Move over Joe

move over Joe
make way for the multitude
of pikininis whose lives you've touched
the nihonjin to whom you held out a hand
whose damp caves the only succor
in those dark days after the atom split
you were the brighter light!
incarnate Friend I remember you

 

and I remember a story you told me:
in the jungle of Papua
friend Jab took something that wasn't his
you good man confronted him
demanded payment be made
and he cursed you
in anger you struck his face
then both with shocked expression
embraced and wept
he repayed the theft
but you returned the money
(the fine for striking another)

 

I remember the tear in your eye
as you shared this story
and I know you've shed more
since your darling RB has gone
through war, cyclone, disease
she held your hand
she holds it still

 

move over Joe
make way for the ones you loved
spanning globe and time
they fill the world
because you filled it
and I with your memory
am full this Christmas season

 

Now we see dimly

What if this swagger, this self-confidence, this winking at the boys as if we share a secret only men can share, this suit and tie, fine watch and sunglasses, what if this whole way of being in the world is contrived?  What if we are playing at being men: like reflections in a vanity mirror - to be seen?

Real men have no reflections.

Underground People

"In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises you in a momentary doubt about your own status as an 'intellectual' and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the Nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants - all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel."

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

That Peculiar Intensity

"Don't mistake what I'm talking about. It's not that I'm trying to put across any of that poetry of childhood stuff. I know that's all baloney. Old Porteous (a friend of mine, a retired schoolmaster, I'll tell you about him later) is great in the poetry of childhood. Sometimes he reads me stuff about it out of books. Wordsworth. Lucy Gray. There was a time when meadow, grove - and all that. Needless to say he's got no kids of his own. The truth is that kids aren't in any way poetic, they're merely savage little animals, except that no animal is a quarter as selfish. A boy isn't interested in meadows, groves and so forth. He never looks at a landscape, doesn't give a damn for flowers, and unless they affect him in some way, such as being good to eat, he doesn't know one plant from another. Killing things - that's about as near to poetry as a boy gets. And yet, all the while there's that peculiar intensity, the power of longing for things as you can't long when you're grown up, and the feeling that time stretches out and out in front of you and that whatever you're doing you could go on forever."

George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

Process, Self, Society

For man does not wait for science to have his life explained to him, and when the theorist approaches social reality he finds the field pre-empted by what may be called the self-interpretation of society.  Human society is not merely a fact, or an event, in the external world to be studied by an observer like a natural phenomenon.  Although it has externality as one of its important components, it is as a whole a little world, a cosmion, illuminated with meaning from within by the human beings who continuously create and bear it as the mode and condition of their self-realization.

Voegelin, Representation and Existence

Further Up and Further In

Having read through all seven volumes of Narnia again the final paragraph still brings me to tears, after all the adventures and all the friends along the way...

"And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Campus wandering

The bicyclist

The Depth

"A descent into the depth will be indicated when the light of the truth has dimmed and its symbols are losing their credibility; when the night is sinking on the symbols that have had their day, one must return to the night of the depth that is luminous with truth to the man who is willing to seek for it.  The depth is fascinating as a threat and a charm- as the abyss into which man falls when the truth of the depth has drained from the symbols by which he orients his life, and as the source from which a new life of the truth and a new orientation can be drawn.  The return from the depth with a truth newly experienced, then, is symbolized as renovatio in the double sense of a renewal of truth and a renewal of man; the new man can experience the renewal of reality and truth with such intenseness that only the symbols of death and resurrection will adequately express it; the depth will become a dead point of consciousness beyond consciousness, so that the transition through the depth will have to be symbolized as a state of ecstasy or mania; when the new truth effectively constitutes a new social field, the event of its emergence will be considered to mark an epoch and to articulate the process of history by a Before and After..."

Eric Voegelin, Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History

The Bacchic Art

"If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds."

Socrates, in Phaedrus, 245a.

A'Falling

Mallarmé Sonnets

Oui, je sais qu'au lointain de cette nuit, la Terre
Jette d'un grande éclat l'insolite mystère
Sous les siècles hideux qui l'obscurcissent moins.

Yes, I know that far from this night, the Earth
Casts a brilliant mystery of unusual light
Beneath the hideous centuries that obscure it less

Mallarmé

I feel the light

Wildflowers and daydreams
start with a seed
so do the thoughts
spinning round in me

Beauty cycles again
mystery
where do I begin?

I feel the light
calling me
I feel the light
calling me

On Religious Confidence

Because I still rock

Drink tea

Meaning without God

As an atheist I've been asked how life can have ultimate meaning without God. This is quite a common question. For some of my nonfaith affiliated readers this will seem like a truly bizarre question. Does it suggest that people without faith lead meaningless lives, or at the very least, are simply fooling themselves about the things they find meaningful? The obvious answer is no, of course nonbelievers lead meaningful and fulfilling lives. Whether they're fooling themselves or not is really beside the point because you'd have to have a true ground of meaning outside the individual in order to compare.  The question secretly sneaks God back into the equation for that reason. The atheist believes we create and sustain our own meaning (or the cultural/social meaning we take as our own from our context or the contexts of others). This meaning is tested by experience and reason, shared and shaped by the vicissitudes of life and time.

If believers would take a moment to reflect they'd see they're in a similar situation. When they feel that God ultimately guarantees the meaning of life or whatever, they too are dealing with an idea (no less culturally/socially mediated in most cases). So when they say that God guarantees meaning, the hidden supplement (that indeed must remain hidden) is that the idea of God guarantees meaning. It must have this meaning because believers have no more access to this supposed ground than anyone else. Indeed they take it on faith. The difference between the believer and the unbeliever is that the believer insists his idea has the status of a real object-person whereas the unbeliever recognises her values for what they are, i.e idea(l)s, and may or may not choose to argue why such idea(l)s are reasonable considering X. The believer can also argue about the reasonableness of his position but he has already made the categorical error of confusing idea with object, potential with actual, when really he's in the same boat as the rest of us.

For this reason the question "How can you have ultimate meaning without God" is illegitimate. It's force is only felt by the one who has already made his idea a god.

Ur-Pharaoh

My soul

When I was young I thought I had a soul
But what is a soul?
I used to think it was a spirit inside me
Descartes thought the pineal gland was its seat
I thought it was in my brain at least
If you lose your arm do you lose your soul?
(Of course not that's silly)
But if your brain is destroyed, what then?
Lights out
Then something happened
-God died-
Part of me died too
I thought it was my soul
When God dies the soul dies with God
Was I an automaton?
(A mechanical monkey)
How terrible I thought and I cried
"I'm like one of those crying statues
I'm like my dad's tractor losing oil from its seams
I'm a heartless tinman rusted from crying"
(That's a hint by the way)

I found my soul again
It wasn't at all what I thought it was
Can you believe it?
It was staring me right in the face
-It was my body-
What the hell?
The same guy who was the first to announce
-God died-
Also said this:

"I," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in which you do not wish to have faith - your body and its great reason: that does not say "I", but does "I."

Ok ok if I switch "I" with "soul" what would I have:

"Soul," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in which you do not wish to have faith - your body and its great reason: that does not say "soul", but does "soul."

Jesus Christ he's on to something!
"Your body... that does not say soul
But does soul!"
He who has ears to hear man
All this time "soul" had been a breath of stale air
I choked on it every time it left my lungs
I said it like a stuck record player:
Soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, click
I said it so many times I mixed it up with my saying it
(Like: God, God, God, God, God, God, burp)
But my body was doing it
Oh was it ever doing it
I am it you see?
Why else would God resurrect a body?
(Ok so they had that part right)

These days I prefer to use "I" instead of "soul"
But they're really the same thing
They always have been actually
When I was young I was taught not to really like my body
"I" was a sinner
My body liked sin you see
(Did it ever)
This started all the confusion though
It created a fake wall between soul and body
(Soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, gag)
"It's got to be something different than my body!
I mean, look how many times I can say it
Bad body!  Go to your room
(With pleasure)
Soul you sit over there
Body you shut up and sit over there
Don't you dare look at soul like that you dirty body
(What, like an amputated limb?)"
What a lot of hooey!

It's built into us you see
When we're little kids our parents take us to learn stuff
Stuff they were taught when they were kids
We don't have a choice
We grow up thinking it's real
Words like "soul" refer to real things
(Well, as real as something that's invisible and can't be found anywhere)
Ok but they just confused things
I can forgive them for teaching me stuff they thought was real

I like the old way of saying things like:
"The boat went down and 30 souls were lost"
Or:
"S.O.S- Save Our Souls!"
(Nobody in Church has a sign with S.O.S on it)
Or:
"I went down to the kitchen and not a soul was there"
You see? 
"Soul" just means "person" or "body"
We've always known it probably
When we're not pretending it's something else

West

It is almost noon

The last post from Gillian Bennett, a woman fighting to end her own life legally in Canada.

With the dark night of dementia closing in she decided to take her own life yesterday at noon, but not before writing this letter on her blog Dead at Noon.

Thank you Gillian for standing up and embodying human dignity.

Winging it

Farm market

Yeast Reflection

This is a rather silly reflection, but nevertheless one I found quite fun to entertain.  As I was making my famous home-made pizza dough, I took the yeast out of the refrigerator, as I've done dozens of times before, and sprinkled it over the warm water and sugar solution I had prepared.  It suddenly struck me how amazing this yeast was, having been transported to this home from our previous two houses, covering a period of roughly four years!  Yet it still becomes active under the conditions I prepare ahead of time.  What does this mean?  The yeast has been stored in its jar, completely inactive in the cold temperatures, as lifeless as the jar it was sitting in.  I've heard of much more simple viruses reviving after being frozen in time for 30,000 years.  The virus sat completely lifeless, frozen solid, a matrix of lipids and proteins until suddenly "animated" by being placed in the right conditions.  Doesn't this start to blur the line between the organic and inorganic?  This is precisely the problem some Creationists have with the earliest evolutionary accounts of life: how does life make the jump between inanimate molecules to animate organisms?  What if part of the answer lies within my pizza dough?  What if it's simply a matter of the proper conditions?

Now who wants a slice?  :)

Dan Barker- On losing faith

On the one hand I was happy with the direction and fulfillment of my Christian life; on the other hand, my intellectual doubts were sprouting all over. Faith and reason began a war within me. And it kept escalating. I would cry out to God for answers, and none would come. Like the lonely heart who keeps waiting for the phone to ring, I kept trusting that God would someday come through. He never did.

The only proposed answer was faith, and I gradually grew to dislike the smell of that word. I finally realized that faith is a cop-out, a defeat—an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only indemonstrable assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that require faith. Biblical contradictions became more and more discrepant, and apologist arguments became more and more absurd. When I finally discarded faith, things
became more and more clear.

But don't imagine that this was an easy process. It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence. It hurt badly. It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out a window. It was sacrilege. All of my bases for thinking and values had to be restructured. Adding to that inner conflict was the outer conflict of reputation. Did I really want to discard the respect I had so carefully built over so many years with so many important people? But even so, I couldn't be distracted from the questions that had come to the forefront. Finally, at the far end of my theological migration, I was forced to admit that there is no basis for believing that a god exists, except faith, and faith was not satisfactory to me.  I did not lose my faith—I gave it up purposely. The motivation that drove me into the ministry—to know and speak the truth—is the same that drove me out.

I lost faith in faith.

Robin Williams (1951-2014)

I hope you found your Summerland..
Rest in peace Robin Williams.

Supermoon Saturday

The view from my backyard. 

Hello

Orbweaver

Cross Orbweaver
Araneus diadematus
Region: Almaguin Highlands, Ontario, Canada
August 3, 2014

In the Temple Pavilion

 

Ur-Pharaoh 

Sphinx

Temple pavilion with labyrinthian view

 

How many have seen your courts oh lord?

Without moving or speaking, into my mind these words:

"Only a few..."

Return to Lantern Waste

"I know not how it is, but this lamp on the post worketh upon me strangely. It runs in my mind that I have seen the like before; as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream." "Sir," answered they all, "it is even so with us also." "And more," said Queen Lucy, "for it will not go out of my mind that if we pass this post and lantern, either we shall find strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes."

"Then in the name of Aslan," said Queen Susan, "if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us."

Ride

Shirley's Love

"There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.  It's a very fuzzy line, and it's getting fuzzier all the time. We find animals doing things that we in our arrogance used to think was just human." -Jane Goodall

Luminous Beings Are We

My Friend the Ant

One morning while I was having a shower I noticed a large ant appear out of the top of the shower door frame. At first I was startled to see such a large bug in such close proximity to my naked body. Having gotten over my initial reaction I decided to observe the ant to see what it would do. I watched as it moved along the shower ridge, pausing at drops of water to dip it's head and do what I can only describe as having a drink, before heading on to the next drop. Indeed, each time it paused and dipped its head, the water droplet grew smaller. He was certainly drinking or collecting this water. I suddenly felt sorry for the ant, living in the frame of my shower door, coming out in the face of danger to have a drink. I watched as it clung to the top of the ridge with the legs on one side of its body while hanging down to reach drops that were farther away. How dangerous this maneuver was! If the ant slipped it would mean certain death in the bottom of the hot and soapy shower. I gently raised my finger and deposited a number of small water drops along the top of the stall. This way the ant might avoid the risk of falling. For the ant's part it seemed not to notice or at least acknowledge this act of charity but did drink from my drops thereafter. After completing my shower I watched the ant scurry quickly into hiding as if it knew it should clear the premises once the human wasn't busy washing itself.

Over the next few days I would see the ant almost every time I had a shower. Each time I would deposit the water drops safely along the ridge and the ant would drink until my bathing was complete. If the ant didn't make an appearance I would feel as if I had missed a friend. Then tonight as I was finishing up my evening routine I noticed something in the bottom of the shower stall. The colour and approximate size were right, but I avoided looking more closely. Then as I prepared to turn off the bathroom light, I saw that it was indeed the lifeless body of my friend the ant. Had it slipped and fell into that steaming torrent? Had it been knocked there by a towel carelessly thrown over the shower wall? A feeling of sadness washed over me. We two lifeforms, so different in size and appearance, even in the way we experienced the world, were nevertheless united in some inexpressible way.

Its passing is noticed, its absence felt. My friend the ant.

Jeffrey Baldwin's Tribute

Tribute's arrive too late
As if a consolation to the living
While little boy's silence
Lingers there where tortured life
Hungry neglect
Emaciation dissolution
Superman antithesis
Projection of our need to believe
A spirit overcoming
The worst of human depravation
But there was no overcoming
Little spirit lately crushed
Did you feel like Superman?
Tattered feces-filled pajamas
Climbing weakly up those stairs
To die of kryptonite indifference
Oh human tragedy! 
What love and joy you could have known
What comfort were you given?
There gasping chill floor
Scraps and child indistinguishable
We built you a goddamn statue
As hard and cold as the ones you loved

Simple things

Shape of the Self

What do you desire?
Does the answer not reveal your concern?
Your desire reveals the very shape of self: 
That in you which wills it's self-satisfaction.
Would you visit the Oracle to Know Thyself?
Rather stay where you are:
Know your desire.
And you will know yourself.

Look up

 

Starlight through window

Who are YOU?

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

"Who are YOU?" said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."

"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain yourself!"

"I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir" said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."

"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.

"I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Alice replied very politely, "for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing."

"It isn't," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet," said Alice; "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little odd, won't you?"

"Not a bit," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps your feelings may be different," said Alice; "all I know is, it would feel very odd to ME."

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously. "Who are YOU?"

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation.

Old places

Afternoon reflections

What you mean to me cannot be put into words and yet not to try is a great failure.
If a memory is but a brain recollection, why does the thought of you cause my heart to ache?
There was a time, when we were younger, when our beliefs circumscribed the limits of our passion, but those inhibitions only drew desire in that much more tightly.
I remember tree bark and snowballs, bus stop dropoffs and pickups. 
I remember the smell of your hair.
In partings and reunions there's always a vision of your smile.

There have been storms.
It's funny we both love the rain.
What are years compared to a heart's longing?
What is a life without love?
And yet, how can I touch the heart of things without touching you?

Little things

Click on photo for larger image

Still lookin up

Haliaeetus leucocephalus

Bald Eagle

Waterfall capital of the world: Hamilton

Turdus migratorius

Beluga

Here

On mystical experience

"Everything I have written seems like straw."  Thomas Aquinas

After a mystical experience while saying mass on or around 6 December 1273.

Incinerator

Threesome

The brightest touches all the others..

Withdrawal

"... his decline was for him a pretext to be: his final birth."

R.M. Rilke, Elegies to Duino, I

John goes camping

Rest in peace John Pinette.  You were always one of my favourites. 

A Song of Joys

Indefinite Human?

"Technological culture dehumanizes because it rests overly secure in its conception or definition of the human."

Carlson on Heidegger

(Is this what it means to be a man?)

The Process of Our Love

"To love somebody is always to need more time to know him. You don't have enough information about him. You will never have enough information. This is the infinite hermeneutics of the other."

Jean-Luc Marion, The Face

Depression

Depression is an inexplicable thing.  No matter how hard you try to put your finger on its cause the answer eludes you.  Is it due to this or that event in my life?  Or is it the sum of these things.. the sum of a series of unfortunate events?  I think in my case I can discern a beginning, or perhaps an event after which nothing would be the same, a traumatic beginning.  Running through a doorway, discovering the prostrate form of my grandfather, discovering death and then trying to overcome it with whatever abilities I had.  Failing.  Calling on my God to come help me in my moment (the moment if there ever was one in that young life) of need.  The realization I was entirely alone.  Glancing down at once powerful arms now resting lifeless on the concrete floor and seeing a wristwatch still silently ticking off the seconds.  A growing fury inside me on seeing this watch... Eventually an ambulance arriving, then driving into the distance.  Then alone, returning home through the forest over moss-covered paths.  The bewildered looks on the faces of family as I walk through the house overturning chairs and tables on my way to the small sanctuary of my room.  "He's dead!" I yell at them.  "I couldn't help him!"  It was too late to say goodbye or anything else.  Tempus edax rerum- Time, devourer of all things.  All things fall to it, even the ancient gods.. and the ones we think we know.

What was the true beginning of this sum of events, this depressive condition?  Was it the shock of discovering death in place of my loving grandfather?  Was it the failure of a God I was led to believe could not fail, answered prayer, possessed omnipotence and so could act on His love for me, and so a discovery that death, or rather absence, stood also in the place of my God?  Was it my inability to revive a still warm body before me?  Was it the sound and feel of breaking bones during CPR?  Was it the taste of his mouth, the smell of his breath, and the sound of air escaping his lungs?  Was it the watch that dispassionately counted off the seconds even though its master could wind it no longer?  Was it the solitude of the aftermath, the walk through a living forest which was also under time's injunction?  It was of course the sum of these things.. and yet, except for perhaps this last which receives its power from the others, any one of them by themselves would have been enough.  So it may be the relationship of one to the other adds significance to these individual events and so to the sum.

The "sum" doesn't end with these events.. it is something one can calculate at any moment, but always a present moment.  Do we carry these things about like Sisyphus?  At what point can we release them and gaze at the valley below?  Perhaps the promise of a hilltop ensured that Sisyphus would continue to struggle.  Even after he realized there was no rest at the top, that he was doomed forever to bear his load to the heights, he did not let his weight slide instantly away to the bottom but continued to push the cursed rock.  Why didn't he simply let go?  I think the answer must be that it had nothing to do with rocks.

 

Fred Phelps

Fred Phelps, dead at age 84.  You hated fags.  How queer.

The Beer Shall Flow Again

For St. Paddy's Day, and for the expats far from our Northern "Gelderland".






The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
In our Gelderland
To victory in the battle
To meat and merriment
Come, let’s drink now
To our Gelderland

Endured a thousand dark nights
Crawled through the deepest dales
Loneliness in our lives
Sneaked through nocturnal forests

The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
In our Gelderland
To victory in the battle
To meat and merriment
Come, let’s drink now
To our Gelderland

The coldest ice has been set foot on
The strongest flows, waded through
The greatest enemy, exterminated
The heaviest storm has been endured

The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
In our Gelderland
To victory in the battle
To meat and merriment
Come, let’s drink now
To our Gelderland

Far away from hearth and home
The country, so beloved by us
Yearning for our Gelderland
The sails are tight in the eastern wind

The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
In our Gelderland
To victory in the battle
To meat and merriment
Come, let’s drink now
To our Gelderland

Our destination is the horizon
We are chasing the sun
Longing for our place of birth
Now, the Rhine is leading us homeward

The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
The beer shall flow again
In our Gelderland
To victory in the battle
To meat and merriment
Come, let’s drink now
To our Gelderland

Winter evening haiku

Endless winter cold
Rests heavy in the shovel
Waiting for the spring

Lord Krishna incarnation of Vishnu

Nay, and of hearts which follow other gods
In simple faith, their prayers arise to me,
O Kunti's Son! though they pray wrongfully;
For I am the Receiver and the Lord
Of every sacrifice, which these know not
Rightfully; so they fall to earth again!
Who follow gods go to their gods; who vow
Their souls to demi-gods go to demi-gods; minds
To spirits and ghosts given o'er sink to such things;
And whoso loveth Me cometh to Me.
Whoso shall offer Me in faith and love
A leaf, a flower, a fruit, water poured forth,
That offering I accept, lovingly made
With pious will. Whate'er thou doest, Prince!
Eating or sacrificing, giving gifts,
Praying or fasting, let it all be done
For Me, as Mine. So shalt thou free thyself
From Karmabandh, the chain which holdeth men
To good and evil issue, so shalt come
Safe unto Me- when thou art quit of flesh-
By faith and abdication joined to Me!

I am alike for all! I know not hate,
I know not favour! What is made is Mine!
But them that worship Me with love, I love;
They are in Me, and I a friend to them!

Bhagavad Gita, 9

Light to light

Passing through.. each of us.. and through one another.  What took so long?  Was it ready-made morality passed off as the word of God?  Was it timidity?  If only I had seen sooner, felt sooner, lived sooner.  What is normative?  What we're raised to hold dear by those who are raised to hold it dearly.  What do we see?  What we're taught to see by those who were taught to see shadows.  What is ideal?  What is taught to us in a book or by someone who has read a book, while Nature's truth lies trampled beneath our clumsy feet or lost above our stiff unbending necks.  What is real?  What we see, and what we hold to be ideal, i.e. what is normative-> our socio-cultural construct. 

How does one shed light on this?  By drawing back the shutters of a window.  How does one transcend this?  By opening the window and crawling out.

Skull-splitter

Now Regin made a sword.
He told Sigurd to take the sword and
Said he was no swordsmith if this one broke.
Sigurd hewed at the anvil
And split it to the base.
The blade did not shatter or break.
                       - The Saga of the Volsungs

No brown dogs allowed

Doesn't seem fair..

Ragnarök

Happy impending Ragnarök everybody!  It was nice knowing you. 
(My house for the afterparty)

Translation Wodan Heerst

Wodan knew where he would go, traveled through weather and wind
Past giant's mountain and shadow-filled valleys
To Mimir's spring, at the foot of Yggdrasil
Where Wodan came to get never ending wisdom
No other man would drink from the spring, so was fate
Only one prize/price* would reward the man
Wodan offered Mimir his eye, should he see better
What that is will yet come to us

Unending, your rage, your wisdom is great
Grant us your blessing, the enemy death
No fear of dying, your people fearless
The world will know that Wodan rules
Unending, your rage, your wisdom is great
Grant me your knowledge of life and death
Open my eyes, unshackle my spirit
And I will know that Wodan rules

Wodan hang in the tree, himself wounded with a spear
A sacrifice to receive the wisdom of the runes
Plagued by his hunger and thirst for nine nights long
So/in this way he made the runes his own
The runescript, the magic script, he gave to the people of Midgard
A gift to us who fight with his blessing
Now we carve the runes in our sword for victory in the battle
Valkyries we see riding through the heavens

From the heavens stare two ravens
They peer over our dark, flat land
And they see how Wodan's people awaken
With Wodan's blessing we go to battle
We reach for the sword, the spear and the seax
The enemy hears how our people yell a battlecry
From our throats sounds the songs
They sing of the Allfather's wisdom and power
And we see how the old god awakens
The cowardly enemy fears for our wrath
We fight for victory and otherwise death
And we see how Wodan lives in us

Source: Lyrics Translate

To love is to struggle...

"To love is to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence- this world where I see for myself the fount of happiness my being with someone else brings.  'I love you' becomes: in this world there is a fount you are for my life.  In the water from this fount, I see our bliss, yours first.  As in Mallarme's poem, I see:

                In the wave you become
               Your naked ecstasy."


Alain Badiou

Mozart Clarinet Concerto part I, Martin Fröst

Hold You In My Arms

Close encounter

Dear Syl.

Though we've just met I must admit you've left a powerful impression on me.  I feel like you know me better than I know myself.  How cliché these first two sentences, but how true.  This has frightened me somewhat because I'm not used to having my insides so radically turned out into the light.  To say our first meeting left me uncertain is an understatement.  Was I happy with the experience or wasn't I?  I couldn't decide.  I wrote about it in my journal to see if I could parse it out.  I spoke with a close friend about you, and she suggested I rethink the terms of the encounter altogether.. in a kind of (re)performative language way.  I've agreed to this and have come to the conclusion that meeting you was a wonderful thing.  My partner has her doubts, but I think she has come to accept our relationship.  I'm not sure how far I want to pursue this.. but rest assured I look forward to the next time we're together. 

Yours
G.Thumb

Safety Comparison of Psychoactive Drugs

Gable, Robert S. Comparison of acute lethal toxicity of commonly abused psychoactive substances. Addiction. 99. 686–696 (2004).

Don't let go

Compatriots
Tell me of love
And I'll sing to you of loss..

Last day together..

On Sex and Love (letter)

Sex, like many other acts, can be reduced to its barest (pun intended) physiological form: in this case, bodies stimulating the genitals of other bodies.  Why is this done?  There are many reasons.  Usually it is because this stimulation feels good.  Sometimes however it may be for reasons of power, violence, despair, intoxication, need for affirmation, loneliness, etc. 

But the question concerned sex and love.  At first this seems rather straightforward.  One has sex with one’s partner because one loves him/her, i.e. sex is a natural consequence of deep-seated feelings of mutual affection.  I should point out that sex is only one natural consequence of this affection.  Perhaps this is only too obvious, but it may surprise some to know there are lovers who never have sex.  I have heard of celibates, for example, who live their lives deeply in love with one another and yet never engage in sexual intercourse.  I have heard other celibates say that even caressing their lover’s arm can send both partners into a kind of orgasmic ecstasy.. a kind of sexual intercourse without what one would normally think of as the sex act. 

A professor and friend once told me that given enough time, any two people, no matter what their gender, trapped on a desert island alone, would have sex with one another if given enough time.  I throw that out there to reflect on.  Quite probably he’s right.  Coupled with one’s biological need for sex (and I do think there is one), social/psychic forces form a very powerful impulse.  Of course, given a choice, I already know who I would prefer to be trapped with on a desert island…

Now if the question involved morality and sex, I would have much more to say about this.  I will say I believe love sanctifies the sex act insofar as it affirms the love relation.  Here I use “sanctify” in the sense of a kind of legitimation.  But there is no need for recourse to the gods, religious law, or to the state’s marriage act.  These are merely usurpers and tumours.  As you know, only Two are required to form the basis of a love relation, and these alone have the right to make any kind of affirmative declaration, either between the sheets or otherwise. 

For a moment looking out over Georgian Bay I forgot where I was..

To Ray. part II

Deep sleeping icy void
How silent the choir!
Cloudy sky and Cold
Wintery draft extinguished candles
Frost crystals form 'round
Rattling window panes
Dim shadow cast over
Closed pale eyes

Mourning breaks on this day
January 20, 2014
requiescat in pace
For there is none here

To R. part I

Dear friend in twilight hour
Lift up your eyes
Beaming ethereal Light
Angelic host in unison
I light a candle with pale hands
And behold your gentle gaze
Through burnt matchstick rising Veil
Cast my own eyes on that glory
Unapproachable Light streaming
What crescendo wave befalling!
Turn dust motes into supernovae-

Given

"The eye - it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will."

Wordsworth

For R.

I know a man, an old friend, who is dying of cancer.  He's about to leave us.  He's not much older than me.  He has a young family.  His friends are praying, for what they don't say.  They're telling him to hang in there, their approach aggressive, we'll beat this.. but his physical frame is a shadow of itself, a skeleton.  He has lost his colour and is white.. as white as the snow he so dearly loves.  Emaciated, laying upon the couch wearing a toque, covered in blankets and posing for pictures with visiting friends, I try hard to see the man I used to work side by side with.  I have seen this picture before, in my mind's eye I can still see it.. this earliest of memories.

I was close to 5 years old, the same age as my oldest boy.  I sat upon the legs of an older woman who was also covered in a blanket.  She wore some kind of head covering, a handkerchief perhaps, and looked kindly at me.  Directly in front of her was a metal bucket, once used to hold flour but now converted to hold vitamin C crystals.  She had been told that vitamin C would fight the cancer in her body and so sat there all day, scooping one half of a translucent capsule into the powder, screwing the other half on, then swallowing it, without any water (or at least I can't recall her taking a drink).  This is the earliest, and only memory of my grandmother.  She had bone cancer and would not live to see the end of the year.  She smiled at me.  I smiled at her.  I couldn't understand what was happening.  I just knew that she was my grandma.

So you see, I've seen a person ravaged by cancer near the very end.  No matter how hard they fight, or how much others would like them to fight, the cancer takes them in the end.  When the disease is this advanced, calls to "Fuck Cancer!" are barbarous.  My friend knows the fight is over.  I can see it in his eyes.  Must he continue to play the game for you? 

This does not mean dying should be left to the funeral mourners.  After all, dear R., how pleasant it is to look out your window and see the freshly fallen snow.  Can you picture yourself flying over it like the wind!  Your perfectly tuned machine carrying your body and spirit into the sun?  Into the sun dear R.? 

For Nickle

"...And all the phantoms of the dream,
With present grief, and made the rhymes,
That miss'd his living welcome, seem
Like would-be guests an hour too late,
Who down the highway moving on
With easy laughter find the gate
Is bolted, and the master gone."     Tennyson

Nickle you will be missed..