Helen Frankenthaler: Spring Run XXVI

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Referer (Sic) Logs (2)

Really, if I stop to think about it, I don’t know what happened with that, the girl and all that. After eight months of going out — seeing a lot of movies and walking around the city a bunch, among your other things — one day, she tells me that she’s in a bad mood. Then she stays in that bad mood for the next two months. Then, after having quit smoking and drinking for two years, she starts them both up again. But that’s not why it fizzled; I tried to see her, tried to set up the next date, and she gave me a list of things she needed to do and places she needed to go, all of which didn’t involve me in the picture; and I guess that was just too much for me to deal with. Yeah, it was probably her pushing me away so I’d be the one to break it off, but if it was, whatever — I said goodbye. (And I remember when I said it, felt maybe I’d get some kind of reaction, and getting none, I said it again, whereupon she told me I didn’t have to repeat myself.) There would be more to this picture later, but this set of scenes faded to black, one chapter closed, if not really a sense of closure was imparted by the closing words. Even with what I would learn later, it still confuses me to wonder why it all had to go away.

I kept looking at my referer logs. I mean, I do that anyway, even now, but after the break-up, I’m saying that I could still see her digital footprints walking through my sites. I’ll tell you how. Firstly, she was the only one in this country that visited my site (my blog, to be more specific) at 5am in the morning, being something of a (very) early riser. My blog, of necessity to describe it a little, consists of the page pointed to by just the domain name (“metaphenomenon.com”) which tells a little about me, and there is a picture of me you click to see the blog entries (“metaphenomenon.com/me/blog.php”). Also you need to know that I have a separate “home page”, which is basically a mini-portal to a bunch of the websites I’ve constructed. Well, even if she didn’t visit me at that ungodly hour in the morning, she was the only one to consistently click to my blog from my home page. I mean, no one visits my home page. Besides her, I get maybe one click every 6 months from my home page to my blog. Referer logs don’t lie; I could spot her from a mile away down the bitstream.

(part 1)

(to be continued…)

The way to sainthood is to do all the things you don’t want to do, but you know are right. All of them.

Referer (Sic) Logs (1)

So the way to start things is in the middle, like you’re planted down in the middle of a conversation, or so I’ve heard. It would be me, though, that conversations would be a poor sample of my daily existence, and really, the story is mostly me alone in my room, where I spend most of my time — that’s a much better sample, crouched in front of a monitor, checking the referer (sic) logs of my websites. I misspell it on purpose, by the way; it’s actually misspelled in the specification, something that slipped through the digital cracks by way of all too human butterfingers, and now everyone has to use it. We make do, I suppose. But I digress, even if it’s a necessary digression — yes, the implications of the thing, something is meant by it, which we’ll probably find out at some point — back to the middle, it’s a lot like the beginning and the end: me in front of my computer, clicking behind the scenes of the internet, though not so very far. Seeing how many people visited my sites, and where they’re supposedly from (both the website where they located the link that led there, and the location physically where their internet service provider say they’re operating from). Yes, I know. I have no life.

Despite my romance with solitude, however, there is a girl involved in all this. Yes, yes, I know — I should say “woman,” but it’s still boyfriend/girlfriend isn’t it? Or, who cares? She and I dated for the better part of a year, something like a year ago, and I thought that she was a real keeper, that one; never really figured out why it petered out like it did. So for that year, I was not by myself all the time, like I had been before, and like I became after. We would walk through the city streets, all around, holding hands — and she was not all alone, too, like maybe she sometimes was. And I introduced her to my websites some time in the middle of that year, and I don’t know why it was just then when I did — things happen when they want to happen, I guess, and some things are like they’re merely passing through us to get where they’re going. And when she went there, I checked in my referer logs to see the trail she made from one to another, like watching her from really high up as she walked through streets I had laid out. And I was happy, because even when I was here, alone, I was not alone.

(to be continued…)

Let me dream a little more before the night fades away. Morning, come not so quickly, for I have friends here I can see at no other time. Just a few minutes more where I wield a righteous sword, where I lift from the boundaries of all earthborn souls, where I understand everything and know nothing. I know what waits for me when dawn shall peer through my window, and it is fair enough, I might say — there is much to be said for the solidities, and I would not that any of them be traded in for the ethereal dreamthings — but I ask not for an eternity, just a little while. My body is too heavy, just now, for this soul to be weighed down with it. Where time and space are blurred into one another, let me just say goodbye to those elfin eyes whose color my focus cannot hold, who once kissed me but never seems to remember it. Let me pretend for just one moment more that it really happened, before I must forget the whole voyage through this night — into the shelves never to be seen again.

There is not anything I know which hath done more mischief to Religion… than the disparaging of Reason, under pretense of respect and favor to it. For hereby the very Foundations of Christian Faith have been undermined, and the World prepared for Atheism. And if Reason must not be heard, the Being of a God, and the Authority of Scripture, can neither be proved nor defended; and so our Faith drops to the Ground like a House that hath no Foundation.

In the deepness of the silent moment, I stir awake,
as if I had been floating, now, for the whole of my existence,
to suddenly have weight, no longer to laugh at gravity.

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
Flying high,
And I don’t think that I’ll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don’t know what to do,
‘Cause I’ll never be with you.
You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.
There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
But it’s time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

– James Blunt

Chagall: White Crucifixion

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Fortune finds fleeting the fingers that hold fast to fate’s fancy.

There were times in my past when my Lord took everything away — but I understood later that it was so that I might see that He is all I ever need. I have not the wherewithal to understand, though, how it might be that how a saint could pray for those who are murdering him; and it most probably will be that I will never comprehend such actions. But I have in my mind that I would like to. Perhaps only to appreciate them in a more or less cerebral fashion, like Salieri in the movie Amadeus was the only one who could see how Mozart’s music was touched by God — appreciate without the corresponding jealousy, I would hope. I know it is not mine to understand how the Son of God took upon Himself the sins of an entire world, but perhaps the saints, perhaps they are human enough for me to digest what a heart is capable of. In my own story, my Lord eventually returned everything to me that He had taken, and more, made me stronger for having done without…. Maybe that little bit, I get.

One dream.

Two rhythms rise.

Three days without you.

Four oceans can’t stop me.

Five candles lit along the way.

Six roses I’ve lain across your pillow.

Seven moments that struck me out of the blue.

Eight goodbyes that lingered on for days and days.

Nine times awakened in the middle of the night — you?

Ten questions I asked out into the midnight sky — no answer.

Eleven days since I’ve last seen you, wondering could eternity end?

The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.

The Kiss

There at my fingertips
danced the magic of a world;
there at my feet swam the rivers
that flowed through galaxies;
there, there at eye level
an angel prince who whispered
eldritch things, my secret name.
I remember the trees
all spoke in their arcane tree intonations,
that sung from bark to bark
the eons of withstanding;
I remember the mountains
that a lifetime could not climb,
whose peaks reached into the third heaven;
I remember, I remember rain
that fell through seven atmospheres
and carried the scent of the uppermost sky
down into the valleys of mist.
And if I think correctly,
all of it together, freely given me
for a thousand years, could not equal
the secret in your kiss:
there, where the real meets the dream,
through the infinite looking glass;
I remember as if it happened just now,
and as if it never happened:
all the magic in the world,
I could taste their every inkling.

My heart swims in despair sometimes, and I find I can trace them only to trivial things as cause — for these are the straws that tip the balance into the red, the real mass of hurt hidden under the surface. And just as suddenly, my heart becomes light; and once again, I am left wondering what it is could be that has turned my attitude around. The real workings of my emotional character are a mystery; perhaps I am just too complicated? For if I recall correctly, when I was a child and spoke as a child, I knew what it was that made me glad, and what things that were that caused me distress. We many of us are now so complex we need the likes of therapists to look inside us from the outside and try and figure us out — simple introspection doesn’t prove enough. But I have an inkling that all it is sometimes when I am down is that there is a secret place where God tickles my soul. And for me, it’s as good an explanation as any.

My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I’m sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won’t lose no sleep on that,
’Cause I’ve got a plan.

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don’t know what to do,
’Cause I’ll never be with you.

– James Blunt

Sigmar Polke: Audacia

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How many things haunt me now? I am haunted by everything. Everything that I ever touched, some part of whatever soul they possessed left some sort of imprint on my character, some sort of mark upon my spirit. Everyone I ever knew, even a little: I carry the scent of their essence somewhere in the weariness of my mind. And those whom I’ve loved, I don’t know how it is that anyone ever stops loving anyone at all, for they still impart to me the promise they had back when, back when they first touched the soft corners of my heart. I dream about my past as if the past never ended; time has stopped in numerous places in my experiences, never to tick forward that they might slip away — all the memories never fade as much as I would have thought they might, in vain wondering, and time healed wounds only so far, and I forget nothing.

Even the things that never happened, the sorry I never said, the girl I did not have the courage to go up to — these, too, figure into the haunting. These nothings sometimes wake me up at night with their vacuum eyes, reminding me of things that never were, to look into the dread soul of the “only if”. The dreams that did not come to be, even though they could have, just that the chance slipped on by — what can a man do to fly from their faces? But with all these in mind… when I start to be of the notion that perhaps I should not have dreamed at all, then I know that I go down an enemy train of thought. For those who never lived, these are the ones that have no regret. Those who take the greatest chances are the ones that most agonize — and I think that I would rather have the pain than nothing. Let me make my mistakes. But let me do what I can.