after lectio -- ground of being

going nowhere

staying nowhere --

one looks out, 

looks in

israel / gaza

 it is hard to tell

who is more wrong who more

destructive of peace

those who use terror or those

who also use terrorism

behind branch

 There it was

Moon just before dawn

Peeper and songbird

headlights on dark road

Imagination,

peace — no imagination

No peace — imagine

some franciscan brothers

 their names from the past

on the page reside quiet

the way fondness feels

see you

 let my final thought

be -- "oh, what a joy to have

 this final look" -- yes

corporéité -- life’s moments and all transitions between

I like the prospect that when the body goes kaput the signal is lost and there is nothing of the world retained.

    Kaput originated with a card game called piquet that has been popular in France for centuries. French players originally used the term capot to describe both big winners and big losers in piquet. To win all twelve tricks in a hand was called "faire capot" ("to make capot"), but to lose them all was known as "être capot" ("to be capot"). German speakers adopted capot, but respelled it kaputt, and used it only for losers. When English speakers borrowed the word from German, they started using kaput for things that were broken, useless, or destroyed. (--merriam-webster)

Either way, according to early phenomenologist Maurice Marleau-Ponty, the body is the connective/corrective source of knowledge.

Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the perceiving body and its perceived world could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call "indirect ontology" or the ontology of "the flesh of the world" (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, "Eye and Mind". (--wikipedia)

So many fellow human beings (if, indeed, we were to ascend to such a designation) long for everlasting life beyond death with all the presupposed benefits of Elysian Fields, heaven with God, saints, angels and forebears, and the possibility of reincarnated reinstatement into (supposedly) more and more evolved states of conscious being.

I like the idea of turning the lights out and going into the sleep of indecipherable darkness with no awareness of that fact or any other fact continuing. 

Perhaps the notion of eternality could fit. The word "eternal" is mostly defined as everlasting. I do not think that's what it means. I prefer to see eternal as meaning "no-time." Timelessness. A no-time and un-spaced remainder. A balance of emptiness.

Elsewhere, this consideration:

Focusing solely on the near-death cognizance of the dying, rather than the material perspective of the living, reveals a new understanding of death. Its significance to psychology, philosophy, and religion is huge for what emerges is a long overlooked phenomenon: a nonsupernatural, relativistic, and timelessly eternal consciousness, which can be a natural afterlife. Ironically, the validity of the theory of a natural eternal consciousness (NEC) assumes the loss of all materially based consciousness with death — more specifically, the permanent loss of time perception. The theory claims, and the article deduces from empirical knowledge, that by imperceptibly entering the timelessness before death, one’s last conscious moment, whatever the type, becomes by default — psychologically, from one’s perspective— a forever present moment. To help explain and validate the theory, the article presents thought experiments and a formal model of all of life’s moments and all transitions between periods of time perception and those of timelessness. An open-minded reading should reveal that the NEC does not threaten faith in a god or a heaven.

 . . .

The natural eternal consciousness (NEC) (in a nutshell):

You believe you are having an

experience, and for all eternity

you never know otherwise.—p. 63

(--from, The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness:, The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife, by Bryon K. Ehlmann, © 2020 The Institute of Mind and Behavior, Inc. 

There's something intriguing about never knowing otherwise.

As I approach my inevitable death the company these days of squirrel, chipmunk, sparrow, finch, bluejay, mourning dove, junco, chickadee, nuthatch -- as well as cats, dog, nighttime footsteps in the dark of moving unseen animals -- and, of course,  compañeras and compañeros on the conversing journey through this existence --all suffice, happily and affectionately.

Suffice

and satisfactorily 

go on sufficiently

sustained in their being

as who and where they are

as who and where I was

scurries off into nescient nullity

amen!

with a compassionate heart

To live a zen life is not a hobby.

It is where intent goes to nap.

Since sky and earth are mindless,
They last forever.
What has mind has limits.
A person who has attained
The Path is like this too.
In the midst of no activity,
She carries out her activities,
Accepting all unfavorable
And favorable circumstances
With a compassionate heart.

--Yunmen (864-949)

It is what I do whenever I can.

To nap. And to live a zen life.

I'm not so good with either.

Take right now. 

As an abject failure I cannot find anything to suggest accomplishment.

Such circumstances are troubling.

I am troubled. But why?

Red squirrel and Tchaikovsky Vogel (White-throated Sparrow) dance outside sliding door.

There, there, I am whole and entire.

allocution

 We need 

one another

One 

no other

We need 

No other

That’s God-

Language

There’s 

No other

Way

(To say it)

glancing over to the person sitting next to me

 do you want to spend

the rest of the day

trying to guess

what I'm going to say

the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place

It becomes a chore to locate who is listening who is speaking.

 I look around. 

Something, clearly, is missing.

If you want to freely live or die, go or stay, to take off or put on your clothes, then right now recognize the one who is listening to my discourse.

That one is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place, yet is brisk and very alive.

As for all manifold responsive activities, the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place.

Therefore, when you look for that one, it retreats farther and farther, when you seek that, it turns more and more the other way: this is called the “Mystery.”

Lin-chi (d.866)

Something clear is missing.

Can I see through it?

Am I even looking? 

absence of facts is only absence of facts

 lie to me

tell me 

something I

don't know

whether true

or not

good to know

 Yes

I’d say yes

If you really

Want to know

I’d say

Yes

reverberating in a deeper place

 Intelligence speaks

To intelligence, (story

in prison today)

Playing classical music

In hospice room, sounding still

no, I did not hear it

 No opinions, police say

This is a university, stick with facts

Remember when disputation was

Deemed height of academic life?

No more. Shut up. Go back to carrel

Be taught, don’t learn, submit!

We’ll get this college stuff right.

Did you hear the one

About the Jew and Palestinian?

playoffs

 Basketballers fly

tossing down scorching dunks — too 

fast too good — lordy