost Rapture/End of the World (Joplin, Missouri - Misery - much in mind) - Prayer to the Broken Western God Image<div class="xsag5q8 x1yztbdb" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); margin-bottom: 16px; padding-bottom: 12px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge2mLY2gSmhscGxDc063Thg8svhHXHvztmAShmz_DEGgH1ayyhRLzZwtPLWwyTr_B5WGp_RA7a4KMbEnnBzJCBkrfi0q7e5BFC1tIDOTDR0WW0b4Fxf1XGda4Kp04WRHLo83M_0k4x3GqFnq-N4Tht-3rC2iv_G6TRqXbLuMt0H1zMS4RQ7pA68k3k/s757/313267998_10224311697753492_7224200604735085753_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="757" data-original-width="452" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge2mLY2gSmhscGxDc063Thg8svhHXHvztmAShmz_DEGgH1ayyhRLzZwtPLWwyTr_B5WGp_RA7a4KMbEnnBzJCBkrfi0q7e5BFC1tIDOTDR0WW0b4Fxf1XGda4Kp04WRHLo83M_0k4x3GqFnq-N4Tht-3rC2iv_G6TRqXbLuMt0H1zMS4RQ7pA68k3k/s320/313267998_10224311697753492_7224200604735085753_n.jpg" width="191" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x1ill7wo x1g2y4wz x579bpy xjkpybl x1xlr1w8 xzsf02u" color="var(--primary-text)" dir="auto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: block; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.1875; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; text-align: center; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A not so benevolent deity sitting in the arch entrance of Canterbury, England. </span></span></span></div><div class="x1iyjqo2 x78zum5 xdt5ytf x1qjc9v5 xh8yej3 x13faqbe" style="align-items: stretch; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; white-space: pre-wrap; width: 700px; word-break: break-word;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x3x7a5m x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u" color="var(--primary-text)" dir="auto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: block; line-height: 1.1765; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="_8emu" style="color: var(--primary-text);"><span><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; outline: none; white-space: normal;"><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="outline: none;">Made the fearful day of the wrongly predicted "end of the world" by </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="outline: none;">a </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Christian </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Fundamentalist madman (May 23, 2011):</span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;"><br /></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;"><i style="outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;">Thus thusly</span></i></span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;"> under the covers I go </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">in part for fear that perhaps that </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Christian madman is right, for God really </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">too, like us, is mad mad </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">mad and bigger than us and even though I protest </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">a mad god and </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">a madder world I tremble beneath covers and pray...</span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">"Stay the day </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">of Thy return, o God, o stay and leave us be...do </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">not </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">return until </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">Thou, too, art whole and restored within Thy Triune </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">Threnody.*</span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"> </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">Should'st Thou return now only a repeat of blood and fury </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">would </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">ensue </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">then there is indeed nothing new under the sun </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">even </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">in </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Thee, o broken </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">but Mighty.</span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="outline: none;"> </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Again I plead that Thou stay away until one true day when all shall </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">indeed be </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">reconciled and there is no more requirement of my blood, </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">that of others, to </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">ineffectively cover the emptiness within Thine own </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Self - we are image of each, </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">O God, but Thou hast the greater </span></span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">power. </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">What satisfaction would come from </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">slaying me who is as </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">subject to </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">forces as Thee which keep us both inwardly </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">parted, </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">separated, </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">l</span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">onging </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">yet for some turn about, some authentic </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">change </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">where </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">wolf may indeed </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">lay down with the lamb, swords </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">become plows, </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">and </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">Thou, o God, art i</span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">ndeed become at last a God </span></p><p class="ydp67f19821x1qodse3" style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">of real Peace."</span></p><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; outline: none;"> </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br style="outline: none;" /></span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">* Threnody - a song, hymn or poem of mourning </span></span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">composed or performed </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">as a </span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">memorial to a dead </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">person. The term originates from the Greek word </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">t</i></span><i style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">hrenoidia</i><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">f</span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">rom </span><i style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">threnos</i><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ( "wailing") + </span><i style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">oide</i><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ("ode");[</span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">ultimately, from the </span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proto-Indo-European </span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">root </span><i style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">wed-</i><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">("to speak") that is also the precursor of </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="color: #1c1e21; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">s</span></span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">uch words </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">as "ode", "tragedy", </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">"comedy", "parody", "melody" </span></div><div style="outline: none;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; letter-spacing: -0.41px; outline: none;">and "rhapsody".</span></div></div><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">**</p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">The fundamentalist Christian college I attended. Yon John </p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">Calvin's dark hill...I fled and <span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">found other mounts, refuged, </span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">s</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">olitary, poetry became more than an interest...</span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx1tpeI1vreSwCwvWJWz2M0xFC_mHWZtUb2kIZDVZ3yviIE3g0s2CJfTn_pLnizrvb4873_GKyt7_TvDUGGnafg9fK5QTqMr-641MGtPMZOj-pRt8CnuTnSWON2XbSC5O04nUsOhR2J0V3mvZ-BxDAvgCjHXRssAAq-XUtu3Adm6dCFmLOPJNH7LRp/s860/Screen%20Shot%202023-05-23%20at%2011.04.12%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="860" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx1tpeI1vreSwCwvWJWz2M0xFC_mHWZtUb2kIZDVZ3yviIE3g0s2CJfTn_pLnizrvb4873_GKyt7_TvDUGGnafg9fK5QTqMr-641MGtPMZOj-pRt8CnuTnSWON2XbSC5O04nUsOhR2J0V3mvZ-BxDAvgCjHXRssAAq-XUtu3Adm6dCFmLOPJNH7LRp/w320-h200/Screen%20Shot%202023-05-23%20at%2011.04.12%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><br /></span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">My first published poem after leaving the Christian college</span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"> linked below.<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">I was till choking on apocalypse for breakfast. </span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">Was really into aleatory poems, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;">constructing them late 70's":</span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/2014236912/1982-05-01/ed-1/seq-14.pdf" style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;" target="_blank">https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/2014236912/</a></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/2014236912/1982-05-01/ed-1/seq-14.pdf" style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;" target="_blank">1982-05-01/ed-1/seq-14.pdf</a></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><br /></span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><br /></span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><br /></span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><br /></span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px;"><br /></span></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="x1qodse3" dir="auto" style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.41px; line-height: 1.4118; margin: 16px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="ydpe58e6978signature" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; outline: none; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "new times", serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; outline: none; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div id="ydpa178d929yiv4085379104yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1508100650782_22998" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: none;"><div class="ydpf339fe2ajb_0 ydpf339fe2aX_6MGW ydpf339fe2aN_6Fd5" style="font-size: 12px; outline: none;"><div id="ydpf339fe2ayiv3992921841" style="outline: none;"><div class="ydpf339fe2ayiv3992921841ydpa0184abbyahoo_quoted" id="ydpf339fe2ayiv3992921841ydpa0184abbyahoo_quoted_1150824879" style="outline: none;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div></span></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-24461925945952385372023-04-01T20:55:00.004-07:002023-04-02T10:06:18.270-07:00Tipping Cosmic Cows, Feeding, or Trying, Upon Transcendentals - "Teacup talk of God"<div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJWXV_N46T8drawEyD_5kc1fqr19GPVCsU0s1yUTPneUxO77NliodLPdXxj4RpEI71RUZ521M0JgKvw6zBJ_e_2fug28OCnfLPvo3mZiqFhdiZkB9VtagokH3OVfud_59KXKBG6x3nnon2AU0OjSeD6XmmP0S6ILhDQ92pV6O_FSIODICUlSn9TJNk/s2068/IMG_2358.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1025" data-original-width="2068" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJWXV_N46T8drawEyD_5kc1fqr19GPVCsU0s1yUTPneUxO77NliodLPdXxj4RpEI71RUZ521M0JgKvw6zBJ_e_2fug28OCnfLPvo3mZiqFhdiZkB9VtagokH3OVfud_59KXKBG6x3nnon2AU0OjSeD6XmmP0S6ILhDQ92pV6O_FSIODICUlSn9TJNk/w320-h159/IMG_2358.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">Photo by Warren Falcon</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Man is an animal who feeds upon transcendentals." - Raissa Maritain</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"Break all our teacup talk of God." - Hafez</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">**</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Spiritual bypassing is a manic defense against depression and death, a denial of the realm of "pathos" - suffering in existence - from which the word "pathology" is derived, the path or pattern of suffering in being. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Great Nature runs riot upon and within that which we project to be "transcendence" but, without a doubt, crushing dissolution, decay and ending is Nature's insistent way despite all our reification of wishful "happier" metaphysics - read "escapes" - bypassing inexorable existential givens. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">We choose to believe that these spiritually flavored subtleties of Imagination must concretely be true given understandable human desperation in the teeth of facticity, of throwness feet first or head long into the maws of life. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Searching for transcendence long sought and hard fought for in the all too human act of artifice, art, alchemy and religion, in the depth cry toward surcease and significant if but momentary peace of mind and body, I no longer wonder that some are wont to take holy vows who, tipping Cosmic Cows (or piercing murderous bulls), cloak themselves in Blessed Silence, a long breath out-sleeved.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There may be more to me and thee, O Mercurial Verities between How-and-Now Cows, than the undertaker's shovel and the deep blue sky and sea but I am a soul man, partial to soul, to space, to time, to locale, at more than a lover's quarrel with the world and very much at quarrel with spirit and entire "congregations of vapor" (Shakespeare). </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This argument is ongoing as it should be, at least for me. What follows <span style="font-family: inherit;">here below are extensive quotes from thoughtful, clear-headed and compassionate writers who rediscover and sing/argue in the face of the bypassers (as are we all, truthfully, us "hopefully transcending ones") of </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">and for the nobility inherent in suffering Creation and Her creatures, including humanity, as part of living and dying into and out of conscious existence:</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Alan Watt's: "Man has to discover that everything which he beholds in nature - the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean's depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets - has its counterpart within himself. He is not, then, at one with himself until he realizes that this "under side" of nature and the feelings of horror which it gives him are also "I". - The Wisdom of Insecurity, Chapter 7: "The Transformation of Life", p.111.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Charles Ponce, Jungian/archetypal astrologer and psychoanalyst, brilliantly writes, arights and reorients us very necessarily toward the urgencies and immediacy of Existence, of Nature in Her appeal, in Her drive for attestation as She is. I quote extensively here for it is a much needed compensation to the overly-inflated and hysterical spiritual bypass which is most certainly the manic "happy" newish religions and and bipolar (manic-depressive) culture of contemporary America):</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"...we rebel essentially against the autonomy of Nature, the natural breakdown of Nature, the need of Nature to relax into itself, even to collapse into itself in the way that trees retreat into themselves with the advent of Winter...We turn away from our bodies in illness and death not because we have resolved the issue of the wound, but because it is far easier to think of an afterlife, far less fearful and painful to surround ourselves with the good feeling that we may not only escape this life in one psychic piece, but that we will no longer have to concern ourselves with our physical humanity...This approach to death robs us of our tie to Nature, strips us of our humanity in favor of an exquisite angelology of the ego. It allows us to slip past the experience of the mystery: that the body is indeed a great temple which moves slowly towards a breakdown and dissolution. The alchemists knew this: that the soul cannot fly, cannot be released from the vessel until the body is broken down, dissolved, and even putrified. When you read the alchemists you will discover that this breakdown and dissolution is the beginning of the Great Work, and that without experiencing and seeing, watching and attending to this momentous operation--keeping the fire of heart and attention at the proper degree--nothing happens. The soul does not fly, the subtle body is not created, nor is the imagination which is the soul's experience of itself open to eternity. It is this focus on the body and the wound in both life and death that leads to the sacred marriage of the alchemists. Paracelsus stressed, "The eternal is a sign of the dissolution of Nature, and not the beginning of created things, and the end in all things which no nature is without...A true medicine and counseling should therefore be one that addresses the immediate, the body of things and the body, for if we really wish to enter into the eternal, see the universe in a grain of sand, we must in our imagination understand..the soul's expression of itself through body, and that woundedness, disease, and the putrefactio of our humanity are for us in the West ordained as the focus of a yoga that sees in these sufferings the gods we have rejected." -- Charles Ponce, from "Paracelsus and the Wound", Working the Soul, Reflections on Jungian Psychology, pgs. 25-26.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Ernest Becker: Sensitive souls have reacted with shock to the elemental drama of life on this planet...this bone-crushing, bone-drinking drama in all its elementality and necessity. Life cannot go on without the mutual devouring of organisms. If at the end of each person's life he were to be presented with the living spectacle of all that he had organismically incorporated in order to stay alive, he might well feel horrified by the living energy he had ingested. The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties full of pigs, and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening. To paraphrase Elias Canetti, each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good. -- Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil, pg.2</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Guillermo Arriaga (transcribed from an interview at PEN Writers Conference 2007): "...So I said, "I am going to be a boxer...so I began training hard and hard and suddenly I have a pain in my chest so I say, "It's nothing, a torn muscle," and so I began again and again, training, training, training, and I went to a doctor and say, "Yeah, you have a torn muscle." Wrong. I have an infection in my heart so I went to a cardiologist and he said, "I have good news and bad news...the good news is that you are not a hypochondriac. The bad news is that your heart is completely swollen and that you can have a heart attack maybe today, maybe tomorrow, I don't know. So you have to go to bed NOW." And so I say, "Fuck!" And so I watch my hands. I say, "My hands may be the hands of a corpse tomorrow.They will not move anymore tomorrow." So I make a commitment to caress the skins I have to caress, to beat with my hands those I have to beat, and to build something that will survive my hands," and that's when I began to write furiously without stopping and I have my studio full of skulls, not real ones but of wood, stone...and every time I get tired I say, "Arriaga, you are gonna die. You have to do something with your hands."</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So until now I have caressed the skins that I have to caress, I haven't beaten people that I like but I don't want to be violent anymore, and I have been writing since then. Thus, a personal fight against death...so I have two thoughts about pain--the first, the worst thing you can do with pain is not using it. You cannot waste pain. Another one is that pain is inevitable but suffering is a decision so I use pain for writing and every time I have pain I try to keep it and use it in a certain way...</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I personally believe that Death doesn't present once, it presents daily and I always think that Death has a giant tongue that licks you. For example, this [rubs his thinning hair] is death licking my hair and says, "You thought you were okay? Well, there goes your new look." And, uh, cellulite in women and tits going down, it's like Death licking and, you know, we men (makes a gesture of an erect penis deflating), is like wop! wop! wop!...and when you lose someone you love, a woman, you are carrying the corpse of someone you love inside you...</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">They say that dust is skin flakes and I believe that every time</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">we wipe the dust we wipe the corpse of who we were at that time..."</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">-- Guillermo Arriaga, acclaimed Mexican writer, in conversation with Paul Auster at 2007 PEN Writer's Conference, has written screenplays, Babel, Amores Perros, The Three Burials of Melchiades Estrada, 21 Grams, and more. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Alexis Zorba: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die?</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Basil: I don't know.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Alexis Zorba: What's the use of all your damn books if they can't answer that?</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Basil: They tell me about the agony of men who can't answer questions like yours.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Alexis Zorba: I spit on this agony!</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">-- from the film, Zorba the Greek, based upon the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis of the same title</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">**</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Of the Shadow of Divinity -</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Tired of Speaking Sweetly</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Break all our teacup talk of God.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">If you had the courage and</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">He would just drag you around the room</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">By your hair,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">That bring you no joy.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And wants to rip to shreds</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">All your erroneous notions of truth</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">That make you fight within yourself, dear one,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And with others,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Causing the world to weep</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On too many fine days.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">God wants to manhandle us,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And practice His dropkick.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The Beloved sometimes wants</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">To do us a great favor:</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Hold us upside down</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And shake all the nonsense out.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But when we hear He is in such a "playful drunken mood"</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Most everyone I know</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Quickly packs their bags and hightails it</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Out of town. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">**</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">easy sleep</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">easy rest</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">easier to be an animal</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">than not - Jerome Rothenberg</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">**</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">All the time I pray to Buddha I keep on killing mosquitoes. - Issa Kobayashi</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">**</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Outside of this Heart there is no Buddha</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This Heart is the Buddha.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Outside of this heart there is no Demon</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This heart is the Demon. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- Huey Nin, the 6th Patriarch in the present era of </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Dao lineage is credited with this quote. This quote was later expanded upon by other Buddhas in the lineage of Dao to include the bottom two lines.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqzLPqEs7k1Z0X8dr-CWDYOjeaccjwT9IrrineDNQexuJGSveXyKA-YE0RRUxmXChDBViQ5w33N7C32sFLTYKQWv_AGykrFkMDfI8dP1serXQJWdUlfNO8iAZabnEIWfw_GPSRhBh504K1OAnnF84rzU74lw28e3sovHDE5p7NdAmtbB56KxuKvdNm/s1656/IMG_1631.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1656" data-original-width="1332" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqzLPqEs7k1Z0X8dr-CWDYOjeaccjwT9IrrineDNQexuJGSveXyKA-YE0RRUxmXChDBViQ5w33N7C32sFLTYKQWv_AGykrFkMDfI8dP1serXQJWdUlfNO8iAZabnEIWfw_GPSRhBh504K1OAnnF84rzU74lw28e3sovHDE5p7NdAmtbB56KxuKvdNm/s320/IMG_1631.jpeg" width="257" /></a></div><br /><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-62238634547820758232022-10-30T23:32:00.024-07:002022-10-31T01:33:56.791-07:00"New Worlds To Gain. . . In Green Sun, On Blue Earth, Under Warm Running Showers" - Of Hamartia/Fatal Flaw of Personas & Alas Of Cultures - Still, Feed Psyches/Souls Despite Apparencies<div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitgAKnTtoVjzAjtR5xkRP9zxQAZt3OSdlfrTlQAgj4LVehNOd4q-UVLCjtE_-EDl7mI0JFJ1yODD_lRHGdV8bubYqY25yJJgWVlo7cIrLU8333FB5ubHU6Wi-USo98yKeSkhERZOSdLpLPrckA_vcRbOmn4pQnv3CP7Rb-sn8QdAdeg36FFSyYWpuN" style="font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="453" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitgAKnTtoVjzAjtR5xkRP9zxQAZt3OSdlfrTlQAgj4LVehNOd4q-UVLCjtE_-EDl7mI0JFJ1yODD_lRHGdV8bubYqY25yJJgWVlo7cIrLU8333FB5ubHU6Wi-USo98yKeSkhERZOSdLpLPrckA_vcRbOmn4pQnv3CP7Rb-sn8QdAdeg36FFSyYWpuN" width="242" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">1972 -me 20 years old in the upper right hand corner.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">[click photo to enlarge]</span></div><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Jefferson Airplane was a first amendment band in many ways..." -</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Jack Cassidy, bassist for Jefferson Starship</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"we are all outlaws in the eyes of Amerika....we should be together all you people hangin' round together...up against the Wall, up against the Wall, tear down the Wall you muthafvl<ah's ..."<span style="font-family: inherit;">- Paul Kantner</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="white-space: normal;">Ground control to Major Godot.</i> - Jefferson Airplane</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs" style="margin: 0px; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"To quote St. Sam Beckett, "Nothing to be done" but one must try while gnawing at a withered radish and twisting an appearing and disappearing hat in hand. Odd rituals somehow matter even if artifactual (though Jung would argue differently but tonight I am an existentialist). </i></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: normal;"><i>Ground control to Major Godot." </i></span><i style="font-family: inherit; white-space: normal;">- Warren Falcon</i></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcZeJAPSfk" target="_blank">Needed this tonight </a></u></i>[see video linked below the text]. I was a teen in '60's collective insanity which was not insanity but an long overdue uprising for justice, equality, questioning long presuppositional aka pre-conscious/presumed/assumed aka "un-thoughts", aka societal "givens" then-and-still-now-preceding-insisted-upon immoveable (or else) so-called "foundations" [aka preferences/urgencies of threatened Western (aka Supreme) culture etc.). </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And now I am 70 y/o and am STILL even more (as I experience it in my seven decades) of collective insanity...and still I experience the need to reconnect with something that made the livid splintered life sentence realer aka more meaningful, meaning at least existence made more sense than was currently that ab-sence force fed to me in harm's hamlet, Stillborn Falls of Major Misieracordia of the Stale Pone and Penance where in my 'yoot', a most most already addled kid/teen, spawned and educated in a Southern (oy!) white culture that couldn't, and still can't, tell its pale ass from a red dirt hole in the ground but made sure with Biblical chapter and verses that that Holy Foot of misperceived God Image remained up every ass, most certainly mine, or else). </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In short, I needed/craved an utterly different orientation outside of what the South and the US of A was force feeding and still pawn shopping to masses devoid of the capacity to critically think on their own. Best to pull at that nippled teat attached to every cyber device and venue (including this one) and draw distorted conclusions about what really is...I would refer folks to a study of metaphysics (not that fluffy pipe dream of the New Age) and epistemology but I know at this point that I am blowing smoke up my own ass as I soon enter utterly into oblivion. But oblivion and obliviousity is here and now. Holy cow. Diamond sow. No possum no sop no taters. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">That which oriented me and millions in the 60's may not orient exactly the same now, and can't suffice (nor should it necessarily, times/values now being cyberly different and such; yes, Virginia, there is (and was and ever shall be) a death and transformation of once was valid values and world views) in this greatly pathologically advanced (and decaying age) but, still, it helps to locate/home me/myself and still gives me some hope against hope (ah Innocence lost and still seeking to be found) that somehow despite the gargantuan hamartia/hubris of current (first) world culture hypnotized by an old yet present and trending insanity, we shall survive the destined and inevitable fall from inflations (perceived to be grace by gods and self (as gods) bestowed) that ancient Greeks and Hebrews insisted then, and do so still, and many other derivatives and reactions thereof that we have some record of (perceived to be grace and self bestowed), humans owning energies that are not our own but are of transpersonal/trans-human (natural) archetypal sources so are thus, so it appears, to pay for being identified as "gods".</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Blah. Blah. Preaching/droning abysmally on into the ADHD Abyss-Mall...</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The brief sum is </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Hamartia - a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine) = You are the crown of Creation (title of a record album that came out when I was in the 10th grade - blew my mind and no mushrooms in sight! though there were many in the cow dung in the appearing to be innocent green pastures spread out all around me. But I was still too by the local trance of Christianity spelled. But with Jeff Airplane and many many others there was an underground spring undermining the calcified trance that still, hard to believe now, trances much of the Western world and finds new ground in non-western lands. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">SELAH</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhL1Isu4LygvezHrmqRQHn_0ZlezK2XR5icMs9NTslfp0fcKKr6QksngL4IjDuZk-yK3bHjSno7eVtmqog1iDwXyYyRNOVO5EF-OrTDE9s_VyCKc0N8GwjefpaUt2SfipY278rCu3AtkIvzlTXGnRGe1nEe45AJk8qSaUKNDWgBKH9MAru8hyU4CWB2" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1372" data-original-width="482" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhL1Isu4LygvezHrmqRQHn_0ZlezK2XR5icMs9NTslfp0fcKKr6QksngL4IjDuZk-yK3bHjSno7eVtmqog1iDwXyYyRNOVO5EF-OrTDE9s_VyCKc0N8GwjefpaUt2SfipY278rCu3AtkIvzlTXGnRGe1nEe45AJk8qSaUKNDWgBKH9MAru8hyU4CWB2" width="84" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif">Me at 18 with a kid on my shoulders at a concert. </span></div><div class="separator" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif">Lifted him so he could see.</span></div><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcZeJAPSfk" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcZeJAPSfk</a></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-83278206444451538092021-08-15T11:32:00.034-07:002023-06-18T17:24:37.597-07:00Little Miss Muffet Late Of Her Tuffet, 'She Gone We Know Not Where' — Contexts & Conjectures As Points Of Departure For Father Will, His Storms<div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="ydpedf39c42yiv4146682255ydp48651ed8yiv9613479428ydp4ba52ae3yiv1405748374ydp71315fc0separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s9KNOgQClyY/YRlbzFvZgrI/AAAAAAAAB_g/giZEfnLn5LIaYGDKJaSySCWZf67oTq3ugCNcBGAsYHQ/image.jpeg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img alt="" class="ydpedf39c42yiv4146682255ydp48651ed8yiv9613479428ydp4ba52ae3yiv1405748374" data-id="1668043319718" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" src="https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2F-s9KNOgQClyY%2FYRlbzFvZgrI%2FAAAAAAAAB_g%2FgiZEfnLn5LIaYGDKJaSySCWZf67oTq3ugCNcBGAsYHQ%2Fimage.jpeg&t=1668043318&ymreqid=404b6980-c5df-7cab-1ca6-25001801a600&sig=ROTcgwVwNyBsa3CxyjAh8Q--~D" style="max-width: 512px; width: 320px;" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EJiiwwaqq40/Sxsq2SAuXkI/AAAAAAAAANI/KlQDxgvAGiA/s1600-h/IMG_0505+D.F.+Balcony+1i.jpg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #888888;" target="_blank">["Mexico City Northwest Twilight". Photo by Warren Falcon. August 2009. Click on the image to enlarge it. All photos are by me but for the one of Schopenhauer]</a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;">I don’t try to reconcile anything’ said the poet at eighty, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">‘This is a damned strange world.’</span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>-John Berryman, from </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"Eleven Addresses To The Lord"</span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;">The original fault </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;">Will not be undone by fire. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;">The original fault was whether wickedness </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;">Was soluble in art. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">History says it is, </span><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Jacques Maritain says it is, </span><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Barely.</span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>--John Berryman, from </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"Sonnet ix" </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;">Once again this babble for Father Will,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">his Bible the Holy Surd of God</span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Context & Conjecture One</span></span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Thou knowest my down-sitting... Try me, O God, and seek the ground of my heart; prove me, and examine my thoughts.</span><span> --from Psalm 139 </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I have often wondered where Little Miss Muffet was forced to go, and did she, and if she did what became of her, who did she become and what adventures of disorientation did she undergo in order to arrive at a more meaningful reorientation of self with Self—what Carl Jung calls the <i>“Greater Personality”</i> within, with, and from which the ego dwells and swells into conscious being with growing capacities to live the questions, to sit in the contradictions, to dwell within and between the conflict of the opposites. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Like Siddhartha Guatama Buddha, Miss Muffet had to leave the familiar tuffet, the premature down-sitting, for enough hard living had not been done for she had not yet been more completely exposed to the vicissitudes of existence, disillusionment, moral and other failure, longing, lack, illness, decay, death and, of course, the interplay, the coming and going of and between their opposites. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Curds and whey, baby food, must be spilled out of the identified-with-Innocence suddenly frightened puerish lap, evidence of the harsh awakening from one form of sitting, unconscious, animal, infantile, collective, dull as a box of hair, into panicked headlong running off the proven riven ways into flight, insecurity, fear, malaise. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Having partaken, thoroughly exposed to </span><span style="font-style: italic;">dukkha</span><span>, meaning </span><span style="font-style: italic;">suffering</span><span>, Freud's </span><span style="font-style: italic;">discontent</span><span>, the Existentialist's </span><span style="font-style: italic;">alienation</span><span>, Miss Muffet can sit down again, having lived and still living the questions, emptied out but for despair, consenting to be there without the collective curd, the theological and cultural whey, with only the weight of existenz pressing her there, now willingly waiting at her Bodhi Tree, now refusing to budge: </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">A dark theme keeps me here,
Though summer blazes in the vireo's eye.
Who would be half possessed
By his own nakedness?
Waking's my care — </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'll make a broken music, or I'll die.—</span>from <span style="font-style: italic;">"In Evening Air"</span> by Theodore Roethke </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">[Thanks to Morbious Konschturkt for pointing out the aptness of Freud's term, <span style="font-style: italic;">discontent</span> for a contemporary rendering of Buddha's <span style="font-style: italic;">dukkha</span>] </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Context & Conjecture Two</span> </span></i></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Or perhaps like Jesus of Nazareth sweating drops of blood in Gethsemane, resisting the cup of affliction aka God's Will, then consenting to drain the bitter Law that requires even Deity's obeisance, Miss Muffet, too, consents, forgetting the longed for infantile curds and whey, the childish stool, to swallow an incomprehensible means of grace which first lays waste the human into more grief upon the opposites' Cross without promise of resurrection. The resurrection is in <i>surrender</i>, in the swallowing, the vinegar sponge thrust into the finite Savior's mouth punctuating the bitter meal that human will and flesh can become, and that murderous, blood thirsty, killing Will of God. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">First awakening is to the clot-itude, mortal clay pushed and shoved by Fated Hands no matter the just protest of beaten, broken dust. Abjection. When Jesus calls out from the hanging tree, “Father, Father! Why hast thou forsaken me?”, there was no hope in the <span style="font-style: italic;">For-Everyhuman</span> hanging there. And hang we all must and will and do with or without awareness or understanding, without consent (no choice but to relent), without familiar comforts, the curds and whey of everyday mind, the historical nostrums, and consumerist collective cures: </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Bound to my heart as the Ixion to the wheel. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Nailed to my heart as the Thief upon the Cross </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I hang between our Christ and the gap where the world was lost. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">--Edith Sitwell, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Dirge For The New Sunrise"</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBCiIcosHcjEUtVKH178vmrBOuYr0Wy8k9275ah1RvWbh6bSErfvwubuYsF61dBCegEyBqSn9KoRB66mPIgVmhY-9QKXPnyzuRN4YOv-OJFbitJcukp__0TK0GylkoCWzYOkRMsB8WPDwKI4JCRPakFaq1v6_RZWy7s-L0FgID87MLiiEAwZ3veegG/s887/18950970_10211065156718245_8912840661850971358_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="887" data-original-width="887" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBCiIcosHcjEUtVKH178vmrBOuYr0Wy8k9275ah1RvWbh6bSErfvwubuYsF61dBCegEyBqSn9KoRB66mPIgVmhY-9QKXPnyzuRN4YOv-OJFbitJcukp__0TK0GylkoCWzYOkRMsB8WPDwKI4JCRPakFaq1v6_RZWy7s-L0FgID87MLiiEAwZ3veegG/w320-h320/18950970_10211065156718245_8912840661850971358_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span><div style="font-family: times; font-size: large; text-align: center;">Let excursus end</div><div style="font-family: times; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div></div><span style="background-color: white;"><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><div data-setdir="true" dir="" style="outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #484848; font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;">Pretend or pray such </span></div></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #484848; outline: none;">extends us into more </span></div></span></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #484848; outline: none;">than infirm materiality </span></div></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;">but let it rest, or give, </div></span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;">if rest can be given, </div></span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;">riven from wrested </div></span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><span style="outline: none;"><span style="color: #484848; outline: none;"><div style="outline: none; text-align: center;">Pleiades retread Maidens </div></span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "bookman old style", "new york", times, serif; font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; outline: none;"><br style="color: #484848; outline: none;" /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span> </span></div></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;"> </span></div></span></span></div></div></blockquote><div><div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Context & Conjecture Three</span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span> </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.</span> --Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 13:11 </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In last month's essay [click and read <a href="https://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2018/05/bone-texts-father-will-confessions-of.html" target="_blank">here</a>] we read of Father Will's return from a month long retreat where he hoped to gather much needed personal and collective comforts and cures at Bone Cabin, a remote desert cabin in the American west, an extreme, austere and overwhelming environment which exaggerated an already present existential opening in Father Will of what Paul Tillich calls <i>ultimate concerns </i>and<i> exigencies (urgencies)</i> insisted within and upon one either lived consciously or, for many people, consciously repressed and studiously avoided or medicated by now even more devices and gadgets of medicine and machinery, the entertainment juggernaut now being one of the largest consumer industries the world over especially in the postmodern Western world. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Granted, it is tremendously difficult to endure the questions of ultimate concerns and not rush to “answers” and "solutions". Enduring the questions and the vast spaces they open internally when endured and not medicated or entertained away by doctrinal or other distracting solutions, one may descend into deeper, transpersonal dimensions of Psyche where an authenticating encounter can occur reframing existential dwelling in the world as a regenerative meeting with and relating to Being and Mystery, Existence, consciously discovering its <i>Dynamic Ground</i> in <i>Essence</i> via human awakening. Such relocating meetings at the edge, brief or sustained, require departures from familiar territory, internally and externally, in order to evolve out of these “childish things” St. Paul speaks of, into mature, reality-oriented encounter with existence as is. Often enough, like Miss Muffet, on her secure everyday tuffet one is inexplicably forced out of the comfort and safety of everyday belief and routine. And so with Father Will I must sit in the questions, in the <i>emptyin</i>g, and not rush to filler solutions. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I, too, must empty. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNbOM15eEjFjo1tZwMArJxL2YKH13d123ALXhSGX81HedFf3kHfKvUHzj_XP-PYHboOCKvWJBHv_qcK52duJKeM8T52FDYFY4vSL4axPF2hLtUYpNwiDnr5icwU6K4xZs-rSctXeYWDIaTnC0wEkI-Y4a9Mhm0l2CGqv8sAwckvhXKId0eEEqm6mba/s1520/IMG_3399.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="1520" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNbOM15eEjFjo1tZwMArJxL2YKH13d123ALXhSGX81HedFf3kHfKvUHzj_XP-PYHboOCKvWJBHv_qcK52duJKeM8T52FDYFY4vSL4axPF2hLtUYpNwiDnr5icwU6K4xZs-rSctXeYWDIaTnC0wEkI-Y4a9Mhm0l2CGqv8sAwckvhXKId0eEEqm6mba/s320/IMG_3399.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Guggenheim Museum. Bilbao, Spain<br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Both Carl Jung and W.R. Bion have prescribed this emptying in similar expressions, that when the fellow pilgrim, the patient/client, enters the room and the door is closed one empties oneself of memory, thought, desire. Existential and phenomenological psychology calls this intentional creating of vacated space <span style="font-style: italic;">Epoché </span>helpfully defined by wikipedia as "the theoretical moment where all judgments about the existence of the external world, and consequently all action in the world, is suspended...One's own consciousness is subject to immanent critique so that when such belief is recovered, it will have a firmer grounding in consciousness...one is thought to be able to suspend judgment regarding the general or naive philosophical belief in the existence of the external world, and thus examine phenomena as they are originally given to consciousness. [Read more about epoche here: </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoché" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoché</a>]</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In this context of epoché, vacated space, and <i>surrender</i> (etymologically meaning "to render out" much like the slow cooking of meat renders out, separates the fat), one suspends security of belief, even of history, personal and collective, and lives on what Martin Buber calls the <i>narrow ridge</i>, "a narrow rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but the certainty of meeting what remains undisclosed." [One may read Buber here in detail re: the narrow ridge here: <a href="https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-1-the-narrow-ridge/]" target="_blank">https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-1-the-narrow-ridge/]</a></span></div><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The narrow ridge can be stormy and, since last month Father Will came in from a violent storm, an understanding of storms archetypally may deepen the context of not only his but our collective departure out of the Piscean aeon into the Aquarian we've just entered. </span></div><div><i><b><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRf34Rq4e7Z8T6moW3JnNqDesKziKgh-CUy7S5jKCgKcjt7QN50msP09Cysg4J2WFf9Wwg1Eye8U_-IZTWEJnZl7EtrtonvWy5Tbtv5PlIlx79vzpyD2eZu97SoJ_03WTTq0UiS_vEp34oMOLfiPhb-NPdlqxo4poz7aGC1s7P4zLpgKDrvfne1hZ/s1955/IMG_3423.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1173" data-original-width="1955" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRf34Rq4e7Z8T6moW3JnNqDesKziKgh-CUy7S5jKCgKcjt7QN50msP09Cysg4J2WFf9Wwg1Eye8U_-IZTWEJnZl7EtrtonvWy5Tbtv5PlIlx79vzpyD2eZu97SoJ_03WTTq0UiS_vEp34oMOLfiPhb-NPdlqxo4poz7aGC1s7P4zLpgKDrvfne1hZ/s320/IMG_3423.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;">"My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." - Doestoevsky</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); color: #484848; text-align: start;" /></span></div><div><i><b><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Context & Conjecture Four </span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><b>O</b></i><b>f storms and absolution</b> at the outset, a context for Father Will, for us all as we fall with our Falling Star: We know from world mythology that violent storms have served the offended Higher Powers to destroy old and no longer viable divine and human cultural orders. These storms arrive, post-destruction, to restore, renew, relink Creative Power(s) with creation and from that tempestuous interaction, with culture. It can be said, then, that culture is a crime of passion between the sacred and the profane. Even the gods fight amongst themselves as they should for it is from this divine conflict that the "10,00 things" of creation are manifest and are subject to an Order/Disorder which we humans continually try to divine from which neither the gods nor we can escape being "hurled down against the flat stones of our lives", as American poet, Mark Strand, accurately announces. Gods, too, are hurled down upon stone tablets, unyielding codes, calcified cosmologies representing the flat world of old orders no longer viable because they cannot accommodate the horrific fact of their own shadow (projected upon creatures/creations), the shadow of the institutions formed around them, and of what humans with their brilliant but deadly shadows have been able to technologically create and in the creating awaken globally destructive powers. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As our gods are so are our determined destructions. Our annihilating bombs along with our balms are images of our contrary and contradictory gods. It is we and creation who suffer <i>them</i>. Thus we are startled awake, overwhelmed in this age of authentic anxiety, of pandemic sleep disorders, of pathological gods (Jung says our gods now show up as pathologies, as symptoms), their religions and <i>our</i> consequent spiritual bypasses. We remain warily, scarily aware of this cosmic set up in this crushing, cranking cosmological <i>turn of the Wheel</i> since the old and current centers and the meaning they once provided do not, apparently will not, hold because they carry internally their own apocalyptic seeds of destruction in order to be renewed, a process <i>en perpetua</i>, called <i>renaissance, </i>which is a hope but not a guarantee or given. We are in this condition where "the center cannot hold...things fall apart," to quote William Butler Yeats. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Carl Jung indicates that we are moving through this threshold of chaos and <span style="font-style: italic;">kairos</span>: </span></div><div><em><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></em></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><em>"A mood of universal destruction and renewal has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the KAIROS - The Right Moment - for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental principles and symbols... So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human.”</em> -C.G. Jung, <i><b>The Undiscovered Self </b></i></span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>"Kairos is the passing moment in which something happens as the time unfolds...it is a small</i> <i>window of becoming and opportunity. One of the origins of the word comes from shepherds watching the stars. As the night progresses and the stars turn in the sky, they appear to rise and then fall against the horizon. The moment when a star has reached its apogee and appears to change direction from ascending to descending is its </i>kairos<i>." </i>--Corrigall, J, Payne, H, Wilkinson, H (eds), <i><b>About A Body</b></i>, 2006: pg. 201 </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Like it or not, Father Will expresses/compresses/distresses within this context of chaos and kairos, the falling star of <i>our</i> Aeon (symbolically, stars partially represent particular meaning points, archetypally specific constellations/apparitions of consciousness). In so doing he speaks for us all though we may hide our heads in bestseller, consumerist New Age and similar sands, vacuous, temporary <i>spiritualish</i> confections, or alternately/alternatively, calcified and calcifying Fundamentalist invectives and insurrections, denial or bile by any other name, sympathetic magic flailing or doctrinaire dogma flagellating against the tragic condition of gods and man, self-righteous fingers or hand folded <i>namastes </i>pointing actively or passively at the scapegoated causes. This understandable but narcotic narcissism in the end will not lead us through this <i>nekyia</i> ("night sea journey") like Odysseus to that newly discovered inland <span style="font-style: italic;">terra firma</span> where we must plant our hand hewn oar carried far from familiar seas and shores. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The fullness of this time, Kairos of the falling star (which is a violent storm, indeed), of cultural/cosmological <i>dis-aster</i> (meaning, <i>ill-starred</i>), is reliant upon human capacities such as they are but effective enough, to proclaim, reclaim and proceed to <i>ongoingly</i> integrate shadow, human and divine, for this is <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> work not only of egos but of eras. It is also a time to grow equally enduring capacities for disorder, for chaos, so as not to blame or punish gods, Nature nor humans for what appears to be a primary given of existence, <i>entropy</i>, which is inevitable social, physical and energetic decline and degeneration. In tandem with entropy there are or can be evolving human capacities for what I call <i>syntropy</i> where we may more consciously witness and participate in the inexorable falling apart while keeping <i>meaning-threads</i> in mindful hands while winding and finding our way within and potentially out of one labyrinthine Wheel Turn into newer ones of potentially creative/destructive formations. Ensuing personal, collective and cosmological gains may be derived from willful Time's twining whorl and wheal<span style="color: #ff6600;">*</span> for this Fateful ordeal of inevitable wandering is imposed by appointed rising and falling stars, ours and our cultures' scars the signatures of their greater impositions. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Ah, but now I hear Father Will growling, "But <i>who</i> or <i>what</i> is it appoints the stars?" </span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">[</span><span style="color: #ff6600;">*</span> "wheal -- mark made on the skin by a whip," 1808, probably an alteration of wale, possibly by confusion with weal "welt," and obsolete wheal "pimple, pustule" (1440), from O.E. verb hwelian"to form pus, bring to a head." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="ydpedf39c42yiv4146682255ydp48651ed8yiv9613479428ydp4ba52ae3yiv1405748374ydp71315fc0separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yqEO0_eMQSA/YRlc-SA_soI/AAAAAAAAB_o/mv0cfBv1RoYhk6g_z9uGSsDw53QS1TMqACNcBGAsYHQ/200px-Schopenhauer.jpg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img alt="" class="ydpedf39c42yiv4146682255ydp48651ed8yiv9613479428ydp4ba52ae3yiv1405748374" data-id="1668043319720" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" src="https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2F-yqEO0_eMQSA%2FYRlc-SA_soI%2FAAAAAAAAB_o%2Fmv0cfBv1RoYhk6g_z9uGSsDw53QS1TMqACNcBGAsYHQ%2F200px-Schopenhauer.jpg&t=1668043318&ymreqid=404b6980-c5df-7cab-1ca6-25001801a600&sig=ug2yigpELnHzPF4BSjBw0Q--~D" style="max-width: 200px; width: 201px;" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">[Portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer, the 1800's German philosopher and inspiration for our Father Will who reappears in this month's essay to quarrel, and in quarreling make confession, with <i>Existenz</i>, his own, mine, the Church's, the New Age and more because of and amidst <i>the persistent agonies</i>. Father Will returns to us here first introduced in my March and October 2009 Learning For Life Group Newsletter essays also found here on the blogspot (click 'March (2)' and 'October (2) under 'Blog Archive'). The retired and <i>retiring, </i>troubled and troubling, goodly Father is a composite character, a convenient and necessary fiction drawn from my practice comprised of many, composed by one. I've chosen his name, <i>Father Will</i>, to signify Human Volition, Will to Power/Will to Cower in homage to Schopenhauer who wrote <i>The World As Will And Representation</i> (To get a sense of his philosophy go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer). However, any resemblance to an actual person is completely accidental unless it is an oblique locution referring to me. Credit for the painting here of Herr Schopenhaeur is from wikipedia online: "This portrait of Schopenhauer was painted in April 1859 by J. Lunteschutz...<span lang="en">This image... is in the public domain because its copyright has </span><span lang="en"><b>expired</b></span><span lang="en">."]</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span lang="en"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivphMBsYGecxBdPQTzJAwDGPIAsq2dNX1gfiKS8DbTfT0yLtzHju3ogHjDnKYRs0iGgMYqov3xWeoQUIr572GWeJfbHMMQzoGY3nKRYZ6Tm2-MgX53Jbesol0-7fFOUe-BBgZX1-L-iCC9KiyZJEmLNux68GggvuGK1sjtQrGdjjUL0M-iJpSPFk46/s2720/IMG_5951.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2720" data-original-width="2720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivphMBsYGecxBdPQTzJAwDGPIAsq2dNX1gfiKS8DbTfT0yLtzHju3ogHjDnKYRs0iGgMYqov3xWeoQUIr572GWeJfbHMMQzoGY3nKRYZ6Tm2-MgX53Jbesol0-7fFOUe-BBgZX1-L-iCC9KiyZJEmLNux68GggvuGK1sjtQrGdjjUL0M-iJpSPFk46/s320/IMG_5951.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>Ghosts. Ordinary planks propped against the wall</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">in a Santa Fe, NM museum.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>F</b><b>urther Pretexts for Absence: Quotes from Other Folks Who Have Opinion on the Matter</b></span></i></div></div></div><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;">You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.</span> -- Flannery O'Connor </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Artaud warns his readers and listeners that each person who knows conflict and seeks to grow, must expect a shearing of flesh and a letting go of blood in the act of life which is a <i>cruelty</i>. </span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>To be you can let yourself go until you just exist,</i> <i>but to live,</i> <i>you must be someone,</i> <i>to be someone,</i> <i>you must have a Bone,</i> <i>not be afraid to show the bone</i> <i>and to lose the meat by the wayside.</i> <i>And what is infinity?</i> <i>We do not know exactly.</i> <i>It is a word</i> <i>which we use</i> <i>to indicate</i> <i>WIDENING</i> <i>of our consciousness</i> <i>toward the inordinate,</i> <i>inexhaustible and inordinate</i> <i>feasibility.</i> </span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>...but there is one thing</i> <i>which is something,</i> <i>only one thing</i> <i>which is something,</i> <i>that I feel</i> <i>wants to</i> <i>COME OUT:</i> <i>the presence</i> <i>of my bodily</i> <i>pain,</i> <i>the menacing</i> <i>never increasing</i> <i>presence</i> <i>of my</i> <i>body.</i> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">To live meant to Artaud--to act, to hurt and be hurt, to experience fully joy and pain, and in so doing, to mold, <i>create</i>--and recreate oneself in the process..."<i>I hate and renounce as a coward every being who consents to live without first having created himself."</i> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">--from <i><b>Artaud, Man of Vision</b></i>, Bettina L. Knapp, First Swallow Press / Ohio University Press edition 1980, from the <i>Preface</i>, pg. 217-218, pg. 214<i> </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And if the babe is born a boy </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">He’s given to a woman old, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Who nails him down upon a rock, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Catches his shrieks in cups of gold. -- William Blake*** </span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Obit anus, abit onus</i> ("The old woman dies, the burden is lifted") --Arthur Schopenhauer**** </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">According to Julia Kristeva in the <i><b>Powers of Horror</b></i>, the abject refers to the human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other. The primary example for what causes such a reaction is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality); however, other items can elicit the same reaction: the open wound, shit, sewage, even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk.--from a Purdue University web article: The abject for Kristeva is, therefore, closely tied both to religion and to art, which she sees as two ways of purifying the abject: "The various means of <em>purifying</em> the abject—the various catharses—make up the history of religions, and end up with that catharsis par excellence called art, both on the far and near side of religion". --http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">At times one might say: "In the beginning there was nourishment." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">At times one might say: "In the beginning there was catastrophe." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Bion's writings give voice to the traumatized self. If Walt Whitman sings the body electric and catalogues joys of self, Bion details what it is like for self to be electrocuted and to continue as the remains...Destruction turns up and screaming substitutes for satisfaction. Bion is most keenly Bion in depicting destructive transformations of the scream as link. He is particularly master of the fading scream, the scream that dies forever, background radiation of spaceless space, the dispersed scream...Silence explodes...From nourishment to explosive wipe-out." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">--from <i><b>Damaged Bonds</b></i>, Michael Eigen, H. Karnac (Books) Ltd, 2001, pgs. 29-30 </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3C7djok-yXdHdED8j1BHB4DST1ZtLzR_s-sMlZYSv_aRxI3GYDN4qEH6R27126h365coKdri9AGVE2sLgNQkkN8nVVVyUQyQ0alUrv59DkxTFXxev5-qjSybrKYE5m3uEWnFiIDHFgJV4eL5gTgZvbAzWTxa27qtgwX-kWL8vjneFDJoLs6svThh/s2736/IMG_4295.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1987" data-original-width="2736" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3C7djok-yXdHdED8j1BHB4DST1ZtLzR_s-sMlZYSv_aRxI3GYDN4qEH6R27126h365coKdri9AGVE2sLgNQkkN8nVVVyUQyQ0alUrv59DkxTFXxev5-qjSybrKYE5m3uEWnFiIDHFgJV4eL5gTgZvbAzWTxa27qtgwX-kWL8vjneFDJoLs6svThh/s320/IMG_4295.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In a field I am the absence of field. — Mark Strand </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Becoming and transformation are tasks imposed on man by Fate, working both from within and without him, and this is something which man becomes aware of at the turning points, the crises of his existence. In so far as man experiences such crises with anxiety and under the image of inescapable death he also experiences himself as one disposed by nature to transcend his existence as it is at any moment and to experience and express previously unknown possibilities. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">-- <i><b>The Dream and the Underworld</b></i>, James Hillman, New York: Harper & Row, 1979, pg. 113 </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">This essay is dedicated to dearly departed Karen Eberle, Tien Ho, Walter Schell, and last but not at all least, the astonishing Marianne Annur: <i>"It means so much that we can be broken..."</i> </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">--Raul Voz, from <i><b>Las Poemas Cornadas </b></i><i>(The Cornada Poems</i>)</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: times;">"We do not mourn that we see through a glass darkly, </span></span></div><div data-setdir="true" dir="" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none;"><span style="font-family: times; outline: none;"><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; outline: none; text-align: center;">we now rejoice in the dark loveliness of the glass." </div></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: times; outline: none;">- John Dominic Crossan </span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: times; outline: none;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_sA4BuH_KFxSkSjQlyZDk3sE7qrEQeabLkrOxE4bgWnWdUwMHdgWdtTCrM5fNrfi__avmhnXebCxHORBCtxJpzVvHw97B2LI-VQEJ5rU4xCH6367H_oUjLlr7xt385aqaNdNWwKfXM3an8iSDrqkqShYB6czoeR-ES6d8MJBGB4-pNdmvTN5tEKqc/s2515/IMG_8430.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2515" data-original-width="2246" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_sA4BuH_KFxSkSjQlyZDk3sE7qrEQeabLkrOxE4bgWnWdUwMHdgWdtTCrM5fNrfi__avmhnXebCxHORBCtxJpzVvHw97B2LI-VQEJ5rU4xCH6367H_oUjLlr7xt385aqaNdNWwKfXM3an8iSDrqkqShYB6czoeR-ES6d8MJBGB4-pNdmvTN5tEKqc/s320/IMG_8430.jpeg" width="286" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"You barricade yourself from the world with exaggerated saviour fantasies.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Come down off the mountain of your humility and follow your nose." </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">- C. G. Jung</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm_5BzBDeRbKnT1nmbqjj-LbmeDYU1mymxk9d4WmXOXWOHnqgSKZveQ6fhZGJ6mDv0H8iHetU_ydjBzOR5ob1Xzbfv_eHbRq1JkdXZnwyWhotSE8UrdNpoXTz4Wf57bhTGEGYPygkyGqWEufFHlcz_MfozWMyaBIgDuPu7y7Lv7iA5C5NQHCpFp1L1/s1484/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-16%20at%2010.21.22%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="222" data-original-width="1484" height="60" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm_5BzBDeRbKnT1nmbqjj-LbmeDYU1mymxk9d4WmXOXWOHnqgSKZveQ6fhZGJ6mDv0H8iHetU_ydjBzOR5ob1Xzbfv_eHbRq1JkdXZnwyWhotSE8UrdNpoXTz4Wf57bhTGEGYPygkyGqWEufFHlcz_MfozWMyaBIgDuPu7y7Lv7iA5C5NQHCpFp1L1/w400-h60/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-16%20at%2010.21.22%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0VfEjCqpzzGgUc0PhRAavUbojOiz4hEIR9eNd0tCab7ApqlYhQOy6WuYLBePsrjeO1PZJcqZZpx7ozXz5_hi7ybc-GdqsD0WnEmhuwrlIHHZnhTBdBDQ-tg8g9DN8JoSr80krgoDseqEPP7-MxMt-XkVUIQgvWwgkNnm4XL75zez69ubT_1LVeNnp/s3249/IMG_3126.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3249" data-original-width="2436" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0VfEjCqpzzGgUc0PhRAavUbojOiz4hEIR9eNd0tCab7ApqlYhQOy6WuYLBePsrjeO1PZJcqZZpx7ozXz5_hi7ybc-GdqsD0WnEmhuwrlIHHZnhTBdBDQ-tg8g9DN8JoSr80krgoDseqEPP7-MxMt-XkVUIQgvWwgkNnm4XL75zez69ubT_1LVeNnp/s320/IMG_3126.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Pilgrim close-up. Mont-de-Marsan, Gers, France</span><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>Advent Letter To An Old Philosopher In Rome - What Knees Are For</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">for Father Will</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself in the end." - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"We make no claim to include anything of the past in the present but to maintain in the present the actuality of the eternal." - Jacques Maritain</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">1</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Old Friend, from one desert to another, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">let other scholars of absence break </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">their burden-heads against these mute</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">stones. The cactus here, perhaps knowing </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">of your advent by post, has waited all </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">these years to come into its radiance </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">with you. Just tonight it blooms once </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">only in its life, a miracle itself, a startle, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">one blossom of rarified hope. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Distant cousin, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">you unveil too in Roman darkness there as </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">we once shared silent prayer in the churchyard, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">our knees on hard stones - our God then - our </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">thin books not yet written.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">One simple stone veils you where you rest, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">your books, long in the making, shoulder the </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">burden so faithfully carried without complaint. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A landscape scarred - life's hard impress has </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">etched you - is now placed, framed, beside </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">the new flower, sheer and here.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I wonder how you are now that you are prayer itself </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">on that hill of bones wet with penitent pilgrims tears.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Your photograph travels all these years to </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">reach me so long without news of you, my </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">letters unanswered though rumors stray in </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">from the same old rivals fed on envy inquiring</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">about you. I never bother to answer them. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The postman, angel at the gate, has firmly </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">placed in my hands your parcel of plain brown </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">paper from ROMA — proclaims bold print framed </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">beside the other framed —</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Dear Unexpected Face. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">To see you at last, your resigned smile finally, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">gladly, admitting surrender - such repose is</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">an altar where incomprehension finally breaks </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">into blossom - Emptiness is Presence Divined </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">in any landscape or ocean. Or mind. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">On the back of your photo you ask simply, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">briefly, a note scribbled by a weak hand, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How fare's you, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">God's mason friend? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">2</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I stammer on scraping skin and song, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">a geography myself, a landscape severe, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">gone in the nose and ears, the eyes</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">good now for shadows only. And some </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">old beloved words. But I'll plead allergies. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I am reading some dead Thomists </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">these days, Maritain, your friend, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">whom I've secretly adored since </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">covenants were broken, my own </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">fault, asking again and again how </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">one can keep covenant with self </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">much less a God. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Bless my bones if there are blessings</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">for such. I've taken them for granted</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">much. They are my formation base.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I've wasted years chasing the world, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">the words for things, and why and </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">how, I never really thought of bones </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">but old Thomists did and do, even </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Calvinist too though they're way too </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">dry for me.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Maritain frees me, as does his wife, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">the gentleness in them both astounds.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Jacques's a tough bird, though, an </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">intellect staking claim on thought and</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">what perhaps it ought to do with silly</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">human will once Divinity has entered</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">the room —</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What knees are for upturned palms can plead.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">NOW</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">sings bones</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">their old hymns ongoing theme.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Somewhere I read, or did I dream it, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">an old heresiarch in the desert retreated </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">to cultivate a life of prayer in nowhere.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">After all the years of abstention and</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">heat, the bare land inexorable, he could </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">no longer utter much at all, speechless</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">before severity, and beauty, how the </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">eternal question of "why is man" could </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">be summed in his only prayer: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Heres breath for you."</span></div></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-36934802028119950482021-03-30T08:38:00.002-07:002021-03-30T08:46:37.744-07:00Roof, Rexroth, Blossoms, Bridges, Zen-itude - Views Above Windows <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lTicZwMnCKc/YGNEF_-LdOI/AAAAAAAAB8U/Tkfyho0VFO0OFz2M12Mf3iBqsBkzih9BgCNcBGAsYHQ/s1440/12794714_10207244404641831_1687282556859365270_o.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lTicZwMnCKc/YGNEF_-LdOI/AAAAAAAAB8U/Tkfyho0VFO0OFz2M12Mf3iBqsBkzih9BgCNcBGAsYHQ/w300-h400/12794714_10207244404641831_1687282556859365270_o.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">[I took this photo about 12 years ago (2010), my first spring in the studio apt, a new digital camera gifted to me so my arm plunged out the window often to snap mostly wasted images…but a few as usual were keepers or, rather, keepers enough. Click on the image to get a larger view.] </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><i><b>Kenneth Rexroth is</b></i> good reading now while I'm on the roof, first roof sit of the too too brief warm-enough/cool-enough season for sitting on the layered tar rolled flat reflecting gray from a clear sky (the roof will be unbearable to sit on by April's end). Fragmental view of bridges Manhattan and an edge of Brooklyn Bridge framed by buildings East and riverward…so, reading Rexroth, an early teacher for me in Blue Ridge tree tops 1970's then, and then with his translations of Chinese poems too which are now with me on the roof NYC 2016, the cover's wrecked, stained, torn, the edges brown and where the scorch came from I have no recall at all but clearly some flame or other got to the spine of it and burned the gray to dark brown and black. But the book still works and my hands are gentle with the pages, the spine weak and cracked, my thumb's a gentle press to hold it all together, tenuous though. The poems strong though. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">I lean over the brick ledge to peer east and down East 10 Street to quaff the view of bright off-white buds of trees just a few arms length below me, I would so gather them to me if I could but my reach is not long enough so the eyes must do, the stubborn ginkgoes refusing to open; they contrast against red brick and buds bright left and right of each twining limb dark, thin, black studs/nipples where leaves want to be but not yet, not yet. The aroma of the blossoming trees is strikingly sexual, male, though the eye sees the graceful flower an entire tree becomes before green has its long free run over the eyes and street--Not yet "green, how I want you green…" Not yet - "not my hands but green across you now" but these Rexroth essays and translations, and some Shinkichi Takahashi zen surrealist incantations for linear assonance and sumi-e mental negative space…Some Rexroth here accounts for such clear trances, the utility of them in an age bereft of substantial visions (though the essay's not about Takahashi but could be): </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">"Poetry such as this attempts not just a new syntax of the word. Its revolution is aimed at the syntax of the mind itself. Its structuring of experience is purposive, not dreamlike. We are dealing with a self-induced, or naturally or mysteriously come by, creative state from which two of the most fundamental human activities diverge, the aesthetic and the mystic act. The creative matrix is the same in both, and it is that state of being that is most peculiarly and characteristically human, as the resulting aesthetic and mystic experience is the purist form of human act. There is a great deal of overlapping, today especially, when art is all the religion most people have and when they demand of it experiences that few people of the past demanded of religion....A visionary poem is not a vision. The religious experience is necessitated and ultimate."
-- Kenneth Rexroth, World Outside the Window, the Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth, pg. 255-256
</span></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-139957667292481292021-02-18T15:06:00.004-08:002021-02-20T12:44:22.619-08:00from 'Inherited Brood Of Brothers, Wherever You May Sway, Remember To Be Gay - Imagined Letters Whitman May Have Penned To The New Millenium by Norman Nightingale<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kXltHeazlSY/YC7xZ0M0MQI/AAAAAAAAB68/rjkaXdPPSPIKlCOjUPt8Su2tKzx9jiF2QCNcBGAsYHQ/image.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="564" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kXltHeazlSY/YC7xZ0M0MQI/AAAAAAAAB68/rjkaXdPPSPIKlCOjUPt8Su2tKzx9jiF2QCNcBGAsYHQ/image.jpeg" width="193" /></a></div><p></p><div dir="auto" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">"I confess to myself a perhaps capricious fondness for it."
</span></div><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">-- Walt Whitman on this photograph</span></div></div><p><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">But I shall use that 'net' and my still goodly paper and goodly pen to dim whatever ill tides there are and to come, as they surely will in spite of low wattage, jangle keys on the night watches, read my mystic books, make my prayers with roamers of wards and wharves glancing up considering bridges, edges, silty bottoms. The tides are here even now. But right now I wish to sing a lullaby in protest to those hurting departed, even to those coming ills, that I may sing innocence dumbly back to those who may come ashore again more gently having forgotten enforcing depths insisting them toward resistant yet resolved embraces...</span></span></p><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">...So breech then, waves. Feet first. Heads in the brine. I shall keep time on your wrinkled toes sticking up from the sand, play peek-a-boo. Then while you sleep I shall harvest gently, place them firmly in that old woman's shoe with 'so many children she didn't know what to do.'</span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">She may yet have learned what to by now. I haven't.</span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">I remain bitter. Abject, too, from the senseless loss of cast off young men who could not endure the flame, the rust, no fault of their own, who leap blasted from bridges, forced by killing human edges, who are broken open within and by hateful, fearful others forgetting, if ever had, those restorative burning constancies of a Mother's loving hand upon them.</span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">I have placed their names and images upon my altar beside García Lorca's portrait, and Hart Crane's young face, an image of a sweet Christ holding a lamb in perpetua, and the yellowed newspaper clipping from Spain of the Matador's death, all who have joined or will join Hart becoming ghostly visionary company. They now remain forever chaste not having lived long enough to be wasted, to be emptied loving deeply out into Love for more, endlessly bleeding out as Lorca, a corrida of laurel encircling his head no longer remembering but only one sound, guns exploding outward, extending, bullets, petals, one by one beyond the wall where he stood before the obedient squad stunned, 'how young and handsome are the assassins' faces.' Obedient to projectiles and projections he flew backward into the restraining wall, his brave shadow and blood, then fell, a last poem frozen upon lips but for circling birds, spirits, carrion or both, arriving after blood. </span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">Reduced to foolish whispers, restoring moments, patient hidden gods, human hearts and bodies remove themselves from the potter's wheel too early broken, too tired, too alone to try to shape love from Love from the tiny shard, the remnant bone of the ancient mastodon, the last one, dreaming within each heart of that Love which all Nature yearns for.</span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">Inherited brood of brothers wherever you may sway remember to be gay for all the gray afternoons in this sad but forgiving confessional while not forgetting mine and the cock's quarrel with life in the booth by the cracked window near the corner of 7th and Second.</span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">Trembling,</span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;">Nightingale </span></div></div><div class="ydp6b9d306o9v6fnle ydp6b9d306cxmmr5t8 ydp6b9d306oygrvhab ydp6b9d306hcukyx3x ydp6b9d306c1et5uql ydp6b9d306ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: times;">from Inherited Brood Of Brothers Wherever You May Sway, Remember To Be Gay, Letters Whitman May Have Penned To The New Millenium by Norman NIghtingale</span></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-62287531332710317842021-01-24T20:46:00.002-08:002023-07-01T23:59:02.552-07:00...the ubiquity of normality given the intolerable conditions of existence...<div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 15px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R1XHDdNSoAk/YA5LufFvB0I/AAAAAAAAB6M/CwBgELj_S4QmIGYt_NgaAoKfr4fp0TMGACNcBGAsYHQ/August_batch_2015%2B297.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R1XHDdNSoAk/YA5LufFvB0I/AAAAAAAAB6M/CwBgELj_S4QmIGYt_NgaAoKfr4fp0TMGACNcBGAsYHQ/w300-h400/August_batch_2015%2B297.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 15px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fDwz-EXwFGg/YA5MDLyhiWI/AAAAAAAAB6U/lutgGbnJPf4NZiu3kP0l4j6tPaeI011UwCNcBGAsYHQ/August_batch_2015%2B301.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fDwz-EXwFGg/YA5MDLyhiWI/AAAAAAAAB6U/lutgGbnJPf4NZiu3kP0l4j6tPaeI011UwCNcBGAsYHQ/August_batch_2015%2B301.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Building in downtown London, August 2016. Sunday stroll surprise for eyes.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Warren Falcon. All rights reserved.</span></span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">"...the ubiquity of "normality" given the intolerable conditions of existence..."</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Thus the corrective reorientation/enantiodromia of the Absurd and Beckett's version in the West aka Godot aka humor and/or of or with or from or by despair - the laughter born from the in-between them state and perchance AWAKE but for moment in time. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">A zen master asks, "Of time, who is counting?"</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There's resolution in't (the question orients)</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the run-on </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">trousers limp </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the cobbled </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">street where </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">a spring </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">silvers </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">beneath</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">avenue smells </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">too of singed </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">hair </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">a humming </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">boy hums </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">pokes bits </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">of scalp on </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the walk </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">his small </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">white thumbs </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">alone touch </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the white </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">lattice kiosk </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">sells the </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Stranger's </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">face again</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">**</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"Have I ever mentioned that Michelangelo practically never took a bath in his life, by the way? </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And even wore his boots to bed? </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On my honor, it is a well known item in the history of art that Michelangelo was not somebody one would particularly wish to sit too close to. Which on second thought could very well change one's view as to why all of those Medici kept telling him don't bother to get up, as a matter of fact. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Although come to think of it even William Shakespeare himself was terribly tiny, which is something I did once mention. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I mean so long as one would appear to be getting into this sort of thing. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Well, and for that matter Galileo would never even ever shake another person's hand, once he had discovered germs.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">....</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I have just wrapped my head into a towel.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Having gone out for some greens, for a wet salad, this would be because of.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And in the meantime the more I have thought about it, the more sorry I have gotten about what I said.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I mean about Michelangelo, not about Herodotus.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Certainly I would have found it more than agreeable to shake Michelangelo’s hand, no matter how the pope or Louis Pasteur might have felt about this.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In fact I would have been excited just to see the hand that had taken away superfluous material in the way that Michelangelo had taken it away.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Actually, I would have been pleased to tell Michelangelo how fond I am of his sentence that I once underlined, too.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps I have not mentioned having once underlined a sentence by Michelangelo.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I once underlined a sentence by Michelangelo.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This was a sentence that Michelangelo once wrote in a letter, when he had lived almost seventy-five years.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On my honor, Michelangelo once wrote that.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As a matter of fact I am next to positive I would have liked Michelangelo."</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"> - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I conclude re: the above so far -</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Germs induce (eventually) other terms of engagement.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">***</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">After a long afternoon at the Tate Modern Gallery pondering Agnes Martin retrospective I took this photo of the spacious ground floor at least 3 floors high of an higher even office building in the heart of London. In trance all eyes and legs only I had managed to stagger/spin/spend time in the museum's Surrealist Art gallery before needed air and exit/walk/gawk my kingdom for a New York sidewalk pretzel or what my old methodist grandmother called, down south, a 'pertzul'. Whatever. I happened upon it, the building, its glass, the hanging shards' color, the immensities thereof or in. Agnes-ed I was a pointillist blur wobbling about a London Sunday, all the city mostly closed advantage of which was city was mostly to myself but not much in the way of eats, no pertzuls to be found, not even bangers and mash and the horrid mashed peas splattering most served up meals as if a pigeon had flown over and shat splat on the platter before the mutter could be served. Most offal. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Me, accidentally, there are none, accidents, or so it is proposed, or was even so everly long ago pre-Socratical, I happened upon Cathedral of Saint Paul (not my favorite saint but), ethereal (interesting 'ether real' which it ether is after all though the word conveys the opposite) music, live choral large, wafting lures me waffling still the quiet avenue then into a packed house, Gothical standing room only, incense and holy water abundantly around for sniffs and dips forefingers (Michelangelo) only allowed in (note says it is so)...an hungred I stood so sprinkled shoulder to shoulder wondering why there were guards all about uniformed alert which dampened my mystical bent much but the Palestrina then the Thomas Tallis then a far distant priest and altar boy (man, really) Cathedral's other end, raises Chalice to commit the wine into Blood, glad I stood though tired for the Rite, the hand chimes demark the transformation of wine into Host then elbowed politely my way out into too too much brightness though late afternoon and more meander remembering Dostoevsky's "Alyosha, I shall set off from here...loving with one's inside, with one's stomach..." <span style="font-family: inherit;">and mine, stomach, successfully found fish n chips in a most deserted square near an open market (a farmer's but it was shuttered) near famed Brit poet's upstairs flat but ground floor door to upstairs John Betjeman, he decades dead, whom I had ne're read but knew the name and again chanced upon the night sky blue door because the pub with the fish and chips was below the dead man's flat. And no mustard in the place. The pub. Not the flat. Bet your man here, appropriate post-recall Saint Paul ethers and forefingers crucifixions and later apparitions ascents:</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Aldershot Crematorium</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Between the swimming-pool and cricket-ground</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"> How straight the crematorium driveway lies!</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And little puffs of smoke without a sound</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"> Show what we loved dissolving in the skies,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Dear hands and feet and laughter-lighted face</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And silk that hinted at the body's grace.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But no-one seems to know quite what to say</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"> (Friends are so altered by the passing years):</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"Well, anyhow, it's not so cold today"—</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"> And thus we try to dissipate our fears.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">'I am the Resurrection and the Life':</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Strong, deep and painful, doubt inserts the knife.</div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-61563068143882316372020-12-07T09:34:00.003-08:002022-12-07T14:43:43.019-08:00"Teeth, In This Case, Is The Beginning Of Wisdom" - Some Thoughts on Chaos, Catastrophe, and Faith, With Help From James Hillman And Michael Eigen<div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-size: 15px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VXIDXupBVP0/X85nPUoZjAI/AAAAAAAAB5Q/k_u1RHil7W4srT98pYhqeZHJkfnDSmrrgCNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-12-07%2Bat%2B12.31.59%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1332" data-original-width="1492" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VXIDXupBVP0/X85nPUoZjAI/AAAAAAAAB5Q/k_u1RHil7W4srT98pYhqeZHJkfnDSmrrgCNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-12-07%2Bat%2B12.31.59%2BPM.png" width="269" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;">Sketch by Aris Moore</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://peekadoo.blogspot.com"><span style="font-family: times;">https://peekadoo.blogspot.com</span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Teeth, In This Case, Is The Beginning Of Wisdom"</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><div class="ydp7ce41ae9x11i5rnm ydp7ce41ae9xat24cr ydp7ce41ae9x1mh8g0r ydp7ce41ae9x1vvkbs ydp7ce41ae9xtlvy1s ydp7ce41ae9x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Finished in lightning, the little chaos raves.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I meet it in all the faces that I see." - Muriel Rukeyser</span></span></div></div><div class="ydp7ce41ae9x11i5rnm ydp7ce41ae9xat24cr ydp7ce41ae9x1mh8g0r ydp7ce41ae9x1vvkbs ydp7ce41ae9xtlvy1s ydp7ce41ae9x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Blake's vision in his long poem is none other than the assimilation of chaos." - Christine Gallant</span></span></div></div><div class="ydp7ce41ae9x11i5rnm ydp7ce41ae9xat24cr ydp7ce41ae9x1mh8g0r ydp7ce41ae9x1vvkbs ydp7ce41ae9xtlvy1s ydp7ce41ae9x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Here [in chaos, in catastrophe, in shadowland] faith functions as a boundless or infinite container." - Michael Eigen</span></span></div><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div><div dir="auto"><span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Several of James Hillman's books, Dreams and the Underworld, and Healing Fiction, especially chapter two, "The Pandaemonium of Images, Jung's Contribution to Know Thyself", deliciously explore the dimmed yet dynamic dimensions of the Nightworld, the mythic unconscious where upon entering there, says Hillman, human Dayworld values must be left behind. In the Nightworld, in Dreamtime, in the Unconscious, the world of daimons and more, one enters often kicking and screaming or, dangerously to self and others, naively (viz. there's no darkness at all). According to Carl Jung dreams are often enough ruthless "impartial facts" from the objective psyche, many people resist them knowing that if taken seriously their whole view of self, other and reality will be profoundly altered and not so readily wrestled into the ever narrowing corrals of (dis)positivity (as in dispose-tivity). Out of site in this case guarantees out-of-their-mind for even apparently "sane" and "cool" dimentias will out, the nightworld, the daimonic will out by any means necessary and cares not a hoot whether one smells of light and sandalwood or is yogically stretched yet still karmically kvetched and shadow-projected, for the psyche, the daimonic, eventually, finally-had-enough, turns like the proverbial whipped dog and bites. </span></span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Such biting increases the possibility of wholeness, real wholeness, if one does not turn away from teeth. </span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Teeth, in this case, is the beginning of wisdom.</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In Michael Eigen's immensely wise and helpful book, The Psychoanalytic Mystic, in a section describing the function of faith in psychoanalysis and therapy work, he speaks of "the explosive or catastrophic potential in every therapeutic encounter" (page 124). This is certainly so in any encounter with the daimon. Therapeutic work implies the goal of becoming conscious and making consciousness, thus a conscious explosive/catastrophic encounter with the daimon is an inevitable arrival in good, and extremely patient, therapy. </span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Eigen describes William Blake's Heaven, a similar description which my daimon depicts of Hell as does Hillman in his book on the underworld, "William Blake describes heaven as all out war between every human capacity in which all have their say without compromise yet incessantly enrich and are enriched by others. Here faith functions as a boundless or infinite container (Eigen, The Psychoanalystic Mystic. Pages 124/125)."</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Blake's and Eigen's appreciation of Blake's view of heaven is that of an indestructible container (as that which is required in alchemy, a vessel capable of containing the most volatile and destructive of opposites), ever expanding, allowing for each energy as equally valid/vital to participation in the creation/destruction/reformation essential to Creativity and Creation on all levels (mostly unknown given human mental limitations to ken the subtle yet profound beyond-the-senses-and-rationality process and results). Heaven is not at all about "purity" which is too often confused as one opposite on top valued over the other on the bottom and of lowest value (sin/corruption), and vice versa. The goal of alchemy from the oevre or work (volatile cooking) of alchemy is that from the intensity of energies released in the combination of such conflicting substances, and the distillation of vapors derived from the mixing of both or many, a third thing, a refined substance, a new creation born of the foundational substances which are broken down, degraded, dissolved and adulterated in order to undergo refining fires and subsesquent phases, create a new thing, a unifiying refinement which advances/evolves a new creation/evolution in (at least human) consciousness. </span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">This all sounds "heady" but is actually the exact opposite for, though linear and with consciousness operative, the processes incorporate irrationality as one of the elements cooking with other conficting elements...the resulting alchemical product is new and vital and brings about a profound paradigm shift from the inside out. </span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And that, my friends, is indeed a process called "heaven."</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(228, 230, 235); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Heaven is not a place. It is a process ever ongoing, an eternal evolution taking place in space and time yet partaking of something, and within something, a vital allusion, called eternity.</span></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-10001713895724903972020-11-27T17:28:00.011-08:002023-06-14T16:27:14.234-07:00Bone Texts - Father Will, Acedia to Concordia Discors - Confessions of Doubt on a Way of Thorns — Reprise Essay [Originally published 10/23/2009]<br />
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<span><span><span><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span>Acedia (ah-che-dia)</span><span style="font-size: 20.799999237060547px;"> - </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124; font-weight: 100;"><i>spiritual or mental sloth; apathy</i></span></span></div><div style="font-size: 20.799999237060547px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202124; font-family: times; font-style: italic;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);"><b><a href="https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/what-is-the-difference-between-discordia-concors-harmonious-discord-and-con/67235" target="_blank">Concordia Discors </a>- </b></span></span><span><span><span><i><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(48, 51, 54); color: #303336; letter-spacing: 0.20000000298023224px;">inharmonious harmony </span><span class="mw_t_bc" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(48, 51, 54); color: #303336; font-stretch: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.20000000298023224px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">: </span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(48, 51, 54); color: #303336; letter-spacing: 0.20000000298023224px;"><span style="font-family: times;">harmony of discordant elements</span></span></i></span></span></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: times; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 0.10199999809265137px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: times; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 0.10199999809265137px;">Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors. Empedocles deliret acumen?</span></div><div><p class="SimplePara" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.10199999809265137px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="EmphasisTypeItalic" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">What does the discordant harmony of things mean, and what can it do? Is Empedocles crazy? -</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Horace, Epistles I.12.19</span></span></p></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="EmphasisTypeItalic" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 0.10199999809265137px;">....But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence… -</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 0.10199999809265137px;">Nietzsche, Gay Science I.2</span></span></div><div><p class="SimplePara" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.10199999809265137px;"><br /></p></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><span><span><span><span style="font-size: 20.799999237060547px;"><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><b>B</b></span></span><b>one Texts--Enter Father Will</b></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "palatino" , "book antiqua";">.</span></div></span></span></span>
<span style="font-style: italic;"><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>He has an impulse to confess more than is likely.--</span>Randall Potts<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Our path is a path of roses, but it is also a way of thorns.</span> --Father Giovanni Melchior Bosco, now canonized, of the Salesian Society<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">I am walking among the emerald trees<br />in the night without end.-- Mark Strand</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: 20.799999237060547px;"><br />W</span></span></span>hen Father Will arrived for session after yet another extended retreat to the desert hermitage in the American West he was subdued.<br />
<br />
"My text was Mark Strand," says he.<br />
<br />
"Stranded, huh?" I wink.<br />
<br />
An amused groan. A shrug. "Completely in the dark this time. Not the luminous journey beneath the desert stars I had hoped for. Absence. Cold. Absolute. My bones hurt from such emptiness. If they were straws to suck on they would collapse, bend inward upon themselves too weak to crack. Fold they would. I am, as it were...folded."<br />
<br />
We remain quiet for awhile.<br />
<br />
His silences flay me. Viscera exposed without any drama. Well, not much. Mute. But not numb. Rather, more feelingly alive, as Rilke says, "beneath 'the more deeply untellable stars' (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ninth Duino Elegy</span>).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Old men lose drama, </span>I think.<span style="font-style: italic;"> They simply fold. What then from the folding?</span><br />
<br />
"I always expect, expect, expect...but eventually fold into circumspection. I chase my tail in circles like a miserable cur stupidly spinning in one spot without dignity before flopping into a body curl, nose to haunch, canine yoga, dumbly pleased...(bemused)...And dumb. Did I say <span style="font-style: italic;">dumb</span> yet? After all these years?...humiliating, really...Ah, what a pity party I am today." He smiles sadly. "But I'm catching hold of that tail...beneath those cold, blinking stars above...that goddamned, even colder Bone Cabin. Jeez...(musing)...What bones I be?...they caper in dreams alone, and free... where I wish to god-a-mighty... for once, O Solitude, to...to remain dreamless... for a little while...just a little, y'know...Can't an old man...a Catholic priest, for god sakes, go for awhile...without dreams?"<br />
<br />
More Rilke, his epitaph, comes to mind but I keep still and quote to myself silently,<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">O Rose. O pure contradiction.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Delight to be no one's sleep beneath</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">so many eyelids.</span><br />
<br />
I see the old Duino poet tenderly working his beloved later roses in Muzot. He winces, brings a finger to his mouth, sucks blood drawn by a fateful thorn, a slight smile for the hazardous love of roses, this small cut a reminder of the greater gash which opened the floodgates of poetry in him. This tiny wound on a late summer day bloomed into an infection, septicemia, which killed him:<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">O Rose...</span>I address the Rose<span style="font-style: italic;">...<br />Poets embrace irony between<br />The petal </span><span style="font-style: italic;">and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">the</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> thorn, one's infectious<br />Absence a lover's flag of surrender,</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />"No one's sleep beneath so many eyelids.</span>"<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Dissent no more,<br />Yield the insistent argument of<br />Dirt no longer animal.</span><br />
<br />
I listen. I empty out though Father Will's words fill me richly.<br />
<br />
When I can empty I hover between attentions, solar plexus opening. Running. Returning. Hear and feel those desert winds blowing through. I pull a shawl around my shoulders. Reach for the hot tea in the more meaningful cup, its unquestioning solidity.<br />
<br />
This harrowing wind carves out the space between and around us. Vast sky and earth open out. One shouts over the silence portended in such immensity, to hear a howling wind a mercy then, a reference point amidst the disorientation with all directions spinning away, sounding:<br />
<br />
"Father Will... Father Will...Father Will...forty years serving the most weary and wretched of human souls in the most desolate famine places, in war's most wasted erasures of human face after human face after human face, uncomprehending events of erasure, of becoming absent, <span style="font-style: italic;">once and no more (</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Rilke again) and yet to be as he, the face that remains after the unfathomable, uncountable erasures? What then,<span style="font-style: italic;"> beneath 'the more deeply untellable stars'?"</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">In his book, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Damaged Bonds</span>, psychoanalyst Michael Eigen gives us an image for such erasures, the perpetual presencing of absence depicted in</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> the startling, heartbreaking image of one who is electrocuted yet survives as the ongoing, unending, remnant scream, </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">a horrible locution.</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> Or, <span style="font-style: italic;">Father Will's approximations</span>, a folded bone. Or remaining a living face in the face of human erasures by the unknown, untold thousands, one's very presence, Father Will's, a reminder of faces lost, absent yet present in a most terrible gape. What locution can say any of this? What poetic device? What form of therapy or religion can get near much less stand against or stay with such absenting-as-a-verb, ongoing erasure, unending evacuation?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br />Heart broken and breaking in it's endless capacity to do so, binding up my own folded bones <span style="font-style: italic;">loosely, o loosely</span>, butterfly netting my own post-sparked scream, breathing into the empty space of ongoing erasure I bear witness. I must. I will. Can I?<br /><br />I must.<br /><br />I watch my own gathering defenses against Nothingness hammering at the barricades, my impulsive, natural stiff-arming away, or trying, the scraping defacement, the depersonalizing isolation, the waiting on the narrow ridge, the liminal plank stretched over the sucking drink [the unfathomable depth], the unknowing unutterable which begs to be said, moved, demonstrated, given form, not guarded against--build a fence around it it yet remains the Void. Funny to have <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> word for such a thing which is no thing at all--enter Groucho Marx, eyes rolling, cigars blazing, "You said the Void, you got the boid."<br /><br />To be present one must entertain (wrong word! wrong word!) absence, erasure, caesura, fall through and into the stark clarities, the resisted fogs. Once familiar knowns, real <span style="font-style: italic;">then</span>, are now chimerical.</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> With haruspicate hiccups, with hallowed hysterics, with magical passes we in the human analgesia trade ease and/or appease such voiding striving to drive away that which encroaches or more horrifyingly wells up from within and around us, <span style="font-style: italic;">kith, kin, klan, kulture</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">even worse, konjurers</span>. We a-void this voiding with platitudes and cures all too quickly tapping and hypnotizing, reducing-exorcising-excising history, the past, the symptom. And we call it cure, absolution, salvation, enlightenment. Or adjustment. Or even more absurdly, citizenship. </span><br />
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[Waterfall. Artist - Hiroshi Shinju]</div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">What replaces in disorientation? What displaces one's foot on the straining liminal plank when one is haplessly pushed by Fate, or stumbles, or purposely leaps, falls, drops into dizzying isolated spins to become lost in order to gain, one hopes, another--<span style="font-style: italic;">The</span>--Orientation, True North, a foothold, a toehold even, in the Void? how does one remain present with that one who returns to you a surviving scream, a folded bone? Where is the witness, the <span style="font-style: italic;">with-ness</span>, then? A therapist, a guide, a zen master, a guru, a pastor, a priest, a rebbe, a doctor, a psychoanalyst and other wheezing analgesics like me are loans then against the client's nothingness, the client who banks upon your/my realness/reality until the folded bone, O Ezekiel, O Koan, connects to another bone (me) and another then another all born of desertion or theft or loss or death of historical knowns, nostrums and formulas in order to grow more substantial Bone, little death by little death, to arrive at a more enlivened, embodied Bone-soul retreaded for more<span style="font-style: italic;"> grab</span> in the Void until the final summing spin.</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Father Will and I hang together, beside--like the two Biblical thieves, two opposing attitudes present at once in the Hanged Man proposing surrender, both blessing and cursing--between the<span style="font-style: italic;"> "Why has Thou forsaken me?"</span> of the God-man on the Golgotha Tree and the<span style="font-style: italic;"> "Gate Gate </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Parasamgate"--Gone Gone Gone Beyond</span>--of remotest Siddhartha </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Gautama riveted to the Bodhi Tree </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">who smiles enigmatically perhaps delighting to be <span style="font-style: italic;">no one's sleep beneath so many eyelids</span>. The joke and yoke upon us, we two thieves, Father Will and me, have both agreed to hang together though he has in the wilderness Bone Cabin endured and broken apart in infernal, internal weather, violent storms which now shake <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>, fold <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> bones. Yet somewhere within, a kind of madness it is, there is a soft yet enduring and endearing gratefulness for this shared wound, <span style="font-style: italic;">chronicity,</span> which opens, one hopes, through absence into infinity into Presence. Perchance to find the dream in the remnant scream which is prayer by another name--<span style="font-style: italic;">location </span>arrived<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>from locution.<br /><br />Father Will opens a book </span>fetched <span style="font-size: 16px;">from a deep cassock pocket, worn, torn like his book, an early work by Mark Strand. He gives me the "listen up, listen close, listen well, listen deep" look to which I nod turning my better ear to hear toward him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br />"This was my major text at Bone Cabin," he reports.<br /><br />He pauses, sips tea, then reads some lines to me from his<span style="font-style: italic;"> text</span>, friend to friend, warmly, Autumn darkness coming on, the Harvest moon gathering clouds out the office window. There's going to be rain:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-style: italic;">How </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">we wish we were sunning ourselves</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">In a world of familiar views</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">And fixed conditions, confined</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">By what we know, and able to refuse</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Entry to the unaccounted for.</span>..<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />We do not feel protected</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">By the walls, nor can we hide</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Before the duplicating presence</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Of their mirrors, pretending we are the ones who stare</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">From the other side, collected</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">In the glassy air.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">A cold we never knew invades our bones.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">We shake as though storms were going to hurl us down</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Against the flat stones</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Of our lives. All other nights</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Seem pale compared to this, and the brilliant rise</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Of morning after morning seems unthinkable.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Already now the lights</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">That shared our wakefulness are dimming</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">And the dark brushes against our eyes.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
"Next week?" he asks, slowly standing up.<br />
<br />
"Next week."<br />
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[Read the entire poem, <span style="font-style: italic;">Violent Storm</span>, below]<br />
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**"Violent Storm" from <i>New Selected Poems by Mark Strand</i>. Copyright © 2007 by Mark Strand. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Violent Storm</span>**<br />
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Those who have chosen to pass the night<br />
entertaining friends<br />
And intimate ideas in the bright,<br />
Commodious rooms of dreams<br />
Will not feel the slightest tremor<br />
Or be weakened by what seems<br />
Only a quirk in the dry run<br />
Of conventional weather. For them,<br />
The long night sweeping over these trees<br />
And houses will have been no more than one<br />
In a series whose end<br />
Only the nervous or morbid consider.<br />
But for us, the wide awake, who tend<br />
To believe the worst is always waiting<br />
Around the next corner or hiding in the dry,<br />
Unsteady branch of a sick tree, debating<br />
Whether or not to fell the passerby,<br />
It has a sinister air.<br />
How we wish we were sunning ourselves<br />
In a world of familiar views,<br />
And fixed conditions, confined<br />
By what we know, and able to refuse<br />
Entry to the unaccounted for. For now,<br />
Deeper and darker than ever, the night unveils<br />
Its dubious plans, and the rain<br />
Beats down in gales<br />
Against the roof. We sit behind<br />
Closed windows, bolted doors,<br />
Unsure and ill at ease<br />
While the loose, untidy wind,<br />
Making an almost human sound, pours<br />
Through the open chambers of the trees.<br />
We cannot take ourselves or what belongs<br />
To us for granted. No longer the exclusive,<br />
Last resorts in which we could unwind,<br />
Lounging in easy chairs,<br />
Recalling the various wrongs<br />
We had been done or spared, our rooms<br />
Seem suddenly mixed up in our affairs.<br />
We do not feel protected<br />
By the walls, nor can we hide<br />
Before the duplicating presence<br />
Of their mirrors, pretending we are the ones who stare<br />
From the other side, collected<br />
In the glassy air.<br />
A cold we never knew invades our bones.<br />
We shake as though storms were going to hurl us down<br />
Against the flat stones<br />
Of our lives. All other nights<br />
Seem pale compared to this, and the brilliant rise<br />
Of morning after morning seems unthinkable.<br />
Already now the lights<br />
That shared our wakefulness are dimming<br />
And the dark brushes against our eyes.<br />
<br />
For online reading click here or copy and paste:<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></span><br />
http://books.google.com/books?id=I9-IBpQfghEC&pg=PT20&lpg=PT20&dq=mark+strand+%2B+reasons+for+moving&source=bl&ots=P6UUyl_bX7&sig=-pTesOGSguae7Z8iHQEIuB6eH6M&hl=en&ei=qODlSrj4GsbUlAepltnoCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=15&ved=0CD4Q6AEwDg#v=onepage&q=&f=false<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: 20.799999237060547px;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reasons For Moving</span><br />
<br />
In a field<br />
I am the absence<br />
of field.<br />
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
This is </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
always the case. </div>
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Wherever I am </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
I am what is missing. </div>
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When I walk </div>
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I part the air </div>
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and always </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
the air moves in </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
to fill the spaces </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
where my body’s been. </div>
<br />
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
We all have reasons </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
for moving. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
I move </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
to keep things whole. --Mark Strand</div>
<br />
“Keeping Things Whole” from <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Selected Poems by Mark Strand</span>. Copyright © 1980 by Mark Strand. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc<span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />***</span>from <span style="font-style: italic;">"The Mental Traveler"</span> by William Blake, <span style="font-style: italic;">Complete Poems of William Blake</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">****</span>The Marquet Affair: While in Berlin, Schopenhauer was named as a defendant in an action at law initiated by a woman named Caroline Marquet.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-SchopBR_0-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-SchopBR-0"></a></sup> She asked for damages, alleging that Schopenhauer had pushed her. Knowing that he was a man of some means and that he disliked noise, she deliberately annoyed him by raising her voice while standing right outside his door. Marquet alleged that the philosopher had assaulted and battered her after she refused to leave his doorway. Her companion testified that she saw Marquet prostrate outside his apartment. Because Marquet won the lawsuit, he made payments to her for the next twenty years.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-7"></a></sup> When she died, he wrote on a copy of her death certificate, <i>Obit anus, abit onus</i> ("The old woman dies, the burden is lifted.-<span style="font-style: italic;">http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#The_Marquet_Affair</span><br />
<br />
<br />
"Point of No Return", <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Collision Center</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, Randall Potts, </span>O Books (January 1994)<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Duino Elegies</span>, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Spender & J.B. Leishman, Norton Press.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Dreams and the Underworld</span>, James Hillman, Harper & Row,<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Damaged Bonds</span>, Michael Eigen, Karnac Press<br />
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Winter Field. Keene, NY</div>
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ALL PHOTOS BY WARREN FALCON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO HIM. SHOULD YOU WISH TO USE A PHOTO THEN CONTACT WARREN ON THIS BLOGSPOT SITE.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">*****</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">PART TWO OF FATHER WILL'S "CONFESSIONS" - CLICK HERE:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2009/10/father-will-folded-bone.html" target="_blank">https://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2009/10/father-will-folded-bone.html</a><br /></div>
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Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-67355735319471948922020-09-17T21:00:00.001-07:002020-11-27T23:04:39.861-08:00dark water charcoaled with orange sky - a brief moment of my life<div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="5nlkm-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5nlkm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PlAb4RUSPDc/X2QvSbOOa2I/AAAAAAAAB28/XaXNSliZeKkqouzZ5MGnVhzfIJ8fkn09wCNcBGAsYHQ/s766/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-09-17%2Bat%2B6.43.03%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PlAb4RUSPDc/X2QvSbOOa2I/AAAAAAAAB28/XaXNSliZeKkqouzZ5MGnVhzfIJ8fkn09wCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-09-17%2Bat%2B6.43.03%2BPM.png" /></a></div></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5nlkm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5nlkm-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5nlkm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5nlkm-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Rereading the autobiography of Wright Morris whom I've never read before, his novels, rather, 'cept for this his autobiography, A Cloak of Light, when I was in my 30's feeling trapped by New York City. No, wait, not by the city but by myself on yet another shelf even in the most adventurous city in the world, or one of them. And I so wanted adventure thus New York and my Harlem basement room where I "ensconced" reading reading reading as I did everywhere I'd lived, rather, read, on night shifts, and in between shifts, more given by introversion to inner adventures though preachers warned me that these were the worst kind. But the outer ones, the stuff which made/compelled/miseried as my shadow, "will out" but I. not yet ready for the outing, found them in the books I read, and in the twice weekly sessions with Betsy, the patient Jungian analyst, who got plenty of shadow from my dreams. More than once she'd nod out while I was talking on and on which hurt my feelings but I now realize that my shadow was so very big and as yet to be touched that I put her to sleep, made her unconscious, so as to avoid a confrontation with the shadow. I'd silently steal away, ashamed, a personal check on her side table, and walk from East 92nd and 1st Avenue to West Harlem.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="avp1j-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="avp1j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="avp1j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="c0e51-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="c0e51-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="c0e51-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Much as I desired a life "in the world" I clearly wasn't ready so in sessions as with books I couldn't turn the pages fast enough to escape a destined, Jung would warn, "doomed" encounter a few years ahead. . .but I was determined to read only about it, dream about it, take notes, keep journals, yet on some occasions late night by the Hudson River near the corner of West 142nd Street I would relent, cave, rave, shout, weep, threaten the water, life itself on both banks, even and especially that Goddamned indifferent sentinel Maxwell House Cup forever tilted with it's petrified drop never dropping, I pledged revenge, retribution, a long list of bullies spilling out of my mouth where they'd at last flounder then flush beneath the dark water charcoaled with orange sky. Only to come to life and dryer land in me again come the morning. Fuck the pigeons. Then. Me and pigeons are good now. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="4pjbj-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4pjbj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4pjbj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="cj14j-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cj14j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="cj14j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Reading Wright Morris, his travels and dare-thee-wells was greatly satisfying back then. Still is. Now in my late 60's, well into shadowland and vigor mortis I am companion to others who turn pages or count days until the life sentence comes in again, morning after morning, the second act of the play of life trying to play it out, resolve the clot or plot. Or not. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="55uel-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="55uel-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="55uel-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="6cdej-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6cdej-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6cdej-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I am nostalgic for another child in me who has yet to be lived, fleshed out, but now said flesh such as it is/I am is on the sag and hairing up gray to white, so what's to be done about it, this urge for lively living, for Blake's lost child? </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="21vbr-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="21vbr-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="21vbr-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="7j2uq-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7j2uq-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="7j2uq-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Last night's dream reveals a golden pickle, yes, golden, and pickle (life's a pickle), unearthed in an ancient Egyptien ruin, that of a king named Horus. I was/am awed by the find but stumped as back then in ancient times, and now still this was/is the Key of Keys. An adventure for sure. But where's Betsy now that I need her, her dead for at last 20 years? Will make do and of it on my own. A close friend nickname in the '80's "McDoo" for "make do". I'm of a practical bent. A later analyst calls it "compensated oral." I'll not quarrel though I could. Perhaps should. The recommended healing collapse on the psychoanalytic menu offerings did not come with three sides nor a bread basket and I, basket, was already "case" enough. Humor in tact though. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="5bfhs-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5bfhs-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5bfhs-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="aeanm-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aeanm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="aeanm-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">The shadow boy's here in this Lorca bit truer and blue balled for LIFE as ever as I turn Morris pages, me yet again living vicariously:</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="dnskh-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dnskh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dnskh-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="7975q-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7975q-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="7975q-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">"I am going to ask Christ to give</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="e8ar-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e8ar-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="e8ar-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">me back my childhood, ripe with sunburn and feathers and a wooden sword."</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="2tb18-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2tb18-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="2tb18-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="b6m3" data-offset-key="aqcfh-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aqcfh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="aqcfh-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">This passage, Morris's close encounter with what Jung calls the Anima, a vision real, but the road and Europe prevails so. . . . .</span></div></div>Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-52437807387119079842020-07-10T15:28:00.001-07:002020-07-10T21:08:31.679-07:00Mumps eyes plead 'no mountain' - from Covid Journals, Crow Flight Over Meadow<div class="_1dwg _1w_m _q7o" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="padding: 12px 12px 0px;">
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Spruce Hill Farm. Keene, NY. Easter 2013. </div>
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(37, 37, 37);"><br /></span></span>
<i style="font-family: inherit;"><b>S'been a'swelter up</b></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> here in higher mounts upstate NY. 90's. Humid. Like walking around with a large hot sponge over your entire head. Cue Darth Vader breathing </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">soundtrack. But, ah, Keene in winter...glorious. Quiet. Still. Until the howl begins, the blow, the fury snow and cloud chaos obliterate all orientation but for sound. Then eventually return to stillness morning blue hues of sun and ice repainting the known world. The old barn stands a little taller proud of its long black shadow over the mascaraed field whom I affectionately call Mabel for memory of the late '70's Waffle House waitress who worked what I called the 'midnight waffles' shift from midnight to 8 am. Heavy on the make up, eyelids turquoised, eyebrows plucked out then painted in with blackest mascara, and all the rest, powder pink blush, cheek and forehead powdered sugar white, a high stack of blue hair, a Pall Mall cig stub stuck to her bottom purple lipsticked lip. Return to frozen field and qualities of color in sheer sunbright snow white clarity primaries with edged shadow subtleties. Unlike cities. Mabel and me. Now she's pretty with purple and shades of green, wild flowers sprinkled, butterflies so many that I tolerate the biting black flies to gestalt the field and flight/alight vision expanded to pixilations framed only by the extent of my unpainted eyelids. Hedge hog moves through the now tall grass. I track its movement across the wide field to the old once was a well, concrete crumbling, a good place to dig in for the season safer from the raven, the coyote and fox. Heard a yip after dusk last night. Might be the wary coyote hovering always just below the near steep lledge or at yard meets woods edge, Mumps I call him some sag or other at his left maw, a limp on forward left paw leg twisted suspect a car hit him survives now forever on edges nothing bold like a regular road crossing or crow flight over meadow or even straight up Marcie's ice scars' mountain dares still trying to pass but imperceptible cuz aeons - Mumps eyes plead 'no mountain' when we make rare eye contact I try to send some friendly thoughts trying what friend Valdosta does a wounded animal herself so, being wounded, is a healer she softly chants</span></div>
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come come come come<br />
come come come come</div>
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showing both hands flat palms up for frightened animal to see</div>
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come come come come</div>
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I've seen her charm racoon-chewed dogs mauled-cats sick-horse motherless-runted-out-kittens into won-trust and life-enough</div>
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Mumps ain't having any come come come come</div>
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slow eats what's left whats offered in the meadow past dark and Mabel where ravens get to work moon or not peck for the better portions they like bones just like the furred do - Mumps near's watching content enough to eat what might be left of leftovers or excavated fare from back of fridge long forgotten all mold blue or green some slimed things even the barn cats turn their discerning noses to</div>
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Already mourning having to return to the City in mid-August.</div>
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But my Kobayashi Issa book gathers dust on the side table where I foolishly left it forgotten in my haste to escape the city return to Keene. One thing to look forward to though - Issa. And gathered things such are markers of a life, bookstacks of course, sculptures, paintings, totems, random rocks, crystals, rusted once functioning parts of machinery now in decline/dis/un-use objets d'art photos de de de epochs (brief though ever lingering) friends places meals buses' trains' windows passings through, milky filmy insides again dimmed though solid though artifact - a spider web a century(?) constancy inside containment's bottle excavated beneath 100 year old house 1980 or so who knows where the time tracking goes - dwelt in (alluded century) foot of Mount Mitchell Blue Ridge highest, more bottles 18th century an old tin of snuff snuff still in't and th' dipper one old spoon a bent fork a child's trinket gum machine ring (who wore that?), a silver metal comb needing dental work after ages hairs silvered time transluscent intwined....friends tell me it's time to sort, let go, release these things. I respond with these lines from poet and zen teacher John Tarrant:</div>
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There is a blessed fidelity in things.<br />
Useless things grow lovely with good uses.</div>
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And these lines (to end it here) by maestro Nathaniel Mackey to sing once more for [I am] useless things -</div>
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ghost[s] of an alternative<br />
life... They were we before<br />
we were, ancestral, we who'd<br />
never not be ill at ease.<br />
A vocation for lack he'd have<br />
said, she'd have said longing,<br />
a world, were they to speak, be-<br />
tween...</div>
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What wasn't, they'd<br />
have said, went away,<br />
would come back,<br />
first fanatic church,<br />
what would be...</div>
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Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-84362902323684595652020-04-10T23:33:00.000-07:002020-06-04T20:50:46.211-07:00"Still we call this Friday good" - "Only a God can still save us!" - "Amor Carnalis is our dwelling-place."<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: center;">
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Christ Crucified. A detail of a modern fresco of the Crucificion</div>
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Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art. Bilbao, Spain</div>
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Miloz Zizek: "This brings us to the third position above and beyond the first two (the sovereign God, the finite God), that of a suffering God: not a triumphalist God who always wins at the end, although "his ways are mysterious," since he secretly pulls all the strings; not a God who exerts cold justice, since he is by definition always right; but a God who – like the suffering Christ on the Cross - is agonized, assumes the burden of suffering, in solidarity with the human misery. [1] It was already Schelling who wrote: "God is a life, not merely a being. But all life has a fate and is subject to suffering and becoming. /.../ Without the concept of a humanly suffering God /.../ all of history remains incomprehensible." [2] Why? Because God’s suffering implies that He is involved in history, affected by it, not just a transcendent Master pulling the strings from above: God’s suffering means that human history is not just a theater of shadows, but the place of the real struggle, the struggle in which the Absolute itself is involved and its fate is decided. This is the philosophical background of Dietrich Bonhoffer’s deep insight that, after shoah [Evil], "only a suffering God can help us now" [3] – a proper supplement to Heidegger’s "Only a God can still save us!" from his last interview. [4] One should therefore take the statement that "the unspeakable suffering of the six millions is also the voice of the suffering of God" [5] quite literally: the very excess of this suffering over any "normal" human measure makes it divine."</div>
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****</div>
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During Passover week, and today, again, on Good Friday, I just reread Zizek's surprising reinterpretation yet consolidation of an intuition early blinking in human consciousness, yielding slowly through aeons of dawning awareness, incremental, chronic, barely, yet significantly, yet not significantly enough collectively, that "only a Suffering God can save us." Lest pomos (post moderns) repel in reaction to this let them ponder the Buddha's 4 Noble Truths since his teaching is now more "the rage" in the West, which, chief principle, rage, being the coin of the day focus grouped for commercial success, alas, aulterates, if not undoes, the authentic facts revealed experientially in historical and present human history as well as that of creation itself, viz St. Paul's poetic utterance, that the "entire Creation, all creatures great and small, groan/yearn after its/their Originating Source/Force."</div>
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More simply, Thomas Merton's, "My heart yearns for its Referent."</div>
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This yearning a love-sickness most mundane and divine or, rather, within its mundanity divinity resides, in its hiding it, love, is present all the more. And as there is a "resent" in "p-resent" part of that love-sickness/suffering is resentment at absence. And eventually, rage. Suffering, indeed.</div>
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Zizek's essay is a Good Friday medtitation, for sure. An ongoing enigma, for sure. Zizek's not at all a F(undamentalist of any stripe or (un)kind. Thus the reason I was shocked, surprised, pleased, disturbed, moved when I first accidentally came upon this brief in my 2019 re-study (re as in REal study) of Hegel. </div>
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Zizek's use of one of the last recordings by Johnny Cash, When the Man Comes Around, to amplify his thesis, brilliant. See the link to Cash's performance in the comment section below this post.</div>
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Lastly -</div>
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Geoffrey Hill's, a bit, some verses from his "Tenebrae", perfect for a culture of gluttony verily toxically ungluton free and bloated:</div>
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. . . .<br />
O light of light, supreme delight;<br />
grace on our lips to our disgrace.<br />
Time roosts on all such golden wrists;<br />
our leanness is our luxury.<br />
. . . .<br />
This is the ash-pit of the lily-fire,<br />
this is the questioning at the long tables,<br />
this is true marriage of the self-in-self,<br />
this is a raging solitude of desire,<br />
this is the chorus of obscene consent,<br />
this is a single voice of purest praise.<br />
. . . .<br />
He wounds with ecstasy. All<br />
the wounds are his own.<br />
He wears the martyr’s crown.<br />
He is the Lord of Misrule.<br />
He is the Master of the Leaping Figures,<br />
the motley factions.<br />
Revelling in auguries<br />
he is the Weeper of the Valedictions. </div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Cathedral Repairs, Remote, Side Road, Gers. France</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA</a></div>
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Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4090873338484746413.post-49974732331624974132020-02-23T11:39:00.004-08:002023-06-27T17:39:37.982-07:00Respondeo Ergo Sum - Upon Freeing The Gift Of Creativity Turned Inward<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="933fh-0-0"><br />
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</span><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YIyHKVL5H2o/XlLSl55Y5II/AAAAAAAABxg/4dlZ72V0NFg0TaFIGAldvQNsZ6gW7i9_QCEwYBhgL/s1600/Spring_EV_2014%2B1851.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YIyHKVL5H2o/XlLSl55Y5II/AAAAAAAABxg/4dlZ72V0NFg0TaFIGAldvQNsZ6gW7i9_QCEwYBhgL/s320/Spring_EV_2014%2B1851.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="933fh-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; direction: ltr; position: relative; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">Dream image</span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="933fh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="933fh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: times; font-size: 15.399999618530273px; white-space: normal;">"...I formulate the first principle as Respondeo, ergo sum...I am in so far as I respond. I arise on all levels of my being (body, sense organs, soul and mind) only by responding. Man comes into being by an act of response; his evolution consists of interrelated and complicated acts of response. As long as he is alive he responds..." —H. R. Heinemann, from Existentialism and the Human Predicament</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="933fh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="933fh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i style="font-family: times;">for Elaine, Anima-as-Fate</i><span style="font-family: times;">
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</span><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1rv1f-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">"There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gift to those one loves most...The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up." - May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="13v8f-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="bodrj-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bodrj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">This afternoon while still somewhat hungover from last night's rich meal and more than several glasses of red wine, I stumbled as one does when hungover, only today without feet but with eyes, upon the above quote by May Sarton. I had awakened this morning with fragments of a dream, repetitive of other dreams the past few months, where I am carrying something precious and just cannot put it down in any old place or upon just any available surface. I cannot put it down until I find the right surface and location. </span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="ao16b-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="4nsal-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4nsal-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">These dreams are full of torrential flood waters, or backed up, stagnant water, toilets full of filth and pungent bright orange dark urine days old and fermenting. I cannot unhand the burden even though the urge to pee or flee or drive a car away or into flood waters is strong. I must not put down the burden odd as it is; it is my laptop carrying case (in my dream) made of canvas (as in canvas for painting). It is large enough to carry not only my laptop but also many books with which I cannot, will not, be parted from as they are the must-have-with-me-always 'bread', my staple and stability in a given-to-me world-out-of-balance.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="fjdj1-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="20o3o-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="20o3o-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">I have understood the dreams only a little - something within the psyche is flooding up, over-spilling or has already, has not been adequately canalized, channeled, streamed and guided, shaped and formed. Or flushed. I knew that eventually, as dreams do when one sits consciously, patiently, persistently with them (since they persist, archetypal psychologist James Hillman calls them "psychological insistencies"), they would yield their messages to me and, upon revelation, these must be obeyed, brought out, externalized, into the world, Carl Jung having said that one has a moral responsibility to dreams once they are kenned they must be conscientiously acted upon in the outer world. Just dreaming is not enough. Everyone dreams but not very many know to dream them out into the world, to let their messages unfurl, flood and flow to bring forth new consciousness, to reshape old forms no longer adequate to self, place/environment and time, bringing their symbol and their sense, usually not literal, into lived reality.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="bv41o-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="10ud3-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="10ud3-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">And thus, only just now, upon opening up haphazardly in a book about Dostoevsky and his struggle with addictions which mirror the profound compulsion to create at any cost perhaps beyond one's capacities to renew oneself, I find May Sarton's quote and suddenly the dreams clarify and sharpen into focus; I understand them as the burden of creativity too long turned inward, the burden of writing, the burden of poetry which I have carried heavily for most of my life since middle school when I was 11 or 12 years old when books became my lifeline, my links to existence so that I could live on in spite of not wanting to do so. Written words, books, kept me from disappearing though I was and remain a mostly invisible though enfleshed (reluctantly) <i>word</i>.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="78glv-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="9irub-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9irub-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Thus the floods. One cannot ignore them. Alphabets tumble and roil. One dare not ignore them. One must see them without choice to <i>not</i> see them. In them I am suddenly made visible, bright orange piss pot and all. I am both appalled and pleased. My burden is here upon my knees.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="8iokr-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="etsec-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="etsec-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">The backed up water, the urine, is creativity. A somewhat odd symbol of creativity, there is more than enough evidence that urination is symbolic of self expression which is creativity. In ancient Rome the highly valued dirt from the urinals of boys' schools was collected to be used as a cosmetic in order to restore youthful energy and looks. A young boy, or <i>puer</i> in Latin, is an archetypal symbol of ongoing creativity and inspiration, the <i>puer aeternas</i>, the eternal youth, well springs of ongoing creativity still imaged in solid fountains of the world where eternal waters flow from the peni of cherubic youth.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="4p719-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="adn5b-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="adn5b-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">I have struggled my entire life with a strong urge to create, to write, to express in words that creative daemon within which torments no matter the completion of a poem or essay, a lecture, a psalm. And now my dreams have had me consciously, urgently seeking a place to put the burden down, to perhaps come to it anew. I imagine that landing the burden means bringing it down to earth, manifesting creativity all the more by bringing my efforts to others, for the strongest part of the compulsive urge in my creativity has been to contribute one good thing, one good poem or piece of writing, which in some way might further the culture even if only by a flea's leg length. </span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="d06vu-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="9dbtl-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9dbtl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">The dreams urge me to let the urine flow, to let the flood waters indeed flood over, to be less self conscious of what I write and to have at it all, to say my say. And to let whatever waves there are crest and break upon ever receptive banks and shores whose duty it is to allow what may come from motion without complaint, more compliant toward as yet to be fully formed purposes as yet to be scored.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9dbtl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9dbtl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9dbtl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoGTMfyN_cBklgAi1Wc92ga2QH6Y6vereFJ5DqX03GxNE00sjUJctHqHqDBQ1jag1wcq46BTsCUtfo4yiv3gVnkS5kmf-q_4zGeCm-p7gFKtC1D0nNaqNUfVyTFmzA2j0V-_k2n3dnYmhKCVtLxLs3ywterlPnDF7nyROswkKNmSMgvaLCeMke8Q9sXIM/s3365/Tuttie'sYard_PeaksIsle_!%20390.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1719" data-original-width="3365" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoGTMfyN_cBklgAi1Wc92ga2QH6Y6vereFJ5DqX03GxNE00sjUJctHqHqDBQ1jag1wcq46BTsCUtfo4yiv3gVnkS5kmf-q_4zGeCm-p7gFKtC1D0nNaqNUfVyTFmzA2j0V-_k2n3dnYmhKCVtLxLs3ywterlPnDF7nyROswkKNmSMgvaLCeMke8Q9sXIM/w200-h102/Tuttie'sYard_PeaksIsle_!%20390.jpeg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFS_FCU3N_t2ScdhiqWjRDDGJeKXi_qtqXDxw_Lz5fnjd_fMxStHu_ykPks1PMgsPPr13Pwce6NRbvSB86M2MXyEzpYai6aZ8zPqU6MZnxHstlJ2FrTQtOgzU7WoaDgLRSOQC78zTGXKyk8W7CvOPj7tTbsDUMFxCFRjD2usu4J4Bdeg2ooPQlP8XlrD0/s3365/Tuttie'sYard_PeaksIsle_!%20390%202.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1719" data-original-width="3365" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFS_FCU3N_t2ScdhiqWjRDDGJeKXi_qtqXDxw_Lz5fnjd_fMxStHu_ykPks1PMgsPPr13Pwce6NRbvSB86M2MXyEzpYai6aZ8zPqU6MZnxHstlJ2FrTQtOgzU7WoaDgLRSOQC78zTGXKyk8W7CvOPj7tTbsDUMFxCFRjD2usu4J4Bdeg2ooPQlP8XlrD0/w200-h102/Tuttie'sYard_PeaksIsle_!%20390%202.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times; white-space: pre-wrap;">Synchronistically, a few days ago I listened to a lecture by poet Allen Ginsberg about Walt Whitman and his imitators, those who were goodly influenced by his effulgent, self indulgent style, his garrulous poetry which presumed to express the very expansiveness of the North American continent over-flooded by a plague of itinerant, persistent poachers-and-prophets from Europe to Eastern disembarkation then inland and Westward turned, manicly (maniacally) compelled to overtake/sweep up land and native peoples in their possessed, pushed wake. </span><br /></span><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="feq9m-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="61oir-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="61oir-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Ginsberg imagined himself to be a timely extension of this unruly school, as savage as the projected upon land and justly-resistant, resident humanity stretched beyond known bounds and sounds. Blood drowned and pounded, the god-(greed)-hounded, Christhaunted land even now floods by unleashed mighty rivers seeking, if rivers seek at all, to undo and renew in horse shoe and other shapes the crimes of unconsciousness compelled to overtake while leaving it up to human souls to repent and repair, to prepare for more powerful insurgencies of land and Self ever seeking new and nower expressions of dirt and deity both scared and sacred. There's enough history beneath layers to support the scarp and scrape of momentary yet monumental motions finally given mouths to utter what lies both beneath and within the heaping huzzahs of here-</span><span style="font-family: times;">here here full and deep. As in my dream, it is hard to steer in such surpassing tides and currents. Still, I am searching for holy campground that I may lay my own burden down.</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="1u5fr-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="7lubt-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7lubt-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">I have no wish to imitate Whitman nor Ginsberg though both are easily imitated since they did so themselves, an occupational hazard for writers (no anxiety bout that here, but assent only, to the inevitable evolution word by word by those who write them), mine is only to be obedient to the daemon, that urgent, emergent, creative force within. It rushes within and against me. No matter whether derived of the grandiose American continent and the even more grandiose sky or not, I have all too successfully braced against it in fear of failure, reprisal or, worse, complete indifference by/from others. My dreams now urge floods and resultant coagulations, they bring creative splurges to ground from mind/lung-hand to the hard still unplumbed world. And Nature, too, is indifferent but begs none the less and all the more to be given utterance and response. </span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="cchi8-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="ef475-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ef475-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Respondeo ergo sum. I respond, therefore I am. I respond, therefore the other, THAT other, earth, and all her ants, IS, as long as there are eyes, ears, (mouths/teeth) and scanning minds to acknowledge and touch, wrestle, bite, caress, shape/misshape - some in stuttering or sibilnnt scansions - outer from inner, inner from outer, landscapes to be all too quickly discarded in time for what is sung just ahead. And seen. Or hoped, all praise to telescopes. We would be they, so addicted to horizons (so adhered to/identified with distances), to bring them close.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="48crj-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="5t835-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5t835-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Something there is needs completion-via-coagulation, forming, shaping, and sharing with whomever may be open to clods delivered. If not, rivers will, as they will without reason, continue to overrun their banks and insist upon covering designated previous cultivations. Let then excess of creativity have its say, play out, and leave the critical post-considerations to others. I will surely sit and ponder spent what spills forth, to shape, to edit, to discard. And watch my little yard sink beneath needed and needy floods.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="f5pdd-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="ao46m-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ao46m-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">I will have-done with deprivation and bring myself, what I have shaped and misshapen, to the world. These things, this burden, have I most loved and felt responsible for, have born the shame of. I have fought and have failed utterly again and again though my attempts have been, and still are, sincere though not blameless. Fear has been my encampment, a longing beneath knowing feet in secret cellars just beyond reach of contracted hands forever spelling hunger. I know open bastion doors and windows to now fling beyond embankments what has been wrung out of my floes and woes though hands wither from too too much turning-against-and-inward. What a relief to burst beyond boundaries too long successfully restraining**(see footnote below).</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="4sp0v-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">
</span></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;">I recently wrote a poem about much too too solid bastions of self, of forceful puer energy ramming through and over-and-into long buried storms and petrified forms, of passion mangling the delusion of 'norms' ignoring too too sensitive alarms. Given May Sarton's May revelation this morning I now understand that the poem is about more than eros, it is about that powerful creative/destructive force (by any and every means necessary), the daemon/tyro that ever urges outward intent on making and staking Self in new land overtaken and, at least one aging man, wrenched and rendered from dried and calcified encrustations. </span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">I am, to borrow from the insistent dream image, beginning to leak. And to break open.</span><span style="font-family: times;">
</span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMhfkEgj6ibGo2i0CmYrXCI5gk0milAnA4J-NrC0mGzS4fTrZ0Wna56ET8iMyvFIxGodsF0Xw6btjB37pKxviV1NqzG3Sc2WzK82n5egzyQ2bVK5izGO2omqI9RDfazyc8bcXBerEBIi21eZJXbafB35b5E-hNgP3SQ1CmqL8eyJzyCCFDgccaKk0McIA/s3102/August_batch_2015%20166.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2073" data-original-width="3102" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMhfkEgj6ibGo2i0CmYrXCI5gk0milAnA4J-NrC0mGzS4fTrZ0Wna56ET8iMyvFIxGodsF0Xw6btjB37pKxviV1NqzG3Sc2WzK82n5egzyQ2bVK5izGO2omqI9RDfazyc8bcXBerEBIi21eZJXbafB35b5E-hNgP3SQ1CmqL8eyJzyCCFDgccaKk0McIA/s320/August_batch_2015%20166.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;">Large stone outdoor sculpture near the Tate Modern</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;">in London<br /></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="238tk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="5hs15-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5hs15-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Archeology - What The Stele Says 'Upon Taking A Much Younger Lover</b></span><span style="font-family: times;">
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<div data-block="true" data-editor="d8qjn" data-offset-key="97scm-0-0" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="97scm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: times;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">I am uncovered, thin, bared upon thinner </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">sheets the man-ripped to many images, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">torn into, landscaped to former curves. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">No longer do I grieve enclosure, touching </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">only myself, delivered from layers. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">What begins to be, earth swell, breaks </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">root-room open to blood means. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">All hurt now stings twilight quaked into being. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Your breath falls upon me now, taut, sinew, </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">bruising hands, purple insides flare warrior nerves </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">to unknotting surprise. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Magpie dances. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Lines, veins, strung between Pole Star </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">and First River Mouth, an embedded ruin uncovers in milk floods. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Touch gently first what has been too long concealed. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Hard touch congeals once was telling mud remolded into </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">"Not again. Not yet the bleeding Centurion." </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Wield roughly then through gates too long shut. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">When I cry out, do not mind. Blindly ram. Do not stop. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;" /><span style="caret-color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;">Magpie, my keeper, is flying.</span>
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<span data-offset-key="djs6i-0-0">**Psychology would call this represssion but THAT is another essay/article altogether.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: 14px;">
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Warren Falconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17565326018217016651noreply@blogger.com0