straining particles of fog

 Finally, rain

Drips from eaves to porch roof

Falling through my attention

stuttering through incoherence

 Tenth tenth tenth

Ninth ninth ninth

Eighth eighth eighth

July moves along

Lie lie lie

Bully bully bully

Fraud Fraud Fraud

maga moves along

If you love me

If you love you

If you love us

Hold onto truth

Do not give in

Do not give up

Do not give over

Your soul

Their lies bullying

Fraud cynicism

Cruelty unhappiness

Is the death of them

(ἀλήθεια) (unhidden) (die wahrheit) (truth)

Lies and lying are having a heyday. 

Immanuel Kant looks askance.

One of the great difficulties with Kant's moral philosophy is that it seems to imply that our moral obligations leave us powerless in the face of evil. Kant's theory sets a high ideal of conduct and tells us to live up to that ideal regardless of what other persons are doing. The results may be very bad. But Kant says that the law “remains in full force, because it commands categorically” (G 438–39). The most well-known example of this “rigorism,” as it is sometimes called, concerns Kant's views on our duty to tell the truth.

In two passages in his ethical writings, Kant seems to endorse the following pair of claims about this duty: first, one must never under any circumstances or for any purpose tell a lie; second, if one does tell a lie one is responsible for all the consequences that ensue, even if they were completely unforeseeable. 

One of the two passages appears in the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. There Kant classifies lying as a violation of a perfect duty to oneself. In one of the casuistical questions, a servant, under instructions, tells a visitor the lie that his master is not at home. His master, meanwhile, sneaks off and commits a crime, which would have been prevented by the watchman sent to arrest him. Kant says:

Upon whom … does the blame fall? To be sure, also upon the servant, who here violated a duty to himself by lying, the consequence of which will now be imputed to him by his own conscience.

            1. Korsgaard CM. The right to lie: Kant on dealing with evil. In: Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge University Press; 1996:133-158.   

We are likely to protest -- who among us does not lie? A few seconds of self-examination will have us all answer in the affirmative, namely, “I lie.”

It is what we do. Maybe not always as some actually do, but often enough, within and without, as the rest of us invariably do.

Mahatma Gandhi held that “Truth is God.” It is a thought-provoking change from a more traditional statement that God is truth.

Was Kant suggesting that our deepest duty is to Truth? To God (a word he does not use.)

Our current fascination with the incessant telling of lies by liars and the deceptive characters confusing and misleading the people of our country and the world is a fascination that dulls our brains, drains our emotions, and weakens our moral foundation.

Is it our duty, our Kantian duty, to behave as though our actions become the didactical or pedagogical essence attainable and attune-able to the lives of everyone existing today and going forward?

5. The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature

Kant’s first formulation of the CI [Catagorical Imperative] states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G 4:421). O’Neill (1975, 1989) and Rawls (1980, 1989), among others, take this formulation in effect to summarize a decision procedure for moral reasoning, and we will follow their basic outline: First, formulate a maxim that enshrines your proposed plan of action. Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this new law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is morally permissible. (--Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)  

We are unlucky students these days living in the inauthentic didacticism and false doctrines of the current administration of the United States. 

Their lesson plans are poisonous, their blatent and shameless misrepresentation of reality, their ignorance and avoidance of Truth is stunning. Their pedagogy a death-knell.

It becomes as difficult as it is dangerous to speak, or attempt to embody, truth today, given the vehemence and retaliation threatened against it.

Perhaps Emily Dickenson’s poem will help us during this awkward time:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)                                                                                                                               BY EMILY DICKINSON

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)

It is possible that Truth is unaffordable today.

Or, as some might say, non-valuable.

It is also possible that it only exists within, and is brought into being only when realized within.

Invaluably but (mostly) invisible.

Poverty and impoverishment are difficult teachers, teaching things so many of us deem completely undesirable. 

Only saints and wise fools seem to grasp the pedagogy of voluntary poverty. 

Francis of Assisi and other maladroit meandering mendicants seem to walk closely with the un-hidden (ἀλήθεια) (die Wahrheit) (the Truth).

 It is worth considering.

Truth.

say it

 yes

yes?

yes

is it possible

to say yes

in such turmoil?

yes

only yes

penetrates 

confusion

disturbance

uncertainty

truth isn’t difficult to find; stop, look, listen

 when we arrive at the place we are

when the body stops still

when the mind becomes silent

there arrives the sound of creation

articulating Being, bespeaking Becoming

nothing is outside this, here, now, in truth

what our times have revealed

 Good to know there was no crime with regard to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, no files, no client lists.

Nobody did anything wrong. Epstein committed suicide (who said he was murdered?) for nothing. Maxwell got 20 years for nothing. Donald Trump never knew Epstein, never partied with him, never was caught on video images with Epstein and ogling dancing women.  

I’ve been confused.

Now I’m not.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Asst. Director Dan Bongino, President Donald Trump all have explained that we’d gotten it wrong, nothing happened, squirrel over there, crickets over here.

The world was once strange.

Now it's not.

It’s July.

(Yawn!)

Wake me up if anything changes.

birds say it

 “There it is

There it is”

Original

Light

And it

Dawns on me

are you upon yourself

 Can you hear me?

Are you standing in the place 

you are standing?

If you are, you will hear me—

I am the place you are

Standing.

ontogenesis

Speaking the 

world into

Being

Wording the

Place we find

Ourselves

who says there’s no progress

 I understand from the cabinet meeting today that up is now down, in is now out, what you’ve seen and heard is no longer what you’ve seen and heard.

 Most important is the fact that we are being told that every human being is no longer capable of discerning right from wrong and the president will be the sole authority to decide what is right or wrong for the whole country.

Phew, I’m glad to have that finally clarified.

cómo te llamas

Two sections of local news site I am happy not to see my name: Knox County Criminal Docket closed cases, and, Obituaries.

Actually, I’m happy not to see my name anywhere.

Goethe wrote that “Names are but noise and smoke, obscuring heavenly light.”

I don’t know about heavenly light. But I do know about dawn. I look out my window each morning, continuingly surprised how early it comes this time of year.

I listen to “The Stranger in the Lifeboat, a novel” by Mitch Albom.

Wash dishes. Feed cats and dog. Think about mowing lawn. 

“On the first part of the journey...” America sings in “A Horse With No Name.”

The lyrics end with:

In the desert, you can remember your name

'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain

Does pain render us nameless?

¿Cómo se llamas?  -- asks no one we know. (What is your name?)

Mi nombre es el suelo sobre el que estoy parado -- responds each one who understands love. (My name is the ground I stand on.)

zum beispiel

 Einsiedler, Morgen

Zeitgenössischer Mönch beim Studium und Gebet

i do so declare

 Truth is 

What is

Holy

Untruth is

What is

Not

in corner loft of barn, his stuff, these past twenty years

 we ran into each other in a cafe in Belfast Maine

It had been years we’d not talked to each other

who can remember exactly why, or would want to

he’d given me fabric art work over the years, 

Chinese brush stroke, three of them hang from beams

in front room where I sit. In my room calligraphy on wall.

I value these. As I value our silence.

Things like that happen. No need for post-mortem.

He died five years ago today. I wanted to put that in words.

redaction

 In prison this morning we looked at three photos of three sculptures on last page of recent issue of The Christian Century, p.96.

a

Steve Novick, Sculpture, Epitaph, 2022, found marble and brass object, rubber, 12 x 8.25 x .5 I

Seems like a perfect representation of the redaction of death on tombstone.

It led to a funny, playful, and evocative conversation about (in our case) what to do with a body after it has died.

“I’m not letting EMTs or Police come up to second floor corridor with the demolition cat claw debris, torn cardboard boxes, ramshackled disintegration and dusty passageway.”

He thinks he’d best drag her body downstairs if he finds it breath-depleted, blood-unpumping, and skin all cold and clammy to the touch. 

The consensus is that’s not a good plan, what with person-of-interest cause and effect of such a move.

“How about throwing body out of window?” Nah, it would only get stuck on plastic roof of porch.

“And afterwards? Cremation? Ashes in ocean? In pet cemetery? Send it all to southern Massachusetts?”

(Take a breath here!)

Luckily we’re only looking at art. And what it evokes.

The redaction on headstone is brilliant.

Maybe sky-burial? Like our Tibetan brothers and sisters?

Or float a wooden dinghy with wood pyre aflame, remains bound in white sheet, out into bay just south of red channel buoy on a drizzly morning?

(We’re still talking about art here, it’s evocation . . . or, it’s invocation.)

We don’t get to the Paolo Freire article in Philosophy Now.

Probably just as well. Who knows what kind of pedagogical revolution we’d instigate, what radical fomentation would have arisen.

The two brown good dogs have been listening to and watching us in air conditioned library.

(There’s a lesson here.)

Art and Philosophical Pedagogy are dangerous things to engage.

Best we stay with poetry and politics.

What could go wrong there?

(Where’s the black marker?)

morning spectrum

 July July Ju-

ly

You overheated month!

Testing us

Who love cool days 

With your inten-

se

ly

Close

Heat

beggar

 House cat stares

She knows I have the uncanny ability to 

Find cans of cat food, open them,

Manipulate spoon to distribute contents

Into circular bowl placed on floor by

Water bowl

She’s right

I am singularly gifted in this craft

So it is she walks across my chest

Curls on pillow by wall, purring

Admiration for what I have 

accomplished  in my otherwise 

useless life, me, an erstwhile disciple

Of Benedict Joseph Labre, he homeless

Beset with mental illness, vagabond piety

An afterthought of belonging infused with

Solitude and reclusive isolation

Churchless monstrance of real presence

Contemplation, the circular nature of silence

She closes her eyes, breathes shallow sawing

Near rosary. It is Sunday. Sunshine and leaf sway

Everything has become a new silence

As I look out into the day, I am merely here

Belonging nowhere, devoid of skill, unlearned

Unattachable, impertinent, an unspecial fool

Unaligned, misinformed, a nameless passing

Sound the meaning of which is dismissive wave

Enough of that

It is always time for nap

That holy invitation into dimensions

Not yet catalogued, no clear cartography

To reference what or wherefore the pilgrimage

final pee with st. bernard/border collie

 Fisher cat 

(or was it fox)

stares at me

From other side 

of green fence

Each of us 

glowing eyes

unsure 

of the other

i try to warn them that it’s really me

 I understand now

it is readying time

everywhere preparing

the next real revolution

will be christian versus

christian -- it is inevitable

those who think they own 

Jesus taking up arms against

those who are Jesus unbeknownst

those whose innards burn

whose inner realization can

no longer abide the hateful

outers who bank Jesus who 

kneel to Jesus after their cruelty

garners enough votes to crucify

again their prop and circumstances

forecast a good stock market 

tomorrow, thank you thank you

There are two kinds of christians

the inner holy and the outer holding

all the cards in their poker game

the outers send their Jesus to ride

with gangsters and mercenaries to

beat and imprison the stranger

the inners attend to bleeding faces

visit the impounded, place their 

bodies between batons and beatings

I sense the next revolution will be

between the true and the false, the

christ-like and the cynical masks

fronting a false narrative of hate

dressed as popular jingoist lies

befuddling a mesmerized populace

will there be bloodshed? Yes

will there be chaos? Yes

will the country be rift? Yes

We near the time when semblance

will no longer resemble what is real

when what is false will collapse and fall

I tell you -- this will not be a war of ideas

this will be a tearing apart of dissemblance

a throat cut of dissimilitude of the crude unholy

I will hide in the loft of my barn, in my cell

as christian against christian clank and clatter

tossing charters and chapters of scripture at

each other, parading credentials and certifications

temporary restraining orders and articles of heresy 

sacramentals and letters of passage and patronage

none of which will make a difference when bullets

fly, when knives are unsheathed, when messiahs with

bitcoin certificates storm houses and sanctuaries

making america god’s address red hats will proliferate

but bare-headed protectors will bow and advance

no more fear, only, no more camouflaged hypocrite

And where is the Christ-Itself in this conflagration?

I don’t think we will know. There will be no deus-ex-

machina, no white-hat on white-horse entering town

Christ-Itself will remain, as always, away/within out

of sight -- no material appearance behind a podium,

no emergency alert on all airwaves, no full page ad --

Christ-Itself will remain, as always, away/within deeply

centered and uncircumferenced; (to misquote Philip Whelan):

invisible and incomplete uncontrollable everything 

    ~fin~

...   ...   ...

Poem by Philip Whalen:

4:2-59 Take I

What I need is lots of money

No

What I need is somebody to love with unparalleled energy

and devotion for 24 hours and then goodbye

I can escape too easily from this time & this place

That isn’t the reason I’m here

What I need is where am I

Sometimes a bed of nails is really necessary to any man

Or a wall (Olson, in conversation, “That wall, it has to be there!”)

Where are my hands.

Where are my lungs.

All the lights are on in here I don’t see nothing.

I don’t admit that this is personality disintegration

My personality has a half-life of iox years; besides

I can put my toe in my mouth

If (CENSORED), then (CENSORED), something like

Plato his vision of the archetypal human being

Or the Gnostic Worm.

People see me; they like that . . .

I try to warn them that it’s really me

They don’t listen; afterwards they complain

About how I had no right to be really just that:

Invisible & in complete control of everything

(—Poem by Philip Whelan, pp 26-27, in On Bear’s Head, 1960)