Do not become too comfortable in your sin.

We are stranded. And we have learned to live this way. All the information that we have none of us can ever absolutely verify — for how are we ultimately to validate that our own senses do not lie to us? What we have to work with, that which we know, we cannot break down beyond a certain level of meaning, and we cannot assemble them in anything like a seamless manner to some grand design. These things are not meant for us, I think. This is a metaphor of how to live life, that which our cognition ever has in its understanding: do the best with what we have at any given time. Perhaps it is to understand that this is all we can ever do, that this kind of insight is brought to our attention. Not to wait for any perfect moment — such things never were, nor will be.

There is a kiss of life somewhere in the darkness, when you are lost, but it is not.

smoke and wind, the world ignites alive the olive branches
doves fall by the thousands, suddenly deprived of their beating wings
what fool are you to desire the end of the world? what madness?

I’m about to lose control
And I think I like it

– Pointer Sisters

Gerhard Richter: Seascape (Cloudy)

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.

Little in my mind did I suffer like that: you know, complete loss, complete heartache: I have never had any of that kind of thing. I have never been completely hopeless, even in the darkest of the darkest hour; I cannot comprehend what it is like to be completely lost — to man and God, to touch and sight. You, out there: I’ll wager even when your heart broke, there was some one, some thing, that you could fall back on, and not was it the case that only shards of glass broke your fall. I remember what someone once said about what we complain about: and what I fain complain about, life must be pretty swell. We’ve had it easy, n’est-ce pas? Let us consider it: not all in the world have it like us. And it is a gift to know it when life is good — have you thought that lately? Be thankful to the deity of your choosing, even if it’s just to thank the nameless stars. Because it may be that it could be better, but oh, my, could it be worse.

i remember when my mind gave way
like a beam of certainty split in two
my mind, seized by a lying prophecy
to see the mad beauty in the random splotches
my heart never knows what it longs for
some incomprehensible sanity
what was it? what was it? who are you, really?
that nothingness beyond, so palpable
i came upon myself in dreaming, in back
i mistook myself for a dreamer
deathlike stare as if he knew something
knew nothing, intimately, thought so
why did you think you rose so high?
even the dust was above you
you, the mirror says, you: yes, you
i thought you gave a damn