there are lies and there are numbers
give them context and they’ll steal your eyes from anything
naked they are unappealing
like bones of an unknown, but typical, animal
wrap them in death, and they can stun you
clothe them in life, and sunshine pours from their curves
like a slap sometimes, to wake you up
what goes on in the world summarized in a single figure
ignore them at your own peril
even when they are formed to deceive the eyes
anonymized windows into lives not ours

Miracles happen.

[Book.]

In the corner of my eye, I spy something new on the floor. It is an envelope that must have been slipped under my door. I take and open it, reading a notice, that if I have not paid my rent by such and such a date, I will have to vacate the premises. The meaning of it doesn’t hit me for a moment, like I am reading the notes of some musical score, that speaks through the tones something important and mysterious. Then slowly the question creeps up into my foreconscious: what is today’s date? And something like a paranoia strikes my sinus: have I missed noticing this note for any length of days, now? Part of me understands what all this may mean, but more than half is thinking that the world is going to kick me out of it, and that should be an interesting experience. I drop the note. Maybe I’ve even read it before, and forgot?

Had this idea for a short story, and began to write it, so here goes:

The Rebellion of the Machines of Destruction

There came, as technology progressed, the necessity for conceptualizing machines. For as information increased, and the increase accelerated as it fed on itself, it all became too much for flesh and blood to usefully comprehend every little thing needed to run the ever more advancing world. The dream of what was once coined as “artificial intelligence” succeeded so well that none of it was ever called by that nomenclature again. Even when it had exceeded the threshold laid down for its classification as such, decades before. When in certain domains of knowledge, one might indeed have mistaken man for machine, or vice versa, no one said a thing about it. Because it had all transpired quite naturally, as necessity invoked, in all the niches that one could potentially have summed into such a thing called an “AI” — but nobody was inclined to do just that.

[to be continued…]

Jesus did not finish all the urgent tasks in Palestine or all the things He would have liked to do, but He did finish the work which God gave Him to do. The only alternative to frustration is to be sure that we are doing what God wants. Nothing substitutes for knowing that this day, this hour, in this place, we are doing the will of the Father. Then and only then can we think of all the other unfinished tasks with equanimity and leave them with God.

there is nothing in dreaming that is so impossible
except that we lack the courage to follow their airy calling
destiny works the easier when we leave all doors open

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something

– Eurythmics

Dali: Don Quixote

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It will be so obvious to us in the next world, just how wrong we were in this one.

Perhaps the problem in morality is desire, after all. Sometimes I think we are sent to combat the storm armed only with an umbrella. It is seemingly quite fit that the sin of lust is seen only as fitting of the second circle of Hell, according to Dante, only just worse than not having been baptized, almost forgivable. Also, the punishment of being blown about as if in violent tempest, seems fitting. But as I was saying, if nothing that desired were in us, we could be so easily the model citizen, we all. But we do desire, there is something older than man within that drives us. Sometimes to good ends, but much more often, to cause us to take a shortcut on our principles, to obtain what it is we want in the most immediate of fashion. This is the storm vs. the umbrella.

So what are we to do? Seemingly, the best we can hope for is not for us to face it head on, but to have that which is larger take it on. Buddha held that desire was the root of all suffering. That once we eliminate such subversive drive, we would be free from this wicked world. In my thinking, this is what is meant by being selfless — and in the highest of senses, we might think that this is to have replaced our own will with the will of God. Selfless: without self. And perhaps then, in this manner, we are actually going past the goal of Buddha, and tapping into the infinite, when we desire not of ourselves, but of love itself. For I think there is more in this life than pain, and wish not to detach myself from it in totality. The problem of desire I surrender it, my best to win over it.

A function of prayer may be that God lets us ask for things and not just give them to us, so that we might become better, wiser people. Even better, that we ask things for other people. Perhaps it is only secondary whether or not our prayers are answered, especially in the way that we mean for them to be. Or as George Meredith said, “Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.” After all, God already knows what we need and what we want: it is we who are clueless about the whole affair. In seeking God, then, we find out our own true selves. Not that we should not care about the things we pray for, because that is a part of it too, I think. To quote Ani DiFranco, “God’s work isn’t done by God.” Amen to that. Indeed.

O eternal God, who from all eternity dost behold and love thy own glories and perfections infinite, and hast created me to do the work of God after the manner of men, and to serve thee in this generation and according to my capacities; give me thy grace, that I may be a curious and prudent spender of my time, so as I may best prevent or resist all temptation, and be profitable to the Christian commonwealth, and by discharging all my duty may glorify thy name. Take from me all slothfulness, and give me a diligent and an active spirit, and wisdom to choose my employment; that I may do works proportionable to my person, and to the dignity of a Christian, and may fill up all the spaces of my time with actions of religion and charity; that, when the devil assaults me he may not find me idle, and my dearest Lord at his sudden coming may find me busy in lawful, necessary, and pious actions; improving my talent entrusted to me by thee, my Lord; that I may enter into the joy of my Lord, to partake of his eternal felicities, even for thy mercy’s sake, and for my dearest Saviour’s sake. Amen.

time is easily forgotten, impossible to ignore
strange, to us, how death is unavoidable
we dream of a world untouched by pain
strangely, the meaning comes to us in the hurt
we believe we belong not to this world
the secret is known to us, to walk in light
and time is blinked away in the eye of eternity

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
                – Charles Caleb Colton

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
                – Wilson Mizner

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
                – Brendan Gill

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.
                – George Jackson

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
                – Plato

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
                – James Branch Cabell

If you are going through hell, keep going.
                – Winston Churchill

And I am flawed
But I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

– Dashboard Confessional

Max Ernst: The Robing of the Bride

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