A. G. Rizzoli: The Shaft of Ascension

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Life can be so distracting — if you don’t watch out, you might find yourself enjoying it.

The miracle is to feel, to know, that one is loved, when no one else is around. The miracle is when the memory of someone long gone wraps you in a waking dream — so clear, the vision, their words so present. The miracle is how the world of man persists, when all of us surely will die along the way, that something shared can prosper so, in an almost infinite way. The miracle was the day you were born, when something so new and unique was called into being, something never before seen, and which will never been seen again. The miracle is to understand something of another’s soul, the little things that stay with you — blessings handed you in casual passing. The miracle is to see with eyes that sight such miracles, and to deposit these little visions in your memories, to spend on some rainy day when the visibility drops, and nothing around you is clear.

I’m certain the planets will align for me, at some time; but I wonder if it will be destiny bending over backward to spin me a trivial fate. Not that I should complain — for I have food and drink aplenty, entertainment ready whenever I want, a roof over my head, and my health — and that’s better than (I believe) the majority of the world. Yes, I must thank God for this abundance, but this little niggling sense I cannot rid myself of it: that I will be incredibly lucky about some really minor thing, and that whatever sum of luck is allotted for my person’s total of kismet will then be exhausted when it comes to anything of real importance. Alas, nothing I can do…. There’s a lesson here, somewhere, because there always is when I go on about anything. But I’m too busy complaining, I guess, to try and pry it free from the unsorted mass. (And perhaps that could be the important thing I’ll be missing out on? Life’s funny like that.)

Love can move mountains — but only with our help.

Pharisee Eyes

Is it a blessing or a curse?
I may incline myself:
to look out through Pharisee eyes,
to see the world
like the bad guys do, to see
their point of view,
to understand why evil does as it does:
I walk a step or two
in their shoes, all I will allow myself,
but I can see their point.
Like I said, I don’t walk
the full mile, even, for I am afraid —
I desire not that I embrace
that way of looking at things.
Yes, o evil ones, I see why,
but I must (even if I must force it)
see things differently.
You may have a point, but
in the final analysis, that pointing
directs nowhere; there, I admit,
but for the grace of God
go I, that I could mayhap
have held that view of things,
but however I can choose,
even when I am inundated by the brunt
of the reasoning of sin, I must
grope my way after saints,
fumble my way to salvation — and
seeing through those wayward eyes,
perhaps I may yet learn
to love my enemies,
my darkest foes: for I understand
just a little of what you are,
just enough to know
that you have feelings, too.

What I desire has never been made, at least, not by the hand of man.

What I desire I have dreamed of, and forgotten, a thousand times.

What I desire, no one else has wanted this way; none else is me.

What I desire at times weightier than all the gold in the world.

What I desire is sometimes lighter than a feather in a fantasy.

What I desire, strangely, I can often get — ask, and I receive.

What I desire is not so important: rather, what can I give?

In this thick hour, there is a jest and a feint that goes unnoticed by the world. And the heroes of meaning — they have trouble comprehending each other, and sometimes, their own selves — they lack anything of magic. So we may find, in our own little world, that what we have dreamed — even if it comes to pass — we never seem to gain what we really are looking for, the point: the wordless yearning that has been with us ever since we learned how to wonder, which we ask reflexively, not even realizing that we do. One wonders why. The jest: it is merely a question; and the feint: our answer to it all. We believe there are everyday heroics that are surely remembered by the God of the littlest sparrow fall — and we question why it all must be like this, and answer because it must be so. We ask and ask, for the answer we conjure in our lack of the proper wizardry never answers anything. There was, though, one hero of meaning that seemed to have something, but something so simple, it so easily slips from our grasp: to love, it has always been an impossible thing, but we find we do it anyway.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired, although not in the hour or in the measure, or the very thing which they ask; yet they will obtain something greater and more glorious than they had dared to ask.

...I stopped wandering, became then aware of where I was.
I had spent so much energy going nowhere, doing nothing,
that I was as a child, amazed that I could affect the world…

Nothing is anonymous. Everything has its own character, and I think it no mistake that such a phenomenon pervades the universe. The most mass-produced toy: the units so fashioned to be identical, one to the next: physics will decree that each has its own little quirks, each of a little mystery unique. What we try to make as manufactures without personality, God, in His infinite detail, undermines our trivial consistencies with a diversity that transcends the limits of our control. I think that even were we to create things that were atom by atom the exact same, even then we could not remove the nature of what is distinct between them! For it is written that the very hairs on our heads are counted. And it may go even further than what we ever dreamed, and I do not think it beyond Him: that each and every atom has its own name!

‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

– Bob Dylan

Shall I travel the entire world, roam through every corner of discovery, only to return to where I started, to find I needed go nowhere to find who I am? For that is the one thing that escapes us, is it not — to he who has everything, having not found oneself means only to lose oneself in various intoxications, lulled by fruitless dreaming? To awake, then, would be to see the emptiness of it all, would it not? And so, the destitute man who knows who he is, is he not fully satisfied? Is it not thus that when he has meaning, when he has purpose, a man can withstand unheard of sufferings — and even pray for those who murder him? Or is it so that sometimes to ask the question of why is enough, or is it that there are some things that no answer will satisfy, be it from God’s own mouth? (And I ask, who has not wanted the impossible, at one time or another?) Who wants to know?

If life is but a dream, what is it that we will wake to?

A. G. Rizzoli: The Kathedral

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“Oh Bother,” said Pooh as he stared into the unspeakable visage of Cthulhu.

Wanderlust

I have breathed this air before, returned
to me after having circulated
through abrupt pantings and gasps,
through ulterior sighs and growls,
through wild laughter and sobs:
and I, when I released it last,
was I so much different, so far removed
that even the atmosphere must remind me
nothing new is under the sun?
I have stayed in one place
for millions of years, like a species
that forgot somewhere how to evolve;
I have remained motionless
for weeks, as if I were like glass,
a liquid that forgot how to pour;
and if I forgot myself, in the world
there would be one me-shaped hole
that everyone notices, but nobody talks about.
So what is it that I have to do?
I move some matter from one arrangement
into some other one, while I am
strangely me through all that happens:
and my wanderlust comes and goes,
but I have no choice but to travel through life.

In time, time will end, and all that will be left is another beginning.

In time, even death shall die, for even the paradoxes must occur.

In time, all the love that we have ever sent out shall return to us.

In time, we will see all the miracles we never noticed, and be amazed.

In time, all the dreams we have forgotten shall awake from their sleep.

In time, imagination will understand just how big infinity really is.

In time, I will remember that song we all forget — you know the one.