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