The First Question Of Augustine: Universal vs. Particular

“But what is it that I love when I love You?  Not the beauty of any bodily thing, nor the order of seasons, not the brightness of light that rejoices the eye, nor the sweet melodies of all songs, nor the sweet fragrance of flowers and ointment and spices….Yet in a sense I do love light and melody and fragrance and food and embrace when I love my God…And what is this God?  I asked the earth and it answered: ‘I am not He’.”

- Augustine, Confessions Book 10

I asked the earth

And it answered

“I am not He”

I asked the wind

And it escaped through

My fingertips like brushstrokes

“I am not She”

I followed the moon until

It was high past the light

That rejoiced in my eye

And I asked it then and it pointed

To the shadows that it left on the ground

Like ancient photographs

And I asked them also

But they waved their heads and said

“Not us”

Where can I find You?

Beneath a castle

In a mirror

Above a picture

Inside a sea shell

In a story

Yes, in a story

In which You said

“I am He”

(And Judas the traitor

was standing there with them.)

 John 18:5

Hotel California

Hotel California

The old highway turned cactus round corners.

Burrow Walk Canyon over desert sand dunes

Leads down through stars, with eyes closed

And a breeze that said,

“It’s only you here.  There never was anyone else.”

But the new crystal glass pink champagne

Pulls my head through the blue light courtyard.

Star vases peek through pinhole showers and Nighthawks

Soared, Mission bound, towards the Jacaranda tree

That swirled and pulled through crushed red velvet.

And the girl, the borrowed solace, wrapped her feet

In purple satin; sex was in the mirrors.

Hips figured lies out of the prisoners here and the door #9

Never opens enough to let you go, and

Leave the stale breath.

Under the blue-lit canopy,

the dancers don’t notice we leave.

To Be Crushed

Bigfoot didn’t come that day in the car.

(Shane thought it did, but he’d been smoking.)

When we held our hands high and voiced echoed in those ever, ever green trees, where the orbs had been spotted? 

They didn’t land and I felt let down.

We raised the devil and raised hell, but those ever showed too much more than the scar on my right knee from the tennis court incident.

I put my hand on a curling iron once and held frozen peas until morning.

It was really bad the time I picked up my brother and he was a vomiting wreck and shaking, shaking so hard, and he needed $300.

Waterfall cove, where you jump in and under, but the boys didn’t know you had to be heavy in order to come back up and didn’t tell me and I was under just long enough to fill up my lungs.

When the snow fort collapsed and crushed me, that hurt.

They all hurt.

But.

On my worst birthday, I sat in the kitchen and ate cake alone in the dark and crying.

I was seventeen.

Einstien's Theory of Relativity -December Poetry Project-Day 6

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

There once was a bedroom at the top of the stairs,

Where a boy and a girl said their lullaby prayers.

Their heads on the pillows, they closed their eyes

And dreamed about spaceships and pretended to fly

Until just after midnight when they heard a loud crash.

They ran to the window and saw a green flash.

As the smoke settled down, they saw what had hit:

Moonrocks and stardust and a tiny spaceship!

The stairs lowered down and the green light turned blue,

The girl grabbed her hat and laced up her shoes.

She climbed down the roof, with the sheet from her bed.

The boy stared out the window with his hand on his head.

“Don’t go!  Oh please!  You don’t know where to!

That spaceship will take you to the dark side of the moon!”

“Or further!” She said, “ Up past Pluto or Mars!

There won’t be the people, their money, or cars!

“There’s got to be more to this whole galaxy

And I think this green spaceship just might be the key.

“I want to get out, to see what else is here.”

She shut the door and set out for the last frontier.

She was gone for an hour, a day, and a year

Whizzing past milky ways until the sky became clear.

There were whirlybabs and blinkets, asteroids and stars,

Flashes of gorda rays, flomdukes, and maytars!

The dust blew through the space and the stars came with joy

Until that fourth year when the girl missed the boy.

She cried just a little and the days just got worse

Until she turned the ship around and headed towards earth.

She travelled a year, a day, and an hour,

And landed in the yard, with a crash, in the flowers.

She turned off the green light and ran into the house

And crept up the stairs, quiet as a mouse.

She swung open the door with her arms open wide.

“Dear brother!  I’m home!  And I’ve missed you!” she cried.

But there wasn’t an answer and nothing looked the same.

The room was empty and white, with no spaceships or planes.

Where had she come?  And where was her brother?

But time had changed for the little girl and another.

Since she boarded the ship, four years had passed

But on earth, three decades had slipped through the hourglass.

The boy had grown up, had a house and a car,

And forgot about the girl who’d gone to live with the stars.

For Edie, Love New York

.
Little holes of light
run around
circles
     circles
          circles
of the billboards, singing
"New York, New York!"
And the cars oh the cars
let out their long legs for
fur-collared pin-stripes of
diamonds
diamonds traded for taxis
because they fall of fingers
like heads.
And the red carpet speaks
of the girl,
the girl in the tragedy who
ends in
Warhol-obsessed leopard graves.
And so the city goes.

Newtonian Physics Vs. God

I'm antsy.  I think it's the snow.

But more notable than my physical jitteriness or caffeinated chemical makeup or even my uncharacteristically anxious demeanor, I have been dwelling on a memory.

I remember the very first time God let me down.

I was standing on a dock and trying to walk on water.  I'd read the stories about how you held up Peter for awhile or how you walked yourself.  When Peter finally fell, you told him it was because he had little faith.  Little, as in miniscule, tiny, microscopic, bantam.  Or was it little, as in casual, insignificant, paltry.  Or little, as in young, because Lord knows my faith was young, as it still is.

So I squeezed my tiny eyes shut and clenched my muscles, because it seemed that made it look like you were thinking hard, and I thought so hard I thought the blood vessels in my head would have had enough, and given up altogether.  I'm not sure why I thought faith happened in my mind or was contingent with my thinking capacity, but it was.

"Mustard seed, mustard seed, mustard seed," I thought.  Little faith like a mustard seed?  Was Peter's significantly littler?  I hadn't had time to peruse these thoughts and sort through which ones I would later throw out as absurdly irrational.

And try as I might, I stepped off that dock only to break through the surface tension.  You see, its Newtonian physics that explain how molecule cohesion is broken with a sufficient force per unit length.  And my faith just wasn't strong enough. Or God wasn't there.

Or God was and God just decided not to do much about it.  And I hold little blame, now that I realize that I never really knew what God was or what faith was or how to acquire it.

But I still remember that sense of hopelessness when I fell off the dock that day.

Bananas in boats

The 1976 Economic Crisis of Great Britain all started off with a diary entry.

Diary of James Callaghan, Prime Minister of Great Britain

March 4, 1976 

Cheerio, Diary.

I've made a huge mistake.  The value of our economy is falling faster than the breasts of a grandmother and I don't know what to do, other than blame the French.  I could call the International Monetary Fund, but that's so "third world".

Following the journal installment, Mr. U.S. Treasury left a message.

"Hey, GB!  How's it going?  You get that package I sent?  I thought you might get a kick out of the Sea Monkeys.  And the orangutan pencil toppers have been sitting in my closet for months, and I realize the joke is outdated, but thought I'd send them anyway.  All that to say, saw the headlines this morning.  Sounds like you guys are in a bit of an economic pickle.  Listen, I don't want to be rude or anything, but...well, you know.  Our dollar is tied to your dollar, you lose we lose, su casa est mi casa, that whole bit, so if you could kind of get on the ball?  That would be great.  And, I didn't want to do this, but if you need money, let me know.  Then you can pay me back later or something.  Like by supporting me in some war or something.  We'll work it out then.  Anyway, kisses."

So while the world bank and the U.S. lent money, Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda, had a bit more sense of humor.

Economic crisis, eh?
He sent Great Britain a behemothic shipload of bananas.
GB wasn't quite sure what to do with them.  But after all, it is what we do for them.  It makes vaguely rational sense.


So let's analyze.  We, the good ol U.S. of A. is in such a crisis.  And still buying cars and coffee in non-recyclable containers and iPhones and hookers.  We wouldn't take bananas if they sent them.  We are just so affluently arrogant. Prosperously pompous. Extravagantly egotistical. High and mighty and made of money.  Sorry, and thanks for the bananas.

There are things I hate and things I love.

.
i hate that language will never let me say what i want to and i sometimes feel pressured by the need to capitalize words and semi-colon sentances and use nouns as only nouns when "semi-colon" is a perfectly functional verb

And I hate money and the passing of standardized units of exchange because it isn't just dollars.  It doesn't stop at the Presidents in our pockets but it is an exchange of ideas (of poetry) and methods (of invention) and people (of slavery) that are traded.  And there is something so revelatory about this image:

A piece of symbolic paper stamped with "In God We Trust" that sticks out, folded, from the pocket of a stripper.

But the reason I hate is probably related to Hegel's Synthesis proposition.

Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis
Truth + Untruth = Truth Absolutely
Right + Wrong = Reality
Love + Hate = Self

So I can hate so strongly only because I have been thesis-ized by love.

This really smart lady aka someone on T.V. aka someone with a Ph.D. and grey hair said some stuff.
She said that love manifests it self like an addiction and triggers a dopamine response in the center of the brain.  This tiny red dot in the center of our minds becomes active and controls our every thought-breath and emotion.  From rapture to withdrawal we experience the same effects as a cocaine-induced high.  When the trigger is removed, our addiction becomes stronger.

So alcohol becomes the makeshift dopamine trigger.  That's rationalized, right?

That's really all I was going for here.

Why there are no cats in Oregon:

There are three causes, three elements from which to infer the lack of feline occupation.

The first is that the winters are stark naked and breathe mist from their nostrils that condenses into little droplets that form crystal chandeliers on the trees and the underbellies of cars. No cat would choose to dine under such chandeliers. And if it did, an icicle can be the perfect murder weapon when it fell. Come spring, the evidence will have dissipated. The snow provides a less than desirable coat and a cat has trouble walking when it suffers the premature rigor mortis of the freezing weather.

The second explainable causality is coyotes. The grandchildren of ol’ Wiley never got over the lost roadrunner. The ties run thick and course through their blood. It’s been 30-odd years but the fatherly abuses trickle up the family tree, and the most recent generation is just as blood thirsty as the first. (There has been a slight increase in family pacifism as of late. Ronny, Lucille, and Victor never did have a taste for fresh meat and were always sympathizers to the lower fauna. Lucille once had an affair with a Woodpecker and never quite recovered. Ronny and Victor abandoned the family name and are now working at a law firm in Spokane, defending cases of wrongly treated animals. Their clientele is mostly pigs and chickens.) Nonetheless, no cat is safe in the elderly thicket of the Northwest.

The third cause is criticized by most skeptics, though I regard it as a valid concern. The third cause: Bigfoot. The great North American primate that developed a taste for Cat Du Jour and Fromage Dans Chat shortly after the Renaissance. Enlightenment is never good for God’s lower creatures. Just look at capitalism, for instance. As long as Bigfoot continues a feline diet, there will be cats in my country.

These are the three reasons why my father does not want my cat at his house: winters, coyotes, and Bigfoot. At least one of the three is a valid concern.

God is Not a Man. And Hello is Not From Hell.

I think all gender specific pronouns, He's and Him's specifically, should be taken out of our day to day language in reference to God. Whether it is in songs of worship or in biblical translations, in alters and affects our perceptions of God.

This, however, is not exactly what I met.

Carrots are like Risk-Free Gambling

Every one has a unique savour that caters to different palate. Some taste like bitter cleaning agents while some taske like fertilizd soil. Every now and again there is one that seems to have been seasoned with cumin, and there are those occasionally delicious and sweet little carrots that prove to be such a delight, it is enough to keep us coming back for more. The areas of the tongue have a hay day with these veggies. The back, with a soft spot for the abrupt and bitter, tells you that the first 5 carrots weren't worth it, and you could better occupy your time with peas. The side that senses the sour tastes get a little bored with these carrots and tell you, over the course of the next four orangish stalks, that you should try a bit of Lemon Grass Chicken instead, with just a splash of sage. But on the ninth carrot, the tip of the tongue prone to sweetness surprises the rest. That carrot was delicious. Its crunch? Superb. A little piece of vegetary perfection. It's enough to finish the whole bag, hoping for another.



Perhaps speaking in evolutionary terms, we can hope that all carrots will one day replicate and the whole carrot-eating experience will be more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Worth

A boy

rested his head on his hands

and wondered about death

That tail-coated fellow had on a green scarf

that stared to the Boston wind and said

“Let's sail along now

The red moon is rising”

And he snapped his pocket watch shut

and walked toward the shore

Past the snoring one with the knit cap

that woke when the tail coats

sauntered by

and muttered a hymn that said

“I used to love you”

But you said so long

And took them all with you,

from my cottonwood hands

which are left with hourglass sand

because the scarf man goes to the sea

And the sea is all there is

I cried for the boy

“For all there never was.”