Eden

Every tree
is
the
Tree
of
Life

Every tree
is
the
Tree
of
Knowledge

Stockholm 3.X.08

California

"Who needs self-respect," asked an acquaintance, "when you have self-esteem?"

Failure

"Dying," said a surgeon, "is easy! I've never known anyone to fail!"

The Bridge to Babylon

It was a cold night, very windy, with driving, heavy rain. I was alone in the laundromat, a block from my apartment. I had been there perhaps forty minutes, reading a newspaper, while I stood by one of the washing machines. A young man entered, stopped opposite me, and looked at me.

Twenty years old. Moderately long black hair, fine, boyish good looks framed by his hair and an incomplete beard and moustache which were perhaps ten days old. There was a bright, faraway look in his eyes. He was very wet, shivering with cold, wearing only a shirt, a pair of jeans, and black boots. He smiled innocently, to reveal very white teeth. Babylon, I'm going to Babylon, he said.

He pointed at my green athletic sweatshirt, which I was wearing under my heavy coat. Can I have your sweater? I really need a sweater. No, I replied, I need it myself. That statement was true as far as it went, but in fact I had an identical, although newer one, at home. I could have given him my sweatshirt, and would still have had one to wear. But I didn't.

What is your name? Michael, he said. Where are you from? He named a town to the south, a town noted for the wealth of its residents. And he did look healthy and well cared for, apart from being ill-dressed for a cold, wet night.

Michael stood up very straight, and saluted me, and held the salute precisely for several seconds, while he looked at me with determination. Sir, he said. Yes, sir. He spoke for a while, not very coherently, about his dad in the military. Where does your dad live? Michael named his town again, and dropped his salute. The faraway look returned to his eyes.

My friend told me that I can get to Babylon by a bridge over the ocean. I want to go to Babylon. My friend says that it's a beautiful city. I am going to the ocean to cross the bridge to Babylon. Can I have some socks? I really need some socks. I looked at my laundry, which consisted only of underwear, tumbling in a dryer. I wondered whether I had included any white socks in the load. But I hadn't.

I can give you a tee shirt. Would you like a tee shirt? Yes, he replied. I went to the dryer to extract a shirt. I'm a lot bigger than you are, so the shirt is extra large. That's okay, Michael said, smiling. He stood opposite another dryer, and removed his own sopping shirt. I was surprised at how muscular he was, especially around the shoulders and upper arms, like a weight lifter. He was slim but not starving. He spent a minute or two admiring his reflection in the glass door of a dryer, absorbed in the experience.

Here is your shirt, I said. Here is your shirt. Eventually Michael noticed the tee shirt I was holding out to him. Sorry, he said, I did not hear a word you said. My friend says that Babylon is a beautiful city. Is that true?

I hear that Babylon is a ruined city, in a desert, I replied. Really? said Michael. Really?

He put on the tee shirt, and then his own wet shirt. I am warm now, he said. That happy, open, innocent look returned to his face. I have to go now, he said. Goodbye. And he walked out into the rain and wind.

Fårö

Electrocardiogram

four lines to the page
eleven beats per line

your best poem ever he said
straight from the heart

Definition

Fulton Sheen said: "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support!"

From a menu

A blissful admixture of erotic herbs and spices.

Initiation

Image

John Updike writes: There is a way in which success disagrees with Christianity, and its proper venue is embattlement - a furtive hanging on in the catacombs, or at ill-attended services in dying rural and inner-city parishes. Its perilous, marginal, mocked existence serves as an image of our own, beneath whatever appearance of success is momentarily mustered.

Recovery

"I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it!"

Present

Christopher Merrill writes: If poetry is a form of listening to the inner workings of the language, then prayer is how we listen to the divine, which we imagine to be always present, if rarely heard.

Equinox

Boredom

The real mystery of existence is that we become bored with it - bored, disappointed, frustrated, angry, violent.

Apprehension

Is there an indeterminacy principle at work in Being? Can Being be apprehensible and definable at the same time?

rain all day

weatherman say
rain all day
rain all day
weatherman pray

word all day
teacherman say
teacherman say
word all day

makerman say
rainword say
makerman say
word dont say

word all day
teacherman say
teacherman say
word all day

makerman say
word dont pray
rainword pray
makerman say

weatherman say
rain all day
makerman say
rainword pray

City

Mind

said Napoleon, is the fifth element.

by the river

remembering
a trembling power
felt not seen
known not thought
flowing beyond the edge of mind

One morning

I woke very late, and it came to me that I knew nothing at all.

the sun the blue sky

the sun the blue sky
the sun the blue sky

the mountain the road
the mountain the road

the road the red car
the road the red car

the mountain the road the cloud
the mountain the road the cloud

the cloud the thunder the rain
the cloud the thunder the rain

the mountain the road
the mountain the road

the mountain the red car the road
the mountain the red car the road

the road the red car
the road the red car

the road the red car
the road the red car

the road the sun the blue sky
the road the sun the blue sky

the sun the blue sky
the sun the blue sky

the sun the blue sky
the sun the blue sky

the sun
the blue
sky

the sun

the

blue

sky

City

Theology

God is, and I am not.
I am, and God is not.

Centricity

Donald Hall writes: Discovery necessitates eccentricity because the center is already known.

Fårö

moonlight

Raccoon
knows where he is going
so does
Skunk

xmas eve

you asked me did i do you any good yes i said if it weren't for you i would still be driving for a living no glamour job i said but it's better than driving i'm making decent money but that was not the question not the real question not really you really meant to ask me do you love me do you know me do you know that i'm sick that i will die soon will you miss me will you remember me do you know do you care do you understand what i've been telling you for years one symptom after another no i did not know i did not understand and i don't understand why i did not hear you so someone else who never met you but remembered that i mentioned you he phoned me xmas eve to tell me that your death notice was in the paper so i've thought about one phone conversation after another and i can't figure out why i did not hear you why didn't you tell me why didn't you say so in plain words you know how clueless i am i phoned paul he was stunned he did not understand either your funeral was a nightmare he said i asked him to send me a picture of you because i had nothing to remember you by but he never did i'm not surprised he was in a daze he probably didn't know who i was though he said he did

Gotland

Everything

There will never be a theory of everything, because we'll never know that we've seen everything.

What the Angels heard

Your Tears are not enough for Me.
Regret will not erase the Crime
of shaking Apples from the Tree,
and dropping Mankind into Time.

Ominous

We are office workers, waiting at the bus stop in the morning. We know that the express will arrive, and we know when. But, we gaze into the distance, toward the corner where the bus will appear, as though we are searching the sky for omens.

The Art of the Possible

It was a dark and stormy night

I got off the streetcar and headed for a donut shop, where I encountered an old acquaintance, who told me that he had just been released from prison. He had served three years for selling cocaine from his suburban house. He took no trouble to hide his activities, although in court he did pretend that comings and goings from the house were those of partygoers and band members. There was enough noise coming from the house to make this explanation plausible, he thought, but it was not plausible to the jury, who convicted him in thirteen and a half minutes.

Gotland

Tram stop

Excuse me, sir.
He is young. Long, blond hair. Smiling, uncertain. Slight accent. Dutch, I think, maybe German. Straddling a bicycle.
Mm?
Is it permitted to take bicycles on the tram?
I've never seen one on a tram.
And you are on the tram nearly everyday?
Nearly. Where are you going?
Downtown.
You don´t want to cycle there in the rain, I imagine.
No.
I want to tell him about the buses which carry bicycles, but he pedals away before I can speak. I cannot avoid thinking that I have misled him, disappointed him, wrecked a simple communication that could have helped him. I often feel this way in conversation, no matter what the subject.

Night

He comes at night. I see him as a darker shadow. Sometimes I see his face. He is about to say something. I think of an actor struggling to remember a line. So many years have passed.

Overheard

No one ever says, "That's one of the worst rainbows I've ever seen!" or "What an ugly sunset!"

Fårö

Sometimes

Are you a man? a REAL man?
Sometimes, I replied. Sometimes.

Linguistics

One summer, long ago, I traveled to Victoria, capital of British Columbia, to visit friends whom I had not seen for many years.
I reached a hotel. After completing the formalities, the desk clerk said, How are things in Vancouver?
I have no idea. I haven't seen Vancouver in years.
You have a Vancouver accent.
What does a Vancouver accent sound like?
It sounds like you.

Life, The Meaning of

What's the meaning of life?
Why do you ask?
You look like you know.

One sunny afternoon

In a bus shelter, one sunny afternoon, I was tying my shoelaces, which had come loose several times that day. As I tied the second pair with a single knot, I looked up to see an old lady, who evidently had been watching me.
Why don't you double-knot your laces? Don't you know how? My mother taught me to do that when I was a little girl!
I smiled. Now I am fifty, I thought. No one had taught me to double-knot my laces when I was a child. Why not? I wondered. And why had I not noticed others doubling their knots? When I was in my twenties, someone remarked that he thought I was an orphan.
But the old lady, who was at least my mother's age, had taught me after all. Now, I double-knot my shoelaces. They haven't come loose for many years.

Overheard

Now that I've turned 40, I can say things like: You're too young to know! It was before your time! It's a shame you never knew so-and-so! Back in the day! When I was young! When I was your age!

Quest

How are you doing, sir?
Fine, thanks. And you?
Doing great, sir. Did you find what you were looking for?
Yes I did, thanks. And you?
Still searching, sir. Still searching.

Priority

What I bought instead of Wallis Budge's book on hieroglyphics ($6): a tuna sandwich ($2.99); a bottle of orange juice ($1.25); the weekend paper ($1.50)....(total $5.74).

Night bus

The night bus carries bicycles now. No more than two at a time, though. Two bedraggled street people, a man and a woman, load their bikes onto the rack. One bike has a flat tire. When two other would-be passengers appear with bicycles, they realize that they aren't able to take their bikes with them. One locks his bike to a pole near the stop. The other, disgruntled, rides away. Perhaps he will try the next bus, the last of the night.

Streetcar motorman

"Have a good night, a good weekend, a good life!"

Taxi

"And they wouldn't bury her with her mother!"

Orion

silent house
slow stars
the sea

a bell
slow song
a bell
slow wind

a bell
slow stars
the sea

a bell
slow stars
the sea

Gotland

Holy, Holy, Holy

Above a back-alley entrance to a private dining club, which enshrines the usual crowd of the overfinanced and overadmired, there is a frieze, carved in the Roman manner, portraying a priestess or goddess holding wheat stalks, and what look like opium poppies, in each hand, while snakes entwine her arms. Such a frieze, in the ancient world, indicated a sacred site, where neophytes were initiated into a holy mystery. Evidently, the members of the club wish us to imagine that to enter their society is to encounter a revelation equally sacred.


.

Fårö

Approach

I will
come
to the
door

to the
door
to the
dark

I will
come
to the
dark
door

Vocation

God calls people regardless of circumstance, or even likelihood of fulfilment.

Music

is the language of heaven.

Not this, not that.

God is. He is simply, without limit or definition. To define him is to imply that there is some boundary that he cannot pass. He is everywhere and nowhere. He is not an individual, because there is no class or group of beings of which he is a member. He is not unique as an individual is unique, since all individuals share features from which uniqueness stands out. He shares nothing with anyone or anything to which he can be compared. Neither is he one, since there is no other with whom he can be counted. Neither does God know as we know, because we know only in part and can never know the whole as God knows. He has no self, since self delineates one from another, and there is no other than God. Without self, he is without ego, without defenses, without desire, without aversion, without fear. Without self, he is freedom. Without self, he is love.

Movie

"I'm old enough to remember when movies cost fifty cents!"
"They have color and sound now!"

At the church door

A girl in blue walked her bicycle toward a side door of the church. She leaned it against a small tree, and walked up the steps. She placed her right ear against the door, to hear the music of the choir. A look of wonder, astonishment even, crossed her face. I thought to ask her to come in, but I did not.

How to Change the World

Become a person with whom others will want to live in a better world.

Headlights

deer dead in the road
blood bright red
red too bright for death

The Man in the Lavender Hat

The man in the lavender hat smiled his way through the crowd. Many knew his face. They reached to shake his hand. Some wished to appear with him in photographs. He posed happily beside them, while others raised their cameras. How practised he was, how experienced.

Bookshop

Pardon me, I'm in your way, I said, as I turned toward a young man who was looking around me at books on the shelves in front of me. I stepped aside.
I'm looking for a book, but I don't know its title. I know what it looks like, though.
Who is the author?
I don't know. But I'll know the book when I see it.
A few moments later, he walked away. I regret not asking what the book was about. Perhaps the young man did not know that either.

Poesis

A Poet does not make, but finds
in All that is, a Maker's Mind.

Travel

travel
light

travel
light

travel
the
light

travel
the
light

travel

travel

light