'Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking...'

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

graven images in the commons...

     I have a few thoughts for you, and this is as good a place as any to offer 'em, here among friends. [Looks around wondering who will actually read this.] First, graven images are harmless things. They have no power. It is stupid and superstitious to be outraged over them, just as it is stupid and superstitious to cling to them as magic totems of a 'heritage' defined largely by sentimental justifications of brute force. Second, the categories used to 'understand' what's happening are old, tired, and need to die. They weren't any good in the first place. What's more, nearly everyone seems to be re-enacting, in deadly ernest, some period of the past. This isn't the thirties in Germany, or the late fifties and early sixties in Alabama. It isn't Reconstruction. The old scripts don't work, so let's throw them out. Even what passes for 'radical' and 'progressive' is obsolete. You want change, so change for Christ's sake.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

a poem revisited...


     I wrote this a long time ago; it's been something like nine or ten years. It came to me after an illness had kept me locked inside for a couple of months. For some reason, I was reminded of it this morning.

Song



     Today I’ll go outside
leave the house as if for the first time
hear again snow under foot
see my breath again fog the crisp air
     yes today I’ll go outside
leave the house as if for the first time

     today I’ll go outside
see blue sky as if for the first time
feel again warm sun on my face
aslant mixed with the sting of the cold
     yes today I’ll go outside
see blue sky as if for the first time

     today I’ll go outside
hear folks talk as if for the first time
hear all the old neighbors talk
strangers talk while nursing their tea
     yes today I’ll go outside
hear folks talk as if for the first time

     those who won’t hear snow
under foot see blue sky feel again sun
on their face while the voices ring on
     regret regret as I go outside
leave the house as if for the first time

Friday, March 31, 2017

this inspires my inspirational inspirations...

     Found this on Facetube.

     If you hit a star, it would probably be the sun. If you flew as fast as NASA's New Horizon Probe, so the Interwebs tell me, you could slam into the sun's corona sphere in about 106 days. You would be going a little over 36,373 mpg (we're ignoring the drag from solar wind here, and ignoring the fact that it would kill you, just to keep things simple), so congratulations, you've been vaporized before reaching the Sun Proper. 
     Anyway, were you to miss the sun and tumble off into space, the nearest star to our solar system is Proxima Centauri, which is a mere 4.21 light years away. I suspect that you would die before you reached the Oort Cloud. But let’s say you started on the right trajectory and actually made it to Proxima Centauri some time this decade. That would mean you're a being with superpowers, so you probably don't need motivational memes and the like. You would also want to avoid *hitting* it, for the same reason that hitting the sun was a bad idea.
     You know, maybe it's better if you don't aim for the moon in the first place. After all, were you to hit it even that collision would kill you. But let's say you landed safely on the moon all by your lonesome. There's nothing to do there. I doubt the old car we left behind still runs. O, and there's *no air*, the moon being by nature inhospitable to us. The long story short is that, even if you aren't killed *hitting the moon*, you'll die in short order once you're there. No, aiming for the moon is not a good idea at all.
     Now, I suppose this could mean that you're trying to *shoot something at the moon*, in which case I just don't see the point at all.
     Hope you're feeling motivated to do something.

Friday, February 17, 2017

a poem...

Untitled



I want to meet my father Avraham the wandering Aramean,
ask him if he had ever heard the Voice before that day,
ever seen that Angel like a flaming pillar with the Name inside
him as an onyx stone might be set in a piece of marble.
How to recognize the Voice of the One who happens
along if not by those imperious commands - 
quit father’s house kindred homeland quit all that’s dear,
go, go now, go to the Land, don’t bother with where
you will go, I will show you the Land you will know it when you see it.
Just go; always go; forever go. There will be rest at the end.
O my father Avraham tell me at length of the terror
that still tosses nations about like motes in an April windstorm.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

yeah, it's the Guardian, but still...


     See, I don't really want to care how people live out there. I have problems of my own. This, however, is an abuse of language, and that I do care about: 'Transgender soldier is first female to serve on British army frontline'. That's a lie, and as such it is an attempt to do violence to the order of being itself.
     Though it count for nothing, I must say no, this man is not 'the first woman to serve' on the frontline. He's a man, serving on the front line while suffering from the delusion that he is a woman. That several venerable institutions have colluded in supporting this man's delusions is irrelevant to the question at hand. As for the man in question, frankly, he's not my problem, but I'm not going to look into the night and call it day.