tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70269341691925012512024-03-05T22:26:53.555-05:00Estherogen (Hormonal Rhapsody in E)learning to sing a new songE!http://www.blogger.com/profile/09424234314320958150noreply@blogger.comBlogger493125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-65397020036538575732020-04-16T09:51:00.001-04:002020-04-16T09:57:47.607-04:00to a Child dancing in the Wind1.<br />
DANCE there upon the shore;<br />
What need have you to care<br />
For wind or water's roar?<br />
And tumble out your hair<br />
That the salt drops have wet;<br />
Being young you have not known<br />
The fool's triumph, nor yet<br />
Love lost as soon as won,<br />
Nor the best labourer dead<br />
And all the sheaves to bind.<br />
What need have you to dread<br />
The monstrous crying of wind?<br />
<br />
2.<br />
Has no one said those daring<br />
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?<br />
Or warned you how despairing<br />
The moths are when they are burned,<br />
I could have warned you, but you are young,<br />
So we speak a different tongue.<br />
<br />
O you will take whatever's offered<br />
And dream that all the world's a friend,<br />
Suffer as your mother suffered,<br />
Be as broken in the end.<br />
But I am old and you are young,<br />
And I speak a barbarous tongue.<br />
<br />
<br />
// W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) <i>Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
Expecto matronum<br />
<br />
the past 7 and the next 7 years<br />
labor & love<br />
<br />
Hans said you're like a bird, and your thought/decision process like firecrackers.<br />
"... but while you're there we appreciate the beauty of your flight, and the delicacy of the wings that ... soar aloft, and we can continue the metaphor much further than it should go, allows you to go places that we can't follow but we can appreciate the fact that you're enjoying the flight... <i>(hilarious, I receive that) </i>We do enjoy the momentary aligning when you perch on our shoulders and the song that you sing while you're there, and then we just hope it's not too long before you land again..."<br />
<br />
I thanked Seda for pointing the middle way 13 years ago, and holding my sights, from the beginning to love and honor and be satisfied with the length of that life. She had said <a href="http://waitinginthewaters.blogspot.com/2015/09/choose-harder-way.html">butterfly</a> ... And when there's two middle ways? <i>Choose the harder of the two ways (E.E.).</i><br />
<br />
The NYC years will always be precious -- for the gift of separation and self-hood that entered me into the freedom of self-giving, long and deep and wide, of love for neighbor, the fun, the feasts, the revelry, the Church.<i> </i><br />
<br />
<br />
thank You for wings. Yours and mine.estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-89138493016528590392019-03-24T16:29:00.003-04:002019-03-24T16:29:37.533-04:00Further Up the Stream of Consciousnessit is not the past as such that produced the present or poses the conditions for the future . . . but the way we think about it. Or even more pertinently, the way in which we deal with it in language.<br />
<br />
(Brink, 1998: 33)estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-17166800867053079012019-03-21T08:33:00.002-04:002019-03-21T08:33:30.246-04:00Dancingout of the dark<br />
dust off the earth<br />
swarming in the sunbeam<br />
murmurating miracle<br />
kissed to life<br />
my happy feetestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-68276948313880554782019-03-08T13:49:00.000-05:002019-03-08T13:49:17.200-05:00Hineni:. behold, Me!Where You Are<br />
Is sacred<br />
<br />
Attention<br />
transfigures<br />
the profaneestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-10419927626404045182019-02-27T10:08:00.004-05:002019-02-27T10:14:57.650-05:00NDA's are a tool of oppression<div style="text-align: center;">
silencing, and erasure.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
they are against public policy.</div>
<br />
displaceable tenants in a vapidly vanishing world<br />
assimilate<br />
martyr<br />
erase<br />
sweep<br />
dis-member<br />
walking tightropes through histories not our own
<br />
permitted to leave no trace, take up no space<br />
<br />
they've bound you to an altar<br />
fuel for their falsehoods<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
sacrifice and offering you do not desire, </div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
but <i>You</i> have given me an open ear </div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
burnt offering and sin offering </div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
You have not required. </div>
<br />
where is the book of life?<br />
attendance is taken. your name is pronounced,<br />
as if for the first time.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
then i said, Here i am;</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
in the scroll of the book</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
it is written of me.</div>
<br />
where are you remembered? where is your heart re-corded?<br />
gather me into your story and tell truly of your handiwork.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
psalm 40 </div>
many days
i would rather<br />
be a done deed<br />
a dying sacrifice<br />
than a living offering<br />
work in progress<br />
with sealegs off<br />
the ark bringing
all<br />
your heart soul mind strength<br />
to look again<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Behold, I Am</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
making all things Now</div>
estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-6008642738600113212018-12-16T10:35:00.002-05:002018-12-16T10:35:26.288-05:00Horebwhetstone sisyphus thrusts<div>
for gods to sharpen and smooth</div>
<div>
mountain sages tongues<br /><div>
<br /></div>
</div>
estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-66520750904903241632018-12-16T10:26:00.000-05:002018-12-16T10:26:00.969-05:00holy heyokaI am<br />
infinite jest, garrulous with silence.<br />
My heart is a wound<br />
from battering through prison walls<br />
called rib cages<br />
guarding red herrings<br />
called hearts.<br />
<br />
// Gary McGeeestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-4241277736017155122018-12-04T16:13:00.000-05:002018-12-04T18:10:19.002-05:00Diethe top of the earth the gamblers spin<br />
a dreidle is loaded for eastern light<br />
<br />
the game from birth burns blood and oil<br />
bellies get bloated their haste to indict<br />
<br />
grasping at mirth the chaser crawls<br />
toward ash, and so did the rest of her mightestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-13783103929794542272018-11-12T16:27:00.002-05:002018-11-12T16:27:46.689-05:00Calypso or Persephone?estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-4307957957089303922018-11-07T12:39:00.002-05:002018-11-07T12:41:29.325-05:00required is a shibbolethif you had no hands and could not see<br />
what kind of artist would you be?<br />
<br />
and if you lost your voice entirely<br />
how would you reply the necessity<br />
<br />
but obey her with your dying breathestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-80297989859416644892018-11-07T11:49:00.003-05:002018-11-07T12:42:24.702-05:00when your faves hang out and talk education in Jacobs, A. (2018)I have suggested that the cultural health of Europe, including the cultural health of its component parts, is incompatible with extreme forms of both nationalism and internationalism. But the cause of that disease, which destroys the very soil in which culture has its roots, is not so much extreme ideas, and the fanaticism which they stimulate, as the relentless pressure of modern industrialism, setting the problems which the extreme ideas attempt to solve. Not least of the effects of industrialism is that we become mechanized in mind, and consequently attempt to provide solutions in terms of engineering, for problems which are essentially problems of life.<br />
—T. S. Eliot, 1944<br />
<br />
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.<br />
—W. H. Auden, 1952<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>1943</b></div>
<br />
<b> Jacques Maritain</b>, 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.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas Stearns Eliot</b>, 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.<br />
<br />
<b>Clive Staples Lewis</b>, 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.<br />
<br />
<b>Wystan Hugh Auden</b>, 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.<br />
<br />
<b>Simone Weil</b>, 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.estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-49550987512736098962018-10-30T23:09:00.004-04:002018-10-30T23:09:41.568-04:00speak for your servantLeaning on you for understanding<br />
I fell out the window of mine<br />
And was it that I fell so ill<br />
That I lost your voice?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-79900187730475571922018-10-11T17:19:00.001-04:002018-10-11T17:19:03.890-04:00It was the word <i>avant la lettre...</i><div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
</div>
estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-23771866653776482602018-08-08T05:05:00.002-04:002018-08-08T05:05:52.417-04:00the grand forgery<br />
For Mandela's centenary, <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/centennial-nelson-mandelas-birth">a Penn prof writes</a> that for South Africans,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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.</blockquote>
And it makes me think that all the things I ask in Jesus' name turn on all that He did <i>in the name of us all. </i>A grand forgery that restores my true name, being, humanity.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----</div>
<br />
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 <i>and </i>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.<br />
<br />
Just wandering through.estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-49878419493101950782018-05-27T09:58:00.003-04:002018-05-27T09:58:50.033-04:00green pasture eyes don't lieShe looked frail. She looked scared. She did not look like she does now. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
// <a href="https://msindianhorses.blogspot.com/?m=1">Steve Edwards</a>estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-73819410773594651892018-04-18T07:40:00.002-04:002018-04-18T07:40:05.366-04:00who is this priest of the muses?estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-11351639377998790392018-03-28T11:54:00.001-04:002018-03-28T14:21:07.510-04:00Sythia knew the sun delighted in her<p dir="ltr"><br>
חבצלת</p>
<p dir="ltr">with sun salutations<br>
she springs awake to day<br>
stands to greet someone<br>
with palms <u>outstretched</u><br>
she bows and <u>beams</u></p>
<p dir="ltr">was brown and bare in sleep<br>
now cloaked with eastern light<br>
the desert <u>lotus</u> lily<br>
of the shadow valley light<br>
has <u>returned</u> to rain</p>
<p dir="ltr">yesterday distending underground<br>
light bursts forth from sticks and stone<br>
the doorman sees his crown<br>
in tomorrow</p>
<p dir="ltr">and Sythia wonders how<br>
she ever questioned would<br>
Monsieur stay if she left<br>
in vigil if she slept</p>
<p dir="ltr">why<br>
for sake of love<br>
be buried<br>
crushed<br>
a seed<br>
a rose<br>
seeing the light in her<br>
He, a rose<br>
forgot her <u>not</u></p>
<p dir="ltr">She, recomposed in love<br>
blooms but soon<br>
will be leaving<br>
again</p>
<p dir="ltr">then<br>
<u>will</u> be falling<br>
again<br>
a sleep</p>
<p dir="ltr">--</p>
<p dir="ltr">this one is for Sythia<br>
who had him at yellow<br>
forsythia is an "You're Asian!" shrub that arrests my afterwinter gaze</p>
<p dir="ltr">next up in #fakeeytymologies #realnews #flowershavepowerstoo, "Hello, Boris!" ??</p>
estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-13868997750052507512018-03-20T13:44:00.000-04:002018-03-20T13:44:08.168-04:00home for the weekend<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />the leaving behind was hard...<br />
<br />
<br />
hard prunings dead weight<br />
toxic faucets freezing pipes<br />
<br />
kitchen privileges family tables<br />
<br />
i went to nyc this past weekend to be a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a mother.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
...but the reaping/inheritance are overwhelmingly safe and rich. <span style="color: white;">matthew 19.29</span><br />
<br />estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-18758341392347703402018-02-27T06:58:00.000-05:002018-02-27T06:58:22.734-05:00wait, of gloryeasy i'm choked<br />
by the portent<br />
the fright<br />
<br />
cede to the surgeon<br />
cross the beam<br />
in my eye<br />
<br />
carry your burden<br />
like an oxen<br />
carries flies<br />
<br />
take up his yoke<br />
it is laden<br />
with lightestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-57970569289532801992018-02-20T11:41:00.003-05:002018-02-27T07:00:49.725-05:00heavenly gates<br />
pointed finger<br />
nails<br />
spears<br />
pierce<br />
<br />
the Penetrated<br />
<br />
come<br />
in,<br />
<br />
He said I'll<br />
give you shelter<br />
<br />
in my side<br />
splayed wide<br />
<br />estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-55691483870801921982018-02-14T09:19:00.000-05:002018-02-27T07:00:07.878-05:00of making many booksjust another Philly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Parade">mummer</a><br />
daily getting dumber<br />
<br />
<br />
King Thamus, to Theuth, on literacy:<br />
<br />
"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."<br />
<br />
// Socrates,<i> Phaedrus
</i>estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-59111666842524713062018-02-08T07:59:00.001-05:002018-02-27T06:59:32.249-05:00languid days, so dullbut hey, look on the night side<br />
the flask is half fullestherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-61142163352541789242017-11-10T20:55:00.001-05:002017-11-10T20:55:17.695-05:00gargoylesRecently my writing was described by a pastor as "...something like gothic architecture—intricate, strong, thematic and it keeps the gargoyles hidden unless you know where to look for them."<br />
<br />
I have always found comfort (and mirth) in the shelter of flying butt-resses.estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-26947872931120996922017-10-28T17:19:00.000-04:002018-02-27T07:01:15.628-05:00this split second of sweet sovereign CataloniaDolça Catalunya,<br />
pàtria del meu cor,<br />
quan de tu s’allunya<br />
d’enyorança es mor.<br />
...<br />
Adéu, germans;<br />
adéu-siau, mon pare,<br />
no us veuré més!<br />
Oh, si al fossar<br />
on jau ma dolça mare<br />
jo el llit tingués!<br />
el vent que me’n desterra,<br />
que em fa sofrir!<br />
Estic malalt, més ai!,<br />
torneu-me a terra,<br />
que hi vull morir!<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Stanzas 1 and 3 of <b>‘L’emigrant’</b> by Mossèn Jacint Verdgauer, 1888</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Translation by David Block below:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Sweet Catalonia.<br />
Homeland of my heart,<br />
to be far from you<br />
is to die of longing.<br />
...<br />
Good-bye, brothers and sisters;<br />
farewell, my father,<br />
I shan’t see you again!<br />
Oh, if in the graveyard<br />
where my sweet mother lies<br />
I had my bed!<br />
Oh mariners,<br />
the wind that banishes me,<br />
that makes me suffer!<br />
I am sick, and more!,<br />
return me to land,<br />
for I want to die there!estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7026934169192501251.post-7834045244033766342017-10-18T08:24:00.001-04:002018-02-27T07:02:09.859-05:00God our Motherto be <a href="http://www.esther.nyc/2015/10/replacing.html">a mother</a> is to suffer<br />
to travail in the dark, stretched and torn<br />
exposed in half-naked humiliation<br />
subjected to indignities<br />
for the sake of new life<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to say,<br />
this is my body, broken for you<br />
and in the next instant <br />
in response to the created's primal hunger<br />
"this is my body, take, and eat"<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to self-empty<br />
to neither slumber or sleep<br />
so attuned you are to cries in the night<br />
offering the comfort of yourself<br />
and assurances of "i'm here"<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to weep<br />
over the fighting and exclusions<br />
and wounds your children inflict on one another<br />
to long for reconciliation and brotherly love<br />
and when all is said and done<br />
to gather all parties– the offender and offended<br />
into the folds of your embrace<br />
and to whisper in their ears that they are beloved<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to be vulnerable
<br />
to be misunderstood, railed against, blamed
<br />
for the heartaches of the bewildered children
<br />
who don't know where else to cast
<br />
the angst they feel over their own existence
<br />
in this perplexing universe
<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to hoist onto your hips
<br />
those on whom your image is imprinted
<br />
bearing the burden of their weight
<br />
rejoicing in their returned affection
<br />
delighting in their wonder
<br />
bleeding in the presence of their pain
<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to be accused of sentimentality<br />
one moment and injustice the next<br />
to be the receiver of endless demands<br />
absorber of perpetual complaints<br />
reckoner of bottomless needs.<br />
<br />
o be a mother is to to be an artist<br />
a keeper of memories past<br />
weaver of stories untold<br />
visionary of lives looming ahead.<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to be the first voice listened to<br />
and the first disregarded<br />
a mender of broken creations<br />
and comforter of the distraught children<br />
whose hands wrought them<br />
<br />
to be a mother is to be a touchstone and the source<br />
bestower of names, influencer of identities<br />
life-giver, life-shaper, empath, healer<br />
and original love.<br />
<br />
// <a href="http://www.theliturgists.com/podcast/2017/10/17/god-our-mother-live-from-boston">from Alison Woodward's poem</a>
<a href="http://www.theliturgists.com/podcast/2017/10/17/god-our-mother-live-from-boston">read aloud on <i>The Liturgists</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">October 17, 2017 episode "God our Mother"</span></a><br />
<br />estherogenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12019979499639913852noreply@blogger.com0