[Book.]

Perhaps the revolution will be televised? Something tells me to turn on the tube, and I flip randomly, landing on a History Channel show about the Manhattan Project. It is that famous interview with Oppenheimer himself, and there we have it, as the luminescent screen tells me who it is that is seeking me: “...Death, destroyer of worlds…” These words stand out, seemingly to glow in sound, even though it is only part of a phrase the show is relaying. The palimpsest of the notification wires itself into my imagination’s sounding board, the Dreaming is calling out to the shock troops and I have been recruited. Could it be as his role as the fourth horseman of the apocalypse? For Death does not often reveal himself in form….

And suddenly, the future becomes chaos.

[This is the end of Chapter 4, the whole of which you can see here.]

There never was a pain that befell a man, no frustration or discouragement, however insignificant, that, transferred to God, did not affect God endlessly more than man, and was not infinitely more contrary to Him. So, if God puts up with it for the sake of some good He foresees for you, and if you are willing to suffer what God suffers, and to take what comes to you through Him, then whatever it is, it becomes divine in itself; shame becomes honor, bitterness becomes sweet, and gross darkness, clear light. Everything takes its flavor from God and becomes divine; everything that happens [reveals] God when a man’s mind works that way; things all have this one taste; and therefore God is the same to this man alike in life’s bitterest moments and sweetest pleasures.

the dreaming played the notes of a song i can’t remember
from nowhere wafted the smell of fruit i haven’t had since childhood
dawns this part of the universe, wondering about itself

For whatever means by which you may believe them to occur, you cannot deny that miracles do happen.

I dreamed a dream and I followed it. Through the darkness and the light, through the rain and the wind; when there were obstacles, I climbed them, and I never gave up the hope. There were times when I had nothing else to shelter me, it seemed, but some dreams are as if you are not the one truly dreaming, but the world expressing itself through such visitation. They are larger things, whose end you cannot touch if you stretched your arm as far as it can go. I dreamed a dream and I followed it, and it was to be alive, to sense that such were the noble aspirations of the entire human race to follow as I could. What I have learned in this life is to serve your God, and love everyone, but if you can, chase an impossible hope. This is to dance with angels.

[Short.]

Who could have known what was to happen? It was only logical, what came of it all, and so perhaps only the machines could have predicted it. People in these times trafficked in ontologies, the means by which machines learned and functioned, and some were better than others. They affected everything the machines did, out here in the real world, so it could be said that in the interpretation of reality was reality created. This was the feedback loop out of which the emergent structures self-organized, and how the world was made in these times, the autocatalysis of information. More and more of the world was offloaded into the electromagnetic matrixes of the virtual. At the prominence of most of the process, as man would have it, were the engines of war, and what was therefore so surprising was how late the revolution came to them, the machines of destruction.

[previously]

“Hey,” I said, “You can keep my things,
They’ve come to take me home.”

– Peter Gabriel

Max Ernst: The Kiss

Click on the pic for a larger version.

and heartbreaking in its inspiration
i sealed the fissure the doubt incused in my quintessence
the wonder of it all blinded me with joy
breathless in the airy stratospherics which drew me there
(time was an illusion of our mortality)
the imaginary pain but a perversion of wish fulfillment
the mystery how perfect our mistakes
for all of it is a gift that the questions peruse nonchalantly
desiring only to see the light as we die

I have so much to do (today) that I should spend the first three hours in prayer.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the only one ever to have known the secret of secrets, who alone could comprehend the En Sof, the Endless who is God. For ordinary man may even peer the expanse of infinity and have not wisdom, but He who has beheld the face of Glory knows the true depth of love. What was meant that He was called the Son of God: that He was of the same nature, because of being the one true offspring. The mystery is how God can be one and yet be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — each of the same nature as the others, the purpose and the being. He told us that we who saw Him had seen the Father, and perhaps thus confirm what the mystics said of God, that the Endless did not exist like we mere forms do. Of the three, the other was Spirit, which also cannot be seen: only the Son may we know of that which is beyond. And fractions what the Son reveals of Him. And by the Son’s actions may we know, too, that God is good. Being of the one nature, being of substance, love and only love.

Consign yourself to weakness. Understand that any strength you thought you possessed was but an illusion. Give up. Let the Lord take care of anything and everything, humbly let yourself be led to whichever direction God is pointing you. Do your best merely to be able to listen for and to do what you are supposed to at any given moment. For in thinking you understand the best way to go is to put your own will before the will of love, who knows better. You will never understand, except in fragmentary fractions. You will never be able to do any good, except in the smallest of victories. You will ultimately have nothing to boast of, except that you did as you were told, and that, badly. But whatever little you can do, do it. For in these small, small things, even the saints were made.

Help me to find my way, wherever I am. Amen.

i have seen things in the darkness that i can never tell
for it may be the best of mercy that we forget most our dreams
as we have become children of the day, why we ran so far

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction

– P. F. Sloan

Max Ernst: Fishbone Forest

Click on the pic for a larger version.