29 September 2005

Wrote this, this night. I liked it -- perhaps I’ll post the rest in the future...

Upon my death, the thing (whatever it may be) would fade; but then -- and only then -- would it pass. If I were to live a thousand years or watch the light of a thousand suns flare and burst, like a thousand time whitened dandelions -- it would still dwell within me. I find it something far more than temporal... for if I were to touch eternity’s glass, and see all that is through its glistening surface, and watch all that I’ve loved, all that I know fall to dust and fade past my water-wet eyes -- still, too, would this be with me.

( C: 0 )

27 September 2005

... Love is a gradient, from none to complete. This is why we speak of loving growing -- it becomes more complete as days rattle by, complete in the sense that the object of desire becomes more and more the object of desire. Great loves extend far; the paths to the object are laid, their centrality established...

And when (if) the break occurs, it is as if an entire plot of land has been walled off -- the most fertile, most beautiful, for the good goes to the good. It must be: the land is no longer self-owned, but in the possession of another. Walls are erected; new paths are constructed, but looping & meandering paths constructed in great haste, paths that traverse great distances, avoiding the walled lands.

Travel is now difficult -- and at times, long. And the walls are ever strengthened, the gates ever-strong...

( C: 0 )

26 September 2005

The Rev. Sam Farina murmured his hallowed (hollowed?) message today. Ah, the frustration of sitting through such nonsense, of feeling the creeping sickness, of hearing so many praises for his ministry & ‘word’. Word? What word? It was moving song and impassioned act -- wonderful in the theater, but essentially Word-less, mē logos. Watch the lingering smile & brow crease in concern! Watch as his voice cracks in anguish! (odd how it always cracks the same; odd, too, that his protege’s voice has the same weakness) In empathy his eyes sink & his voice rises, always to the same pitch... pitch & rhythm, sing-song voice, rolling movement, falling arms...

Word? Logos? I heard not a word, saw not a bit. I hardly know the intent of the sermon or, rather, the Truth which would compel these students. They spoke of freedom from baggage -- what baggage? Sin -- ah, yes! But why be free? What compels freedom? Who gives it? Why seek freedom -- & why is this the emphasis of this spiritual week? If being free from sin is spirituality (& what is spirituality?) then, fine, I’ll be free. I shall not sin, henceforth. But -- you say -- I cannot avoid sin? Well, fine -- but neither can they. -- so why run to release the baggage that they will doubtless keep? You haven’t explained why this baggage can be released...

Does this ‘baggage’ keep us from salvation? (I still don’t know what this baggage is, you see.) The rich young ruler seems the closest parallel to what you speak (you didn’t mention this) & he life, sadly. But he earnestly desired truth; but you say that the reason others keep their baggage is that they kept taking it back. You implied, “You need to ask with your whole heart.” Isn’t that a description of earnest desire? How do you resolve this apparent conflict? RYR wanted truth w. his whole heart, I wager -- but then he met the Truth... and how can one give ‘luggage’ & take it back? It seems an impossible thing to wrest from God...

And why do this? -- Ah, now, you tell why, or what seems why, in conclusion: “I wanted to kill myself. I was angry, I was lonely -- you don’t have to feel like that...” No? -- so run to the altar, please! Be free from these feelings; and if the goal is removal of negative feelings, what replaces them? -- positive feelings! Give and ye shall receive! What do you ultimately seek? Not Christ, to be sure.

& on & on it goes & where it stops no one knows.

Where is the Word that changes heart (kardia, inner self, not inner emotion) & mind? No matter -- replace feeling with feeling...

I hardly care enough, anymore, to despair.

It is men like these & their guileless manipulation of emotions, men like these which have helped me distrust my own. Distrust? -- repress... for they and their ilk have prevented me from seeing the truth, causing my innocence to drift from mist to mist, until I was left stranded, alone, lacking the emotional ability to consider my state -- and the mental training to adjust my position.

Seeing the poor children respond only strengthens the impulse. Rather than emotional maturing, after small attacks & damages (rather like small tears, the development of muscle strength), my emotion was brutalized & severed & there is little hope of partial healing -- and none of whole...

Who is the one but the one who is both kardia and logos, heart and wisdom, having self and truth -- and where can one find him revealed...?

( C: 1 )

I love the evening, when the sun just dips below the land, leaving a receding tide of light. It washes over the land, dissipating & receding, mixing with the dark to form a strange mixture. I love it because it is wrong, it shouldn’t be because I desire dark & light & here we have both, together. But were life an eternal twilight, the refreshment would turn to frustration then madness: we need one or the other, to know when to sleep & when to wake.

My life is the gloaming.

( C: 1 )

25 September 2005

Eternity’s fire
Is rising higher,
Burning the light of the moon,

Grey’d moths clap
While performing their dance,
and the wind sings lusty and cool.

I gaze in the glow
And hold to the rowan
And cry for the hope of the light.

And eternity’s fountain
Holds star and mountain and
Flows into
treacherous sea...

(Odd, how certain breaths cause me to despise my writing -- to hate it, to find it sickening and banal and useless and worth nothing apart from the value of its destruction, while other breaths cause me to love it, to find in it a shimmering beauty...)

( C: 0 )

Unfortunately, my life is far too subjunctive; would to God I had some indicative power. --Kierkegaard, Journals, 1837

It seems to me that the ellipse well displays the nature of my life -- the incomplete thought...

A mind alone, I think, tends to be challenged more by its own insecurities than its own cognations -- at least, this is what I find to be true of myself.

The last fair sky
falls beneath the leaves
I left my dreams, there
When I slept --
beneath the hickory tree.

Beauty is a form, pleasure is the reaction to it.

Will their be differing opinions in heaven? (I hope so) How subjective will our view of reality remain?

( C: 0 )

24 September 2005

Yesterday was, according to calenders & those of a stodgy mind, the first of autumn. Not so! -- today reeked of the failing season. It smelt of damp leaf and decay, and crisp winds were a continual reminder of change.

It was -- & is -- a day where the field and the forest demand company, they gaze sorrowfully with large eyes & their melancholy is attractive... or is this desire, this act, mine for the outdoors? On days such as these, it is difficult to determine who desires who.

I chose to throw open my sunroof & drive, and as I flew down the road, feeling the air & tasting the sky above, I became jealous of my car. -- to hunch over the asphalt & grip & grasp the road; to feel the wind against your face; to hug the ground as it twists & tosses & bucks... wouldn’t that be grand...! I only am secondary; my car receives the full experience. It must be exciting, really, to know the ground so intimately, to see it rush by, to know, truly know, the dangers of speed -- more life is known in the experience of danger than in a life without.

( C: 1 )

20 September 2005

I often find the foreign fascinating until it is dwelt in & becomes known -- when I read, I see the word ‘district’ used (instead of ‘county’) & I grin, enjoying the strange taste on my tongue.

My reflection is indefinite, it has neither a starting point nor an outer boundary. It has no rules, no stricture, save those areas which are walled & fortified & abandoned, some Scotch castle veiled in mist, deep within evergreen vale & under rocky peak. -- the structure which one, while lost, crosses again & again, but fears to explore.

Determining what I need - now that is a task requiring some deep knowledge of self & masochistic honesty. This is difficult -- I can be brutally honest about the flaws I (in fact) prefer, but those I hate are hidden away from myself & more from myself than from others. It’s akin to women with moles -- some, like C. Crawford, find the flaw to be beautiful. Others poorly hide it under layers of makeup. They look to the mirror w. proud eyes & smirk. “I’ve hidden this so well!” they sigh & walk confidently into the room. -- while their friends squint, tilt their heads, & grin...

( C: 5 )

19 September 2005

I often wonder what I was like in high school, wonder about those spring days before life had decided and I had decided to change and be changed. What was I like before the fading colors and the winter glow? Before I had bent myself in agony (& in despair) to the ideas of other men, men I considered my betters and -- now -- realize are no greater than myself? What ideas were mine, ideas and passions I’d die for, before I substituted other men’s ethereal dreams for my firm ethos? What was my countenance before I took to painting my face in motley colors which matched my surroundings? -- Before I entered the burlesque world, with empty jocularity on-stage and empty tears, off. Why did I love, before love became dry idea and philosophical concept, something apart from human condition? What did I pursue, before I ceased pursuit, seeing all path as twisting and meandering false-trails, and I rested myself upon a scalded and mottled rock? What did I love with all of my heart, before I lost heart? How intelligent was I, before I became aware of my intelligence and feared to show my ignorance? Who was I before I ceased to be?

I ask this here -- some of you knew me. Who was I? Tell me so that I can know who I am. Email or comment -- I really don’t care. But this is a serious question, asked in all seriousness. I need to know who I was, in order to know who I am -- and who I will be.

I’d appreciate it, whatever anyone might add. And I mean that.

( C: 3 )

18 September 2005

In the battle between heart & mind, neither is ultimately proclaimed victor. Mind can, at times, dominate heart, but finds itself poisoned by sentiment; and the heart, in its most furious of passions, only rules for a moment -- for time weakens the heart more than the mind. Why do they fight, as two aged gladiators, weary of this life? They need not be enemies, but are set, waiting, in the midst of the dusty arcade -- but by whom? And for whose pleasure?

But the stadium is empty, the cloud-stone walls are in ancient stumble, broken stone resting upon chiseled seat, a silent, disinterested crowd. For whom do they fight? Perhaps they remember the roar of the crowds, or still hope for victory and freedom. Perhaps they have forgotten that they were once artificial enemies, driven to battle by lust & the dissolute. Perhaps they battle for they can recall no other way...

( C: 0 )

I had no particular reason to apply myself in school; I could very easily ‘get by’, but putting minimal effort into the subject at hand & doing the necessary work. No more than this! When the subject was, by its very nature, a plain, not a mountain, when it did not build upon itself like a skyscraper which is utterly dependent on the strength of its lower levels, but was rather more like stacking unrelated materials in arbitrary locations, I performed exceptionally. But times of construction where difficult & i hardly succeeded, then.

The phenomenon of life is, in part, a choice between those two possibilities. One can make the greater effort to construct, to build -- or the lesser effort to place unrelated materials in heaping, motley piles. Both end with a product, but one useful & the other, a mess.

And the man who choses first the lesser, then the greater, must organize, clean the lot & evaluate: “What is useful, what is not,” he must ask. And the time spent is not wasted -- but, had he chosen differently, the time could have been used for building...

(Indeed, Kierkegaard -- the reversal of one’s path...)

How have I been influenced by K.? He writes, “I have looked in vain for an anchorage in the boundless sea of pleasure & in the depth of understanding...” How often has my thought echoed that remark! -- or, a bit lower in the entry, how he “could not adapt everything to [his] mind... [and so he] withdrew...”

( C: 0 )

14 September 2005

(Completely unedited, undeveloped, half-thoughts.)

Birthday, past. The future, ahead. -- as ahead as the future typically is, I suppose. The day was dull & dark, lacking that vital spark which might give it light, life. --- deep kinship, manifest? Kinship in, of course, the mutual sense.

I miss the days when... we’d naturally gather about & celebrate, with a cake & presents & general cheer. Is that mere sentiment? Not mere sentiment, but a necessary sentiment: how well can a man live without such relationships? Without such days?

Such days are as the first green of the New Year -- the life was still there, in the hour of bluster & ice, but it was missed. But spring brings visible life, “new” life (rather, new awareness of ever-life) and we find ourselves new-aware of it. Such ought to be any celebration -- birthday or holiday, the moment of new-awareness of kinship, of family.

(This is why I find near-ludicrous the thoughts of those who despise those ‘pagan’ holidays -- whatever their historic foundation, they contain a necessary good -- even the Pagan, in a modern sense, distills the necessary from the religious -- the idea of kinship, family. And isn’t that, in the end, so foundational to Christian thought? Christmas, and the celebration of it, even as a ‘mere’ celebration of family, is then a type of Christ...

Truth, highest truth, is not contextual; thou shall not worship idols -- that is to say, those things which you give -- imbue -- meaning to as gods; and man creates & gives meaning to things that are not gods, saying, “You are a god.” When these things cease to be given meaning by man, are they -- except in an historical sense -- gods?

No -- they are no longer worshiped, unless one argues that a particular piece has inherent value, or meaning, as an idol. If so, from where does the inherent value stem? -- the same for the massive green fertility symbol with its traditional garnish.)

(Why would I have, in the past, nearly joined the “Pagan Christmas” brigade? -- a painful admission, but it seemed so damned spiritual. Why? Today, spirituality is more avoidance of evil than pursuit of good. The spiritual man was Ghandi; or Mother Teresa, both whom lived in stricture. -- this is particularly abundant within the Pentecostal movement.

To remove evil is to be holy, it might have once been said (judgment on that statement, whether it is accurate, aside); modern man truncates this: to remove is to be holy. Holiness becomes a spirit, full of sportsmen trying to eliminate & remove, ‘till holiness is achieved.

As it is a game of removal, the rules are bent -- just as any game. Just as an offensive linesmen tries to hold ‘just a bit’, ‘just a bit’ of possible or historical or imaginary evil is enough to cause the holy man to dispense with a thing. After all, to remove is to be holy. The rule was bent -- from ‘remove evil’ to ‘remove’. Enough of the original definition remains to cause the HM to at least look for justification for removal; the offensive lineman seeks to be surreptitious in his holding, as enough of the memory (at least of the consequences) of the rule remains in memory. So, much that is good becomes evil, in HM’s thought -- in order to achieve a bit more removal.

“This, though no longer dark, was. It is therefore evil,” he says, with little hesitation, seeking to be more holy, justifying a bit, seeking a near-honest reason for removal. “Victory is removal,” (‘of evil’ echoes as a temptor in his ears), “I must remove this...”)

( C: 0 )

12 September 2005

“God,” he said, holding his hands flat against his face. “It’s, y’know, like I’ve never lived. I’ve spent all this time all wandering mindlessly about and trying to understand, but never really seen anything.” He glances over the pots and pans, stable and used, homely and homed, tools of a thousand meals. Their undersides were scorched by the licking flame, and their insides scratched and used. Yet they hung in martial order, in rest, pitch-black against white-bright walls. Grimacing, his head darts aside.

“I’ve burned, burned like the cliche flame, burned at both ends. (It’s as if I am the cliche.) I’ve thought many thoughts, forgot them, and thought them again -- never took the time to put them in order, never really could put them in order. They’re all this-way and that. I always thought that order was dull, order was unexciting -- order was the way of a man, fresh-broken, who falls into the pattern of life and is choked, choked by the threads until life has taken his life.”

There is tension in his voice, tension in his chest that can be seen despite his loose, rolling shirt. The tightness peals from him, carries throughout the room, a resounding bell, echoing and sounding in his own ear. He shakes his head, once -- then twice, like a child shaking the painful liquid from his ears. He rubs his brow with the full of his right hand, his eyes closing instinctively; and he speaks again before they open.

“I’ve spent years fighting against the dullness of order; against the dullness of most men. And look, now.”

He sighs, and shoulders rise high, ocean tides held back only by the strength of ancient cliffs. Cliffs which balefully tower above tides that gnaw and bite and snap and, with patient time, will sap any weary vitality. His eyes slow-open, the dull blue of stormy waters.

“And, look, now.”

( C: 0 )