*
Ooo! Pierced.
"I am a worm and not a man."
So there it is.
The little worm slithered along the path that his worminess made. God looked down and loved his worm, that was taken for a given. It wasn't a path or a skeleton, or a safety net, just a given.
Sun, that ambiguous good, beat down.
The orioles chirred and whivered in the palm tree. They did not eat the worm nor did the woodpecker peck it.
There was a moment of not being pecked. Existence, the richest robe, the brightest gemstone, always a match for your birth.
The words of existence were few. You cannot have too much of it and you cannot hate it because even your hatred would be more existence. To exist is inexplicable and wonderful.
The worm slithered in the middle way. Neither fear nor confidence but the middle way. Not happy, not un-, the middle. Purposeful, drifting? Neither. Predator, prey? Neither one. Kind or mean? Not that. Boastful? Humble? Not there yet. Striving, at rest? Musical or dumb?
In the middle of the middle of the middle.
There was a little child with her foot in the air. Coming down, coming down. Gratuitous shape, death in shoes. Now does the cut worm really forgive the plow? Does it really? Does it really? Is that just what the plowman says?
The worm traveled neither in forgiveness nor unforgiveness, no, but the middle way, in between. Not afraid, not unafraid, no, not brave, not cowardly, not hopeful, not exactly. Ready? Open? Hopeful without grounds for hope? Existence too abundant to simply be boxed in this world?
The worm rested in God's hand, which was not a material object and was not subject to sun. A human foot was a thread it wove.
If you love God's work, you love all of it.
I will aim for the heart, the little child thought.
But she couldn't see the heart. It eluded her and twisted.
*
If hope was a sickness, the worm had no wish to get well.
*
Now if the child had simply walked away, she would be a person who had no story, which is like damnation, not having a story. But she stayed and looked down. The nisus had fled and the creature was in pieces. It was "dead" -- what is "dead"?
It is irreversible, right?
So she cried to see the irreversible mess beneath her foot. The yolk would not go back into its shell. It clung to her and defined her.
Tears of accountability.
Bottomless pain -- and everyone had it in some way. A person's story.
"I am a worm and not a man."
END OF PART ONE
*
In time the girl grew over the hole where she once killed a worm. It existed and hurt inside her. Her husband would laugh at her delicacies and phobias. Every corner of our house has a spider, honey. Why not get rid of just a few of them?
You would open a book in this house and a spider would leap out, a little fist of congealed ink.
Let it be.
Wherever the woman went, cats and dogs and children would materialize around her. It is odd how safe and strong a basically timid person could feel.
There was some Buddhist sage who lived in a hut filled with cobras. He didn't bother them and they didn't bother him. He was only careful where he sank his foot.
She attended a rather pokey church near the university. Her husband refused to go. Organ music from a time long ago -- that was what characterized the church. She was comfortable in her great discomfort there.
The sermons merely restated things long known from the gospels. The same ideas were shuffled around and re-voiced. She felt that this was appropriate.
The hymns used phrases that no real person ever ever ever could have said. They were not exactly God's words but certainly not the words of a human. She found some melodious sonnet rolling on her tongue.
One day a young woman wandered into the church and sat down. She was not appropriately dressed, not suitable, she looked like a flower child or really a grass child, as though she'd just gotten up from the grass. The worshippers unconsciously did that horrible thing that worshippers did: they moved away as if she were unclean. They stared at the stranger, forgetting even Leviticus. Elise -- shy as all get-out and far from either a mover or a shaker -- stood up and sat next to the stranger, took her hand. it was as soft and boneless as a worm. The girl was as fragile as a worm.
They went to lunch and shared stories but later in the day the elder woman couldn't remember a word of it -- just that the girl was Una. She was "one" then. But one of exactly what?
That evening, leafing through the paper, Elise found the girl's picture among the stories of brief wonders and accidental deaths. She didn't say anything to anyone. Scott kept his own counsel as always.
She set up a cot in the back room. Her husband raised his eyebrows -- just a millimeter or two -- and said nothing. Since that was characteristic, one didn't really know what it meant.
The old hymns rolled like wagon wheels through the old woman's head. Oh, not so old really. Perhaps neither one was altogether old.
*
Does that girl live here or not? Scott asked.
I feel there's a ghost in this house.
*
Before Elise went to bed she tried to run through some form of evening prayer. As always, she was too tired to focus. It often became a deep and debilitating nap.
Sometimes the psalms were there in the core of dream and sometimes they were absent.
As she fell asleep the book in her hands softened and morphed, it began to move slowly. It was so soft that the slightest squeeze would crush it. It had an ever-newborn feel.
She knew who she was holding. "Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high." The most beautiful one submitted oneself, himself, to utter danger, even the danger of being despised. Our God had no shell, no armor.
Elise woke up shaking and in deepest devotion -- deep in the most pierced place there was. What do I do now? Where do I move from here?
What else was there to do but what you always did? The heavy woman pulled herself somehow out of the chair's suction grip. She put on what passed for a nightie then she brushed her teeth. She navigated herself to the underground region of her husband's snore. She lowered herself to bed and lay herself down.
*
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The worm's soliloquy
*
Here is what I know about myself.
I am a worm and not a man.
If I do something worthy of a man, it is not me, it must have been you who have done it.
"I fell silent and did not open my mouth,*
for surely it was you that did it."
Although I have never committed a murder, my hands have this strangling thing intrinsically threaded through them. They shake with it, a worm's ghostly vertebrae. I will not deny. I will not deny. I will stop denying.
I am not -- no no -- in no way sexually attracted to children and so what terrible thing inside me impels me to insist on even saying that? Why is it necessary?
I am not different from others in feeling impelled, whenever I see something soft and vulnerable, to crush it, and this even though I myself am soft and vulnerable and essentially without defenses.
What stops me from being myself? You do, Lord.
You are restraint. You are the stopping of my native self-hoaxing. When I don't feel you elsewhere I feel you there. And this is my true vertebrae, not the other one. Insofar as you hold me back, strip me and lay me low, I love you.
Restraint is in itself a good, but I am a creature of the American 60s, the time of the worm, and so my zipper is always down, my belly and my dick exposed, everything always open and all over the place until I too am disgusted. I do not know how of myself to find measure and be measure and live within measure, to be just so. Not everywhere and everything all over the place, not standing nowhere talking on my cellphone or watching the abyss of a dancing monitor, no no no, but to be measure and to be just so. No more no less no other.
You know all this, God. Why can't i just submit to you? But in fact I know the answer.
I am a worm and not a man.
*
Here is what I know about myself.
I am a worm and not a man.
If I do something worthy of a man, it is not me, it must have been you who have done it.
"I fell silent and did not open my mouth,*
for surely it was you that did it."
Although I have never committed a murder, my hands have this strangling thing intrinsically threaded through them. They shake with it, a worm's ghostly vertebrae. I will not deny. I will not deny. I will stop denying.
I am not -- no no -- in no way sexually attracted to children and so what terrible thing inside me impels me to insist on even saying that? Why is it necessary?
I am not different from others in feeling impelled, whenever I see something soft and vulnerable, to crush it, and this even though I myself am soft and vulnerable and essentially without defenses.
What stops me from being myself? You do, Lord.
You are restraint. You are the stopping of my native self-hoaxing. When I don't feel you elsewhere I feel you there. And this is my true vertebrae, not the other one. Insofar as you hold me back, strip me and lay me low, I love you.
Restraint is in itself a good, but I am a creature of the American 60s, the time of the worm, and so my zipper is always down, my belly and my dick exposed, everything always open and all over the place until I too am disgusted. I do not know how of myself to find measure and be measure and live within measure, to be just so. Not everywhere and everything all over the place, not standing nowhere talking on my cellphone or watching the abyss of a dancing monitor, no no no, but to be measure and to be just so. No more no less no other.
You know all this, God. Why can't i just submit to you? But in fact I know the answer.
I am a worm and not a man.
*
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
The worm on the cement
*
He called himself a worm but the worms called him an untouchable.
*
So what did the worm do then? He pretended to be okay. He simulated the sort of life that someone who was okay would have. He pulled himself bodily out of the darkness, the mud, the massed bed that bore our color and light. Blinking like a blindman he surfaced into the light and stretched. The world was good and he himself was perfectly normal. Right with God. Average in the sin department, neither a case of bragging nor of shame. Ha ha people said. A worm and not a man. Made an S on the cement and then a question mark. He shivered, finally revealing the truth about himself. He knew that God would have mercy on who he was, not who he pretended to be.
Feet came down solidly on the sidewalk and just missed him or else they didn't.
*
He called himself a worm but the worms called him an untouchable.
*
So what did the worm do then? He pretended to be okay. He simulated the sort of life that someone who was okay would have. He pulled himself bodily out of the darkness, the mud, the massed bed that bore our color and light. Blinking like a blindman he surfaced into the light and stretched. The world was good and he himself was perfectly normal. Right with God. Average in the sin department, neither a case of bragging nor of shame. Ha ha people said. A worm and not a man. Made an S on the cement and then a question mark. He shivered, finally revealing the truth about himself. He knew that God would have mercy on who he was, not who he pretended to be.
Feet came down solidly on the sidewalk and just missed him or else they didn't.
*
And not a worm either?
*
You - you strange boy - you call yourself "a worm and not a man" -- and yet the worms themselves want no part of you. They would prefer you call yourself something else not a worm. For they too have their worm standards of purity -- and you know you are not pure.
*
You - you strange boy - you call yourself "a worm and not a man" -- and yet the worms themselves want no part of you. They would prefer you call yourself something else not a worm. For they too have their worm standards of purity -- and you know you are not pure.
*
Friday, June 16, 2006
The life of a worm
*
Here theology.
I knew a worm. Let me describe a worm.
Drank. Drank too much.
The mouth of the bottle moved its lips a hypnotic serpent.
The two would kiss. Terrible taste. Pseudo love. Nirvana for Dummies.
The worm hated this relationship. In some sense even succumbing he would not succumb.
Would say: I know God means better for me.
Now the moral folk would look at him and shake their heads.
To preserve their holiness would move away and try to shut him out from -- what?
God's grace?
But what did the rich know, in effect, about God's grace? Even Protestants now thought they'd achieved their own prosperity by their own hands. Forgetting Luther they were digging themselves up by their own root.
Meanwhile the worm drank because.
Exclusion. Bad memories. Habit.
A depression that Christians claimed to be sin. Wilderness blues.
Too deep even to explore. But God was there.
Even in depression God was there.
The worm never lost his grip on God and with his worminess even had more to grip with. A grip on God's goodness. God's presence in places mere humans wouldn't go.
The worm would often say: I want to stop kissing the bottle and kiss God instead. And this is possible!
And this was even what the drinking meant.
The drinking was a fervent wish not to drink.
Imitation and perfection seemed to be out of the question. The worm could only love God and pray.
So now the question: what were God's own feelings about this worm?
*
Here theology.
I knew a worm. Let me describe a worm.
Drank. Drank too much.
The mouth of the bottle moved its lips a hypnotic serpent.
The two would kiss. Terrible taste. Pseudo love. Nirvana for Dummies.
The worm hated this relationship. In some sense even succumbing he would not succumb.
Would say: I know God means better for me.
Now the moral folk would look at him and shake their heads.
To preserve their holiness would move away and try to shut him out from -- what?
God's grace?
But what did the rich know, in effect, about God's grace? Even Protestants now thought they'd achieved their own prosperity by their own hands. Forgetting Luther they were digging themselves up by their own root.
Meanwhile the worm drank because.
Exclusion. Bad memories. Habit.
A depression that Christians claimed to be sin. Wilderness blues.
Too deep even to explore. But God was there.
Even in depression God was there.
The worm never lost his grip on God and with his worminess even had more to grip with. A grip on God's goodness. God's presence in places mere humans wouldn't go.
The worm would often say: I want to stop kissing the bottle and kiss God instead. And this is possible!
And this was even what the drinking meant.
The drinking was a fervent wish not to drink.
Imitation and perfection seemed to be out of the question. The worm could only love God and pray.
So now the question: what were God's own feelings about this worm?
*
Poem: Christianity for worms
*
So pitiably were we
unfit to meet God's terms
that we needed a Christianity
just for worms.
We had no kinship
with the saints
whose job was to sweep
us out of their tents.
We already
knew we were
unworthy
to approach the altar
so huddled
in outer
cold
unsure where
our own God was -- not was
in terms of doctrine
but for real and for us
in our desolation.
For the low and stepped on
would there be
inclusion, redemption
finally? -- or were we
tubes of hopelessness
condemned to bake
sad S's
on the sidewalk?
*
So pitiably were we
unfit to meet God's terms
that we needed a Christianity
just for worms.
We had no kinship
with the saints
whose job was to sweep
us out of their tents.
We already
knew we were
unworthy
to approach the altar
so huddled
in outer
cold
unsure where
our own God was -- not was
in terms of doctrine
but for real and for us
in our desolation.
For the low and stepped on
would there be
inclusion, redemption
finally? -- or were we
tubes of hopelessness
condemned to bake
sad S's
on the sidewalk?
*
Poem: The worm in robes
*
The worm looked at the photographs. It saw
itself before it had become a worm.
Elbowy humans in their long black robes.
The sun fell like a stone. One couldn't move.
The light was like a quarry where one's limbs
lay with no possibility of shade,
no hint of shade, there never would be shade.
Light was a giant slab. It couldn't blink
or flicker or not be. Not move. Not think.
Not be a place to grow. The graduates
could only back away from where they stood
embedded in this standing -- yet our God
was there -- orthogonal to our reward,
God was the shade we would soon be dragged toward.
*
The worm looked at the photographs. It saw
itself before it had become a worm.
Elbowy humans in their long black robes.
The sun fell like a stone. One couldn't move.
The light was like a quarry where one's limbs
lay with no possibility of shade,
no hint of shade, there never would be shade.
Light was a giant slab. It couldn't blink
or flicker or not be. Not move. Not think.
Not be a place to grow. The graduates
could only back away from where they stood
embedded in this standing -- yet our God
was there -- orthogonal to our reward,
God was the shade we would soon be dragged toward.
*
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Poem: The worm and the bathtub
*
The worm sits on a bowl -- in pain, content,
both things at once. There is a theatre
confronting it -- a bathtub, white, recessed,
expectant, with a hollow to fill up.
The California shadows want to be
performers -- want to act a mystery
and not just be mysterious, as now.
A red towel hangs, a victim as it were,
and not just what a victim would have worn.
Cloth is kin to the creature dripping blood
into the bowl, the worm. A play begins,
a mystery. The tub is bare and white!
There is a stubborn doorway through its bright
recess -- both open wide and now shut tight.
*
The worm sits on a bowl -- in pain, content,
both things at once. There is a theatre
confronting it -- a bathtub, white, recessed,
expectant, with a hollow to fill up.
The California shadows want to be
performers -- want to act a mystery
and not just be mysterious, as now.
A red towel hangs, a victim as it were,
and not just what a victim would have worn.
Cloth is kin to the creature dripping blood
into the bowl, the worm. A play begins,
a mystery. The tub is bare and white!
There is a stubborn doorway through its bright
recess -- both open wide and now shut tight.
*
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Poem: Christianity for worms
*
The icon looked and maybe did not like
the thing "it" saw -- there was no mirror here,
there was a harrowing disconnectedness
which was no doubt the thing the icon saw.
He saw a worm, no human, just a worm
pressing its body to the filmy break
on the protected space from which one's God
looked out and not just looked, not merely looked
but reached to pull all those within his reach
those golden, beautiful, reachable ones
who "imitated Christ" -- but who were they?
And why was everyone looking away?
He pulled -- even a worm could feel the pull.
It was suffused with blood and wonderful.
*
The icon looked and maybe did not like
the thing "it" saw -- there was no mirror here,
there was a harrowing disconnectedness
which was no doubt the thing the icon saw.
He saw a worm, no human, just a worm
pressing its body to the filmy break
on the protected space from which one's God
looked out and not just looked, not merely looked
but reached to pull all those within his reach
those golden, beautiful, reachable ones
who "imitated Christ" -- but who were they?
And why was everyone looking away?
He pulled -- even a worm could feel the pull.
It was suffused with blood and wonderful.
*
Friday, May 12, 2006
Poem: Truth as a walk
*
What made the numbers had no number,
maker of place, the one
who lifted water like a box
and slid it under land or up in sky
then poised to fall in scintillations,
the scintillating sheets torn by the trees,
this one, the one who placed, could not be placed,
but lay and deeply lay within the waste,
a presence? could you call God that?
an absence? that was just a word
that poets used, but true words had to be
walked into, truth was more a kind of walk
that you had to *do* even to
know what you were trying to *do*.
*
What made the numbers had no number,
maker of place, the one
who lifted water like a box
and slid it under land or up in sky
then poised to fall in scintillations,
the scintillating sheets torn by the trees,
this one, the one who placed, could not be placed,
but lay and deeply lay within the waste,
a presence? could you call God that?
an absence? that was just a word
that poets used, but true words had to be
walked into, truth was more a kind of walk
that you had to *do* even to
know what you were trying to *do*.
*
Monday, May 01, 2006
Chapter 400?
*
Kierkegaard somewhere said that you cannot confront another person's ilusion head-on. You need to come from behind. What does this mean? The insight will not come out of the violence of a debate -- your respondent then just digs in and fights. You need a new arena that changes all the terms.
One is convinced by one's own experience, not someone else's. And the Spirit pushes inward from between the shoulder blades, not from outward into the eyebrows.
*
Una moved through the edge of the campus with her God behind her. He flowed into her movements as she allowed him to. Just insofar. Now God was not the thesis of an argument she had. He was not a point to be made. He was not a historical artifact to be sustained or recovered or polished or put away. Not just discussed per se, not possible. He was not a set of rules, relevant or otherwise. He was not an "experience". He was not an event in her spiritual autobiography. What he was she had to keep from blocking, she had to let him come into her perception -- into the act of her perception -- fostering it, sustaining it, keeping it from its own abject death and oblivion -- so that she might somehow be able to see the way he saw. One momentary flicker would be enough to nibble on for years and years.
She looked behind but the gardener could no longer be seen. Strongly felt but not located. Ahead of her the ruined chapel, left in decay. Crumbs and condom wrappers, graffiti on the helpless softening walls. A depression one simply needed to walk through. An ugliness that ate itself up. In the windows spiders rolled and unrolled like little yoyos.
The dorms at dawn were all in a tilted condition. They leaned like loose teeth. The light they were made of seemed a wavering substance, a flashlight in a jiggling hand. The buildings were only half plugged in -- were one to pull the plug, if you reached and pulled it, what happened to the contents, their existence? If the physical plant were turned off, what happened to the life inside? Would its being turn off too? Was it cradled elsewhere? How solidly grounded was this thing, existence? In what exactly was it grounded? Where did it come from, what was its source?
So much transience littering the soul. She felt the power behind her at an impossible angle, she felt the Lord move her forward, she rested in this immense capability. She yielded to his grandeur: Gelassenheit. Then the inexpressible joy. She walked and was walked.
Her breathing breathed her and left her breathless. "You are my refuge". Do not abandon me.
By the stairwell of the dorm, 2 students she knew slightly were lounging in their old chairs dangling coffee cups. One of them stood up to get more coffee.
Una stood next to the urn but the other didn't even look at her. Didn't see her. When she put her hand on the shoulder the woman shuddered and didn't move. They were not present to each other but rather haunted by each other.
I am invisible, Una thought.
*
Then each of the women backed away from the other as though what she'd touched had been a burning stove.
*
Photons are selfish little things whose dearest wish is to eat each other up, in the Physics that seals the land of God's abandonment. Their nature was to be overenergized and deadly. Through the sweep of them -- the concatenated physical hypotheses that popped inside the dorm staircase and made it occur -- Una moved carefully, the mud on her feet burning and cracking. Over her head the building was a construct as fragile as an untended row of trees. Sycamores say that no one loved enough to groom. She expected it to wink out of existence at any moment. She reached the floor of her own room and paused to catch her breath and pray, since even though the building felt unreal, her own prayer might still be grounded and hence a point of reference, and if so, one much needed. It would be the only surviving link between herself and this space. She opened the door and instantly her roommate rose up from her bed screaming and pointing.
You're dead! she screamed. What are you doing here? You are dead!
You have been certified already!
*
Kierkegaard somewhere said that you cannot confront another person's ilusion head-on. You need to come from behind. What does this mean? The insight will not come out of the violence of a debate -- your respondent then just digs in and fights. You need a new arena that changes all the terms.
One is convinced by one's own experience, not someone else's. And the Spirit pushes inward from between the shoulder blades, not from outward into the eyebrows.
*
Una moved through the edge of the campus with her God behind her. He flowed into her movements as she allowed him to. Just insofar. Now God was not the thesis of an argument she had. He was not a point to be made. He was not a historical artifact to be sustained or recovered or polished or put away. Not just discussed per se, not possible. He was not a set of rules, relevant or otherwise. He was not an "experience". He was not an event in her spiritual autobiography. What he was she had to keep from blocking, she had to let him come into her perception -- into the act of her perception -- fostering it, sustaining it, keeping it from its own abject death and oblivion -- so that she might somehow be able to see the way he saw. One momentary flicker would be enough to nibble on for years and years.
She looked behind but the gardener could no longer be seen. Strongly felt but not located. Ahead of her the ruined chapel, left in decay. Crumbs and condom wrappers, graffiti on the helpless softening walls. A depression one simply needed to walk through. An ugliness that ate itself up. In the windows spiders rolled and unrolled like little yoyos.
The dorms at dawn were all in a tilted condition. They leaned like loose teeth. The light they were made of seemed a wavering substance, a flashlight in a jiggling hand. The buildings were only half plugged in -- were one to pull the plug, if you reached and pulled it, what happened to the contents, their existence? If the physical plant were turned off, what happened to the life inside? Would its being turn off too? Was it cradled elsewhere? How solidly grounded was this thing, existence? In what exactly was it grounded? Where did it come from, what was its source?
So much transience littering the soul. She felt the power behind her at an impossible angle, she felt the Lord move her forward, she rested in this immense capability. She yielded to his grandeur: Gelassenheit. Then the inexpressible joy. She walked and was walked.
Her breathing breathed her and left her breathless. "You are my refuge". Do not abandon me.
By the stairwell of the dorm, 2 students she knew slightly were lounging in their old chairs dangling coffee cups. One of them stood up to get more coffee.
Una stood next to the urn but the other didn't even look at her. Didn't see her. When she put her hand on the shoulder the woman shuddered and didn't move. They were not present to each other but rather haunted by each other.
I am invisible, Una thought.
*
Then each of the women backed away from the other as though what she'd touched had been a burning stove.
*
Photons are selfish little things whose dearest wish is to eat each other up, in the Physics that seals the land of God's abandonment. Their nature was to be overenergized and deadly. Through the sweep of them -- the concatenated physical hypotheses that popped inside the dorm staircase and made it occur -- Una moved carefully, the mud on her feet burning and cracking. Over her head the building was a construct as fragile as an untended row of trees. Sycamores say that no one loved enough to groom. She expected it to wink out of existence at any moment. She reached the floor of her own room and paused to catch her breath and pray, since even though the building felt unreal, her own prayer might still be grounded and hence a point of reference, and if so, one much needed. It would be the only surviving link between herself and this space. She opened the door and instantly her roommate rose up from her bed screaming and pointing.
You're dead! she screamed. What are you doing here? You are dead!
You have been certified already!
*
Monday, April 24, 2006
Shoulder blades
*
As Una walked, someone alighted on her shoulder blades. They folded like Origami in intricate linen, and the weight upon them only made them lighter than before. God was behind her not in front. He dug into her with his vivifying spade. "Where could I flee?"
Orthogonal to the divine is still the divine. You turn 90 degrees and something different stands in front of you. But the same one stands behind. Always there, but only now noticed.
*
As Una walked, someone alighted on her shoulder blades. They folded like Origami in intricate linen, and the weight upon them only made them lighter than before. God was behind her not in front. He dug into her with his vivifying spade. "Where could I flee?"
Orthogonal to the divine is still the divine. You turn 90 degrees and something different stands in front of you. But the same one stands behind. Always there, but only now noticed.
*
Monday, April 17, 2006
The tears in the water
*
You ask about the stream and the chapel. How did they come to be? You know about the cheerleader who cried? No indeed.
She fell in love with the football star. You are the one. He told her how special she was. The girls warned her. Be independent. Don't let a man push you around.
Good rule -- but not in this case. His words were love-infused and love-informed. He meant what he said. Surely. She abandoned herself as if he were a little god. Or a big god.
An idol in shoulder pads. Blissful love like a giant stop in her ordinary life. The stop swelled like a bruise, the life disappeared. Then he grew distracted.
The team had an away game and for some reason she wasn't supposed to go. Or didn't go. Her friend convinced her to check out the locker rooms, the sanctum of the alpha males. Let's see how they live.
There in the men's room with the toilet paper lying dissheveled on the floor. Words about her on the wall, words in permanent ink. He had written the words, she recognized the hand.
Dear Lord. That man has reduced me.
Then the cheerleader began to cry. She was unable to stop crying. She squatted on the cold gray floor and cried. The tears accumulated as she cried herself away.
The tears flowed and at the same time stood still, had nowhere to go. So the standing still became this landmark, it was on the map -- and at the same time the landmark was nothing but this constant flow. Children played next to the water. The young tour guides would bring their visitors, the prospective freshmen, to the side of the stream and stand there looking out. The chapel stood next to the water. It was the cheerleader's place and at the same time stood there empty and abandoned. Abandonment was what such a girl was. It was like her attribute. But she herself had cried herself out and was no longer anywhere to be found.
*
You ask about the stream and the chapel. How did they come to be? You know about the cheerleader who cried? No indeed.
She fell in love with the football star. You are the one. He told her how special she was. The girls warned her. Be independent. Don't let a man push you around.
Good rule -- but not in this case. His words were love-infused and love-informed. He meant what he said. Surely. She abandoned herself as if he were a little god. Or a big god.
An idol in shoulder pads. Blissful love like a giant stop in her ordinary life. The stop swelled like a bruise, the life disappeared. Then he grew distracted.
The team had an away game and for some reason she wasn't supposed to go. Or didn't go. Her friend convinced her to check out the locker rooms, the sanctum of the alpha males. Let's see how they live.
There in the men's room with the toilet paper lying dissheveled on the floor. Words about her on the wall, words in permanent ink. He had written the words, she recognized the hand.
Dear Lord. That man has reduced me.
Then the cheerleader began to cry. She was unable to stop crying. She squatted on the cold gray floor and cried. The tears accumulated as she cried herself away.
The tears flowed and at the same time stood still, had nowhere to go. So the standing still became this landmark, it was on the map -- and at the same time the landmark was nothing but this constant flow. Children played next to the water. The young tour guides would bring their visitors, the prospective freshmen, to the side of the stream and stand there looking out. The chapel stood next to the water. It was the cheerleader's place and at the same time stood there empty and abandoned. Abandonment was what such a girl was. It was like her attribute. But she herself had cried herself out and was no longer anywhere to be found.
*
Monday, April 10, 2006
Poem: The hook
*
The chosen one, he thrashes like a fish
upon the hook -- and the hook like a choice
one did not choose, a choice I did not wish
to have -- this choice a sheer transparency
through which the chooser, not myself,
chose my own choosing -- I have not
brought this upon myself, it was imposed.
It was thrown into me, a hook
of suffering on which my body closed.
Should I reject it, "I" becomes a word.
This I like flesh, it isn't really mine
but someone that invades me. Till my voice,
my poem has no subject of its own.
It's just a skin -- with God the flesh and bone.
*
The chosen one, he thrashes like a fish
upon the hook -- and the hook like a choice
one did not choose, a choice I did not wish
to have -- this choice a sheer transparency
through which the chooser, not myself,
chose my own choosing -- I have not
brought this upon myself, it was imposed.
It was thrown into me, a hook
of suffering on which my body closed.
Should I reject it, "I" becomes a word.
This I like flesh, it isn't really mine
but someone that invades me. Till my voice,
my poem has no subject of its own.
It's just a skin -- with God the flesh and bone.
*
Friday, April 07, 2006
The blade of forgiveness
*
What is the pressure between those blades? Forgiveness, it is forgiveness. Given received. The shoulders loosen and relax, they go lower, they sink down -- the shoulder blades fold and brood, a dove making ethereal gulp sounds, while the heart lifts to the sky. It is forgiveness that pushes you forward. And the will? What exactly is the will? Is it the little guy who sweeps the street in front of you so that you can move at all?
*
What is the pressure between those blades? Forgiveness, it is forgiveness. Given received. The shoulders loosen and relax, they go lower, they sink down -- the shoulder blades fold and brood, a dove making ethereal gulp sounds, while the heart lifts to the sky. It is forgiveness that pushes you forward. And the will? What exactly is the will? Is it the little guy who sweeps the street in front of you so that you can move at all?
*
Monday, April 03, 2006
Imitation and Kierkegaard
*
Kierkegaard talks of true faith as "imitation" of our "prototype" Christ. But (1st but) imitation is impossible because the distance is too great! But (2nd but) recognizing this distance leads one to "grace". But (3rd but) "grace" then becomes a device for the human to go on living as before that same empty life and relying on "grace" like a crutch. But (4th but) all of this is what the human does only as facing forward and willing her redemption. But (5th but) that is not how it works, dear Mr K.
Grace is not in front of one to be willed but behind one and between the shoulder blades. It pushes the blades and so you move tentatively toward the God who is everywhere. But (6th but) doesn't the will get in the way of this? Or can you will to be pushed ever so gently by that push?
*
Kierkegaard talks of true faith as "imitation" of our "prototype" Christ. But (1st but) imitation is impossible because the distance is too great! But (2nd but) recognizing this distance leads one to "grace". But (3rd but) "grace" then becomes a device for the human to go on living as before that same empty life and relying on "grace" like a crutch. But (4th but) all of this is what the human does only as facing forward and willing her redemption. But (5th but) that is not how it works, dear Mr K.
Grace is not in front of one to be willed but behind one and between the shoulder blades. It pushes the blades and so you move tentatively toward the God who is everywhere. But (6th but) doesn't the will get in the way of this? Or can you will to be pushed ever so gently by that push?
*
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Thursday, March 02, 2006
The dog in God's hand
*
At the crossing, a little dog
a little dog
has 4 legs now,
has 4 legs now
looks at the girl and turns
looks back at the girl
walks to the girl
sits by the girl
wags his tail at the girl
runs away from the girl
laughing on 4 legs -- has 4 legs!
splashes in existence
swimming in the ivy like a dog swimming in the ivy.
God's hand
God's hand
my surface is God's hand
God pets the dog
God throws a bone.
God's throw. God's bone.
*
At the crossing, a little dog
a little dog
has 4 legs now,
has 4 legs now
looks at the girl and turns
looks back at the girl
walks to the girl
sits by the girl
wags his tail at the girl
runs away from the girl
laughing on 4 legs -- has 4 legs!
splashes in existence
swimming in the ivy like a dog swimming in the ivy.
God's hand
God's hand
my surface is God's hand
God pets the dog
God throws a bone.
God's throw. God's bone.
*
Conversion
*
At transitional points, at breaks -- where the skin turns into fingernail: that is where conversion occurs.
*
At transitional points, at breaks -- where the skin turns into fingernail: that is where conversion occurs.
*
Chapter 15: Green trees
*
Una walked with the crown of her head as touching heaven, her spine straight as a thrust spear. The core lay upward and became squeezed. Her heart seemed to pierce the clouds. The book of the shoulder blades closed, tight shut. The granite dormitories stood skewed on either side, as if unable to resist the pressure of God's thumb. There was a crack down the front of the world's rational complacency and coherence, an opening of mathematical wrongness -- there for students to ponder, to fall through or ignore. It lay quietly across her forehead too. The world -- considered by itself -- did not add up. But as a kneaded paste of what was to come, it made a different kind of sense or was about to -- always on the verge, just like a human.
There was a man in the garden. Who was that man? He did his work and didn't look at her.
She was certain she knew him. She couldn't remember how. He was very attractive to her. Not knowing what to do with it, she took the attraction and shelved it like a book on some back shelf (behind the shoulder blades?), leaving it there to be latent and ready. Then she looked back and found the attraction unshelved, in front of her, bursting her heart. It had nothing to do with sex. As she stepped forward the man no longer stood in front of her, was no longer visible. But he was still there.
All around her were the green and succulent trees. As still as her own heart.
*
Una walked with the crown of her head as touching heaven, her spine straight as a thrust spear. The core lay upward and became squeezed. Her heart seemed to pierce the clouds. The book of the shoulder blades closed, tight shut. The granite dormitories stood skewed on either side, as if unable to resist the pressure of God's thumb. There was a crack down the front of the world's rational complacency and coherence, an opening of mathematical wrongness -- there for students to ponder, to fall through or ignore. It lay quietly across her forehead too. The world -- considered by itself -- did not add up. But as a kneaded paste of what was to come, it made a different kind of sense or was about to -- always on the verge, just like a human.
There was a man in the garden. Who was that man? He did his work and didn't look at her.
She was certain she knew him. She couldn't remember how. He was very attractive to her. Not knowing what to do with it, she took the attraction and shelved it like a book on some back shelf (behind the shoulder blades?), leaving it there to be latent and ready. Then she looked back and found the attraction unshelved, in front of her, bursting her heart. It had nothing to do with sex. As she stepped forward the man no longer stood in front of her, was no longer visible. But he was still there.
All around her were the green and succulent trees. As still as her own heart.
*
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