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