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.
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
Another time to take a break. I don’t know how many of you have been with me from the beginning, but I wager not very many. You would know that from time to time, I take a break from writing on this site, usually because there is too much else going on with my life. Generally, all things are very good, but there are issues that I must attend to. Mostly they deal with the line of work I started last June, a venture a long time coming. I’ve been working 32 hour days, sleeping for 16 hours afterwards. It’s exhausting. It’s great. But basically, it’s sapping any and all strength that I have to do anything at all, so some part of my life has to give. This, here, has to be it. Dunno when I’ll have the chance to come back, so goodbye for now. Wish me luck. Hope to be back someday.
[Book.]
(In the buzzing of my mind there is business that actively achieves purposelessness. It is a faux nihilism, absurdity that has no deeper meaning. A billion neurons that each rolls a tiny boulder up a hill, to have it roll back down again: not sound, not fury, merely a swarm of senseless to and fro, to and fro, tossing around futile gestures. And that I realize that this is true makes it not one iota more substantive, for I know not why I so practice this flailing of the sensibilities. I am the ultimate test of free will, to choose not to choose until the whole paradigm collapses in on itself like a black hole of cognition. For in the buzzing of my mind there is a danger to anyone I let in, that they mistake the reality for the illusion, as if these theories go somewhere, and the randomness is merely a fog upon the road. But no. It truly makes no sense at all.)
Thomas a Kempis speaks for all the ages when he represents Jesus as saying to him, “A wise lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables, and sets all gifts below the Beloved. A noble-minded lover rests not in the gift, but in Me above every gift.” The sustaining power of the Beloved Presence has through the ages made the sickbed sweet and the graveside triumphant; transformed broken hearts and relations; brought glory to drudgery, poverty and old age; and turned the martyr’s stake or noose into a place of coronation.
in my watercolor dream, paints flowed one in another
no psychology could discern the pattern in the canvas’ blur
it all dried indistinct of form, and showed me the shape of sleep
I saw in a vision why there is something instead of nothing: love is simpler than nothing. The heart of God, in its opening, tells the story of which we all have a part, unfolding a perfect mystery of light. And too, in a vision other, I saw these people all as if standing on the stage of the world, when it was revealed to me: “The Immortals!†Each in wonderous variation, all who had taken the meaning of the Christ into their hearts…. How I have gone without seeing that these things were there, even as I spoke of the miraculous in the every day. How are we to notice a miracle among miracles? We take for granted too much. Letting the seconds slip away until years blink by. And wonder what the visions meant, when then you saw far, far.
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– Gavin Rossdale
