something in the air

 And you know that it’s right

of course we do

And you know that it’s right

of course we will

get it together

sooner or later

because the revolution’s here

now

one thing done, poet said, the rest follows

 Up east

Sliver of blue

Faint

Silhouettes trees

Night is being

Pushed aside

And where being

Stood, a child’s eyes

The world, they say,

Will break your heart—

I am ready, there are

Broken pieces on ground

peccatum mundi

 Mary?

     What?

Is your son at home?

     My son is dead.

Oh!

     But thanks for thinking of him.

[silence]

I’m sorry.

     Me too.

—fin—

pardonnez-moi

 I regret

Not seeing

What is

Here

In front

Of me

the infinite plenitude of being

Looking into Jacques Maritain, (1882–1973), French philosopher and political thinker.

What is "unknown in itself and activating all beings”?

Maritain suggests "another Whole […] another Being, transcendent and self-sufficient.”

Lotsa snow today, and more and more that I don’t know, and so, and so, let’s think. 

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes:

There is, Maritain writes, an intuition that is awakened in persons when they are engaged in thought—that is, that it seems impossible that they, as thinking beings, should at some time have not been. As a thinking being, one seems to be free from the vicissitudes of time and space; there is no coming to be or ceasing to be—I cannot think what it is not to be. Nevertheless, we all know very well that we were born—we came into existence. We are confronted, then, with a contradiction—not a logical contradiction, but a lived contradiction. The only solution to this is that one has always existed, but not through oneself, but within “a Being of transcendent personality” and from whom “the self which is thinking now proceeded into temporal existence” (Approches de Dieu, in Oeuvres complètes, Vol. X, p. 64 [Engl. tr., pp. 71–72]). This being 

must contain all things in itself in an eminent mode and be itself—in an absolutely transcendent way—being, thought and personality. This implies that the first existence is the infinite plenitude of being, separate by essence from all diversity of existents. (ibid., p. 66 [Engl. tr., p. 74])

Maritain also acknowledges the possibility of a natural, pre-philosophical, but still rational knowledge of God (see Approches de Dieu, pp. 13–22). This is, Maritain claims, a ‘knowledge’ that is necessary to—and, in fact leads to—a philosophical demonstration of God’s existence. (In this way, then, one can know that some religious beliefs are true, even without being able to demonstrate them.) Maritain’s argument, which resembles the Thomistic argument from contingent being, is that, in one’s intuition of being, one is aware, first, of a reality separate from oneself; second, of oneself as finite and limited; and, third, of the necessity that there is something “completely free from nothingness and death” (ibid., p. 15 [Engl. tr., p. 19]). This is concurrent with a “spontaneous reasoning” that follows the same course to the conclusion that there is 

another Whole […] another Being, transcendent and self-sufficient and unknown in itself and activating all beings […] that is, self-subsisting Being, Being existing through itself. (ibid., p. 16 [Engl. tr., p. 20])

This knowledge of God, Maritain admits, is not demonstrative but is, nevertheless, “rich in certitude” (ibid., p. 19 [Engl. tr., p. 23]) and is both presupposed by, and is the underlying force for, philosophical demonstrations of God’s existence.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maritain/#NatuTheoPhilReli 

The thing about thinking about God is that there’s no end to it. And, if I read things correctly, no beginning. And thinking, not just the rational-logical type of thinking, but the building-dwelling thinking transports the thinker places that cannot be described in familiar designation or composition.

I watch the film “Lions for Lambs (2007). AI sums up the experience:

"Lions for lambs" means brave, strong individuals (lions) are misguided or sacrificed by weak, incompetent, or self-interested leaders (lambs), often referring to soldiers sent to war by politicians, a concept popularized by the Robert Redford film. It highlights the tragic irony where courage meets foolish strategy, or where the powerful exploit the earnest, though the phrase also carries biblical undertones of peace (the lion and lamb together) and contrasting spiritual strength and sacrifice. 

It's a slant jeremiad, for which patience is required, still rings true twenty years later, through the acting and direction of Robert Redford and the way Meryl Streep is able to look from side to side so authentically.

We are beyond curious about what we cannot see. For example, our not being able to discern when we are being used and abused by self-obsessed narcissists whose only interest is self-interest. Or the sei pazzo characters of the White House cabinet whose primary task is to praise and fawn over the debilitated chief whose ring and rear they pathetically kiss.

Maritain would prefer we talk about God. I would too. But we're in a different crisis than a theological one. A pickpocket is not only taking our money, he's taking our neighbors. He kidnaps them. He executes them. He shunts off neighboring countries. He alienates foreign allies. We see this. We know this. But... we're uncertain what to do or how to do what we don't know.

It's always been that way with God.

Now we have a president who thinks he is God.

He's not. He's delusional. But our sanity is tested.

I do not feel "rich in certitude."

But I am curious.

A bit disconcerted, but curious.

I think we are seeing through God, and God is seeing through us.

But we do not seem to have the language to satisfy our curiosity.

Perhaps "God's existence" is an outdated concept.

Maybe "God's insistence" comes closer. One thinker talks about "explicitness"

CIRCLING AROUND EXPLICITNESS: Adventures in the 'thatosphere'. Season 2, Ep. 24, Tuesday, October 7, 2025.   In this conversation philospher Raymond Tallis talks about his new book 'Circling Around Explicitness: The heart of human being'. Ray's book opens with a quote from German philosopher Friedrich Schelling ‘Uniquely within us nature opens her eyes and sees that she exists.’ What follows is an exploration of the meaning of 'thatness', his attempt to, in his words, 'eff the uneffed'. Our circling alights on a number of thinkers who he believes oversimplify misrepresent being, how 'the blob and the brain' become 'the bloke' . Donald Hoffman, Phillip K. Dick and Martin Buber get a mention, not all favourable, as does the 'autocidal tendency in contemproary philosophy', as we work through the four section of his book. To close he reads the closing paragraphs and gives us a peek at what is coming next. 

Worth the labor. 

To open our eyes.

no trace

We live in meetingbrook Dogen and Francis hermitage.

Today.

We meditate on this quote:

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.” 

—Dogen Zenji, born today in 1200AD. 

la confession est bonne pour l'âme, et le sol

 Homeland (so-called) Security 

Is lying, bold-faced bald-faced

About the murders they are committing

We are the patsies, we are the guilty

Accused of truth and justice, rabid

Desire to see things as they are

Thus, dangerous, a threat to gaslighting

Government. I am guilty, yes, take me

Shoot me again, I confess, bury me

pardonnez-nous, nous ne savons rien

 I hear it snows

I can’t tell

There’s too much white

If you want 

To know what justice is

Keep away from us

nothing appears to be as it is

 I came across God 

In an empty room

Neither of us were there

I heard God ask, “Anybody

Here?” No response. I guess

I wasn’t. Nor was God.

Funny, when you think about it.

I guess I was mistaken. It wasn’t

God. Nor was it me. Nor you, reading this.

ma vie absurde

 The Norwegian philosopher writes about the burden of consciousness, how, like when the Irish Elk’s antlers eight thousand years ago grew too large for its ability to survive.

Our ideologies wear us down.

When a different ideology battles one we’ve grown accustomed to, we bridle and buck and run headlong into dense forest growth, unable to extricate.

And here we are.

White nationalism, racism, oligarchy, and authoritarian rule bellow and stomp and crush the ideology of democracy, its weak proponents, its soft adherents.

I’m going to head up the mountain. Find an old shelter. Spend a night or two looking out over the ocean. Then succumb to the frozen smirks and scowls, grins and growls of a new species of predator animals populating the flatland below with their wealth and munitions.

 Jean Anouilh was right:

KING. But you must be logical, Becket!

BECKET. No. That isn't necessary, my Liege. We must only do—absurdly—what we have been given to do—right to the end.

 http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/becket-anouilh.html

pressure at the core is over 3 million times that of the surface

 From where I stand

Four thousand miles

To center of earth

It will take a strong

Shovel to get me there,

Maybe a pick axe

When I get there, they say

I will be consumed by fire

Iron and nickel, 9,752o F

Not much remaining

For return trip, scorching

Obliviation at center 

I’m thinking I’ll remain

On the surface of things

For now, as it is, as I am

With less pressure, although

Remaining unable to arrive

At core of things, befuddled

de tout

 God rests on the Sabbath

(Saturday? Sunday?) choose

Stipulate ‘rest’

Stipulate ‘God’

Goes off-duty

Sits with coffee

Maybe bagel

Or croissant

Definitely coffee

Some chocolate,

Cinnamon, ok

‘Sits’ —a euphemism

But, there

Attending, not working.

(Where was I?)

Ok, there, (da-gott)

Sees Alex Pretti help

Woman shoved to ground

Thinks ‘what a nice man!’

Dunks bagel, picks up novel

Misses seeing the shots fired

Wonders, senses, sips coffee, 

Thinks about the world

Frowns, thinks again, sighs

On earth, America, Minneapolis

Deep freezing injustice and sorrow

Resounding through mythic realms

Disturbing rest of God, wondering

What has happened, puts novel down

Asks passing angel for any news

Angel only shakes head, ‘you dont

want to know’ goes off —

God, instinctively knows something

Is wrong, summons satan, asks,

Satan says one of his crew murdered

A nurse who was helping a woman —

‘No’ says God, ‘that nice man?’ 

Satan reluctantly confirms. And there 

They remained. And wept, holding

One another. Coffee, bagel forgotten.

Everyone nearby giving them space.

It was a bad day. It was a bad day.

God and Satan looked out over Cosmos

Wondering if anyone knew, whether

Anyone cared, whether anyone understood

Anything

Anything

At all

At 

All

wir sind nicht das was wahr ist

 If we tell the truth

Truth will tell us

What we are

If we lie

Lies will tell us

What we are not

Pity ICE, CBP, and DHS

They tell us what

We are not, we are not

perversion has its day, and its perverted provocateur

There is no place to go, it seems

But straight up get your guns

Fight it out on the streets

It’s what the administration wants

Probably what they’ll get

Sorrow and more sorrow

Unless congress takes him down

The perpetrator, the oblique criminal

Gone beyond all law and decency

If I prayed, I’d pray for innocent

Compassion and loving fortitude

To end the cruelty to end the slaughter

froid et troublant, source de colère et de tristesse

 I am troubled

They shoot 

our neighbors

It is cold

Very cold

And troubling

boop boop di do

Woman and dog walk at 2 degrees Saturday morning.

sound of all

 Can you hear me now?

The body does not know how to discourse or to listen to a discourse. 

This which is unmistakably perceivable right where you are, absolutely identifiable yet without form, this is what listens to the discourse.

Rinzai (d.867)

(Silly!)

It's only “now” that can hear anything. 

Because it is only now that sounds itself across the dooryard.

If I am not here/now I can’t hear nothing.

And, let’s face it, nothing is the simplest, sweetest sound of all.

fawning, until every follower’s dignity is shorn away

Some words that caught my attention:

Tacitus was especially good at describing the effect the tyrant has on the people around him. When the tyrant first takes power, there is a “rush into servitude” as great swarms of sycophants suck up to the great man. The flattery must forever escalate and grow more fawning, until every follower’s dignity is shorn away. Then comes what you might call the disappearance of the good, as morally healthy people lie low in order to survive. Meanwhile, the whole society tends to be anesthetized. The relentless flow of appalling events eventually overloads the nervous system; the rising tide of brutality, which once seemed shocking, comes to seem unremarkable.

As the disease of tyranny progresses, citizens may eventually lose the habits of democracy — the art of persuasion and compromise, interpersonal trust, an intolerance for corruption, the spirit of freedom, the ethic of moderation. “It is easier to crush men’s spirits and their enthusiasm than to revive them,” Tacitus wrote. “Indeed, there comes over us an attachment to the very enforced inactivity, and the idleness hated at first is finally loved.”

(--

῏῏OPINION,

DAVID BROOKS, The Coming Trump Crackup, Jan. 23, 2026, Nytimes)

last bill and tasty mint

 Reading about hunter s thompson, I feel obliged to clarify my state of mind:

I will not commit suicide.

If I am found dead it will have been a murder by God, some librarian, or being mistaken by ICE for an immigrant at corner bodega buying cigarettes.

All three suspects should be investigated. Especially God and ICE both of whom know no limit or constraint.

Please bury my body on the grounds of mar-a-lago. I want to be near the embalmed bronzed body of  the savior of the known universe who has sacrificed everything to sever [sic] us.

he came from the wrong county of ny

 Criminals are criminals

To lesser of larger degree

I visit as volunteer

In prison with criminals

I’d visit with trump

When he’s imprisoned

Hell, a kid from Brooklyn

Can put up with a kid from Queens 

history

 Time will come

We’ll look back

And say:

What fools they were

To have that man

As president!

Shake their heads

Begin to forget him

As the embarrassment 

He was

quickly, now, adumbrate

 When I

Die

Nothing 

Continues

Apace

only that and light was all it needed

 In prison this morning, Ernest Hemingway’s story “A Clean Well Lighted Place” took us into why we even bother being patient with another.

And, nothing.

Once thought of as possibly disrespectful of two known prayers, now experienced as new prayers identifying the core of existential longing, to be here, to be now, creating what is coming to be.

    "You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted.  

The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."

    "Good night," said the younger waiter.

    "Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

    "What's yours?" asked the barman.

    "Nada."

    "Otro loco mas," said the barman and turned away.

https://yale.learningu.org/download/51358dbc-0c73-4e33-8cfb-967c55a621f5/H2976_Hemingway_A%20Clean%20Well%20Lighted%20Place.pdf 

We wondered about what it meant to call into existence. Whether a phone call. Or the indecipherable Big Bang. 

We wondered about the Inca in Utah, Spaniards in Peru, memorization in the sciences, logic and calculation, and what ‘nothing' has to do with God.

The older waiter smiled.

The barman called him loco.

So much comes to nothing, so much comes from nothing.

Still, he smiled.

ergo

 Jack Smith tells the truth.

Donald Trump tells lies.

Any questions?

soporifique

 Watching Smith hearing. 

It’s surprising that theatrical posing allows anything of substance to occur.

No wonder so many are jaded.

I concede.

This brand of politics is numbing.

les soins palliatifs, c'est apprendre à accepter

 I’d sat with the dying

For decades

A hospice volunteer

Been humbled

At lives going elsewhere

Remaining with bodies

One day I stopped,

Practicing odd prerogative

To attend within silent distance

As a buddhist/christian meditator

And contemplative I am always with

Each brother and sister, within each being

But I’d return, to outer, if asked

To sit with dying president

On his way elsewhere

Trusting

It would be good

For both of us

dasein

 Snow plow goes up hill

Yes

Deer trips light outside barn

Yes

Realms away in dream brought back

Yes

I understand nothing about being-here

No

Snow plow comes back down hill

Yes

As a buddhist christian silence is holy

Yes

un fléau pour un patron

embarrassment 

doesnt even come close

more — horrified sadness

at such a man

then what’s left

 I like that Schweitzer concludes that the Jesus of history is unknowable.

While he was studying medicine, Schweitzer’s book The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906) was published. In it he rejected the contemporary views on Jesus – both the conservative approach, and the liberal approach that tended to remould Jesus in its own image. In the book he concluded that the Jesus of history is unknowable, and it’s only by accepting the spirit of Jesus that we can begin to see him. This is not knowable through doctrine but only through ethical action based on a reverence for life. It’s not a love of belief nor a love of self, but a love based on respect for life. For Schweitzer this was the true message of the gospel.

Schweitzer concludes his Quest with this eloquent statement:

“He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words: ‘Follow thou me’, and sets us to the task he has to fulfil for our time. He commands – and to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings, which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn, in their own experience, who he is.” (pp.127)

 https://philosophynow.org/issues/171/Albert_Schweitzer_1875-1965         

Many say they feel him. Hard to argue another’s experience.

I don’t think I have anything to say about this.

Except --

A New Hampshire Episcopal bishop's stark warning to his clergy is resonating across the nation, drawing fervent praise from some and rebukes from others.

Bishop Rob Hirschfeld was one of several community and faith leaders gathered in Concord, N.H., for a vigil for Renee Macklin Good just days after she was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. 

Hirschfeld called out the "cruelty, the injustice and the horror … unleashed in Minneapolis," and warned his clergy to prepare for "a new era of martyrdom." 

"I've asked them to get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written," he said, "because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable."

Hirschfeld's comments quickly went viral.

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5678579/ice-clashes-new-hampshire-bishop-urges-clergy-prepare-wills 

Is the experience of Jesus one that puts our lives in jeopardy? Are the things of God things that put us in harm's way? Helping the poor? Protecting the immigrant? Attending the sick, the imprisoned, the victims of greed and cruelty?

 If so, then Jesus is an annoying experience.

One that we can do without.

(There you are, I’ve got you covered. You don’t need Jesus.) Right?

Right?

Right?

on the other hand

 Two months 

Until Spring —

Can you imagine

using obviate in a long sentence

 I stay in my room

I do not go out

Am I afraid?

Will I be taken?

Back then

Immigrants from Ireland 

Into the streets of Brooklyn

The schools on corners

Perhaps my great grandfather

Filed wrong form, fudged a fact

Immigration control has found out

Are looking for me, drive passed

Want bonus for each capture, drag

Out of car, pull from living room

Tell me only the pure belong

Only genetic purity is wanted

Decommission human compassion

The Jews will not replace them

I am Somalian, I am Venezuelan, 

I am Cuban, Salvadoran, Colombian

I am Arab, I am Danish, Greenlandian, 

I speak Spanish, speak Norwegian, French

I am now an enemy of the state

A traitor to their race, a piece of garbage

So I stay hidden, tucked away, unclean

While the new masters spew their rhetoric

Load their guns, kneel on necks

Drag us on the streets, punch faces

No one asks where is God, no prayers 

are heard, no churches, no gospel

No children playing in schoolyard or park

Only this, only this — some white men

Believe they own everything, count

Their money, are paid tribute, steal fortunes

And no one, no one can stop their absolute 

hubris, megalomania, superiority, excellence

So…we hide

Waiting fate

Wondering how 

One country’s suicide

Would obviate

Everything

Until

It becomes

Nothing

la peur est un fou dangereux

 It becomes frightening.

The chaotic threats

The frightened people

Frightened legislators

Frightened Supreme Court

Frightened criminals

Frightened pastors and priests

It is frightening

Now then —

Aside from fear

Can we talk about

(I’m sorry)

Can we talk about 

How decency has died

(I’m sorry)

How we now have to live

In his indecent world,

Again, there’s no antidote

No cute political banter

No facile name calling

A turning point

Dancing cacophony 

to my representatives and senators

 Forced myself to watch 45 minutes of trump at White House podium.

It is, in my estimation, a criminal dereliction of cabinet and congressional responsibility to allow this man to continue in office.

Unless, of course, the goal is the destruction of the US government as exemplified these 250 years.

And if such is the goal, I say — well done, and well played, you are overlooking and overseeing the end of the American experiment of democracy.

Now, then, tell me what’s next.

Shall I write my last will and testament? Leave the country?

Or should I buy a gun and cans of provisions for a long siege?

Thanks for your counsel.

sgìth

I used to think I was a pacifist. 

“True pacifism,” or “nonviolent resistance,” is “a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.” (--Martin Luther King)

 I'll have to ponder this.

These days it seems that the courage required exceeds my ability to see through the fog of evil to the light of love.

This realization leaves me bereft. 

oración haiku

 Creating 

Wholeness

Gracious

One

We long to

Become

Your

Face

True

Here

αυτό που είναι, που έρχεται να γίνει

 Creating

One

Heaven

Itself

Your name

Is beyond us

May your 

Reality

Be our

Reality

(As it is)

As it must be

Today, move through

Us, be each beginning

(Even though we forget 

Causing others to forget)

Merciful compassion

Assisting us

To walk 

In peace, svāhā!

έτσι είναι, έτσι θα είναι

 Mothering 

Grace

That which is

Within wholeness

So that wholeness 

Comes through you

As true

Blessings do

You are the prayer

Of grace-filled

Wholeness for those

Of us not yet so

Let it be so — now

And at the hour

We give up our

Illusion of separateness 

Undergoing yes, your yes,

Our completing yes — svāhā!

anything else

 No reason

To love

Only reason

Is love

Anything else —

No, 

nothing 

else

ana-agoraphobia

(again — no easy 

way to escape) 

Ah, nightfall

Hiddenness

If you love me

Keep your

Commandments

I will follow

Your love

No compulsion

No competition 

Just what is true

From which 

There is

No easy way

To escape

worlds percieved -- that which is passing through, that which is passing by

Where have all the religious people gone?

•  “I just want to do God’s will.” (--Martin Luther King, 3april1968)
• 4april1968, Shot dead.
• 19jan2026, Wondering about the correlation of God’s will and the racist cruelty of pernicious personnel calling themselves 'leaders.'

Once christians were christians. 

Now the only christians whose voices and authoritarian pronouncements seem to be heard are white christian nationalists, and those whose designs collate with those voices.

And yet --

God is unknowable

The Trinity is incomprehensible.

Jesus is marvelously, badly, represented by his followers.

The Holy Spirit is beyond articulation or representation.

What we call ”The Christ” is the deepest longing of creation and the human heart for justice, compassion, service, peace and beneficent love. 

“Christ” is yet to appear for the vast majority of us.

Christianity, in its essential nature, thus, is mostly mute and moribund. What we hear are archive recordings of once vital proclamation. A nostalgia of oratory.

There is no creating a new religion. We've given things over to exegetes and historians to re-dredge our absurd arguments over who owns Jesus, who controls God, who is worthy to be saved, or, at least, have their name on the congregant registry.

We are sociologists scanning humankind's conceptualization in language of its religious sectarian and denomination variety, the parsing of subtile belief preferences, the registering and codifying of domicile congregations and fundraising letters.

We are left with fundraising appeals from our new political religions -- the republicans, the democrats, and the heretic independents.

What else is there?

Perhaps the return to the originating energy sourcing.

What is the originating energy of that which astounded us before we came to word trying to describe it?

Listen carefully

Fall into silence.

Look carefully.

See through everything.

Stop trying to nail your suspicions to the wall. 

That which you are seeing through, that passing breath, that sound gone by, that uncomprehended image faded away -- that is your very being, surrounding and surrounded by being-itself.

Umwelt. 

            Umwelt | ˈǒǒmvelt | 

noun (plural Umwelten) 

(in ethology) the world as it is experienced by a particular organism: the worlds they perceive, their Umwelten, are all different. 

origin 

German, literally ‘environment’.

The surround.

Seen through . . . seeing through.

This is what we are.

This is what is God.

What an experience to have faith in!

That is, if anyone remains willing to have faith in what-is-most-intimate. 

for martin and renee, prière du lundi matin

 Call me

Old-fashioned 

But I still hate

That a good man

And woman

Were assassinated

By stupidity and

Arrogance (the

Hidden rulers

Calling shots)

Rather,

(If you now dwell

Elsewhere),

Forgive our hatred

With

Your love

a pornography of perverse portraiture

Pernicious

Precedent 

President

Chooses

Himself

Over country

Persistently

We are poorer

A too-patient

Populace

Broken

By this perversion

Looking only

Up at his face

Lusting 

Paid-off

Pinning down

Decency

lullaby

 Snowplow

Passes

Again

Maine

January

Night

Empty

Once again

Quiet

huis clos

And then one day

He closed his door

Going silent

It was hard to know

What broke, but there

Were pieces on the floor

creator, creating, creation

 If you pray,

maybe this --

That which is

coming to be

our life our love

our hope

we are here

for you to be here

amid all who

are absent

refresh us with

presence, 

we are

here, we are

here

γνώρισε τον εαυτό σου, οι θεοί το κάνουν

 Socrates did not believe in the Athenian gods.

for that he was hounded and scorned by the Athenian gods’ believers.

Twenty five centuries later, those who believe in the American gods

Hound and scorn those who don’t believe in the American gods.

Socrates was condemned to death, he chose to drink hemlock,

My guess is he didn’t have a handgun to shoot himself in the head

 

The American gods are a jealous bunch of gods, but, oddly, generous —

They have guns and will happily shoot you, saving you the trouble

The chief god smiles, says you were stupid not to believe, gathers prizes

We're lucky to have such a god, not having to think anymore, we’re free

a special skill

 It looks easy

On television movies

Pulling the trigger

Killing someone

I don’t know what

I’d do in such life or

Death situation

Pulling the trigger

It is a big ask

Stopping someone from

Killing you by

Killing them

We ask people to do it

For us — soldiers, police

Ice goons —I might not be

Able to shoot a woman 

in the face

Because she told me

She wasn’t scared

Or didn’t blame me

a ban against it

 Light snow still falling Saturday afternoon.

Yesterday in prison we spoke of perspective, of seeing through, of seeing through space, of seeing through inner space and outer space. We are that which is seeing through.

We name this seeing through many things -- perception, awareness, consciousness.

"Consciousness," argues psychologist George A. Miller, "is a word worn smooth by a million tongues . . . Maybe we should ban the word for a decade or two until we can develop more precise terms for the several uses which 'consciousness' now obscures.1

He is of course right, but the solution he suggests is impractical. When one thinks about it there are few key words in our vocabulary that do not share the same polysemy. Should we also dispose of "life," "existence,” "time," "love," "humor," or "holiness"? They all invite idiosyncratic interpretations, even by professional users of these terms. Consequently they all are surrounded by a haze of ambivalence.

But ambivalence is not necessarily a drawback in human communication, because speech is only part of our total language system. And the inbuilt flexibility of words like "life," "love," and "existence" can even be advantageous. What is more, unless our emotional nature is stultified by an inflated rational pose, we can always empathize and reach out into the psyche of others and resonate with their feeling state or intended communication. Thus we may quibble about the definition of the word "love," but unless we are particularly callous or intransigent we know very well what it is to love. We also have a sense of what is means to be alive or to exist, notwithstanding the sophisticated word-splitting of philosophers.

I propose that the concept of "consciousness" falls in to the same category. We all intuit what it stands for, though our descriptions may not always match in every detail. Miller agrees: he writes: "Despite all its faults, however, the term would be sorely missed; it refers to something immediately obvious and familiar to anyone capable of understanding a ban against it."[2]

(--beginning of paper, On the Nature of Consciousness and Reality, An Overview of Jean Gebser's Thoughts on Consciousness, by Georg Feuerstein, Journal of Conscious Evolution, Volume 1 Issue 01/2005 , 

Perhaps we might do away with the word ‘perspective.' Settle on ’seeing through.’ 

We are that which is seeing through. No longer ask ‘who’ is seeing through. No association with a discrete person exercising perspective with perception.

We might find ourselves asking: What is that which is seeing through?

And here begins, again and incohately, the investigation of insight.

Perhaps we have become too enthralled with terms like consciousness, life, love, existence. We argue and dissect them, fancify and elaborate, complicate and obscure.

But when you ask me: What is that which is seeing through? -- you have my attention, and my ignorance.

Is that what Zen is asking?

Why we get all confused and pseudo clever in our responses?

Why we’re told to get back on our cushion, to look and breathe?

I don’t know.

The answer might be immediately obvious -- but I’ve always been blind, and now I am going blind.

Which might just be a blessing.

(With gratitude to the conversationalists on Friday morning in prison.)

window

 Light snow

Cat watches

Buddha sits

Empty cross

Dog snorts

Truck passes

All’s well

Within itself

the banality of great-full bullying

I read the two volumes of her “Life of the Mind” in my winter rental off the sands of old orchard beach in 1981.  

Here is Arendt on totalitarianism.             https://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/download/101/168

This morning I am reminded of Arendt’s take on politics vis a vis America’s slide into fascism:

Many readers were shocked by The Origins of Totalitarianism – not so much by its relentless account of insane cruelties, as by its occasional flashes of outlandish good cheer. At a time of deepening disillusionment about the public world, when many of Arendt’s contemporaries were turning towards the pleasures of cookery, religion, scholarship, children, art or psychoanalysis, Arendt insisted that however badly things were going, politics could always save us. She drew inspiration from the Nuremberg trials and the new-minted concept of ‘crimes against humanity’, and from the foundation of the United Nations, and looked forward with extraordinary confidence to some sort of global political renaissance.  

Arendt had a distinctly high-minded conception of politics, seeing it not as the bureaucratic administration of collective concerns, or a burdensome public duty, still less as a self-interested continuation of warfare by other means. Politics for her was a precious cultural achievement rather than a regrettable social necessity, and it involved the careful maintenance of institutions that enable people to converse freely and respectfully about the world as they see it and as they would like it to be. It was essentially concerned with problems of a kind that will never have perfect solutions, and which therefore require improvisation, invention, and endless critical discussion. Politics required us to set aside all sentiments of pride, indignation, shame or resentment, as well as any pretensions to superior expertise, in order to become responsive, intelligent citizens, willing to negotiate all our differences on a basis of complete equality.8 Politics, in short, was the opposite of totalitarianism, and it depended on an open-hearted love for ‘human plurality’9 – for people not in the mass or in the abstract, but in the distinctness and idiosyncrasy of their lives and the infinite variety of their perceptions. It was more like a serene philosophical seminar than a self-interested struggle for power, and it was not so much a means to human happiness as the pith and substance of it. 

https://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/download/101/168

Perhaps our cheerful slide into fascism will be a distinctively American variety of indomitable obliviousness.

reminder

 To the people of the United States

Do not allow

Racist and corrupt people to

Rob you of your beauty

Call them their true names

Ugly, and cruel, unkind, and hateful

They are not America

They are the perversion of our identity

Be nice

Dissolve ice

Remove maga

Return to your true saga

its only words, but words are all we have

 The lad in the novel

Where a woman went lost 

Hiking the AT ended up at

Dorethea Dix in Bangor

I’d visited there

There’s a mental illness

Thinking that the government

Is spying on you, is going to

Hurt you, hyper juiced and wary

I’ve looked at the brochure

The warden’s service, hiking clubs

Comb Maine woods

The thick growth hides and shelters

All visitors to the mind’s hospital —

Thank you for visiting

we read charles olson in prison friday morning

 LOVE

 

(down 

to my soul:

 

                         assume your nature as yourself 

                         for the love of God

 

                                                             not even good enough

    

 Stories 

                 only

                            the possibility

                                                             of discrete  

                                                                                   men 

 

There is no intelligence 

the equal of
the situation

 

There are only

                                  two ways:

                                  create the situation

 

                                                                     (and this is love)

 

                                  or avoid it.

                                                         This also can be

Love.

                                                                                                                    (Poem by Charles Olson)