Sunday, December 16, 2018
holy heyoka
infinite jest, garrulous with silence.
My heart is a wound
from battering through prison walls
called rib cages
guarding red herrings
called hearts.
// Gary McGee
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Die
a dreidle is loaded for eastern light
the game from birth burns blood and oil
bellies get bloated their haste to indict
grasping at mirth the chaser crawls
toward ash, and so did the rest of her might
Monday, November 12, 2018
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
required is a shibboleth
what kind of artist would you be?
and if you lost your voice entirely
how would you reply the necessity
but obey her with your dying breath
when your faves hang out and talk education in Jacobs, A. (2018)
—T. S. Eliot, 1944
To all of us, I believe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Roman Empire is like a mirror in which we see reflected the brutal, vulgar, powerful yet despairing image of our technological civilization, an imperium which now covers the entire globe, for all nations, capitalist, socialist, and communist, are united in their worship of mass, technique and temporal power. What fascinates and terrifies us about the Roman Empire is not that it finally went smash but that . . . it managed to last for four centuries without creativity, warmth or hope.
—W. H. Auden, 1952
Jacques Maritain, age fifty-six, philosopher and theologian, is in Paris, embroiled in a heated dispute with his fellow Catholic Paul Claudel over Maritain’s support for the leftist rebels in the Spanish Civil War.
Thomas Stearns Eliot, age fifty, poet and editor, is in London. He continues his work for the publisher Faber & Faber; he signs up to serve as an air-raid warden in Kensington, where he has a flat.
Clive Staples Lewis, age forty, Fellow of Magadlen College, Oxford, is in Stratford-upon-Avon to give two lectures on Shakespeare, though the second is canceled after the news comes that Germany has invaded Poland.
Wystan Hugh Auden, age thirty-two, poet, having left his native England for New York earlier in the year, is in a trashy dive bar, Dizzy’s Club, in Manhattan.
Simone Weil, age thirty, thinker, is ill with pleurisy—she is often ill—and taking a kind of rest cure, with her parents, in the mountains near Nice.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
speak for your servant
I fell out the window of mine
And was it that I fell so ill
That I lost your voice?
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
the grand forgery
For Mandela's centenary, a Penn prof writes that for South Africans,
His struggle was our struggle, his imprisonment was our imprisonment, his freedom was our freedom, his equality was our equality, his justice was our justice. He did it in the name of us all.And it makes me think that all the things I ask in Jesus' name turn on all that He did in the name of us all. A grand forgery that restores my true name, being, humanity.
My days in South Africa are drawing to a close. In 13 days I leave this beloved country. I dread returning to the pace and pressure of not Philly, but Penn. Fieldwork – wherein my sole professional and academic responsibility is to be fully present to and immersed in human interaction, to transcend cultural partitions, to observe deeply and finely, and to inscribe the full humanity of myself and others... Well, this has been rehumanizing and restorative.
Just wandering through.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
green pasture eyes don't lie
Those looks were deceiving. A boat that has been battered by a storm, sails torn, taking on water, yet still afloat and refusing to sink looks weak and frail. But the reality is that were it not strong, well made, and resilient it would have sunk a long time ago. She is stronger than the eye can see or the mind can understand.
Of the four principle virtues -- courage, generosity, kindness and resilience, one can make a strong case that the most important is resilience. It is the virtue that makes it possible for one to lean into the wind hard enough to continue to demonstrate the other three.
// Steve Edwards
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Sythia knew the sun delighted in her
חבצלת
with sun salutations
she springs awake to day
stands to greet someone
with palms outstretched
she bows and beams
was brown and bare in sleep
now cloaked with eastern light
the desert lotus lily
of the shadow valley light
has returned to rain
yesterday distending underground
light bursts forth from sticks and stone
the doorman sees his crown
in tomorrow
and Sythia wonders how
she ever questioned would
Monsieur stay if she left
in vigil if she slept
why
for sake of love
be buried
crushed
a seed
a rose
seeing the light in her
He, a rose
forgot her not
She, recomposed in love
blooms but soon
will be leaving
again
then
will be falling
again
a sleep
--
this one is for Sythia
who had him at yellow
forsythia is an "You're Asian!" shrub that arrests my afterwinter gaze
next up in #fakeeytymologies #realnews #flowershavepowerstoo, "Hello, Boris!" ??
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
home for the weekend
the leaving behind was hard...
hard prunings dead weight
toxic faucets freezing pipes
kitchen privileges family tables
i went to nyc this past weekend to be a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a mother.
...but the reaping/inheritance are overwhelmingly safe and rich. matthew 19.29
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
wait, of glory
by the portent
the fright
cede to the surgeon
cross the beam
in my eye
carry your burden
like an oxen
carries flies
take up his yoke
it is laden
with light
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
heavenly gates
pointed finger
nails
spears
pierce
the Penetrated
come
in,
He said I'll
give you shelter
in my side
splayed wide
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
of making many books
daily getting dumber
King Thamus, to Theuth, on literacy:
"This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."
// Socrates, Phaedrus