All hate is misguided.

stark white still the doors of death stand, incontrovertible
auguries of age begin the approach into that shared secret
how long the suffering, yet how fleeting is it all, to be

Love is careless in its choosing
Sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none
Just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love
And love is not loving

Soul love — the priest that tastes the word and
Told of love — and how my God on high is
All love — though reaching up my loneliness evolves
By the blindness that surrounds him

– David Bowie

Max Ernst: The Night — Prowling Fish

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Like many of the leaders and teacher [in the church], perhaps I failed to prepare people for the way of suffering. I had not suffered much myself and did not help people to be ready for it. But the fact is: when you follow Jesus, what happened to Him happens to you.

[Book.]

I have heard tell that this is my story.

Once upon a time, time began, and it lined all sequences up, from all which had been the primordial chaos. But you can’t get there from here anymore: infinite detail skipped over, from then to two weeks back: rises and falls, fire and space, distance and trees. And one thing: we do not know if we are alone. When I came into this world, it was as if I had entered a great river, whose source I could never fathom, and its destination only hinted at, ever, in the days where I swam these rapids — trying with dear might just to keep my head above the water…. And what happened to happen two weeks ago, that I put it in the league of cosmic time? Nothing. People shoved and yelled and kicked and fell, just like any other day; it is arbitrary. Therein is the mystery: destiny will take a random value and subject it to such withering heat it cannot help but become alchemical gold. All days were arbitrary, once — all that you hold dear.

[Book.]

I say just take it and run: “Hello, I am Everyman.”

Where am I? I am nowhere I want to be, in continual traveling to where I should be. What is the clue? To know you are clueless. What is wisdom? To realize one is a complete idiot. I once heard said that what is unfair about life is that it is fair. For a moment, it sounded as if I’d heard the meaning of life — but such ideation usually comes to very little. And now, I think that is merely a dangerous way of considering what justice in this universe truly may be. Here, this city has no name: it is as when one looks out the window of an airplane and sees a landscape of clouds, and one believes that if he stepped lightly, he could be a citizen of the sky: we do not name these fleeting places, and in the scheme of eternity, all is as having existed infinitesimally. Indeed, all finites are negligible in the face of the endless. ...and the dreaming: it is a land that borders death.

Never despair.

i have saved enough pain to get through the day
most shiny things are not worth the cost
truly, we squander the day, no refund or warranty
the merchantability of the experience varies
myself, i feel as if i’ve paid for priceless things
the story of it all truly does it no justice
(and the teeth of justice are loose in their sockets
nothing as cunning as the cold steel of logic)
all love is priceless, yet you claim to have a deed
vast sums of torment do we wish only to liquidate
sunbeams cannot be bought in such currency
we are hemorrhaging dreams like no yesterday
in my pocket the coined misery, desire’s pay
what story have i bought? at least it’s sad

We are of secondary importance, tertiary, the best of us. We are peripheral. How is it that those who were the primary, those who were of the primal space-time and imagination, passed through this world like we do? Or what did they themselves seem as to be when they walked the earth? Could it truly have been that Jesus, and to a lesser extent, Alexander and Shakespeare and Einstein — how could they breathed this ordinary air? Or is it something that is imbued upon we side-goers as time goes on? That perhaps those alpha humans were like us, until the shadow of the long year passing cast them in some special glow? ...I wonder who of us shall be so named as the luminaries of yesteryear. Could it be me, too? Could it be you?

Stone love — she kneels before the grave
A brave son — who gave his life
To save the slogan
That hovers between the headstone and her eyes
For they penetrate her grieving

New love — a boy and girl are talking
New words — that only they can share in
New words — a love so strong it tears their hearts
To sleep — through the fleeting hours of morning

– David Bowie

Anselm Kiefer: Nuremberg (1982)

Click on the pic for a larger version.

[Book.]

Nothing to see here, any mirror says more.

What is it I long for, far within my unsearchable waters? We who refuse to open our eyes, lest we believe and be saved…. I remember reading about this woman who lived another complete life in her dreams: she had her waking husband and kids, and house and all; and then she had a second family, a second house, to which she’d return when she said goodnight to the first. What did I, myself, lose to the dreaming? Perhaps nothing so well formed, but some kind of blunt, primordial fire that extinguished itself for my fear of it, fear of any kind of passion? And I will never now be comforted, for what I lost was the torch that led me out of the wilderness, and I am lost in the dark wood of myself, unable to care. (Where am I?)

Bernard [of Clairvaux] did not stop with love for God or Christ, he insisted also that the Christian must love his neighbors, including even his enemies. Not necessarily that he must feel affection for them — that is not always possible in this life, though it will be in heaven — but that he must treat them as love dictates, doing always for others what he would that they should do for him.

you cannot be a hero without you have humanity
do not wish for ultimate challenges while failing the small ones
learn how it is that merely to stand is sometimes victory

The real clue is in knowing that you are clueless. The real wisdom to realize you are an idiot.

[Book.]

We become who we are in the dreams we forget.

This morning, I woke up and my heart was inexplicably broken. As if the moonlight cast in the window reminded me of someone I’d never known, a secret I’d kept from myself. Pain removes the reason from us. We are lost in wondering why, nowhere a viable foothold, to slip between the lines on the uncertain page. How does one truly empty his mind? It seems that the only recourse is distraction, to fill it instead with something else, to escape your regular sights and sounds to expose the imagination to novelty. It was still dark out when I awoke, some strange 4am glowing red in the clock by my bed — a hint of an archaic weird. The brokenness inside compelled me, then, and that is all that my memory would keep of the hour I spent between there and here, otherwise a numb blank is all that’s stored.

[More book.]

Time plays tricks on us.

Vague, the meanings that trickle in. I stare in the window, understanding that everyone is selling something. And a lot of us do better at it not actually realizing that little tidbit of existentialism. There are photos of people on display in front of me, of individuals decked out in robes and mortarboards, wearing clean dark suits and bright ties, groups of people who must be related to each other in some how and feinting some kind of sterile smile, women in white white wedding dresses, singled out relatives in front of subdued velvet purple backdrops. Yes, a photographer’s window. He’s selling you memories that he’s concocted, of scenes that would never have happened without that he had set them up. Arranged a bit of your life for you, in simulated perfection. One of the many people we pay to lie to us.