bird feeders are filled and hung

 I attended a Christmas party tonight

The place was green and red

All the people that were there

We’re sweet and kind and dead

I didn’t attend a party

Only headlights on the road

I’m told soon it will be Christmas

I’ll wander this abode

eyes, ears, mind

God and body from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Western Concept of God:

Incorporeality. 

 God has no body (from Latin, incorporale), or is non-physical. This is a central tenet of monotheistic religions, which insist that any references to God’s eyes, ears, mind, and the like are anthropomorphic. Christian belief in the incarnation is a unique case in which God takes on human form in Christ. 

While some regard God’s incorporeality as true analytically (that is, true by the very definition of the word “God”), others derive it from one or more other attributes. Accordingly, God cannot be corporeal because that would preclude his being eternal, immutable, and simple, for example. Furthermore, if God were corporeal and omnipresent, it would seem that all physical things would be part of God. Others derive divine incorporeality from an apparent incorporeal element of human nature, termed the soul or spirit.

So, what do you think about this?

       Me? I dunno.

It’s early yet. Take your time.

       Ok. Thanks. I will.

[end scene. lights dim. curtain falls. audience leaves]

One small boy looks at his mother and asks “What does it mean?”

She smiles at him, takes his hand, and, immediately, they disappear with whatever meaning they might have found.

Camera centers in to volunteer usher off to left who says: “Don't let the uncertainty turn you around. Go on and make a joyful sound.” (Quoting For a Dancer, from Late for the Sky, by Jackson Browne)

Or, perhaps, if something further is necessitated, Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

Poems, and corporeal beings, don’t just appear and disappear, you know! There’s more to it than meets the eye or is contained in our philosophy,

Act 1 Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet says to his friend: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 

Sigh!

[Exeunt omnes]

appear star, disappear star

 This myth we live in

This Christmas myth

We are newness being born

Be present be present be present

Try not to be confused, no history

Can expunge your incarcernation 

Do your time, live in the body

Then turn to cosmos, disappear, a star

what dark arts and predictive conjuring is his name doing

 Is Donald Trump dead?

What’s his name doing on a Washington Memorial Building honoring the dead?

a portion burned in paris

The enemy of the empirical is not the illogical. The enemy of the empirical is the secretive 

. (—Kevin Birmingham, in The Most Dangerous Book)

Considering Joyce’s Ulysses

Literary rainy day

Biography of a book

Seven hundred thirty two pages

seeing dental staff waiting for table

 Prison closed 

to volunteers 

this morning

We sit at wharf

By coast guard

Wind whitecaps

The day

Proceeds

(a pace)

a new england atlas

 He killed two in Rhode Island

One in Massachusetts 

Then himself in New Hampshire 

We had breakfast

In moody’s diner in Maine — 

That, at least, was something good

announcement from the high-rise

As Trump Puts His Brand on Washington, the Kennedy Center Gets a New Name

The board for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that it would now be named the Trump-Kennedy Center, although a formal change may have to be approved by Congress. — (nytimes, 18dec25)

Our new board and slaver recognizes Ντόναλντ Τραμπ. 

(donald trump) and has renamed The Basilica 

of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC

"The Trump Spectacular Regression" of DC, (and east coast.)

Mass this Sunday will consist of Big Macs, diet cola, and 

greasy fries for those who pay five hundred thousand

for their perpetual indulgence and free ticket to heaven. 

The Whitehouse press secretary says all catholics will now

be called magaholics and must be rebaptized in January at

the trump-baths just outside Orlando Florida. The ceremony 

will cost an additional five hundred thousand dollars and you

get to shake hands with the new pope, his excellency Wholly Farther

Trump-Epstein the Fecund, once removed, resurrected with honors.

(God, we love what is being done with the place!)

Anybody who can make it, should reserve a space for brunch.

Five hundred thousand dollars will get you ham and eggs, 

coffee, and pineapple cheese cake.

Lets make religion fun again!

Oh yeah, no pre-2026 christians are invited. We're starting a

new cleansing of that fake Jesus stuff. The new papal motto

will be: Ο Ντόναλντ θα το κάνει, (O Ntónalnt tha to kánei)

"Donald Will Do It."

[Note: this press release will go out at 2:30AM, 25December2025. Thank you for your detention within this madness.]

rte 220

 Two field-hands ride

Snowmobiles to pole-barn

Across from Morse’s Sauerkraut 

Walk across road

Get something to drink

dear laddie

Mornin’

I’m noticing that a lot of people die around my age and I suspect death, mine, will trundle down the mountain in due course.

Just wanted to say i love you, carry on, and try to be as happy as a weekday allows you to be.

I’m happy to have known you, loved you, and shared in your wit and wisdom,  What a weird time it has been  — as it is in this flawed and flatulent time of our current blowhard in the Whitehouse.

You are a lovely son, a lovely man, and a delight to have known.

Don’t bother about my ashes. Wherever they wind up is fine. The earth and sea will roll with my debris.

Enjoy things, enjoy friends, enjoy yourself.

Bite a bagel, think of me, throw away the bakery bag in a proper receptacle, and may your coffee stay hot enough for a generous time.

I love you.

Nothing more,

Cheers,

Dad

just the two of us

 One day

He will

Fall down

Dead

That blowhard

One day

I will

Fall down

Dead

This blowhard

respiciō

 Shhh

Quaker Friends

What is

There

(To be heard)

well now

I don’t know about religious holidays.

I do know December will end in fourteen days

And that the bitter cold has snapped

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.

--Wu-men (1183-1260)

Morning comes and daytime follows.

There’s nothing to do.

I read. I follow the news. The bedlam.

The stillness of this room.

The way everything is here, even if unseen.

I no longer know what to think about God.

It’s fine with me not to know what to so think.

Hannukah, Christmas -- have at it.

I take no refuge in these celebrations.

I greet the living, I sorrow the dead. Nothing more.

I bow to Buddha and cross, all things that remind me to observe.

The foolish kabuki dance of political posturing does not interest.

Mostly alone, I look around, seeing comforting friends.

Buson:

    中々にひとりあればぞ月を友

nakanaka ni hitori areba zo tsuki o tomo

well now,

if I am to be alone

I'll take the moon as a friend 

--Cheryl A. Crowley, Haikai Poet Yosa Buson

and the Bashō Revival (2006), 113

Dog wags tail in his sleep. 

insight (yes) imagination

Για την σκεπτόμενη ψυχή, οι εικόνες χρησιμεύουν σαν να ήταν περιεχόμενο της αντίληψης (και όταν ισχυρίζεται ή αρνείται ότι είναι καλές ή κακές, τις αποφεύγει ή τις επιδιώκει). Γι' αυτό η ψυχή δεν σκέφτεται ποτέ χωρίς εικόνα. 

—Αριστοτέλης, περί ψυχής, 11l, 7

To the thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of perception (and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it avoids or pursues them). That is why the soul never thinks without an image.

—Aristotle, de anima, lll, 7

Imagination

Thinks

Itself 

In 

What is

Seen

In 

The

Mind

In 

The 

World

(Where,

As we 

Know)

There is

Only

Mind

(Imagine that

Imagining

This!)

Berdyaev said

The 

World

Is created

By

Imagination

sending dog scurrying

 This ending of year

Leaves us like the great 

Swooping horned owl

Landing on bench

Ten feet near last night —

Wondering what’s next

rozzo e sgradevolex

 Crude and unpleasant

It’s just the way he is

Our president

He doesn’t know better

A decipherer, a flawed

Text of character, garbled soul —

Here we are, unsure whether

To pray for him or punch him

In his face, turn, walk away

Sadder and no wiser about fate

His, ours, all of it, a brokenness into

Fragmented pieces, our dignity

what do we think we are killing

 A sadness arrives. 

Murders, ignorant leaders, 

more murders, 

an ignorant president, 

saddens.

At least, in prison this morning

conversation about space, the space

between us, how we fill it with what

we put there from what is within us

suspecting we create the world

Reflecting on Hitchen’s question

if Jesus cured the blind man, why

not cure blindness? Why is it only

Lazarus that is raised from the dead?

Is love really a verb? Because, if so,

to say “I love you” means I participate

in your co-creation. “You” are brought

through the movement of love into

apparent existence where stark relationality

is what love is bringing about. I, you, no other.

We kill each other in misguided attempt to

accomplish no-other, to find ourselves in the

wholeness of holiness without exception. But --

our mistake is trying to eliminate the physical

rather than embody the spiritual in vibrant form.

We kill the other -- a misguided belief

that there is another to kill. We misunderstand

the word “another.” It means no-other. There is

no-other. What we are killing is ourselves. One 

by one we destroy ourselves destroying no-other.

It is a sad time.

Our ignorance waterboards us.

We sputter and choke and feel ourselves drowning.

We take up knife and gun and missile and invective.

We are thick students in the face of hard learning.

If ever peace

then inner love

seeking out into

the space between us

a new creating, a new seeing 

a total eclipse

 Someone wants to give you a piece of their mind. Dont take is. Even if only a figure of speech, it is easy to be deceived and think you are being given something, some thing, you deserve, are owed, need.

The real understanding is there is no mind. No-mind, (wu-shin) is there. The best reception, the best engagement is with no-other. There are only a few who can effectively share what is not there.

What-is not-there.

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn’t appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.

Hui-hai (8th c.)

Mind murders. Mind splits. Mind is a terrible thing to waste.

True mind sees no-other and loves what-is seen.

True mind is willing to be inside Itself and outside Itself at the same (proverbial) time.

True mind knows heart is a lonely hunter and so accompanies it with invisible presence and encouraging nearness, a felt and objectless support.

Mind knows no-limits and resides there like a destitute hermit on perpetual pilgrimage encircling emptiness with joy and good will.

Feel the space you pass through.

Be there as another (i.e. no-other) arrives, resides, departs — imprinting space like an unseen footprint in melted snow..

Instead, it is the peace of one’s mind that makes for a true world with liberated hearts and loving eyes seeing everything as Itself.

strana strano

 Murders

Here, there,

Everywhere

It seems

An odd

Odd world

what is looked for

"Liberation depends upon yourself.” (--Khyentse Rinpoche)

The outer projection of an inner meditation, he said, is what is looked for.

So, we look at the world today. Is that our outer projection? Yes it is. Oh dear!

How, then, does the world change?

Rather ask -- What is my meditation?

Complete or right meditation is the re-creation of the external world.

It is no surprise that people shoot and kill shoot and wound other people from academic university to Australian Hanukkah celebration, to men in boats carrying drugs.

Their inner meditation is unsightly and urgent to eliminate that which is unwanted by them. 

In order to love the world that is becoming itself through creative wholeness and accepting accommodation we have first to find that inner capacity to accept, forgive, and love what we find within ourselves.

A better world is no secret.

But the manifestation of worse world is well kept secret. Only project your inner turmoil, greed, anger, and delusion out into the observable world.

If it is important not to dwell in a deteriorating and ugly world, begin to dwell in a rehabilitative healing and constructive inner world.

Stay away for a while if necessary. Allow darkness to cover you. Become penitent. Pray for all to be well and true and transfixed by loveliness.

There is beauty in that which is coming to itself.

Itself, alone, is liberation.

Become alone with the Alone! 

two words about guns and shootings

 Two words and 

one comma

Most of us

Want no comma

“No

More”

Republicans seem

To want to keep it

“No,

More”

The heartbreak of

Gun shootings!

my head hurts

 This hurts my head. 

Maybe it’s the 4AM belief I could read and understand such a piece.

Americans might be used to hearing conservatives blame postmodernism and critical race theory for social problems. Dr. Weaver, who died in 1963, took aim at a philosophical concept called nominalism, the rise of which he traced to early modernity. (Think of philosophers like Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.) Nominalism involves the rejection of universal concepts and absolute truths — including transcendental moral truths. Nominalists believe that truth is embedded in the particulars of the world around us. There is no universal objective moral reality as Plato and other philosophers believed and it does not exist as an expression of the divine.

Dr. Weaver insisted that nominalism was not merely wrongheaded; it was the source of all our woes. In his introduction to “Ideas Have Consequences,” he called the shift to nominalism evil and likened it to Macbeth’s seduction by “the witches on the heath.” Like Macbeth, Dr. Weaver wrote, “Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions.” By challenging the idea of universal objective moral reality, modern man had succumbed to individualism, relativism, materialism, historicism and politics as will to power.

 In my research on the MAGA New Right and in the countless hours I’ve spent in conservative academic circles, I’ve heard this Weaver-esque refrain again and again. It is hard to think of a single significant thinker of the MAGA New Right who would disagree with his assessment of the ways in which modern thought is inherently corrosive or who would dissent from his insistence that we must restore some kind of transcendental moral orthodoxy to our politics.

But conservative ideas have consequences, too. When Dr. Weaver argued that modern ideas are evil, he helped legitimate the repression of anyone who thinks about truth differently. When the thinkers of MAGA New Right suggest that only conservatives — or as some put it, heritage Americans — have access to America’s founding principles or that America is a Christian nation, they are providing a justification for authoritarian actions on the part of the government.

(—in, The 77-Year-Old Book That Helps Explain the MAGA New Right, by Laura Field, nytimes, dec.13, 2025)

I’m going to take two aspirins.

Don't call me in the morning.