Hemingway's ONE TRUE THOUGHT of the day

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
-Tom Stoppard

of course we will

Arizona wrinkled rocks
Irish shores or Grecian docks
Khalua sand and the Southern cross -
head's or tails, come on, let's toss

They'll let us go 'cuz it's our time
send us out without a dime
who needs money? i don't care
i just gotta get somewhere

Somewhere somewhere we'll end up
swigging more than 7up
we won't always get where planned
Ziggarat picnic or sleep on sand

I've got a coin, you've got a pack
let's head out. We won't come back
until our feet are about to bust--
we've got to live this wanderlust!

another fragment

rummaging for the right words
she came across a string
of pearls
once bright, but now outworn
their sea has forgotten them
dried foam and fragrance
rustled in memory's wind
and she just sat there
remembering
how blue and white the world used to be

Horatio to Ophelia:

Wonderment, divine surprise
oft appeared in your grey eyes;
calmly movedst thou along
lured not by the prince’s song.
Long days we spent in childhood bliss
unthinking friends in friendships kiss
when your soft beauty drew his fire
I masked my fear & played the lyre
joy & joyful journeys you
deserved, yet lived to rue
his wild accompaniment and haste,
so die you now, young and chaste.

okay, i lied.

so this is my mind un-chained/restrained.

words constantly barrage.

thank you God for school & forced & structured assignments that distract me from half-baked creation.

words constantly are lost.

otherwise i would go crazy like that guy in Into the Wild who ends up writing down EVERYTHING as it happens & then goes raving mad into the wilderness.

ULTIMATE LAST ONE BEFORE TOMORROW I PROMISE

"MAY DESTRUCTION REIGN!!!" (assembles mangonels, onagers, and catapults) - "FIRE!!!!!!"

(i had to look up "trebuchet" and found out that when Richard the Lionheart was crusading, he used them. He nicknamed his especial favorite machine "Malovisine" which means "Bad Neighbor" and used it extensively while trying to destroy a turkish wall surrounding the city of Acre.)

Hurray for obsucure history!

uh-huh

Many phantom scarves and hats lie about on the floor, but Yolanda the spansih illustration is nervioso about her Hombre and i've got to sort through all these impossible reflexive verbos so i can sleep. random song lyrics compose themselves from my fingers instead: Every time i close my eyes/Another dream of you comes alive/Reach out to me and wrap me up/The night is like an empty cup.

Isn't life craSy? the moon turned Yellow like a massive Oval of grapefruityness Under a canopy of blackest satin. Rare is that Sight - it won't come again 'til 2010!

procrastination, continued:

i have discovered i have a strange affinity for toads.
and mushrooms.
and licorice.

(i'm not sure what that all means, but it seems very important just now)

live-wire ADD mind-jumping

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -t.s. eliot

ha! so T.S. eliot never stopped to ask for directions and didn't know a landmark from a hole in his map.

His poor wife :)

Hmmm....

God gives all day every weekday for work; all he asks is the 86,400 seconds of the Sabbath for me to rest in him. Have I even used one today to say "thank you"?

oh, dear. i am full of words tonight.

It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge. ~Brooks Atkinson, Once

Recommended Reading

Well, Miss-I-got-a-David-Akimen-recommended-book, you'd better check out WATER TALES by Robin Mckinely and read "The Sea King's Son" because it broke my heart & glued it back together and my eyelashes are all tarred with rainbows now because i cried through happiness(the kind where you weep but your heart laughs and you put down the book and walk away with Eliade's "mystical memory of a blessedness without history" that has haunted you since birth, since you learned how to read).

there, is that a book recommendation or what?

your letter

it was like the birth of a small sun, an explosion of quotable joy,
your envelope
but just as i prised up one corner and made
a little rip on the white
the clouds clouded over the sun
and i wondered if i should save this missive
for a brighter moment,
a less darkening day.
but i am greedy
greedy for any news of you and yours
so i tore
away
and opened up your letter.
(there were flowers upon it, and the scent of summer)
may Christ keep you as
as his own on these, the cloudy days.

acrostic sonnet idea

colorblindness (a fourteenletterword):

abab/first half: He's focusing on work and what he has to do: perpetually distracted by what sunrise brings rather than the sun itself

cdcd/2nd half: he sees a white tiger, a tulip on fire, the stars - something, and she points out that he must internalize this and enjoy creation

voila/efef: Adam did fall, but afterall, GOd made pomegranates and licorice (and lovers)

g-g/last thought: let's go

instead of media law

heather-gold hairnets and turquoise balloons,
scalloped deliliahs and tawny bassoons,
ridge-ropes and sling-stings
majory and thyme
the way you distract me is surely a crime

instead of econ

Merry-hearted Mary handed
Morty Martin many munchies.
Morty Martin munched and muttered
Mumbling a minty mantra
“Miss Mary’s munchies make my muse
Most inspired and divine,
If Mary always bakes these munchies,
Merry Mary should be mine.”

Morty Martin’s mandibular movement
Slowed directly with this thought,
Down upon his knees he threw him,
Noble passions in him fought.

“Marvelous madam, Mary my mink,
Your mouth-watering munchies
Have caused me to think,
If you will have me, marry me now,
I’ll love you more than my finest milch cow!”

Young Mr. Martin missed her reply,
For wise little Mary, about to cry,
Gathered her munchies from Morty’s big hand,
And ran off
and started her
own snack
name-
brand.

saturday after work

with the rain & night softly making halos around the streetlights, her questions drained softly away & she walked quietly along under a delicate spell

james a servant of God....

oh well up within, water of life
most clear clean and wholly holy
flood with praise
these hours and twisted, creviced ways
wherin i crawl and starve.
o jesus lord,
deliver me; fire rims the world,
my tongue
a bridge across which march most
vile and dark-inflicting thoughts,
they storm and o forgive, they conquer where
my best battallion ought to stand in trust,
unrusted swords unsheathed and sharp; instead
the scorching ramparts see
my weak and weary watchman faint in vain
awaiting orders to enthrall and sieze those uncaptivated
mutineers;
curses and raptures from one source?
My brackish self-same seamarsh claims descent
from yonder peak, from your most high headspring?
Coursing and urging, jumbled like an army disarrayed for war,
from the splendor of thy holy hoard, shall i plunder and abuse
that which blushes Spirit and glistens with anointing?
Come now, with torrent and blaze of rain, take me
by surprise with thy upwelling Truth,
and sanctify again upon my lips
the majesty of the incarnate WORD, flood both bed and bank with grace.
another Ruth I bind the sheaves, gleanings from your salty lexicon;
My grapevine shall not bear figs, nor stray its tendrils into other orchards.
My Lord, my teeth tremble at the syllables they cage. My Lord,
this clay jar shall break and spill out nothing,
nothing but immortal victory.
I love you.
I shall learn by heart none but Cross & Christ.

Tim Roth

Don't you discriminate at all?

Too much

Sometimes, like when i have this knife
and this small green apple
i wish it wasn't my job to break the skin

because halven means broken

Suddenly, as when I open this door
and she stops playing Ravel
i rebel to the task of interruption

because halven means broken

Yet when i stand here with the pages blowing
and the roses wilting
i weep...and hear his voice

halven means broken
broken means healing
healing means heaven

So today i will lay the dirt in heaps
but the words are there
and halven means jesus.

anniversary

Lost mountains, dry valleys, and the raspy cursing of our turbaned guide.
You never promised me miracles, but.....

I never knew water fell into the category of the supernatural.

Forget our different color eyes she said. All rainbows are the same.

AFTER THE HIGH ROMAN FASHION – by J. Cate Pilgrim

Written in lieu of western civ. notes

Caesar felt a little down
He looked in his mirror with a regal frown
Reflected back in a bronzey hue
A fleshy face, and body too.
A shocking state - The Emperor sighed
Those extra pounds must be defied.
With ringéd hand he shook a bell
Summoning slaves; he could tell
Now he was aware, of sheer distaste
Written in the movements of their haste.
"Bring me a physic," Caesar bellowed.
"Fetch me a young one, still unyellowed!"
With one last glance at his portly form
Caesar’s will with resolve did storm!
No more midnight feasts with his brother
No more afternoon teas with his mother.
Farewell to honeyed boar flank tender,
Adieu to venison of the female gender.
A strict regime did the State decree—
The physic swore it would set him free.

"My sugar dove general, O darling Supreme,
Come have a dollop of strawberry crème!"
But Noble Caesar, iron of will
Refused the temptation, tho' bitter the pill.
His sweetheart, Octavia, with tears did implore
Bold Caesar to visit the grocery store.
Yet Emperor Caesar stuck to his guns
Forewent all enjoyment of fresh bakéd buns.
His physic, young Jupo, applauded the stand
Encouraged his patient—his vanity fanned,
"Oh Excellent Caesar, O Ruler Divine,
Your waistline is girlish, your muscle defined.
Your skin tone is rosy, you're bursting with health!"
Thus the young Jupo acquired much wealth.

Mightiest Caesar, in loose tunic garbed
Rode out every morning, his spear-head enbarbed.
Such hunting and sporting! Old Rome was impressed
Her leader was zealous, he lived life with zest!
In Tiber-side fisheries, the fishwives did say,
"We got us a gen'ral" and their words held sway.
Toned from the gym and tanned from the chase
Fearless the Emperor his mirror did face,
"Ha," came his victor's sneer, Ha!" did he yell.
His double grinned back, and Jupo felt well.

smile

6/28/2006 2:38 PM String Theory: Disaster for Physics

As I was browsing through articles in the paper, I came across an interesting one about 'String Theory.' Apparently it's a theory that became popular in 1984 - it "posits that elementary particles (electrons) are not points, which is what standard physics says. Instead, they are vibrations of one-dimensional strings 1/100 billionth the size of an atomic nucleus. Different vibrations supposedly produce all the subatomic particles from quarks to gluons. They exist in a space of 10 or 11 dimensions (no one knows exactly what or where the dimensions are, but assuming their existence makes the math work." The reason I read this scary jumble of complicated terms was because this 'theory' has never generated a single prediction. It isn't a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world and because of all the dimensions it involves if a prediction is made, it cannot be disproved (whatever answer you get, even if it doesn't accord with physical reality here on earth, you could say it was correct in another universe). So basically, it shouldn't be called a theory. This article was in the Wall Street Journal, and Lee Smolin is quoted as blaming string theory for a "crisis in particle physics."

Mr. Kerr, what is your opinion of the string theory - do you think it has tied up the time of physicist who otherwise might pursue bigger questions--like why there is more matter than antimatter? Why the 18 key numbers in the standard model of fundamental particles have the values they do, or why the proton's mass in 1,836 times the electron's?
(the technical information in this post was taken from the Wall Street Journal and a Biology textbook.)

-Cate Pilgrim

6/29/2006 2:16 PM Re: String Theory: Disaster for Physics

Uh, as a male, this is difficult for me to say, but, uh, I don't know...

-Dr. Kerr

Pastoral by John Montague

I.

Lyricize this, my fretful love,
Love is the claw within the velvet glove,
Love is the movement of a withered hand,
Love is a dawn illusion
Blandly planned:
How can brief blood understand?

II.

Love is the movement of the race
Blood-blindfolded to a chosen face:
Movement of unlawful limbs
In a marriage of two whims
Consummation of disgrace
Beneath the burning-glass of grace.

III.

And yet, my love, we two have come
Into love as to a lighted room
where all is gaiety and humbling grace.
Hearts long bruised with indolence,
With harsh fatigue of unrelated fact, can trace
Redeeming patterns of experience

fasting

there were banks of violets on both sides of the road; and leafy little may apples too.

Beginnings

Did the serpent just said EXACTLY what Eve wanted to hear anyways? Was it even the first time she thought about breaking the command? And why the heck did she follow that snake all the way to the tree – ugh, snakes.
But I guess he had legs and was beautiful.

Miriam

I have been lured by your strength & fire
& spirit; by your beauty true.
I have listened to your voice becalming storms; I have cowered
in the smoke left by your flaming tongue.
I have wept.
Now I walk the steps behind your shadow, worshipping,
and speechless;
I have been unmasked before you.

The Naked Seed

My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run
With longing, are in me
Dried up. In all my countryside there is not one
That drips to find the sea.
I have no care for anything thy love can grant
Except the moment’s vain
And hardly noticed filling of the moment’s want
And to be free from pain.
Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep
Nor slumber, who didst take
All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep
Watch for me till I wake.
If thou think for me what I cannot think, if thou
Desire for me what I
Cannot desire, my soul’s interior Form, though now
Deep-buried, will not die,
— No more than the insensible dropp’d seed which grows
Through winter ripe for birth
Because, while it forgets, the heaven remembering throws
Sweet influence still on earth,
— Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes
Still turning round the earth.

- C. S. Lewis
Lewis is quoting this passage from the end of Dante’s Divine Comedy

THE BRIGHT FIELD

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

- R. S. Thomas

"I have no safety. there is none. I never get to rest. Listen, I watch on the outward wall while you raise your beer mugs among my brothers and wassail. I hear your salutes and the roar of a battlestory well told, and o GOD what shall I do with all these broken ends of threads that have snapped within me – I see no pattern for my tapestry save on with divine theme but oh my lord it is worked in colors too bright for my eyes and I fear the finest stitchings of mine will not suffice. it hangs on walls in crypts and charnel houses; it bedecks milords halls and the great captain’s cabin aboard ship; kings and princes admire it’s workings, and learned men weep to see the wonder and intricacy of its design.
Fine. All around me say I am too skilled for a simple imitation, one to spread on the table and watch the children lay the clay plates on. What then – what is my pattern? Dear God, a novel or a story or something coherent that is forced to point and sticks to framework and shows me whether I am gold or pyrite. SHOW ME!
we are told to create
and not imitate
we are told we must become the best
the culture shapers
where does motherhood fit in to that?
where does normal life?
are we allowed to be merely human?

this is wisdom, to do the common tasks with solid strength and leave the world to damnation if it wants to be blind

I am not sure that is quite right;
it could be phrased different
more like a tree will grow from acorn to oak
and whether or not it shelters the animals of the forest
is up to the animals and where the tree was planted
as long as the tree utilizes the minerals in the soil
and the sunshine to photosynthesize
it is a good tree
it achieves its telos
and can die happy

O Hannah

Oh Rachel, o the weeping of Ramah, mourning for her children because they are no more!

He spoke, and i saw the young girl's eyes, full of fears, of not bearing children, no being able to bring forth from her body something made from both of you that speaks two lines with one voice, with hair and face and form from disparate and differing line of men and women, from Scottish and from French and from Saxon and from Cherokee – the strands of vocal cords he cries with are made up with DNA – blood from both, from a unique "us."

The night went quiet around me as i watched them there on the steps, and a new fear,
sudden, loomed up as a whole world of motherhood crowded into my adolescent brain.
The horizon of love (and also loss) stretched before as if in a fourth dimension – i bit my hand, for I realized then a great burden, the loss of ignorance and thirst for ownership. This is what mother’s feel when their bellies swell, this is the wolf seizing its young with careful fangs (fangs that scythe through flesh and skin), and gently carry them into the den.

But I remember Great-great-grandmother Ruby, how she mocked fear. "God’s hand will open my womb or close it," she said after losing her 4th child. I think of her and her waiting years, of at long last holding in her arms a son, and I wonder at the green fierce feeling of motherhood and mineness of a human baby,
a child who years later when he’s clothed in the sinews of a man I can see
“Ah thus you have become, and yet I held you when you could not lift a finger in your defense, when if I left you you died, starved, stank, wailed and froze, but if I held you you had food and heat and learning. I am god to you, and yet not god, for it was he who knit you together within me, and here is your father who is the instigator of you mind and muscles.

Oh you, my phantom son, be strong and courageous, for there are legions of me out there, who would be god and not god to you.
Beware.
Look down at your stomach; see the circle stamped in you.

That circle is my legacy of life.

Yet, really, I did nothing.

I am not god to you.

She sits

Petals litter the desk around the vase, and the tea roses droop on their long stems, dying, dying, dying and alone.

When she returns, she will sweep them up & throw them out (where they will decompose in the composte pile, in the company of all kinds of peasant vegetable matter).

She will lean over the desk, head down so the clock is out of sight, and cast her eyes demurely on all the unwritten letters there. Yet as the minutes go by, she will wilt and sink and fade in her young glory. She will question and grow silent as she sits, for she is waiting, she is dying, dying, dying and alone.

(and she envies those twelve roses, their beauty turned to loam, their death and their repose. she too longs to be immured in the earth, to be part of something common, even if the company of the dead)

Turned my brain back on....

lots of people eat rice every day
access granted, visotors pass
continental drifting and whitenoise
far-reaching no refunds valid on weekends and holidays
on the run? yes, on principle
you're a lifesaver
a national and strategic godsend;
headache possible, he warned, but along with solid gains.

A BUNCH

"counterbidding counterchanged counterchanges countercharged countercharges counterchecked counterclaimed counterculture countercurrent counterdemands counterefforts counterexample counterfactual counterfeiters counterfeiting countermanding countermarched countermarches countermeasure counterordered counterpickets counterplayers dumbfoundering counterplotted counterpointed counterpoising counterproject counterprotest counterpunched counterpuncher counterpunches counterraiding counterrallied counterrallies counterreforms countershading countersigning countersinking countersnipers counterstained counterstating counterstepped counterstreams counterstrikes counterstrokes countertactics counterterrors counterthreats counterthrusts countervailing counterweights, counterbalance"

Life Afterwards: for Elizabeth

Sorrow knows no pity, no springtime twilight cool.
Once invited, grieving stays. Sorrow sits across the table in her seat, and with unease I see how familiar it has grown with all her things - i see its shadow where I used to see the sunlight on her
face;
flesh to shadow.
love to memory,
Pain is no seasonal guest. It is a gardener with graveside manners, laboring in all weathers, ploughing my heart into bloody
furrows.
I walked along on the greening shore with her today, but not alone.
Sorrow and Pain followed beside, observing. O God!
They will not even let me hold her phantom hand in peace!

a string of late night failures

a lot of life, she said, is knowing when to duck down & put your head between your knees so you don't faint and he thought she was wise & unrefined

OUR SKY

for Annibale de Gasparis

Cruel and blank, thou midnight sky above,

O'ershadowing all who wake upon the earth.

No brightness lendest thou to us who move

Sleepless; we hard crave safe rest and berth.

The clouds obscure the stars; the moon ashamed

Evades our praying eyes. Time wanders lost,

Left to rememb'ring. Dog with Bull stands tamed

Like Ram; celestial order chills, its frost

Arrests sly Dragon and She safe stays chained

To weep while Wolf and Hunter curse the mist,

Intent and anxious, their swift hunt detained.

O'ercome by fog the wind doth twist

No Winged Horse; nor Lyre nor Swan befriend.

Subdued all wish for dawn—or death's dark end.

Merwoman

my hands were numb and the willow tree (which was strange because I was looking up at it laying on the hideous brown and pink and green crocheted blanket that I got from the hospice sale last fall
(which blanket does fail in its telos because it is full of holes – who invented the crochet ANYWAY)
well, I sat under that tree with the beautiful form of a proportioned woman, like a merwoman who is beautiful until her hands splay and the fingers web and your eyes follow them in confusion and awe and don’t connect that they are part of her, and then you step back and you see the whole being and the shock of connectivity almost frightens your limited and learning brain.
I’m trying to get past 1) me lying in the dark at eleven o’ clock under the smallish willow tree by the gazebo with the pond in front of me just misted with street light enough that I can see my shaking fingers.
I am writing frantically, not clearly or cleanly or well or anything, not writing to be noticed but writing because I must; it is a need and then there is a lull as I grope back in memory and I close my eyes and the water puckers and TWO GEESE LAND, noisily,
for all the world like two teenage backpackers jumping into a mountain lake, thinking they’re unobserved.

Without warning, I began to see.

The fragments of moon skittering under their wings. The intensity of wanting be here, now, was so sudden it hurt, the air was getting colder the wind not so friendly but OH!
what if instead of just an accidental witness to the miracle of wings and water, instead of sitting outside just because I need to write, what if I had intentionally sat there in on my muddy khaki rear and waited for those large birds to soar in and land right in front of me, feet from my face, their raucous calls louder in my ears than it is in dreams or in bed when I’m sleeping with the windows open!

Big bodies- HOW DO THEY FLY! why?
the wind pushes them, the parking lot lamps conflict with the inexplicable silver tinged wind-waves. They are wind-surfing, I’m sure of it!

HOW DO THEY FLY!???
DO I really not know?!
miracle miracle miracle.
now I am cold, but I have resolved to intentionally stake out the land;
if I am going to freeze, I want to freeze for a reason greater than the philosophical/emotional ranting of my 20 year old brain.

finished

Soon

for Francis Ledwige

He’ll greet me from an all night ride,

The sunrise gold upon the place,

Rough and bliss-filled from the chase,

How slow the strength of his embrace

And hope and joy shall fill his face,

And whispers of strange oceans wide.

Grave shall he speak of hidden wrongs

And new my love will spring from me.

In his presence will swell our song

Of rapture mighty as a tree.

With him through every voyage long

Faithful and willing shall I be;

Bound to him yet wildly free

To fall, rise, and stand if the wind grows strong.

SEEING

No hate, no anger, no appetite.

Just grief. unquenchable sorrow- it is well to mourn, it is fitting to fast and pray.

and all the words have been flooded out;

silence.

i am on an island with Death and Victory;

never did i feel the Father's pain as now--nor know his unstinting, untimely love.

and words?

i have none, no more, nor desire for any for this season.

i have recieved The Word.