the dream unfolds like petals of a clockwork
this is the strange silence before the storm
where the air halts by an invisible hand
to rush in bursts of wind to scatter all color
i am calm as if my eyes know the curve of the road
breathing at the pace of a lion before the pounce
quietly to gather my senses, and dive in

Do what we can, with what we have, at the moment. This is enlightenment.

Back in my wilder days, one of my favorite videos to watch was Woodstock (3 days of peace, music and love), the documentary about the festival of the same name. You know the one, 400,000 people zonked out of their minds listening to rock ‘n’ roll. The one that was declared a disaster area. Yes, that one — there is, of course, none other that you could really confuse this with, the anniversary concerts being such crass commercialism that one must just shake one’s head when one thinks of them using the same name. But the original one, in that huge gig, I think about this line that still stays with me, an announcement when they realized just how many people showed up, most without tickets: (I paraphrase) “There’s only one way this is going to work. See that man next to you? He’s your brother.” And I think that really, that so applies anywhere, everywhere you may go. See this world? There’s only one way all of this, this whole deal is going to work: see all these people around you? They’re your family. Yeah, man. That’s cool.

Night falls, and the darkness swallows up sound, as if the sky itself were louder in the light.

Night falls, and it is day which is the curtain that is swept aside, to reveal the vast outside.

Night falls, and I imagine the sky becomes one wide well of ink, in which I might dip and write prophecies.

Night falls, and the stars know me better than the sun, who do not blind me if I gaze upon them.

Night falls, and I wonder what it would be like if the dawn never came, and everything stayed hidden.

Night falls, and I think I am not more alone than in the day, but that the solitude stands out more.

Night falls, and I imagine I can see farther than the sky is deep, like the movie said, beyond infinity.

The glory to come far outweighs the affliction of the present. The affliction is light and temporary when compared with the all-surpassing and everlasting glory. So Paul, writing against a background of recent and (even for him) unparalleled tribulation, had assured his friends in Corinth a year or two before this that ‘this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’ (2 Cor. 4:17). It is not merely that the glory is a compensation for the suffering; it actually grows out of the suffering. There is an organic relation between the two for the believer as surely as there was for the Lord.

i am spoiled on meaning, from the love that comes from nowhere
the heart imagines itself grand when drifting in dreaming’s river
look up: each pinpoint of light fits not in our hugest vision

...I’m no saint
But I believe in what is right

– Kid Rock

van Gogh: Corridor in the Asylum

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Remember, whatever happens: we have won.

The moment you are saved is simple: when you decide, once and for all, that you’ll do whatever it takes. That you would expend effort on it forever, because that’s what it’s about — eternity. Jesus Christ had the parable about it, that when a man found a treasure hidden in a field, that he sold all he had and bought that field. It’s an all or nothing proposition, for one should cut off your arm, or leg, rather than be cast into the fire, that there is no choice half of a fire wherein you experience partial salvation. Would you do anything at all for eternal life? That is the question, the true “to be or not to be”. This is the one leap of faith that mixes you with the infinite, the only one that counts. The yes with no shade of no, what it really means to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul.

I thought of how a machine might love. Like a flurry of processes all relating to one subject, which they all flutter around, and are about, and which the concentration of its processing power cannot seem to have enough of this subject, that which courses through its mechanical synapses. And I wonder if that feeling of love that we have — if the machine did not feel it like we do, couldn’t it still be love? For is it not really that the feeling of love is the least of it, in these final analyses? For I cannot imagine that all that love is is a feeling that one is in love — like I imagine that it is as an incandescent light, which gives off light and warmth, and the light is the point, and if one felt not the warmth of it, the point would still be there. And I imagine that the machine who could love, that he might feel something completely different, completely alien to what we do. Yet in my believing, love is love, and love would still be love, even among such aliens: that a heart can come in any shape.

If Religion has raised us into a new world, if it has filled us with new ends of life, if it has taken possession of our hearts, and altered the whole turn of our minds, if it has changed all our ideas of things, given us a new set of hopes and fears, and taught us to live by the realities of an invisible world — then we may humbly hope that we are true followers of the Holy Jesus, and such as may rejoice in the Day of Christ.

the hint of her coming is as the moment fills with magic
the curve of her cheek a line between the real and dreaming
she is what a flower imagines itself to be in its fantasy
she lifts me with her eyes until i am drifting with the moon
her kiss is where time stops, eternity wrapped in her lips
her eyes are where the rose of fate blooms before me

where am i? so lost in that whisper that it is everywhere

[Book.]

I step away from the storefront like I am stepping away from a life. As if there were finality to it, as if there were meaning that I am imbuing to the moment, in deepness that I act. I am then struck by structure — that is all there is, architecture and me, the street going a distance and ending ambiguously in buildings and alleyways at arbitrary angles forked out of this street. But I know there will be people soon, not wanderers like me, those who have some fixed goal in their onward perambulation. They fascinate me, sometimes, their plain purpose so ineffable to me. Perhaps I will talk to one of them, and wonder if they understand that I am different?

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology

– Sting

Joseph M. W. Turner: Snowstorm

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Happy New Year!
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I’ll be mine,
And we’ll tak a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine,
But we’ve wander’d monie a weary fit,
Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand my trusty fiere,
And gie’s a hand o thine,
And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne