as years jig by

Irish

I am

memory 

of which

fades some

but, still

Irish 

I am

pi forever, pie tonight

There are days

Numbers numb

Mind

I try to help

But read wrong 

Column

Where

At end

Nothing adds up

surfing metaphor

A Times review:

 ONE WAY BACK: A Memoir | By Christine Blasey Ford

A swirling gulf between truth and news.

e voilà, moi aussi

Who are

We

Speaking with

fuente, procedencia

capitulate

to life

join the stream

recapitulate 

with love

you are what flows

no opposite

no enemy

beyond self

resound

return

to Source

namen sind nur lärm und rauch

 If you want

to know my name 

pronounce your name

If you’ve forgotten

your name

my name means nothing

and the leaky barn

 Everything speaks. 

Everything tells you about itself. 

If you listen. If you hear.

Abandoned Farmhouse

BY TED KOOSER

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

—Ted Kooser, "Abandoned Farmhouse" from Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1980 by Ted Kooser. 

Can you hear it?

Each thing speaks.

homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto

 Coming off mountain, stopping in yurt to assure it has not been abandoned.

Mountain absorbs tired snow as winter prepares to pass off its stay.

We move on and into the turnabout nature dances.

The author I listen to quotes the playwright Terence:

“I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.”  — Terence 

 

Cf. "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."^[2] This appeared in his play Heauton Timorumenos.^[3]

Publius Terentius Afer (/təˈrɛnʃiəs, -ʃəs/; c. 195/185 – c. 159? BC), better known in English as Terence (/ˈtɛrəns/), was an African Roman playwright during the Roman Republic.        

          --wikipedia

Every step on brown winter-pressed flattened leaves along trodden path is prayer for what has passed, is passing, will pass.

I am mindful we are sometimes asked to pray for someone — and we do.

It is human to so remember.

night gatha haiku prayer

 May God be Here Now 

And True —Be With Each Being

As Way Moving Through 

hey hey lookie here

Winter looks

Askance

Night air through

Open window

Even brown

Blanket covers itself

difference with distinction

Some call it post-modernism. 

Cut in thirds, split in half,
How can truth be expressed?
Can one see beyond white clouds
With the naked eye?
The monks still have not come
Back from Mt. Kukkuapada.
The leaves of the sutra
Merely stir a sad wind.

Daito (1282-1334) dz

Daito's "sad wind" captures the scent along roadways from either landfill town dump or the new and pungent cannabis facilities that have me looking for the dead skunk on side of road.

Wikipedia fleshes it out:

Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse^[1][2] characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernity, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power.^[3][4] The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism,^[5] emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge.^[4] Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism.^[4] It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.^[6][7]

Emerging in the mid-twentieth century as a reaction against modernism,^[8][9][10] postmodernism has permeated various disciplines^[11] and is linked to critical theory, deconstruction, and post-structuralism.^[4]

Critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.^[12] 

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

Justin E.H. Smith in his book Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, 2019, writes about the difference between the liar and the bullshitter. The liar knows the truth and seeks to conceal it. The bullshitter doesn't care a whit about truth or lies, only wanting to advance his/her own interests. (Not his exact words.)

In his book, On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt, 2005, helps us understand the difference:

...Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.     (Princeton University Press)

Chris, at Tuesday Evening Conversation, brought up "wisdom." There was talk of The Book of Job, there was a slide into talking about "truth" (which Tina corrected), and a variety of insightful comments by Doris, Asha, and Saskia that deepened our uncertainty.

I recalled the last line of the Serenity Prayer which (for the evening) gave me an anchor to root my bobbing in the rough-wind tide: "...and wisdom to know the difference." Hence, head above water, wisdom for me (at the time) was the rising and falling ability to know the difference between this and that, the false and the true, bullshit and no-shit.

In this post-modern age there are a lot of folks peddling bullshit, so much so that they make lying seem like a quaint virtue.

In my cell/room, a wall:

Up the mountain, run-off from recent rains:

I let go opening at Trappist monastery for retreat some 234 miles away.

What I might be looking for, or, what I am looking for, is a lot closer than someone else's monastery, than some other place I used to go to experience succor.

Turns out where I dwell is a place of collation and recollection.

As is where you are.

It's a difference with distinction.

I love the difference.

the wisdom (to know and not to know) the difference

don't ask me 

about

truth or wisdom

I don't 

know the 

difference

not me, but others

 I suspect

In ten years

We’ll look back

On 2024 election

And

(laugh) (cry)

as night resides

 No one lives there

Not for last three years

But porch light is on

And side stairs light

They took away mail box

roadside and work shed

shall engines repaired

tinkered spark plugs 

Owner doesn’t sell

doesn’t rent it out but

paints and repairs has it

mowed and plowed

I walk past on walks

Say hi to emptiness

Lights on for what 

lights are on for 

through night

throughout 

monday morning

 in prison today

good conversation

the eight of us

and one sweet dog

monday evening

walking cold

vacant snow bowl

stiff wind

season ended

grey

sky

mountain 

abandoned

listening to

Irrationality

this time

we live

thank you, thank you

I know why there’s so much wrong in the world. The failure to want to become human. Instead so much lust to be rich or powerful, somebody at the expense of somebody else.

Now I’d like to collect my reward for figuring that out.

I’ll take it in nickels and dimes.

Compassion and caring are not that expensive.

I have a change purse.

qui es-tu; pensée

Miracles are not what we think.

A miracle is that we think.

What do you think?

(Take your time. 

World awaits.)

Tous les débuts sont difficiles.

μεταβιβάζω*

 It’s easier to live on the off-side of the clock. No phone calls, emails, texts. No bumping into anyone in the kitchen. 

Stepping to barn door, thin layer of snow on ground. Sound of rain on roof. No cats. No dog.

Growing up I was a night person.

Staying at a monastery, night office was most intimate.

Now, a different version.

It could be called unsleeping prayer — but that’s a stretch,

Maybe call it breath-in-the-dark.

People used to think God wandered through the night.

I think that night, the solitude of night, is that wherein God has disappeared.

A worthy place within which to dissolve and devolve.*

time

 And here I thought it was 3:15AM.