not that far from

Most times our typical news sources are inadequate. Our spirits are sacrificed to the egos and lustful greed of deficient human beings who have control over us.

We need, at times, an insight into core wisdom of efficient wisdom to buoy our spirits. 

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. 

When goodness is lost, there is morality. 

When morality is lost, there is ritual. 

Ritual is the husk of true faith, 

the beginning of chaos.

(--from ch.38)

Ordinary men hate solitude. 

But the Master makes use of it, 

embracing his aloneness, realizing 

he is one with the whole universe.

(--from ch.42) 

The Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu

Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1988 

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html

Just because obsessive irrational greed-lust grabs for billions and billions of chump-change coin and bribes to stuff into your underwear drawer, there is no correlation with well-being or genuine affection looping back against diseased character.

You are not loved, not when imposition and demand for love is your every ruse masked as power, that’s abuse, not real love. You might be granted an admiring fear from sycophants and hangers-on, but don’t misinterpret their fawning and obsequious attention -- you are an object of derision and sniggering behind your back. (I’d best be careful. I might fall into genuine sympathy and longing to rehabilitate the scoundrel on one of my better days.)

These days I seem to fall into aloneness. Not out of accomplishment, but de-complishment, a failed and incomplete attempt to recognize and complete a more fulsome achievement.

I see and (seemingly) understand the characterological makeup and disorder of his supreme Egoish Apotheosis, the current occupant of the Gilded Office. 

Richard Hugo, in his poem "The Villager" reminds me:

Love him

for what you might have become

and love him for what you are, not that far

                    from him.  We are never that far.

And I am sobered. 

I don’t think I love him. Which realization, sobers.

He ritualizes his unhappiness and craving for attention, every week, every day, every social media post.

Ritual is the husk of true faith, 

the beginning of chaos. (Tao de Ching, ibid)

There arises out of dark and sinister corners of our American shadows a curiosity as to how it is some contract hasn’t been levied against his unpredictable and destabilizing effect on domestic and world stage --  but, God help us -- no, not again, not 1963, not 1968, not again. The uselessness of assassination as some curative to ideological non-preference is profoundly demented. No! Let him live. Let him have a chance to redeem and/or pay for his unhealthy psyche. No more martyrs. No more delusional belief that violence has any real benefit other than to glorify both violence and delusion, of which we have our fill.

So, we live with pain. We see brothers and sisters violently accosted, torn from their cars, work-places, families, and homes, beaten, taken to warehouse detention, shipped out of state, out of country, out of any sense of caring belonging.

The ideologues in power are miserable people.

This misery is our current fate. No amount of sequestering from the reporting and news will change the facts of what this regime has promulgated and inflicted on the populace. (Besides, the felt anguish, like bits of sub-atomic matter, squeezes through everything, arriving at our souls, penetrating even our most deflective intentions.)

I’ve taken to prayer.

Silent sitting.

Wordless gazing.

Implorative wording on blank spaces to try to find out where I am, who I am, how to be of any healing assistance during this ruinous time. Only to fail, and again fail. 

If prayer is attention, then, I am learning to pray.

If attention is communal, I attend, obliquely, such a community.

If community is salvific, thank you for including me -- even as I dwell in the aloneness of the whole -- universe.

We are

within this

(This) 

together

cold

 Shute 

Frozen water

Toboggans,

February

the great might-have-been

 Reading William Logan on Hart Crane 

Then again Logan’s exposition of his criticism of Crane

Brrr -- the drop from stern of boat

The ways words circle and fall from one’s exhausting mind

gazing

 James Martin and Richard Rohr in conversation. Two kind and gentle people. 

Rohr references McNamara:

Father William McNamara’s definition of contemplation -- “a long loving look at the real” -- became transformative. [1]

 [1] William McNamara as quoted by Walter J. Burghardt, “Contemplation: A Long, Loving Look at the Real,” in An Ignition Spirituality Reader, ed. George W. Traub (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008) , 91

. in https://cac.org/daily-meditations/contemplation-and-right-action-2022-08-22/

Just that, enough to sit with, gazing. 

nothing to tell

 I don’t know about zen teachers

all that lineage stuff, begets and begots

I see Zen as dog sees cat

living together but cautious

just this, zen, stretching paw

just like this

nichts ist so sicher wie ein sicherer geist

I look forward to the wayward president taking control of November’s elections and securing victory for his beloved Republican Party. Perhaps the Insurrection Act, perhaps Martial Law. It might prove beneficial for the country to see the dominance of one man controlling all branches of government and imposing his singular will over everything.

He is someone perfect for the roll. He has a stylish wife, wonderful children, loyal cabinet, he’s wealthy, brutally honest, a devout christian, a good golfer, has powerful friends in business, women love to flirt with him, and he’s not a slave to telling the truth the way lesser men are.

I think he’s wonderful.

I can’t wait to see how the Supreme Court favorably assists him in his ambition to become America’s sole arbiter and chief elected wunderkind.

[knock, knock]

            Yes?

Your lunch is ready. We’ll just loosen the restraints on your straight-jacket and place your tray beside your bed, Would you like help sitting up?

            Yes, I would.

After lunch and your nap, perhaps we’ll wheel you around the grounds so you can say hello to some of the other patients.

            Yes, that would be nice.   

listening to lauds

 Show me your

Monastery

I’ll tell you

Nothing more

if you’re sitting on nineteen, don’t ask for another card

 Think twenty one

But stand pat

Winning ain’t much better

Than not losing

Chance

Is a funny word

Dawn breaks

Your heart

give it time

 There was a kid 

in childhood neighborhood 

a dangerous bully

long time ago

Probably dead now

Can’t remember his name

There’s a guy

At the reins today

An ugly soul

I hear his name

His horse stands still

He is falling

to nameless

Dust —the grounded 

anonymity 

of the forgettable 

pleased to not meet you

 There is no 

experience of God 

There’s only God

Mystics know this

Everyone else

Tells tales of that

it’s not the meaning of words, it’s the words themselves

 At conversation tonight 

the observation

maybe we don’t have language, 

maybe we are language

rien

Doris sends Leonard Cohen. 

Yes, the poet: 

In a timeless passage that now reads prophetic, he writes:

We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind… The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/07/18/leonard-cohen-anger-resistance/?mc_cid=c68dcbeb24 

To all those needing to be told what to do, here’s what I think you should do — rien de ce qui a été suggéré par d’autres.

getting away clean

 If I were to rob a casino I'd need a crew

a driver, someone inside, place to chill

I think about robbing a casino because

I’m reading Don Winslow on such a thing

I realize one drawback -- I'd have to leave

my house, go to where a casino is, rob it --

the first part is the hardest, leaving the house

choosing what shoes to wear, the coat, hat

whether to wrap a scarf on neck, remember

clip-on sunglasses, take mittens or work gloves.

It’s the same reason I don’t go to church, 

having to leave the house, it’s too much work --

besides, Christ is everywhere, casino cash

cannot satisfy a mind interested in Spinoza

and after turning down an offer to teach upper-

level philosophy at the university, who’d ever

trust me? No, once you’ve established

yourself as a loser, no one looks at you again.

I guess I’m not going to rob a casino. I’ll just

read my novel, assess their plans, sip coffee milk

pat the dog, look out window, clean bloody nose,

thanking Christ I’m nobody doing nothing all alone 

post-democracy

 of course 

we’re afraid

we are watched

being afraid

ain't so bad

its not like

someone is going

to shoot us

dead, eh?

do not convict me, oh my darling

“It's just the body wearing out,” said the doctor to Julian Barnes’ question about why there were such high levels of this or that within him.

Sounds right, wearing out. 

'My’ body has lately been seen walking in circles in the kitchen. It spurns medical appointments realizing they are cattle calls for medical practitioners, an annoyance of patience prior to submitting requisite insurance form for the $350 visit fee, thanks for coming, see the front desk, they’ll schedule your next moo visit.

I’m close to disengaging these medical waltzes. The music fades. As a younger man I used to take goulash pride that I’d not been to see a doctor in over thirty five years. As though such trifling accomplishment neared any sanity.

My weight is down close to schoolboy reminiscence. These days weight loss is more proudly announced than accomplishing the nine first Fridays. Tommy took pride in those Fridays. His antagonistic relationship with his childhood church was his grumpy pretense at not being the loyal parishioner he actually was.

After weight loss there’s the tiredness. The last two weeks were sepulchral. The stone was rolled in and I slept in detached slumber uncaring whether there was any afterlife or even quotidian life outside my closed door. Aphasic antinomian absence. There was no external beckoning capable of enticing me from the void of non-believing somnambulism.

The woman in court gallery says “You are some public speaker.” I’d finished my comments on behalf of a friend petitioning the court. I was holding a scruffy, battered, scuffed, and scarred baseball he gave me on my eightieth birthday, which now embodied a metaphor.

If the judge heard any of it he merely said, “Thank you, sir,” made some stark but judicious comments, moved on to deny the motion and exited the door behind him. I made a mental note to attend a criminal trial in the future. The law officer at the metal detector said they are educational.

I sit more than I should.

My body is wearing out.

I’d prefer not to spend my remaining years in prison.  

We’ve reached a particularly dodgy time when ultra-sensitive convicted felons in high office send stormtroopers to your front door to harass and terrify you should they not like your opinion of them. As Vonnegut said, So it goes!

Cat is now on lap. So, it’s that time of morning.

I’ll let you know when the body throws a rod or has its wheels fall off. I know you’ll want to know. Send condolences, and all that.

De rigueur. 

benefit of doubt, bénéfice douteux

 Let’s stipulate

He might, maybe

Might be right

That those opposing

His lawless criminality

Are out for justice

Should be punished

For preferring lawful

Administration of our land—

Imagine that Christ died

For nothing, mother Mary

Raised a stupid son, ideologue

Fool for kindness, compassion,

And charity for all, especially

Poor and those in need —

That Christianity is for suckers

And once renovated will be

For rich whites who whore

Wealth and power and deserve

All deference and privilege —

Superior and beyond comparison —

 

We would need a new messiah

A pure and stainless savior

Who holds all power all truth,

Right? Imagine! Stipulate! 

A pure and stainless group

Willing to rule this world!

Wow!

God might not be good, but

He is republican— and that’s that!

The devil, we’re told, believes in freedom,

Justice, and fairness, is a democrat 

And eschews child rape (the nitwit)—

No, no no — the master race returns

And not a minute too soon, there

Saluting, shooting, shouting 

 Let’s stipulate

He might, maybe

Might be right

What a relief!

No longer having to think,

Triumph of the Divine Family!

May they rain forever

Puddles of mud, 

Downhill sewer filthy fealty!

things equal to the same thing are equal to each other

 I pass cemeteries, I bow

The dead deserve encouragement

When I look at our government, I bow

The dead deserve encouragement 

already truth

There are times when words help. 

Everything is already truth, so everything coexists with no hindrance. For example, here is space. Clouds are constantly coming and going. Rain comes, and rain goes. Lightning comes and goes. Wind comes and goes, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Storms appear and disappear all the time. But though these things ceaselessly come and go in space, space is not hindered by them in the least, because space is complete emptiness. Clouds and rain and wind and sun and night and day are not hindered by one another. Your mind is exactly the same. If you practice meditation with great determination, you can completely attain the fundamental emptiness of this universe. Then when feelings come and go, and thinking comes and goes, and good situations come and go, and bad situations appear and disappear, nothing can hinder you at all. Everything is empty! When happiness appears, you can use that for other beings. When suffering appears, you can use suffering to help other beings. You can use good situations and bad situations, good experiences and bad experiences, only to help all beings get out of suffering, because all these "things" are completely empty, and this emptiness is our original compassionate nature.

"No Hindrance", Zen Master Seung Sahn 

 These words help.

finding god in hell

Spirituality attempts 

to see what 

and where “God” is --

it looks at the world

as God would

wondering what God 

would say. If God sees

the world as skewed or

skewered, God avers --

if you wish to dox,

dox God, we’d love to 

learn where God dwells

if you wish to condemn, 

condemn God to hell -- 

there God would gladly go

to sit with the condemned

speak with the dispairing

ask you your name, love you

the loved and the unloved, julian enjoyed reading mauriac

Reading Julian Barnes’ last to be written novel, Departure(s)

He has, in it (and out of it) a blood cancer --

I’m interested in learning how I am doing

what’s a synonym for perverted ugliness

 Justice, it used to be said, is blind

In America it has had its eyes gouged out

The White House holds the bloody ice pick

Every day in every column on every page

The New York Times writes his name

Telling us another awful story of grift

Graft, and grotesque behavior he has performed 

The people read about him and shrug, go on

With their day, mutter an obscenity, fatalistically

Such perversion is commonplace now, unremarkable

The incompetence, the criminality, the impotence

An outrage that eats out the stomach of morality

We watch the show, there’s no where to go, we

Have become coliseum spectators where animals

Rip and claw at neighbor and the law bloodying both

hardly seen

Kindness.

 Icicles touched with night light.

Sometimes it's a hard look through the darkness to see glimmers of light.

two fish swimming

 Infinite Jest turns thirty

It was a slog

Not ha ha funny

Will have to read again

Bought at Montpelier 

bookshop — more an

Act of love

For my son

Twenty some-odd

Years younger

if you smell of cash, try deodorant

 When you're a hammer 

Everything’s a nail

If everyone turns their back

On you, close the joint, renovate

It’s what you know, it’s all you know

G’wan, give yourself a facelift, 

Nobody’ll notice you've gone

Out back bank door into smelly alley

why pray

a life of prayer

is well-being of all

by being-in-all

where each is

as each-in-prayer

a wholeness healing itself

bonjour tristesse

 No, i have no friends

     What do you mean?

I have no friends --

     That’s sad

No, wait . . .

saddness is a friend

[he goes downstairs

Puts wood in firebox, smiles]     

     I am watching you

[Places calendar square 

at top of stairs —

“2:30”]

archeology of passing species

 Squeaky snow underfoot

Yellow circles outside barn

Quick-frozen Ensō visits 

thanks louie

 Bright moonlight

On white bright snow

This January, cold 

And colder

I remember Thomas

Merton’s birthday

A man

Worth his words

délivre-nous des personnes malveillantes

 When did we 

become so disdainful 

of decency

when did being

cruel and ugly 

become winning strategy

it is beyond my understanding

but for them, they say

“it is only me, just me, perfect me"

my buddhist friends say

there is no 'me' -- who are

these unexisting ghouls?

una brevissima storia di un ricordo congelato

 Sarsaparilla, eh?

     Yeah, what of it?

Seems odd?

     Why so?

You seem odd.

     Don't start.

Were you just fingering beads?

     Yeah, what of it?

A rosary?

     What of it?

Seems odd.

     How so?

Can’t put my finger on it.

     Well, i can…and do.

But sarsaparilla…

     Jeezus!

[In the gospels there’s this riff about an executed guy showing up a few days after his murder. It seems highly unlikely, but a lot of people think that story is true. They wait for some reappearance replete with justice, charity, maybe — joy. Seems a long shot.]

[entr’acte:] 

Rockport harbor is iced over.

Long icicles outside window.

Somewhere, under snow, on frozen ground, a bottle cap.

nothing follows

 The Buddha and the Christ 

walk into a bar —

Buddha: “Can i get you anything?”

Christ: “Thanks, a sarsaparilla please.”

Buddha: “Odd what’s going on in America, eh?”

Christ: “Damn odd.”

Buddha: [sits in silence]

Christ: [sips drink in silence]

[as scene ends, nothing is clear, 

nothing continues,  nothing follows.

Light fades.]

the end of disgust

 Time is here

The man has to go

There’s no doubt left

One by one

Weaklings understand 

They are crumbling 

upstaging himself

 there’s discussion

is trump just playing

the fool

or is he not playing --

I hope he’s just playing

for his own soul

else when curtain

drops he’s trapped

on dark stage uncalled

mu...[sic]

someone wanted me 

to teach 

a college class about zen

I’m silent

I don’t know 

anything about zen

but I do like

bruce springsteen’s song

about Minneapolis

not lasting a second winter

the frozen battery

has no pulse

charger can't revive

I’ll try the paddles

one more time

before calling it

as the cat meows, no doubt a mouse

 They say

The beauty

Of life

Is that

One day

It will end

I don’t know

Beauty

Is the beginning

Of the end

Each beginning

Is the end

Itself

6:56

 Disappearing 

I do not see

My way clear

Snow is deep

Depleted energy

This step, this

vigil, a watchful unknowing

When his name

Is printed

In obituary

I will say 

a prayer

Because

That’s what

A decent

Teaching teaches

Belief is irrelevant 

Prayer is where

Not-knowing gazes

asked no questions, tell no lies

 Night

Nothing

To see here 

Not at, but

Look through

Nothing

If you see

See nothing but 

What is there

Think

Nothing

Of it 

please, pass the broom

 We’re ashamed 

of the president

Vice president 

and cabinet

Ashamed

Of them

Truly

Ashamed

disappearing

 Cold hands

Find letters

Where no

Words go

Never

Mind

all my troubles seem, at 6 degrees, so far, away

 Plowing guy

Pushes snow

From yesterday

He might as

Well be

Called spring

comes sun over tree line

 Icicles

Hang from

Eaves

Looking out

Window 

Frozen shut

una volta, e poi basta

 If you need to sing

If you want to sing

Then sing

Your own song

Once

Then done

loco cenae

Two sips of coffee milk

Four pills at bedtime

I’m retiring 

from most everything 

something in the air

 And you know 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.