Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

At times the human heart will crack under the pressure of its own weight. Sometimes it is moved by tiny things, and turns stone in the face of great and sorrowful events. Surely there is logic, but no one is to tell what transpires within the soul that triggers this reaction, or that, and I think there are those who have gone mad that sought to pry the secret of how it functions, that fistful of muscle. No, it is true that the feeling rests not truly in the organ that pumps our blood, but it surely does make the chest collapse when we say that our hearts break. But we dare to feel, nonetheless. At times the human heart surpasses all expectations of what can be done, here and now. Beyond the dream, the substance of love.

At times what I have inside me I would want to pour out upon the world, to see the color of my guts, as it were, a splendid offering to the gods. At times I want to hold it all inside, to hide from both the light and the darkness, to curl up with oblivion in the null space between knowing and nothingness. I am not shy, if need be called upon me for some purpose, though I am withdrawn from much of the world at my own choosing. I will be bold, I think, in the future that comes, for what I do I must stand by, and take the flack that comes with attention. Where was I when I found myself? Staring at the distant vision of death, and understanding that who I am matters little to such cosmic things. Understanding that God is love, whatever happens, and that I am made in His image. The guts in me made of such stuff.

Strange thing about money: the less of it you have, the realer it is.

the ink on the page darkening with meaning
storms gather on the shoulders of the sky
where the mind is, the clouds brood, charged
the world fades as the idea comes into focus
the wings of the eye dipped in the promise
now the vision was handed out in feathers
read from the page, ripped from heaven
the rain to fall a thousand years, oblivious
lightning and thunder as the angels clash
the fathoming suddenly to stop all the world
the look in the eye of flying, flying: such light

My dreams have waited this long. Shall it be that such things as airy as that can have substance in the hard light of what is “out there”? For I shall venture that there were select others who had such distant visions implemented in the present, complicated workings of these running gears here in the solid realms. I can do more than dream, and mayhap even more than hope. It is to roll up one’s sleeves (if that metaphor still has any meaning) and take what one can from the abstract, as simple as one can find, and hammer it into shape, into iron, and soot. The shape may lose something in the translation from the land of pure forms where it was envisioned, but the workings may still have meaning. The dream can become real. This I must put my muscle behind, my faith in this. And not lose heart.

It’s not that unusual
When everything is beautiful.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

The sky knows when its time to snow,
Don’t need to teach a seed to grow.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

Life is like a gift they say
Wrapped up for you everyday;
Open up and find a way
To give some of your own.

– Glen Ballard & Dave Stewart

Sigmar Polke: Untitled

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Night falls, a dream hovering in the distance, in sight of the worthy.

Night falls, noise hidden but present, the low and ominous hum.

Night falls, punctuated sharply by fires, but subdued by candlelight.

Night falls, a notion that those will work to forestall the dawn.

Night falls, places we cannot reach by daylight, by secret paths we go.

Night falls, sometimes the stars being generous with their answers.

Night falls, memento more: do not waste the day in complaining.

Having tried, we must hold fast [to the truth] (I Thes. 5:21), upon [the penalty of] the loss of a crown (Rev. 3:11); we must not let go for all the fleabitings of the present afflictions, etc. Having bought truth dear, we must not sell it cheap, not the least grain of it for the whole world; no, not for the saving of souls, though our own most precious; least of all for the bitter sweetening of a little vanishing pleasure.

sometimes you peel the void away and reveal there the light
too sharp the features for a dream, a hyperreal glow to it all
between dawn and imagining, logic even to the pain

Most problems will give if one applies steady, sustained effort — but you may end up having pushed to a completely different place than where you started.

[Book.]

(It is all vanity, and chasing after wind. It is all hesitation, and lack of any distinct purpose. It is all rushing into war, it is all inability to agree. It is all ending in fire and it is all ending in ice, and it is all ending in a whimper, and it is all ending in a thud, when the whole thing falls over lopsided onto its side. It is all taking the road less traveled, up until that road is the road everyone takes, and we all forget why we went in the first place. It is all the brokered peace that the subjects had no say in having, whose children go hungry waiting for a promise no one has any incentive in keeping. But it is all the beginning of a new day, every day, because we must never lose hope that things can change, that changes have happened on days just like today. It is all just the one day we have, after all, this thing called today, thousands of chances to get it right.)

[Book.]

The sky is both at once close and far. How the clouds do not care about any of the passers by, floating by like oblivious dreams. Though, even as I know this, I am still a bit lighter when I look up, and out at the centerless blue — such a color I have never seen a faithful reproduction of, not by any human hand or eye. Even the photographs miss something of the magic, as if the mystery had been filtered out when the image came through the lens. We are none of us tall enough to understand, I think, what is above. We shuffle around, earthly specimens, as angels soar through the yonder. It is the source of all myth. Outside the cycle of pain and stupidity, celestial wonders routinely work their miracles, and life goes on indebted to the light that pours down. Which we never notice, because there is so much of the miraculous at hand.

And my hands have slipped into my pockets for some reason. Once I read that this was an indication that someone is hiding something. Perhaps I am hiding something from myself? I feel a coin in my pocket and pull it out; I bring it before my face, and sense a great mystery to what I hold my hand. Currency: this is what is current, this is carried along the current of buying and selling to who knows where. It is a thing, a created thing, small and self-contained, but useless without an elaborate context around it. It is a marker of an entire world. It shares a value of “thingness” with all other creations, great or small — the commonality almost lets one forget the multiplicity, and believe in the One from which all forms have come. But what value, this thinking? That (realization) and the quarter I stare at will buy me a gumball, if that.

Half the time the world is ending
Truth is I am done pretending

– Gavin Rossdale

Alberto Savinio: The City of Promises

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the secret

in the small of the hours, the secret waited patient
we huddled on by the one massive lie, quietly, lit in pale fluorescence
we dared not look up, for what that would do to our backbones
time reversed several times; nervously we ignored it
we realized somewhere that this was all happening, now, as things were
but we just let it go as if it were all shouting about someone else
the secret to wait a lifetime more, no one to ask why

It takes a lot of work to get to the place where solutions become obvious.