He’s a hermit
What’s that?
He lives alone
Even with others
Prefers solitude
Can’t easily abide
Garrulous insistence
constant commentary
Knows death
Is very next breath
Not nostalgic
Understands nothing
Wants (that) nothing
Wouldn’t recognize it
If he held it in hand
Thinks midnight is
The perfect time
Watches it
go by
all we can do
is look out
into daylight
be grateful
for what was
and wasn’t
what is
and isn’t
I no longer
look for god
nessuna necessità
shoes under
rocking chair
one tilted
the passing cars
sudden silence
Neighborly,
brotherly,
my good friend
words cannot cover
the hate and cruelty
russia destroying
ukraine, the multi felon
pats hand and shoulder
of war criminal like
sweethearts over
croissants, my good
friend
russia russia russia
he is alone in his
delusion, and yet
*zabluzhdeniye
lyubit
durakov
*delusion
loves
fools
If I understand this
You say the woman
Was lifted up into
Where? The sky?
Heaven?
Let’s say she was
Taken up into
Somewhere beyond
I’ll go with that
(For now)
That makes two, maybe
Three going that route
Ok, fine, let’s say
It’s so —
One question,
Will it rain soon, and
Why is bodily ascending
Assumpting necessary
I’d like
To say
Hello
But I’m
Too far
Into goodbye
👋
To want
To say
Hello
The question was asked in prison today what level of worry or concern there was about the future of things, internationally, with AI, climate change, militarily, cyber warfare, the condition of psyche and consciousness.
Responses were the spectrum. “Beyond worried,” one said.
Then Donald Justice:
Poem [“This poem is not addressed to you”]
This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.
Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.
It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.
Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.
You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.
O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
Copyright Credit: Donald Justice, "Poem [This poem is not addressed to you.]" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Justice
And Emily Dickinson:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish us - you know!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell your name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)
Awareness
of
Not-being
A christian
Awareness
of
Not-being
Someone wise
Nears
Both
With no
Movement
Paul insists that strict adherence to neither worldview can finally succeed because they don’t have the ability to “incorporate the negative,” which will always be present. He recognizes that the greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order. There seems to be a shadow side to almost everything; all things are subject to “the principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). Only the unitive or nondual mind can accept this and not panic; in fact, it will grow because of it, and even grow beyond it.
Neither a liberal pattern nor a conservative pattern can deal with disorder and misery. Paul believes that Jesus has revealed the only response that works. The revelation of the cross makes us indestructible, Paul says, because it reveals there is a way through all absurdity and tragedy. That way is precisely through accepting absurdity and tragedy, trusting that God can somehow use it for good. If we can internalize the mystery of the cross, we won’t fall into cynicism, failure, bitterness, or skepticism. The cross gives us a precise and profound way through the shadow side of life and through all disappointments.
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-mystery-of-the-cross/
It remains beyond me.
“[A]ccepting absurdity and tragedy, trusting that God can somehow use it for good” remains beyond me.
It could be right out of a Zen Buddhist teaching — “there is absurdity and tragedy, move through them with equanimity!”
Rationalization and logical inference positing God as supreme agent, befuddled by what the world has chosen, yet willing to transform the chosen hatred and cruelty into a beneficial outcome — does not bring me either emotional or intellectual comfort.
Baby, I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew yaAnd I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
I concede I am missing something.
I experience absurdity. I see tragedy.
My “thank you, Lord” is hard to come by.
Surely I am missing something.
It is as though, somewhere beyond all that is, someone is gathering up shards of broken vase and refashioning some loveliness not experienced before. As though some audience now nods heads and makes approving sounds as if some confident magician is performing an astonishing magic trick.
I’ll bite. Is that it?
I suspect many would frown at such impertinence.
Bad into good — an absurdist sleight of hand?
No, I suspect that centuries of theological exegesis have this topic covered six ways to Friday.
Good for them.
Some among us, like the woman who writes out of her pain and despair, live in the cold and broken with some fierce resolve and gritty continuance that never quite explains supernatural gratitude. I read her words, I see her blue canvas — I marvel.
What does it mean to say —“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us”?
What does it mean that the French monastery bells call me into something remarkably irresolute?
Particles of
moisture
Float in air
Outside barn
Late at night
Dog lays down
ground
silence
Two of his books that have been translated into English provide us with further metaphilosophical insight into Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life (initially published in French in 1981) and What Is Ancient Philosophy? (first published in French in 1995). The latter book is the smoother read, but the former is the more substantial contribution, consisting of a deeper account of Hadot’s particular philosophical themes.
Philosophy as a Way of Life explains that the goal of history is to structure an account of events from which conclusions can be drawn. In contrast to Michel Foucault – who advocates the ceaseless development of new readings of texts and events – Hadot believed that it is possible to understand the past once a sufficiently cogent account has been given of it. Yet the project of understanding the past remains incomplete, due to the faults of historians who have come before. As Hadot writes, “error was the result of bad exegetical mistranslation, and faulty understanding. Nowadays, however, historians seem to consider all exegetical thought as the result of mistakes or misunderstandings” (Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase, p.74).
In an essay called ‘Spiritual Exercises’, Hadot connects ancient and more modern thinkers around the theme of reasoning in conjunction with living. Reading is not a departure from this central motif: “And yet we have forgotten how to read: how to pause, liberate ourselves from our worries, return into ourselves, and leave aside our search for subtlety and originality, in order to meditate calmly, ruminate, and let the texts speak to us” (p.109). Hadot’s anxiety about the crises of information, entertainment and advertising confronted by modern people represents a common thread with other philosophers, and his solution to this problem is to focus upon reading, upon thinking, upon living a well-reasoned life. Other contemporary thinkers working on similar issues include Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, MacIntyre and Pirsig, to name just a handful; but it is no accident that, of all these philosophers, the one most focused upon maintaining and encouraging the practical application of philosophical thought is the one whose work is the most accessible.
(—in philosophy now) https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Pierre_Hadot_1922-2010
If i were to pause any further i would be a rooted tree on a dry mountain in midcoast maine.
And the spiritual exercises of passing bird, hot sun, and needed rain would be my only companions.
Recluses are odd companions.
They know you’re there, feel your sound, yet still let you be unto yourself.
Friendship is the learning of shared solitude.
It’s a silly life
Run by silly people
I have no solution
No, no, no
Now then,
There will be
Soup for dinner
Yes? Of course, yes
With thanks to the Creator for allowing me to wake up this morning into this wonderfully incomprehensible creation!
This psalm:
Ps. 3) Dómine, quid multiplicáti sunt qui tríbulant me? multi insúrgunt advérsum me.
(Ps. 3) O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me;
2. Multi dicunt ánimæ meæ:
2. many are saying to me,
Non est salus ipsi in Deo ejus.
“There is no help for you in God.”
3. Tu autem, Dómine, suscéptor meus es,
3. But you, O Lord, are a shield around me,
glória mea, et exáltans caput meum.
my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.
4. Voce mea ad Dóminum clamávi:
4. I cry aloud to the Lord,
et exaudívit me de monte sancto suo.
and he answers me from his holy hill.
5. Ego dormívi, et soporátus sum:
5. I lie down and sleep;
et exsurréxi, quia Dóminus suscépit me.
I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.
6. Non timébo míllia pópuli circumdántis me:
6. I am not afraid of ten thousands of people
exsúrge, Dómine, salvum me fac, Deus meus.
who have set themselves against me all around.
7. Quóniam tu percussísti omnes adversántes mihi sine causa:
7. Rise up, O Lord! Deliver me, O my God!
dentes peccatórum contrivísti.
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.
8. Dómini est salus:
8. Deliverance belongs to the Lord;
et super pópulum tuum benedíctio tua.
may your blessing be on your people!
9. Glória Patri, et Fílio,
9. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
et Spirítui Sancto.
and to the Holy Ghost.
10. Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper,
10. As it was in the beginning, is now,
et in sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.
and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
I’m not angry
No?
No,
I’m not
Ok!
What then?
I’m sad...
Sad?
yeah, sad
Why’s that?
Him...
Him?
Him!
Yeah,
I get that
him
Everyone
is
afraid of
him
Stupid, eh?
Yeah, stupid
A perfect recipe for a hot august day.
A Poem for the Epiphany
by Pablo Medina, (b.1948)
It snows because the door to heaven is open,
because God is tired of working
and the day needs to be left alone.
It snows because there is a widow hiding
under her mother's bed,
because the birds are resting their throats
and three wise men are offering gifts.
Because the clouds are singing
and trees have a right to exist,
because the horses of the past are returning.
They are gray and trot gently into the barn
never touching the ground.
It snows because the wind wants
to be water, because water
wants to be powder and powder wants
to seduce the eye. Because once in his life
the philosopher has to admit
to the poverty of thought.
Because the rich man cannot buy snow
and the poor man has to wear it on his eyebrows.
Because it makes the old dog think
his life has just begun. He runs
back and forth across the parking lot.
He rolls on the snow. He laps it up.
It snows because light and dark
are making love in a field where old age
has no meaning, where colors blur,
silence covers sound, sleep covers sorrow,
everything is death, everything is joy.
-- Poem by Pablo Medina
There you are!
And this couplet for our meditation:
the rich man cannot buy snow
and the poor man has to wear it on his eyebrows