before eating the soup

 I can't quite grasp the rapidity with which the United States seems to be devolving into a sidekick of Russia, an aggressor-invader of the sovereign country of Ukraine.

I read about Donald Trump in books. I read the newspapers. I watch news programs. All indications point to his decimating the protections of both domestic and foreign agencies and the elimination of programs and aide organizations for the poor, sick, and those in harm's way.

The perplexing part of all this is the seeming lack of recourse to counter the plethora of decisions made by one or two men that affect our standing in the world and the well-being of so many here and abroad.

It is maddening.

But there is precedent. The feeling begins to feel familiar. 

The Germans

These men belonged to the Germans

the way a mule belonged to the Germans

and the Germans stood watching

their hunger and then their deaths,

watched them as if they were dead trees 

in the wind, and waited for them to fall,

and some of the men did. They sank

to their knees like children begging

forgiveness for sins they couldn’t recall,

or they failed to rise when the others did 

and were left in the wet gray fields 

where the Germans watched them 

and the Germans stood watching

when the men who were still hungry 

came back and lifted the dead men 

and carried their thin bones to the barn, 

and buried them there before eating the soup

that wouldn’t have kept them alive.

The Germans knew a starving man

needed more than soup and more than bread

but still they stood and watched.

                                                        (--poem by John Guzlowski) 

 Don't be too attached to the fact that it speaks about "the Germans."

Perhaps substitute 'the Russians.'

Even, more and more, 'the Americans.'

It is a state of soul, not just a national or geographical reference.

I feel it surrounding my soul.

It wants to leave the barn and punch someone in the face. 

Someone has to do something to divert the slog to destructive decimation some very stupid people are forcing us to set out on.

that longing entered time as this body

 In prison today we read Li-Young Lee.

I Loved You Before I Was Born 

 

                 (-Li-Young Lee, 1957-) 

 

I loved you before I was born.

It doesn't make sense, I know. 

 

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.

And I've lived longing 

for your ever look ever since.

That longing entered time as this body. 

And the longing grew as this body waxed.

And the longing grows as the body wanes.

The longing will outlive this body. 

 

I loved you before I was born.

It doesn't make sense, I know. 

 

Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse

of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.

And I've been lonely for you from that instant.

That loneliness appeared on earth as this body. 

And my share of time has been nothing 

but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly. 

Your face fleeing my ever

kissing it firmly once on the mouth. 

 

In longing, I am most myself, rapt,

my lamp mortal, my light 

hidden and singing.  

 

I give you my blank heart.

Please write on it

what you wish. 

(--From The Undressing: Poems by Li-Young Lee. Copyright © 2018) 

The great delight in it. 

The strong conversation. 

The original musical composition made of it by one of the men.

The longing surrounding!

like an old run down hermitage

 Two folks visiting Japan attend across the world Sunday Evening Practice during which the poems of Ryōkan were presented.

Their responses:

the advantage

of not being --

attractive

(-LS)

    2.

so many years

looking for the hammer

that will crack this nut

(-TP)

nightly ritual

Wood fire smoke fills yard

Sidling through 8° air as dog

Sniffs way to woodpile

maintaining perspective

 the day is bright

sun on snow under blue sky --

nothing to grasp, everything to love

the word is stronger than the bullet

I think that a University of Southern Maine student at Maine State Prison (who attends weekly Meetingbrook Conversations) and is studying World Ethics might be interested in article in The Journal of Religion. I send it to him.

This excerpt:

He invoked the story of the boy and the oppressive king in Surah al-Burūj.  The boy was a believer, and the king tried to kill the boy to dissuade the people from believing in his God. Every time the king would try to kill the boy, he did not die because of God’s will. 

The boy then said to the king, “You will not be able to kill me until you do as I order
you. And if you do as I order you, you will be able to kill me.” The king asked,“And
what is that?” The boy said, “Gather the people in one elevated place and tie me to
the trunk of a tree, then take an arrow from my quiver and say: ‘In the Name of Allah,
the Lord of the boy.’ If you do this, you will be able to kill me.” So, the king did this,
and placing an arrow in the bow, he shot it, saying, “In the Name of Allah, the Lord
of the boy.” The arrow hit the boy in the temple, and the boy placed his hand over the
arrow wound and died. The people proclaimed, “We believe in the Lord of the boy!”
Then it was said to the king, “Do you see what has happened, that that which you
feared has taken place? By Allah, all the people have believed (in the Lord of the
boy).” So he ordered that ditches be dug at the entrances to the roads, and it was
done, and fires were kindled in them. Then the king said, “Whoever abandons his
religion, let him go, and whoever does not, throw him into the fire.”51
Talı̄ma was not alone in using “The story of the boy” as justification for
hunger strikes in particular and nonviolent self-destructive acts of resistance
in general. 

The late Muslim Saudi intellectual ʿAbdallā h al-Ḥā mid—who
went on a hunger strike twice and died in 2020 in prison as a result of med-
ical neglect—theorized hunger strikes as part of the nonviolent prison resis-
tance that he advocated. 52 In his book Al-Kalimah Aqwā min al-Raṣ āṣ (The
word is stronger than the bullet), he argues for the importance of what he
calls “civil jihād” as more noble than violent forms of resistance.53 He stated
that “they [state-aligned scholars] consider that when a civil mujā hid goes
on hunger strike—demanding his rights or the rights of the ummah [com-
munity]—he is a sinner. And if God grants him martyrdom as a result of
his hunger strike, they would consider him to have committed suicide. He
does not enter paradise as a result and is not buried in the burial place of
Muslims. Sharı̄ ʿa and Muslims are cursed with these scholars of despotism.”54

(--in Carceral Fiqh and the Battle of the Empty Stomachs: Debates on the Permissibility of Hunger Strikes*

by Walaa Quisay / University of Edinburgh, The Journal of Religion, Volume 104, Issue 3, July 2024, Pages 257-420) 

There is haram against suicide. But if the fast is intending to evoke justice and humane treatment, the goal is not death, but righting of wrong.

A reasonable case can be made that extreme acts of resistance in the face of intolerable circumstances or impenetrable conditions -- intent on rectifying what is clearly wrong, without harming any other beings, or overt destruction of property, is a meaningful way of expressing one's interest in contributing to a clarifying and sanctifying correction that might benefit all beings.

I might not immolate my body. I might not starve my being. But I will commit to the elimination of the harmful and reintroduction of the helpful into the midst of this current creation.

I oppose hatred and unkindness. Especially within myself.

I propose love and compassion. Especially for all beings in all categories and realms.

And finally, with gratitude for the Kennebec River Zen Center in Augusta Maine and their Sangha for today's morning practice, allowing distant attendance.

what do you expect to hear

being 

alone

in-the-world

is the way

things are,

don't you think, eh --

hello . . . hello . . .

hello?

tee time for the troublesome

 Polonium in your tea

(the senator said)

is Putin's pouring service --

No thanks, none for me

nor you for anybody

the projecting pretense of political pandering

 if I had

a spiritual life

I would meditate

on justice, mercy, 

ethics and morality

don't tell me that

love of God's truth

is not down and

dirty reflecting when

darkness is darkness

cynicism is cynicism

and false pretense of

loving and obeisant 

homaging God obviates

everything God is and

God loves --

we cannot be

such fools

as to believe what

gross and callous

lying fraudulent

piety down on one knee

thanking God for not

being God, but serving, 

instead, felonious falsity

button up

 I've taken to wearing wool sport coats in the morning. It feels dressy. I pretend I'm at home, not going into any building or office where I have to pretend to be a distinguished anybody with a professional uniform bought fifty years ago then closeted with wooden hanger while weight gathered and shrunk the fit of the fashion.

Now, age takes back weight and size and opens closet door. Spring scale in bathroom shrugs off pounds and whispers go to closet, retrieve jackets, dress yourself up, forget Maine casual fleece vests, present yourself to mirror and carry on.

Dog snores. He wears fur and baggy tail, doesn't care about pounds or mirrors, only walks, bowls of food, and good-boy treats.

We appear, we do not fear, we wear what we wear, contemplate our ear, then disappear.

ανακριβείς ηλίθιοι

What did the sooth-sayer say to Julius Caesar? 

Was it "Beware the idiots of March"?

History has such cruel inadequacies. Even today.

damn, that's some cold stuff right there

 I do not forgive our president and vice president.

It is not mine to do so.

So I inquired of God.

God said, "I do not know those two. I only know those from whom light shines."

chump unchange

 To the Vice President:

I am saddened and embarrassed by your comments and behavior toward the president of Ukraine.

The disrespectful ambush and posturing was an unbecoming and blatantly contrived  piece of political theater of the absurd.

My students, all of them felons, recognize a chump piece when they see it.

If you're going to stay as vice president, you'll have to do and be better.

sword of shame

 To the Secretary of State:

It is disappointing and sad that you sat there as a deflated suit as a brave leader and wartime head of state was mocked and ambushed by your boss and his junior.

Then, your post, affirming your complicity in the embarrassing event.

The samurai have a code of falling on one's sword when disgraced. You need not do that. But there is no coming back from the disgrace you aquiesced. 

Shame!

shema sabbath

 Meanwhile, back on earth, cars drive down road heading for town. It is Sunday [sic]. Are they heading for church? Will Jesus in the sacred scripture or holy rites gather them all for a camp meeting to reassess how the second coming of the American president would play out in heaven in hell in eternity.

The dog doesn't care. He goes out through barn door to drizzly icy dooryard heading toward diminished woodpile. It survived into March. Barely.

I wear red boxed flannel pj bottoms, brown wool insulated herringbone sport jacket, red and black Washington nationals baseball cap, old crocks with fleece inserts. I sit in the ersatz imaginary church of front room, species of orange juice and entemann's chocolate donut.  

My mistake.

It's not Sunday. It is Saturday. The cars are probably going to the dump.

I've been hoodwinked.

Cat on lap.

Water for coffee boiling.

I'm not thinking of any syphilitic unbalanced leader anywhere in this country.

I'm happy to grind beans for coffeepot on stovetop.

And enjoy this extra day I might have rued.

would we had courageous representatives

 Email to Susan Collins:

It is beyond embarrassment that the leader of your party, Donald Trump, has behaved so badly, rudely, and tragically toward the president of Ukraine.

You are a Maine Senator. I implore you to speak and act in such a way that assures the people of Maine and the United States that we are not being led down a very dangerous path in world alliances and untoward relationship with Vladimir Putin and authoritarian control.

Please do not shrug this off with platitudes and political rhetoric. We are in urgent need of true leadership. Are you up to it?

ignorance of history, by the ignorant of history

 Something broke 

in America today

in Oval Office 

two bullies

tore off disguise

declaring their cynicism

ripping off shirts

undressing to shorts

then naked in front of

everybody, howling

they are predator, 

bare-assing, defecating

on history, on decency

on America on 

american people

in their own kitchen

two embarrassing executives, one wounded country

 I watch president and vice president embarrass the United States in the presence of president of Ukraine in the Oval Office.

Ambush and bad faith.

American president chooses Vladimir Putin. No one is sure why.

Something seems very off.

Very off.

do you hear what i hear

 Unspeaking divinity

 Leans closer (one supposes)

To silent hospitality

We cannot hear God

We can only turn to see

Where sound isn’t 

honda ridgeline zafu, an unplowed parking

 sitting zazen in medical office parking lot

driving over slushy roads full of snow and rain

unmoving for an hour, windshield running wet

book is saying there is another spiritual dimension

energetic alongside this material one we breathe 

when we die we are there as it is here as we live

the obscurity of umbrellas

 I've decided to write a short novella:

    Chapter 1.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. In fact, no one got killed, no wife was compromised, no knave redeemed.

    Chapter 2.

When the front door closed, it marked the last of many times rusty hinges held on until raincoated shoulders went out, down stairs, onto snowy slush steps descending to waiting car with motor running.

    Chapter 3.

In the morning, under foyer mirror, small table with housekeys and black gloves, a drying drop of water near edge revealed nothing more about what took place the night before.

--  fin --

All rights reserved.

All wrongs preserved. 

perspective, telescopic

Doris sends "The Consolations of the Telescopic Perspective in Disorienting Time", BY MARIA POPOVA.

The “Pale Blue Dot” photograph captured by the Voyager 1 (NASA/JPL)

 And so, on Valentine’s Day of 1990, just after Bulgaria’s Communist regime was finally defeated after nearly half a century of reign, the Voyager took the now-iconic image of Earth known as the “Pale Blue Dot” — a grainy pixel, “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” as Sagan so poetically put it when he immortalized the photograph in his beautiful “Pale Blue Dot” monologue from Cosmos — that great masterwork of perspective, a timeless reminder that “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was… every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician” lived out their lives on this pale blue dot. And every political conflict, every war we’ve ever fought, we have waged over a fraction of this grainy pixel barely perceptible against the cosmic backdrop of endless lonesome space. (- Marginalian)

So much depends on how we see what we see when we see it as we see it.

The current view of this country and the world is close up, nose-smashed and eye-gouged, by men with large thumbs. who don't care about what is seen. 

wislawa and george

 A former student and friend from prison for 80th birthday last year gives me book of Poems New and Collected 1957-1997 by Wislawa Szymborska (c.1998)

In it, this:

Three Oddest Words

by Wislawa Szymborska

Original Language Polish

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold

A used book, 1st edition, well hand-noted, with ribbon page mark set to this poem.

I suppose, like the book, it can be said that nonbeing is also used but seldom marked or held.

My professor of Metaphysics in philosophy department of The Catholic University of America in Washington DC in 1968 would start each class writing on chalkboard “Being is, nonbeing is not.” It was enough for me at the time. But I’m not sure enough of what. He died in 2016.

I try to parse I make something no nonbeing can hold, but cannot. I try to parse my life-to-date, but cannot.

My friend and the woman in his life received into the world three months ago a baby girl. A star, Stella, no doubt, a stellar event.

Stella, the Latin word for "star," shines brightly in the word constellation, but stella words have been favored by scientists to describe earthly things as much as heavenly bodies. Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped." That use is no longer current, but today biologists and geologists might use one of these synonyms: stellular, stellate, and stelliform. Poets, too, have looked to stella. John Milton used stellar in its infancy when he wrote in Paradise Lost "these soft fires … shed down their stellar virtue." Stellar shot into its leading role as a synonym of star (as when we say "stellar pupil") in the late 1800s. (Merriam-Webster)

I am fond of the three of them.

As well as Being and Non-Being.

Along with Thursday mornings.

And prospect of coffee.

Not to overlook Wislawa the poet and George the professor.

Cat on shoulder. Light snow beginning. 

Nuns from Neumz chanting. Monks from Barroux chanting.

Psalm 120

Levavi óculos meos in montes, * unde veniet auxilium mihi. Auxilium meum a Domino, * qui fecit cælum et terram. Non det in commotionem pedem tuum: * neque dormitet, qui custodit te. Ecce non dormitabit neque dormiet, * qui custodit Israel. Dominus custodit te, Dominus protectio tua, * super manum déxteram tuam. Per diem sol non uret te: * neque luna per noctem. Dominus custodit te ab omni malo: * custodiat animam tuam Dominus. Dominus custodiat introitum tuum et exitum tuum: * ex hoc nunc, et usque in sæculum.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from whence comes my help. My help will come from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not suffer your foot to stumble; he who keeps you will not slumber. No, he who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. The Lord is your keeper, the Lord overshadows you; he stands at your right hand. The sun will not scorch you during the day, nor the moon during the night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your soul. The Lord will keep you in your going out and in your coming out, now and forever. Glory to the Father..

For 

Now 

This

Is 

Enough 

hallmate

 I passed the buddha in the hall today

he looked tired

I bowed as I passed

he looked over at me and nodded

he's ok

just there in the hall with a smile

l'état, c'est eux

everyone seems paralyzed

how can a private so-called

citizen step into Oval Office

and run the country to ground?

republicans pray after vote thanking

God for their victory cutting funds

meant for children and elderly health care

their rape and pillage thank you to Jesus

it all seems berserk it all seems cruel and

comical these two men scissoring history

saying f*ck you to everyone, a coup d'etat

by sneering cynics with no restraining them

requies*

of course the "I" 

is afraid of dying

the "I" is illusory

illusions fear exposure

it is their death

voila!

to become non-illusioned

is to lose illusions

to become dis-illusioned

is to lose "two" or "twice"

to shunt off, move aside, 

duality

death is not the problem

dying is

the awareness of ending,

transitioning, stepping away 

from the two, the divided

other

I am dead now

dying will follow

relinquishing two

for undivided one

the silence of it,

this . . . rest*

facing book, changing socks

 Everyone has dozens and

Dozens of friends on Facebook

I am embarrassed to have none

Before Tommy died he would say

That everybody is so important, not

Him, he was nobody in world of elites

He was cranky. Why not? It’s respectable.

He had a friend. They went to Moodys for

Breakfast regularly, that’s all I know.

I have no friends, am nobody, live alone

With another, listen to snow melting onto

Porch roof, watch red cardinal on green feeder.

It feels winter’s back is broken, light stays

Morning sun moves north, pond begins to slush

Snow plow'd piles look down driveway, planning —

Emily said it for people like me — “I’m Nobody! 

Who are you?  / Are you -- Nobody -- too?”

Let’s face it, somebodies are important, no doubt,

Nobodies are unimportant. What a relief! 

Empty space, vacant mind, abandoned body —

The stuff of unemcumbrance, shutterblink still-life

An esoteric peek into what is obvious, something

New, a private collection of unexcelled images, a

Canvas with acrylics and a signature indicating

“I did this!” Yes you did. Good for you. Cheers!

So many books to face, this desolate company,

Finishing Irish novel Time of the Child, by Niall 

Williams. The simplicity of aloneness as no stranger

When ordinary life, like boots inside barn door,

Hold their place near open bag of bird seed

the search for peace and all good

we can use noble speech

to reteach this country its

loveliness, like Galway 

Kinnell's sow, it is necessary

for America to learn again

to speak with each other, not 

at, before we descend into

punching faces and shooting

heads with guns, our crude and

ugly language mocking and 

snearing putdown bully-words;

we have to learn to speak again

because words matter, and we need

to be created and the face of the earth

needs to be renewed with worded love

loving words, sounding loveliness 

considering the apocalypse

 i've been thinking about

shutting down the white house

sending the chief exec to DRC

in Congo to solve the violence

I think he could do it, he's so

skilled at making things efficient

perhaps he'll offer to build a hotel

a golf course a casino a sports arena

everybody knows how clever he is

how much a man of the people he is

how christlike and humble he is

who wouldn't love to adulate him, he is

probably the savior of the world, just

ask america's fundamentalist poseurs,

they know. God! How we need their

vision, their discernment, their charisma

Forget God, forget Christ. Get me a

modern-day christian -- they slay me 

they slay us, they eye new crosses

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae

 rugged rosaries

trappist and franciscan

will be held in hand

prayed through

a mon-day and mon-night

dog's snoring comes through ceiling of front room

he played in prison with service-dog-in-training earlier

walked with mistress across ice in dark to Hosmer pond island

peed in dooryard before good-boy treat and going upstairs

until then there are dentists to be dealt with

 We have materialized because we want to know

Perception requires body, senses, emotions

Ultimate reality is formless immaterial origin of breath itself

So here we are, attempting to know the unknowable by unknowing

When we awaken we will remember nothing of any substance

ayuh

 Let’s hear it

For Angus King and

Janet Mills of Maine —

As Maine goes

So goes the nation

そこにいる … soko ni iru … there we are

 Friends visit Japan

Send blossoms

Flowering us

when parental love is the question

 The historian says

When the people expect 

And demand honesty

From their leaders

It will show itself

But when we are

Deceptive opportunistic 

Liars we get deceptive

Opportunistic liars as

Leaders. We create them

Liars love our president

He is made in their image

And even if he pains them

And deceives them they take

Pride in their offspring

Once honesty and truthfulness

Were valued character traits

The ability to manage the good

That hid in plain sight and void

The evil that lurked in shadows

It is us

We parent new life

We foster and adopt

What needs care and love

It is we who shape and sustain

what she wrote

Woman entered shop thirty years ago during conversation.

Next time she came in, she brought this:

altar

 Buddha just sits there

Jesus just hangs there on cross

late at night, right here

heating system cuts in -- no

other, side by side 

ser con dios

what news?

I've quit

Donnie who?

Ha, ha. ha, 

no more

he'll pass

earth

remains

I'll pass

nothing remains

even the Pope

is critical

Salud para ti, Papa

(Health to you, Papa)

whether here or there

ser 

con dios

(Be with God)

snow bowl alive and jumping

 across Hosmer pond 

cold wind at back at face, one

step at a time, walk

never off center

 At center

Where truth resides

No opinion visits

At edges

Left and right

Bellicosity

Don’t let them

Convince you to step

Off middle way

mother nature

Walk with the wind (love)

Native American said

Be where peace steps (love)

unloading and disembarking

 When I jumped from the top floor

of the Actuarial Department of

the New York Life Insurance

building

I landed in a small town on

the Delaware River upstate

I studied and prayed, played

basketball and baseball, hit

tennis balls and pingpong balls

attempted to block a full running

tackle on a kickoff and crawled

breathless to side line nearly dead

It was the early sixties, JFK 

was shot but not yet Martin or

Bobby

Fr. Louis, talk done, would disappear

I was impertinent and naive

slipping past God on a stairwell

in Manhattan during the riots

at Columbia, staggering away

from one life to another, ersatz 

pseudo-

ronin and under-bridge non-saint

I had to learn how to pray

all over, a tug, lines cast off

no one on the bridge, adrift

in night harbor, tide going out, 

as abandoned as abandoning

listing and listless, creaking

through slip and breakwater

stars looking away, no moon

waves lapping at rusty hull

derelict

It sank somewhere miles off 

shore in sudden storm without

fanfare or known coordinates --

and there, depth scuttled by time

broken apart and blanched grey

bottomed and bedraggled

never to feel surface again

unsalvaged

 just the right place to mull

where buoyancy had disappeared

becoming at home in murky depth

far below passing liners and tankers

all going with effective weigh-points

to expectant calls with useful cargo,

gangplanks set and rituals followed

unloading and disembarking, ready

to return and resume passage homeward --

passing over shadow hull fixed firmly

on sea floor of no place else to go --

tucking, if nothing else, the unentered log  

nichts ergibt sinn *

 There's so much sadness 

so much turmoil

an odd president

odd vp odd doge odd fbi

odd dni odd ag odd sec/def

odd gop senate and house

It is an odd time in the USA 

odd

terrifyingly odd

I drink orange juice

eat Breton crackers

watch day dusk

in the silence of this front room

buddha christ and mary on windowsill

altar, they see it, nothing makes sense *

quóniam in aetérnam misericordia ejus

 The new clock from goodwill

Is one minute ahead in red numbers

Nuns from France chant psalm

No place no time I’d rather be

he wants money, pay him, send him away

 Such frumpy foolishness

a blanket over sleight of hand

look over here -- see the hat

see the rabbit see the switch

I think the people will rise up

I think he will be overthrown

down deep the American people

do not suffer fools gladly,  no way

at day's end will we allow a fool

to continue foolishness -- 

just pay him off,

run him out of town

campana

 There it goes

Sliding up from east

Slow dusk

There it goes

Sliding down to west

Fading daylight

Here i am

Between the two

Call me Campana toll

one bullet into a wall and a second

Sometimes a headline of a story just snatches your attention from wandering without focus. 

Today, 2025:

Anne Marie Hochhalter, Paralyzed in Columbine Shooting, Dies at 43, NYTimes, 18feb2025

Anne Marie Hochhalter, who spoke publicly about the long-lasting effects of  gun violence after she was paralyzed in the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine  High School in Colorado, was found dead on Sunday at her home in Westminster,  Colo. She was 43. The police said that officers had found Ms. Hochhalter after they were called for a  welfare check. The Adams County coroner, which initially handled  Ms. Hochhalter’s case, said it had been transferred to the Jefferson County coroner,  “given that her death was likely related to complications of paraplegia associated  with the Columbine shooting.” The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office said that  autopsy results were not yet available.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/us/anne-marie-hochhalter-columbine-shooting-dies.html

Twenty six years ago, 1999: 

Mother of Injured Columbine Student Kills Herself,  Associated Press, 23Oct 1999

The mother of a student wounded in the shootings at Columbine High School walked into a suburban pawn shop today, asked to see a handgun, loaded it and killed herself with a shot to the head.

The suicide by the woman, Carla June Hochhalter, occurred about six months after her 17-year-old daughter, Anne Marie, was critically wounded and partly paralyzed in the April 20 shootings by two student gunmen, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold.

This morning, Ms. Hochhalter, 48, asked to see a handgun at the Alpha Pawn Shop in Englewood. As a clerk handled paperwork, Ms. Hochhalter loaded the gun with bullets she had brought with her. She fired one bullet into a wall and a second one into her head, an Englewood police spokeswoman, Leticia Castillo, said. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/23/us/mother-of-injured-columbine-student-kills-herself.html

And here, the Wikipedia reference:

A school shooting and attempted bombing occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States.^[b] The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher; ten were killed in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape.  (Wikipedia)

These stories stop you.

They root you.

Set you pondering.

Any questions?

gelassenheit

6°, I open window

for cold air

Spare

Change

Is all I can manage

Am I praying?

I can’t really tell —

If attention to word

Rare

Strange

Gone to ether after sound.

Like acosmism — the

Philosophy maya, denying

Universe has any absolute

Reality or existence apart from God —

Clear

Range

Stretching thinner than can be . . . seen

again and again it will have to “nichten”

Some philosophical papers are really dense.

An excerpt: 

Anders refers to sexuality to refer to everything enfleshed: “One

is tempted to vary the famous French saying ‘ni homme ni femme, c’est un capucin’ into: ‘ni homme, ni capucin, c’est un Dasein’” (349).

For Anders, the capuchin, the monkishness of Dasein is nothing nugatory: 

Heidegger retires into the cloister of his own Self, in order to become “authentic Dasein”; since he does not know of any way of becoming “authentic” within a definite world, a society; since, on the other hand he can’t help continuing to live in this world which, so to speak, continues “in spite,” it is bound to become “alien” to him: i.e., again and again it will have to “nichten” [vanish]. (345) 

(—p.204, ch.10, Da-Sein’s Pronouns, by Babette Babich, Original version appears in: Patricia Glazebrook and Susanne Claxton, eds., Heidegger, Dasein, and Gender: Thinking the Unthought. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2024. 189-222.)

It does, however, appeal to the difficulty of becoming authentic. And the instinct to “vanish.”

Tonight at conversation we spoke about the word “acosmism.” 

References to A Course in Miracles, the Gita, the Gospels, William Blake, Advaita Vedanta, and the third season of True Detective were made.

And how in dying we “nichten” [vanish].

But return to Brahman, the Supreme Reality.

A mostly unappearing mode of being.

Yet, still, there. 

Still, here.

as words would have it

 In the novel, words: 

“Let tomorrow 

take care of 

itself”

Yes, care, 

of itself

Is what must be taken

Let (allow) tomorrow

It will, or it might, maybe

Show itself (finally)

petit-déjeuner

 Lavrov and Rubio 

Sit for breakfast

Time passes

Coffee cup emptied

Lavrov folds serviette 

Pushes back chair

Rubio, a small crumb,

haphazardly falls to floor

the way of interfaith dialogue in maine

the young baptist pastor

climbed ladder with hatchet

to chop ice from roof

of catholic buddhist woman

after leak dripped onto desk

sure and it is

From an Irish novel I’m reading:

      “He was a man in a suit of many yesterdays who liked to carry today’s newspaper.”

A good sentence.

through the passage up to, within, and through

 It seems a good time to say adios, 

perhaps I'll see you next time 

Not sure I've seen you this time

It's nothing you've done, It's me

I don't see so good, never have

So I say "to God" -- adios amigo

via con dios, go with God, I wish

 I had, gone with God. I don't know

what I went with, but I don't think 

it was God. I seemed always to want

something else, something other than 

God, what-is, haeccitas, (thisness).

So, 'to God' with you, go with God is

my prayer for you, as it is (come to

think of it) my prayer for me. You see

God is what-is, the thisness of this world

the next thing that happens, the last thing

that happened, the arrival, the noticing,

the departure. It is the dance. It is the dance.

But we want something else, something other,

not dancing through the music of transportation

but saying hold it, hold on, making of the tune

a closeted file in a locked safe, for later review.

Something other. Not this. That. Other than itself.

Hence my prayer -- Go with God -- who is always

going, going, gone, gone -- (hmmm) awakening

through the passage up to, within, and through.

Compañera, amiguis, amigo del alma

with all your annoying qualities, foibles

left-over syllables muttered while turning away

God is all that's left to us. We don't know this,

not for sure, but we suspect it. We lament our short-

sighted impatience and ill-conceived aggravation;

returning to bed, shifting for comfortable position

remembering to breathe, forgetting everything else,

not caring what tomorrow brings ... almost ... happy

chapelet

 rosary

for each being

a passing thought

a passing

prayer

for each being

neige moi-même

 Snow falling on Maine mountain 

Each flake a soul materializing

All my relations, all my arriving self

no body home

The other world

The one beyond my experience

Where the dead do what the dead do

Where my ignorance gains no access

A civilization of comings and goings

Beyond me, beyond you, beyond seeing

An address without a number

Door without handle, mail unopened

Dishes in sink, one glove on floor

nite

 A day might come when the thought would arise telling himself it could have perhaps been better to have been more social, less reclusive, a better fit in a crowded room.

He pondered such a thought.

It fell like a cigarette butt dropped onto the sidewalk of a late night street. 

He was no use to anybody. No one held any such illusion. He was useless in company. A potted plant.

And so he stayed for a long time.

And that was that. Which is what he thought.