On writing

"Warum willst du dich von uns Allen
Und unsrer Meinung entfernen?"
Ich schreibe nicht euch zu gefallen,
Ihr sollt was lernen!

"Why do you wish to leave us
And our opinions?"
I write not to please you,
You should learn something!

Goethe

Sister passing

In mother's eyes streamed love
Child born into the world
Heart and lungs too weak to work
Hope's finger grasped in little hand

Today you died sweet infant
Heaven does not answer prayers
Can those prayers bring comfort now?
She's gone false consolation!

(Indifferent heaven Thee we curse
Oh that we might forget Thee
Unrequited love Thou mockest
Impotent Omnipotence!)

Tiny child we loved you
More than gods know how
Tonight a candle lit
To honour sister's passing

Spiritus

Nos habitat, non tartara, sed nec sidera coeli: Spiritus in nobis qui viget, illa facit.  A.N., Epist. v.14.

It dwells in us, not in the underworld, and indeed not in the starry heaven: the Spirit who is living in us makes all this.

The logic of Sacrifice (A letter)

Something beautiful?  I wish I could draw it out of the very field of molecules whirling about me.  Perhaps I could if I had more time.

This morning, however, I've been reading de Sade.  He is the opposite of beautiful.  He is destruction.  He is rape and murder.  He is the slit throat of a dead prostitute.  He is a child torn to shreds in a frenzy, broken skulls, wine and blood, bloody corpses, screaming and blasphemy.  People are his playthings.  His pleasure is their suffering.  Try as I might there is no beauty to be found here. But somehow he finds the divine in all this.  Perhaps it is because the Divine once desired the destruction of peoples, once demanded the blood of gentle lambs soaking his altar, spilled from gaping slit throats.  Even Christianity touches on violence and the divine, as Bataille says:

"The ordeal of the Cross itself links Christian conscience to the frightfulness of the divine, though blindly.  The divine will only protect us once its basic need to consume and to ruin has been satisfied."

And this is true.  Why the cross, that torturous stake?  Only after the scourges and rending of the Saviour's flesh can we receive the blessing!  Marcion was wrong to deny the God of the Jews was the same God of the Christians.  Here's how we know: This God is bloodthirsty.  He demands blood before bestowing gifts upon the people.

But I have to add a qualification here.  The God of the Jews demanded death as a satisfaction.  The God of the Christians demands death so he can create anew.  Bataille stops at the cross, but he should visit the empty tomb.  This is little consolation in the end however.  Why, one might ask, must we destroy before we can witness the new creation?  Why must the Saviour be covered in his own blood and filth, pierced by crude nails, before he can know his own exaltation?  This is still the logic of the old god, the logic of satisfaction, now with a promise.  When I sacrifice myself for the love of Christ I do so to remove myself out of my own way in order for the new man in Christ to come forth.  I cannot pour new wine into old wineskins.  But when Jesus was sacrificed, who was it he had to remove?  He was already the man of God, full of the new wine.  Here we see the scandal: We do not die like Jesus, he was a true sacrifice.. the last bloody corpse to satisfy the old god.  Sacrifice today means something quite different.

Ghost

Hopi Prophecy

If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.

Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.

A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.

Kayleigh

Life's fragility
Kayleigh
Ripples spread across the face
Of saltwater-rimmed puddles
Your delicate feet tread lightly home
Dear Kayleigh

Blind machine blind hand! (a scream)

Rose crushed beneath a boot
O God, the finality.
"My child is gone..." (a horror!)
Did you say goodbye
Dear Kayleigh?

Will your crumpled frame not rise?
Will your tiny feet not walk?
This steam that rises from your body
As spirit flees indifferent earth
O broken little heart

Our few live seasons

"I remember how you bide your time in the city, and think, if you stop to think, 'next year... I'll start living; next year... I'll start my life.'  Innocence is a better world. 

Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time..."

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Down Zhongnan Mountain

 

Down the blue mountain in the evening,
Moonlight was my homeward escort.
Looking back, I saw my path
Lie in levels of deep shadow....
I was passing the farm-house of a friend,
When his children called from a gate of thorn
And led me twining through jade bamboos
Where green vines caught and held my clothes.
And I was glad of a chance to rest
And glad of a chance to drink with my friend....
We sang to the tune of the wind in the pines;
And we finished our songs as the stars went down,
When, I being drunk and my friend more than happy,
Between us we forgot the world.

Li Bai, 701-762 C.E.

Despisers of the body

"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."

Valentine

Love for sale
On the shelves
Young men line up
For prepackaged roses
For identical cards
Absurd pink baubles
"How nice"
Smile producers of junk
"It's the thought that counts"

Study of the trunk of an Elm tree

Constable, c. 1821

Post facto

The sheer weariness of life
A dull needle stuck in a shallow track
All our words arrive too late
And are never enough
Go to the ant to learn industry
And to learn repetition
There you see the universe
In a single insect
You have it

Blind man in a new place
Will you hear the children
Place a block in your path
Or will you not trip and fall
I have waited quietly
To see your fate

Nietzsche's Madman (or 1637)

"Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lit a lantern and ran to the marketplace calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why? is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? - the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub.The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? - for even Gods putrify! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife - who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event - and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!" Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise.At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," he then said. "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling - it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star - and yet they have done it themselves!" It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned hisRequiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?""

The Gay Science, 1882

Beyond the foothills

"In contrast to a steady progress, where we move unawares from one thing to the next and everything remains alike, the leap takes us abruptly to where everything is different, so different that it strikes us as strange.  Abrupt means the sudden sheer descent or rise that marks the chasm's edge.  Though we may not founder in such a leap, what the leap takes us to will confound us."