3:12 am

 Sliver-moon off-east

Looking back at under-sun —

Early Monday glance

thank you

Mother Earth

Gave us birth

For what it’s worth

amore e buona fortuna

 just before my mother died

she wrote me a card

it was in my mail drop

when I opened door 

returning from her funeral --

it was mother’s day 1981 

the last words she wrote 

were “Love, and Good Luck”

una teleologia linguistica di una teologia della presenza *

 A linguistic teleology of 

a theology of presence *

God cannot be spoken of as historical actuality --

God is articulated manifestation of immanence

We speak around absence

enunciating conception

God cannot be worded

only felt as that which is

coming to sound, nearing expression

enveloped in silence --

no longer wording God

we become the inarticulate explication of God 

...   ...   ...

cf:

Explication, explication de texte, and literary criticism

The terms explication and explication de texte have different meanings.

As argued by Carnap (1950), in science and philosophy, "explication consists in transforming a given more or less inexact concept into an exact one or, rather, in replacing the first by the second. We call the given concept (or the term used for it) the explicandum, and the exact concept proposed to take the place of the first (or the term proposed for it) the explicatum. The explicandum may belong to everyday language or to a previous stage in the development of scientific language. The explicatum must be given by explicit rules for its use, for example, by a definition which incorporates it into a well-constructed system of scientific either logicomathematical or empirical concepts."

In this context, "explication" is now regarded as "an appropriate methodology for formal philosophy". (Maher, 2007).

By contrast, in literary criticism, the term "explication" is used as a proxy for the term explication de texte (proposed by Gustave Lanson), where additional understandings and meanings are derived from the "close reading" of (say) a poem, novel or play.

In this process, explication often involves a line-by-line or episode-by-episode commentary on what is going on in a text. While initially this might seem reasonably innocuous, explication de texte, and explication per se, is an interpretative process where the resulting new knowledge, new insights or new meanings, are open to subsequent debate and disaffirmation by others.

--wikipedia

mais certainment

 Yes

If you want

To know,

The answer

Is

Yes

ecco dove c’è *

 Here

is what I

want you

to know 

about 

God:

here is 

where 

there is *

what are we with prayer

 At Friday Evening Conversation:

“I don’t believe in God,

         I conceive in God.”

 

We find ourselves asking:

        What is it we are trying

                to bring into being?

God is not-yet here

        prayer opens heart and mind

                to what-is (revealing) God    

كما هو الحال هنا*

  In prison this morning, poem by Naomi Shihab Nye:

Different Ways to Pray

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

There was the method of kneeling,

a fine method, if you lived in a country

where stones were smooth.

The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,   

hidden corners where knee fit rock.

Their prayers were weathered rib bones,

small calcium words uttered in sequence,

as if this shedding of syllables could somehow   

fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long   

they walked like sheep.

Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—

Hear us! We have pain on earth!

We have so much pain there is no place to store it!

But the olives bobbed peacefully

in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.

At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,   

and were happy in spite of the pain,   

because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,

wrapping themselves in new white linen   

to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.   

When they arrived at Mecca   

they would circle the holy places,   

on foot, many times,

they would bend to kiss the earth

and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers

the pilgrimage occurred daily,   

lugging water from the spring

or balancing the baskets of grapes.

These were the ones present at births,

humming quietly to perspiring mothers.

The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,   

forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.

The young ones. The ones who had been to America.   

They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.

      Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.   

They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,

for the twig, the round moon,

to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one

who did none of this,

the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,   

who beat everyone at dominoes,

insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,   

and was famous for his laugh.

Copyright Credit: Naomi Shihab Nye, “Different Ways to Pray” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Our prayer is conversation.

All prayer turns to look at what is there as what is here.*

peepers in the night

 I have forgotten how to pray

Once, once I thought I knew how —

Now, no idea — sheer emptiness

لم يتحقق بعد، لم يتحقق بعد*

 My Muslim

Brother

Asks about

Prayer

I say

Pay no attention to me

Prayer is when

Everything goes away

Except that which is

Still coming to be*

intériorité

 being

a contemplative

conceals

nothing, not a thing

rather

opens without sound

sight

without recognition of

what 

is presenting Itself

within

exterior disappearance

it’s not too late

 Yes it is

sub-terra-fuge

 Uh oh — sun’s up

Better get under covers

Fool cat into thinking

I’m asleep

scilicet

 Sc — Namely —

(Oh, those Latin abbreviations!)

Nonscheduled, non-sc, nonce

several steps from reflective poetry

Mirror image.

At the summit:
One rude hut, the snow,
This lonely body, and the wind,
I lean on the rail, heart suddenly struck;
The moon rises from within Great River -there.

—Yuan Mei (1716-1798)

I can barely climb stairs

Here, one disheveled room, after-rain 

This broken down body

Silent bed, arrhythmia drumroll

Dawn breeze pushes branches on cedar 

          —-wfh (today)

nihil, nulla mens

 I was wondering

about god 

nothing came to mind

non-precatio

 clips of commander-in-chief

at most inarticulate

so sad so embarrassing

if I was a praying man

i'd pray for him

but, no, I don’t think I will

don’t want to encourage

god to do something against god’s 

interest in caring loving justice

and then, suddenly, flowers

 neighbor brings bouquet of flowers

waves from down dooryard, I nod, fairly

undressed, their sweet thoughtful gift 

wed morning gift

no flowers graced the place

 God’s funeral

Was magnificent —

No body showed up

vita errans aeque vacua est

 I am not writing a novel in French.

Nor a play in German

No poem in Spanish

I write some pensées

Some quick kurze beinamen

As well as metáforas rápidas

Insignificant brushstrokes

Things in themselves with

No sustaining narrative to speak of —

Speculative nonsense

General impertinence 

Discarded drivel

I am a child of this administration

Nothing matters but grift and graft

I wander an equally meaningless life

it will come

 When his time comes

Many will shrug shoulders

Say ‘he was crude and vile’

Will go to bed delighted

The blight is over

who indeed

Such an annoying response: 

 46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

(—Matthew12: 46-50)

Still, we think about it. 

the world is through with me

Plotinus (204--270 c.e.) wondered: If God is perfect, how can an imperfect world exist?

(As Genesis and Eden pointed out: Damned if I know!)

Tricky, isn’t it? Trying to figure out what ancient scriptures are saying?

That which is moving through is perfect

That mucked and mired unmoving through is imperfect

Look, I’m not saying anything about good or evil

I’m saying Plotinus wondered... I’m saying I’m wandering...

Through, and through, and through

long-distance call, plotinus

 red dump-truck barrels up barnestown -- 

nothing in it 

sitting in chair by window, watching --

nothing in me

l’anniversaire de la mort de ma mère

 Peepers through night 

Sparrows and red wing blackbirds

Just after sunrise

Cat in window

Cars heading east on road —

This, this, everything to love

soul, one said; it ain’t got any

 In prison this morning 

we spoke about AI, quantum computing 

and consciousness

Excitement and hesitation filled room

How will we know when we don’t 

Know what is good for us

no way of knowing

Sit for a second. Take steps a few inches. Breathe once or twice.

And don’t think you’re anything special.

Of all good works, zazen comes first,

for the merit of only one step into it

surpasses that of erecting a thousand temples.

Even a moment of sitting will enable you

to free yourself from life and death,

and your Buddha nature will appear of itself.

Then all you do, perceive, and think

becomes part of the miraculous Tathagata-suchness.

--Meiho (1277–1350) 

 I have no way of knowing who I am.

Looking out over greening branches and wet road, there is nothing else I want.

Thank you!

(You’re welcome.)

what insentience? -- (無)

 no eyes no ears no nose no mouth

what a silly sutra

no grass no hill no tree no brook

wait a minute --

when each everything is itself

no need to separate into two or many

also no need not to, --- names names 

names --- when I walk, I walk

when I look I look, sitting I sit

who asks silly koan questions?

when I approach the yurt

the yurt approaches me -- 

when brook flows toward Hosmer

Hosmer swims up brook to mountain

nearing death, death nears me

so close to one -- another -- unknowing MU

after merton

 Silly talk

Enlightenment, awakening

Ecstasy

Brrrr . . .

Desire, desire, desire —

Gimme, gimme

Morning rain

Wet road

Puddles by wood gate

Ghost of Thomas Merton

Wanders aimlessly —

Not caring how he died

For a split second there is

No first — then

Yes, yes — no me, (he whispers)

qui sumus

 We are not

What anyone says we are

We are as

We find ourselves to be

in the endless

 Wandering into St Francis Church 

in Manhattan in 1962

Behind veil of confessional 

I told the friar I felt I was resisting a vocation 

to be a Franciscan.

The presumptive hubris of an eighteen year old just elevated from mailroom to actuarial trainee at New York Life Insurance Company after being told by academic dean to take some time away from freshman year in college to decide if I was serious about attending college studies.

Sixty four years later, sitting in wohnküche, reading Beneath the Mask of Holiness, by Mark Shaw about Thomas Merton’s relationship with a young nurse and its historical surround, I feel unusually confessional, à la Kerouac or Lowell, a ruse unsubstantiated by any sustained sincerity going forward, where I’d be more Robert Lax than Thomas Merton, vaguely avant-garde versus conventionally essayist, and, in actuality, neither.

Ain’t that the joy of literature!

At Friday Evening Conversation, the question was asked about our favorite book. Instantly I allowed as how my favorite book (surprisingly) was Los cipreses creen en Dios (1953) about the Spanish Civil War.

José María Gironella (born December 31, 1917, Darníus, Gerona, Spain—died January 3, 2003, Arenys de Mar) was a Spanish author best remembered for his long historical novel Los cipreses creen en Dios (1953; The Cypresses Believe in God), in which the conflicts within a family portrayed in the novel symbolize the dissension that overtook the people of Spain during the years preceding the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. The book, which won the National Prize for Literature, was the first explanation of the origins of that war that was well received by the Spaniards themselves.   

cf. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jose-Maria-Gironella

Also, cf https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-08/fight-kill-die 

As I recall from my reading of it some sixty years ago, it was the final page, final paragraph, final line that embedded itself into my emotional luggage that carried it to mind in the conversation. 

I’m not fond of ‘favorites’ questions. Our plucking memories are too weak-fingered to sustain such retrieval and assessment. But I remember Gironella and my Franciscan mate Gilberto recommending it to me between assassinations in the sixties.

While at it, read the Robert Lax poem Kalymnos: November 29, 1968  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58583/kalymnos-november-29-1968

It ends like this:

    11

in the

endless

city

the end-

less city

the beg-

gars are

in one

place

the cops

in an-

other

the fine

people

here

& the

poor

people

there

(each has

his parish

each his

precinct)

in the endless

endless

endless

city

 

Copyright Credit: This poem appears courtesy of the Robert Lax Literary Trust, the Robert Lax Archives at St. Bonaventure University, and Paul Spaeth, archivist.

Source: Poetry (December 2015)

Robert Lax

1915—2000