windowing

Brass Buddha statue

Sits on Apple box

This rainy afternoon

ag siúl gan ceann scríbe*

            (*Gaelic: walking without a destination)

 If I had my druthers

I’d live in Canada

Nova Scotia, Cape Breton

A side street

In Baddeck 

Up from Bras d’Or

Sausage and eggs

Coffee at café

Jetty leading nowhere

As James Joyce wrote

About a pier being 

A disappointed bridge

umwelt

 Contemplation is

Omnidirectional attention

The heart longs

For itself

The mind is still

Within itself

An expanse of 

Intimacy

Like birdcall 

Through drizzle fog

direction

 Prayer

is turning 

mind and

heart

(in)to

God

free, free, and empty

 Try not to be annoyed, frustrated, or worried.

In the Ch’an perspective 

 

Wisdom is a state 

 

That is free from attachments, 

 

Free from measurement, 

 

Free from self-reference 

 

And empty of vexation.

--Sheng Yen (1931-2009)

Everything that happens out here is chimera.

All is an impossible, wild, or unattainable dream, fantasy, or illusion. 

I know this is so because it is the way things are and the way I am.

There’s no one to blame.

No one to hate.

No one to say “He did it.”

Were we wise we would see this as it is.

Then we’d be able to decide how we’d want to be in the midst of how things are.

Yes, yes, and yes!

repeat, repeat; revise, revise

What she wanted. What he got. 

“When you write my epitaph, you must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived.” (Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell)

He didn’t get to write it. After he died in 1977, she wrote this elegy for him:

        North Haven

                              In Memoriam: Robert Lowell

I can make out the rigging of a schooner

a mile off; I can count

the new cones on the spruce. It is so still

the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky

no clouds except for one long, carded horse¹s tail.

The islands haven't shifted since last summer,

even if I like to pretend they have—

drifting, in a dreamy sort of way,

a little north, a little south, or sidewise—

and that they¹re free within the blue frontiers of bay.

This month our favorite one is full of flowers:

buttercups, red clover, purple vetch,

hackweed still burning, daisies pied, eyebright,

the fragrant bedstraw's incandescent stars,

and more, returned, to paint the meadows with delight.

The goldfinches are back, or others like them,

and the white-throated sparrow's five-note song,

pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.

Nature repeats herself, or almost does:

repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.

Years ago, you told me it was here

(in 1932?) you first "discovered girls"

and learned to sail, and learned to kiss.

You had "such fun," you said, that classic summer.

("Fun"—it always seemed to leave you at a loss…)

You left North Haven, anchored in its rock,

afloat in mystic blue…And now—you've left

for good. You can't derange, or rearrange,

your poems again. (But the sparrows can their song.)

The words won't change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.

(--Poem, North Haven, by Elizabeth Bishop)

Friendships, like words, find their own particular expression. 

chit-chat

 I don’t know what you mean

     I’m saying it feels like 

     deflation, everything going away

What does that mean

     It means I’m losing it

What do you want me to do

     Nothing, I’m just saying

Ok, you said it; now what

     There’s another cup of coffee

     in the pot. It’s yours

Lord help us

     Nah, don’t go there

road walking with camus

some cars cut it close

not concerned the road walker

might step out into their right

fender, to them we are not suicidal

they don’t want to be bothered

to ease over toward center lines

only the suicidal consider stepping

into speeding fender, that’s not me  

the thought never occurs, not at all,

not even once, not less than once, never

the greater the loss

 For me, it is inactivity. 

Too much knowledge leads to overactivity;

Better to calm the mind.

The more you consider, the greater the loss;

Better to unify the mind.

Water dripping ceaselessly

Will fill the four seas.

Specks of dust not wiped away

Will become the five mountains.

—Wang Ming (6th c.)

Drips and dust cover the earth.

Cover me.

These days 

non est in te

 At Tuesday evening conversation, a 4th century hymn:

Tota pulchra es, Maria Thou Art All Fair, O Mary

V. Tota pulchra es, Maria. R. Tota pulchra es, Maria. V. Thou art all fair, O Mary. R. Thou art all fair, O Mary. V. Et macula originalis non est in te. R. Et macula originalis non est in te. V. And the original stain is not in thee. R. And the original stain is not in thee. V. Tu gloria Ierusalem. R. Tu laetitia Israel. V. Thou art the glory of Jerusalem. R. Thou, the joy of Israel. V. Tu honorificentia populi nostri. R. Tu advocata peccatorum. V. Thou art the honor of our people. R. Thou art the advocate of sinners. V. O Maria. R. O Maria. V. O Mary. R. O Mary. V. Virgo prudentissima. R. Mater clementissima. V. Virgin most prudent. R. Mother most tender. V. Ora pro nobis. R. Intercede pro nobis ad Dominum Iesum Christum. V. Pray for us, R. Intercede for us with Jesus Christ our Lord . V. In conceptione tua, Immaculata fuisti. R. Ora pro nobis Patrem cuius Filium peperisti. V. In thy conception, Holy Virgin, thou wast immaculate. R. Pray for us to the Father, Whose Son thou didst bring forth. V. Domina, protege orationem meam. R. Et clamor meus ad te veniat. V. O Lady! aid my prayer, R. And let my cry come unto thee. https://youtu.be/6uY_WV__JP0?si=cLg8ZYFxVFsLTz5u

https://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/BVM/TotaPulchra.html

destroying decency

 Heather Cox Richardson

From Lincoln to Trump

History as revelatory clarification of what we are dealing with.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/april-15-2026-wednesday?r=26uu5u&utm_medium=ios

The madness and the sorrow of history.

a red-hot stone

Thought, reasoning, and derived conclusions are dangerous skills in a world dominated by symbolic preference, myth-poetic literalism, fanciful beliefs, and (let’s face it) dull wits. 

 Anaxagoras, a Greek Philosopher, (501BC) - introduced philosophy to the Athenians during the age of Pericles, and he was prosecuted for teaching that the sun was not a god but a red-hot stone. 

(--Andreas Nothiger in Synchronoptical World History Chart, 2004)

The current Pope doesn’t have a chance against Trump, Vance, and Johnson. These three men know a god when they look around and, slack-jawed, affirm the prejudices of their libidos and their stock-holdings.  

Of course djt thinks he is the christ.

He knows how to hollow a city block in order to pour a foundation. He knows how to manipulate a dug-out psyche of its intelligence and replacing any wit with a red baseball cap to hold the empty space together.

Anaxagoras was charged with heresy, sentenced to death by the Athenian court, left Athens, and spent his remaining years in exile.

Many might be pissed-off by the empty-headed ignorance of unfeeling, unthinking, and uncaring leaders, but there’s something to be said for having a current passport.

a relationship of mutual respect

Came across:

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin^[a] (9 December [O.S. 27 November] 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist political philosopher and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.  

. . . 

Although in the past he harshly criticized religious morality,^[76] Kropotkin recognized the Christian anarchism of Leo Tolstoy as one of the four schools of thought in anarchism.^[77] Kropotkin and Tolstoy maintained, despite never meeting in person, a relationship of mutual respect.^[78] Kropotkin saw the origins of anarchism in Europe as found in various Christian movements, such as the Anabaptists and Hussites, mentioning figures such as the Italian Catholic bishop Marco Girolamo Vida and the German Anabaptist theologian Hans Denck.^[79] 

 

Kropotkin admired Christianity and Buddhism, along with the figures of Jesus Christ and Buddha and their ethical teachings.^[80] Kropotkin did not see that Christianity introduced anything new in its defense of brotherhood and mutual aid, but considered Christian (and Buddhist) teaching on forgiveness to have been an innovation. In contrast with the ethics of vengeful pre-Christian cultures, the doctrine of Christ repudiates persecution and revenge. In the view of Kropotkin, "the true greatness of Christianity" lies in the words "do not take revenge on your enemies."^[81] Kropotkin also saw the Christian God as an improvement over the pagan gods, whom he considered vengeful and requiring submission on the part of the believer.^[82] Kropotkin's Ethics stated: 

 

In the case of Christianity the love of the divine teacher for men, – for all men without distinction of nation or condition, and especially for the lowest, – led to the highest heroic sacrifice – to death on the cross for the salvation of humanity from the power of evil.^{[83].  (wikipedia)}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin 

https://youtu.be/et2Vdu8i97Q?si=fh9D_3kOOSSss5ZT

On a personal note, I think fondly of my craggy-haired grey-bearded leather-working alternative-educator philosopher, self-proclaimed anarchist, former-drunk, sometime-poet, turkey-vulture loving good fellow, erstwhile-friend, Bob D. who died 29aug2022.

He knew every service station on the coast of maine and what day of the week they gave away a free cup of coffee.

Wonder if he knew of Kropotkin? 

wandering within words

 I am

(As I say)

I am

looking out at what is passing

 He doesn’t go to church

He thinks he is always in church

He is, of course, deluded

There is no church, and he attends

Morning baptism, communion 

Penance, and extreme unction

From his chair by front window

His monastery, his solitude

The way things fall away, unseeing

The unseen, unhearing the soundless

You won’t find me there, you won’t

Find me here, no latitude, no longitude

A vacant point, an empty erasure

One tired gesture waving itself away

The way a song, maybe “rainy night

in soho” lingers in air near no one’s ear —

“I'm not singing for the future

I'm not dreaming of the past“

Nothing pronounced, nothing

Renounced, drizzle everywhere

At

Once

Subway car rolling to stop

Doors open, a window seat

something like this happens, makes you know what’s really important

Something about owning up, self-sacrifice, choosing a redemptive course, realizing who is important, encouraging others, resolving lingering burdens, accepting help from unlikely quarters, unmasking hidden feelings, accepting what is there -- 

Touches, and softens, a crusty and unforgiving environment.

So it was finally getting around to Season 8, Episode 16, Suits -- after years of letting it go.

Watched it twice, for the wide assortment, thought, emotion.

ἀλλαγησόμεθα -- we shall be changed -- nothing true

Where do we think true reality resides?

Is it ‘something’ that is ‘out there’ somewhere that our so-called instruments of senses and intellect extend themselves as a fisherman might cast his line into a body of water? 

Here’s Plotinus as presented by The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Plotinus (204--270 C.E.)

Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neoplatonism. Taking his lead from his reading of Plato, Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three foundational elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. The principal of emanation is not simply causal, but also contemplative. In his system, Plotinus raises intellectual contemplation to the status of a productive principle; and it is by virtue of contemplation that all existents are said to be united as a single, all-pervasive reality. In this sense, Plotinus is not a strict pantheist, yet his system does not permit the notion of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothingness). In addition to his cosmology, Plotinus also developed a unique theory of sense-perception and knowledge, based on the idea that the mind plays an active role in shaping or ordering the objects of its perception, rather than passively receiving the data of sense experience (in this sense, Plotinus may be said to have anticipated the phenomenological theories of Husserl). Plotinus’ doctrine that the soul is composed of a higher and a lower part — the higher part being unchangeable and divine (and aloof from the lower part, yet providing the lower part with life), while the lower part is the seat of the personality (and hence the passions and vices) — led him to neglect an ethics of the individual human being in favor of a mystical or soteric doctrine of the soul’s ascent to union with its higher part. The philosophy of Plotinus is represented in the complete collection of his treatises, collected and edited by his student Porphyry into six books of nine treatises each. For this reason they have come down to us under the title of the Enneads. 

https://iep.utm.edu/plotinus/#:~:text=Taking%20his%20lead%20from%20his,existence%20emanates%2C%20according%20to%20Plotinus.

 Alexander Earl, writes in Plotinus, Augustine, and the One God:

I. Intellect 

But what exactly does this claim entail? What does it mean to say intellect is thought-thinking-itself? Unsurprisingly, Plotinus says it best:

Since, then, there is soul that reasons about just and beautiful things, and reasoning that inquires whether this is just or that is beautiful, there must also be some stable justice, from which there comes to be reasoning at [the level of] soul. Or how else could it reason? And if soul sometimes reasons about these things and sometimes does not, there must be in us intellect, which does not reason discursively but always possesses justice.4

Stephen R. L. Clark, commenting on this passage, explains that “this identifies the need, in any reasoning, for premises. If our premises are wrong, so will all our reasonings be.”5 Clark continues by asking an intuitive follow-up: “where do we get right premises?”6 If prior to any right reasoning we need an apprehension of right premises, and those right premises were right before we recog­nized them, then, Clark concludes, there must be “some further permanent rightness” that acts as a standard for all our judgments.7 To avoid an infinite regress, that permanent rightness will have to be a rightness self-possessed, so to speak; that is, it cannot be a rightness discovered, which involves moving from potentially to actuality qua coming-to-know the standard—again, invoking the principle of causality—which will entail that the case in question is just another instance of something under the standard, instead of the standard itself. Plotinus, in countering other 3rd century Platonists about the status of the forms relative to intellect, argues that

If one grants that the objects of thought are as completely as possible outside Intellect, and that Intellect contemplates them as absolutely outside it, then it cannot possess the truth of them and must be deceived in everything it contemplates. For they would be the true realities; and on this supposition it will contemplate them without possessing them, but will only get images of them in a knowledge of this sort. If then it does not possess the true reality, but only receives in itself images of the truth, it will have falsities and nothing true.8

(--Plotinus, Augustine, and the One God, Posted on 30 July 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel, by Alexander Earl, Eclectic Orthodoxy)  https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/plotinus-augustine-and-the-one-god/

I’m not sure whether it is myself or philosophy that has become soporific.

My bet it’s me.

Catholic and Orthodox Easter have skated through the upper partitions of April calendars. Some have thought about Resurrection; some not.

I’m in both categories.

I take note that someone suggests that NeoPlatonism was inspired by Buddhist thought.

I also note that my sunporch thermometer points to 800, the pussy willows by road are puffed out, and I have to clean the kitchen and wash the stack of empty cat food cans.

I like the end-phrase in final quote by Plotinus, namely “nothing true.”

I’m good with nothing (being) true.

I’m good with me (being) nothing.

True that!

 

this Easter, 

this Resurrection, 

this contemplation.

What the disciples witness behind locked doors is not merely the return of a dead man. It is the beginning of God’s creation all over again.

God loves nothing more than creating stuff. He never gets tired of making the sun rise every morning. G. K. Chesterton once suggested that God is strong enough to exult in monotony. He looks at the daisies and the snowflakes, and he exults, “Do it again!”

Creation ex nihilo is the great biblical confession. Out of nothing, God calls into being sun and moon, sea and sky, beasts and birds, and at last the human from the dust. Above all, God delights in life. New beginnings are his signature.

(--from, Resurrection Isn’t Resuscitation—It’s Creation ex morte victa, Posted on 12 April 2026 by johnstamps2020, by John Stamps).   https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2026/04/12/resurrection-isnt-resuscitation-its-creation-ex-nihilo/#comment-46609

let’s talk about love

Song by Foreigner: 

I Want to Know What Love Is

I've gotta take a little time
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older

Now this mountain I must climb
Feels like the world upon my shoulders
Through the clouds, I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder

In my life, there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me

I wanna feel what love is

I know you can show me

Oh

I'm gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me
I've got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has finally found me

In my life, there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me

I wanna feel what love is

I know you can show me

I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me

(And I wanna feel) I wanna feel what love is
(And I know) I know you can show me
Let's talk about love
(I wanna know what love is) The love that you feel inside
(I want you to show me) And I'm feelin' so much love
(I wanna feel what love is) No, you just cannot hide
(I know you can show me) Yeah
I wanna know what love is (Let's talk about love)
I want you to show me, I wanna feel
(I wanna feel what love is) And I know, and I know
I know you can show me (Yeah)
(I wanna know what love is) (I wanna know)
(I want you to show me) I wanna know, I wanna know, wanna know
(I wanna feel what love is) (I wanna feel)
(I know you can show me) 

https://open.spotify.com/track/1JLn8RhQzHz3qDqsChcmBl

As good a longing, as good a prayer, as one might find