Remember?

Beginnings

I have begun at the beginning
and begun again,
though I did not realize it
until the trees seemed strangely familiar;
but it always feels that the air
is somehow different.

I always wonder who ends at the ending,
how many of us
find the true closure of a whole lifetime;
I always imagined I’d go out
in the middle of a sentence,
never to realize
that my destiny was only to be half baked.

I look around now,
and think if I’ve been here before;
I know I get preoccupied;
busy being born, and busy dying,
until I average out —
but running in place
will give you strong legs, isn’t it so?

I cannot believe
that I ever thought it would go to naught,
all that happens to everyone:
it seems so clear
that there is a purpose, for this, for that,
even if, in construing what it might be,
I make foolish leaps of faith,
to start again, from the beginning.

What does it take to inspire us? Some will turn around, and suddenly see the world as if they had never seen it before, with new eyes, with heavensent vision. And then there are some of us who it would take the end of the world to open their jaded sight, if even that will shake them from their boredom with everything. It is a certain genius of the world, a rare light that hits even ordinary things from a whole new angle, and none may predict just what it is that will tip the mind into new paradigms. How sad that some of us will refuse to acknowledge that there is yet wonder in the world. Perhaps they, most of all, will be the ones reserved for a change of soul: I say, worry not, there are still surprises left for all of us. Suddenly you may look around, and all your senses will fire, as if you were a phoenix newly born again of the blaze, and all the future is laid out before you, when just a moment before, all you could see was dead end. And you find the courage, now, to take the first step in a journey of a thousand miles.

Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody’s going to jail
If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door

In a new york minute
Everything can change
In a new york minute
Things can get a little strange
In a new york minute
Everything can change
In a new york minute

– The Eagles

Franz Marc: Tiger

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I like to watch birds drink from fountains, small pools, anywhere there is water after a rain. They drink until they are satisfied, dipping their heads, little shivers to shake off the chill. I find it fascinating. The birds fly off — I never encounter them again. They will probably remember nothing of the drink, not really; I will remember it better than they, hold it closer, for it is not always that I see the birds so sip. Somewhere in me, there is a place I can go where the birds are, dipping their heads in little waters. Somewhere in me, I can believe nothing is wasted, not even the smallest drink of water from the tiniest of birds.

There is never any peace for those who resist God.

– Francois Fenelon

There is fire in me, which propels the engine of my soul.
And though it may shed much light in its going combustion,
too, it burns into nothing uncareful things, into ashes.

If not desireless, pray that one desire well — this, we know, is possible by any of us.

I seem to think I will make it, that some of these things I dream will come to fruition; and it is a strange thing to me. I really have nothing in my past that prepares me for something of this caliber, that the noble wellsprings of the world open and pour forth this kind of ambrosia. I only hope that I will remember these things I have held to, that all the work I myself have done to get here, and go beyond here — they are truly trivial things; similar to Newton saying that if he had seen far, it was because he had stood on the shoulders giants, that I know that I bring to the path only the next few feet from a road that stretches back too far to see — that in fact, man himself only added to, and did not begin himself. And I have been praying recently, again and again, to make me a good and humble man, that I be devoted to this purpose: not a vain repetition, but making myself understand that this is what I truly desire. For all that we do, there are basic things we must not forget; on this long road, the reasons why we make the trip in the first place.

I imagine we have been to the brink of doom, if not doomsday, many times, and never noticed, simply because we skirted the threshold without tipping over. I wonder, too, how many times we have been on the edge of great things, but the chance was missed, and we stayed behind the line on this side of the tremendum. Things that happen which seem improbable, the freak occurrences — they seem to me not so out of the ordinary, if I consider it. For it is that they almost happen all of the time, are constantly about to occur. “If only,” I believe, is the common vocabulary of the universe. Many an enterprise of great pith and moment has turned awry, I think, by a simple wave of the hand, a shake of the head. And the one step you didn’t take, and thought nothing of later — perhaps this is why you are still alive, thinking about this and that; to live as we do on the borders of the terrific.

Harry got up
Dressed all in black
Went down to the station
And he never came back
They found his clothing
Scattered somewhere down the track
And he won’t be down on wall street
In the morning

He had a home
The love of a girl
But men get lost sometimes
As years unfold
One day he crossed some line
And he was too much in this world
But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore

In a new york minute
Everything can change
In a new york minute
Things can get pretty strange
In a new york minute
Everything can change
In a new york minute

– The Eagles

Yves Tanguy: Indefinite Divisibility

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Though Unrequited

1

Your tulip smiles are each a dawn and
a patient magic is soft on your fingertips,
dancing delicately upon your command.
You are there in the feathery heights each time
my eyes learn the moon and your voice sighs
from each fragrance of the tickling breeze—you
are a sly cloud which drifts through my hymns
and I deepen through the shimmer of its flavor.
(Your midnight waltzes through the center of my
desire quiet the faltering of my dreams.)

2

Within your eyes there is an immortal rose
whose every petal balances the dew of dawn
in rhythm with stillness. Falling stars imagine
a home within you (the snow, a Christmas) and
every solitude I furl into my prayers climbs
above the steeples of fantasy awaiting the why.
Hues of sanctuary echo from your every yes,
and each no is a mirror held to my sanity.
There is no hope which flutters more endearing
than the breath of your silver wondering.

3

You are a rain of awakening when the night
has blurred the edges of meaning.
And this is love which has cast me aloft
in the gentle sift of the moon’s hourglass.
(And this is need which has collapsed
the tumblers of my every instinct until the
constant rhyme of your image is the only
page my soul can read.) No fable can reduce
the claim of my logic to a lesser unfolding.
No death is more eternal than your whisper.

There are many people who… speak to God in prayer, but hardly ever listen to Him, or else listen to Him only vaguely.

In the dream, there is a place without sound, white in every direction, where I do not know if I stand or hover. And I do not know if this is where I belong, or whether I am being shown something that will never be truly mine — for there is peace here, a life beyond life, the comfort of infinite patience in the wings, watching. And I am afraid to say it, what this place might be, as if it would break the quiet spell, and I would fall, fall, and discover that the dream is a dream. I stand as still as I can, and I wonder if I am breathing. I am filled with the notion that this is not an end, but a beginning: whatever is behind me is infinitesimally small, what is ahead I know is gloriously grand, vivid in colors I have never imagined, all beginning as this white, white that will blush in red, green, and blue to fill a world’s worth of iridescence. In the dream, I am aware that anything is possible, and it is with this feeling I awake, this feeling as if I’ve done something noble, forgetting all but the strangest hope: nothing is wasted. That is what the silence told me.

When one has what are called “eyes of faith,” it is as so: to start from the premise that there is some kind of order inherent to the universe, and going from there. It is interesting what one finds, given this frame of mind. For example, the question why God did not make human beings perfect, incapable of sin — this has been one great criticism by those who do not have such eyes. But from the perspective that there is a reason why: it is perhaps the difference that comes from having a created being that is capable of doing wrong, and that that being choosing not to: what is worth more? Having something or someone that blindly follows, rather than that who perceives the choices, and chooses to follow; the difference in value is, if not of infinite worth, a priceless one. It is a way of seeing that can be quite logical — and though it can be fraught with complications, too, it can be found to be rewarding in profound senses.

I admit that my “eyes of faith” must remain mute on many a mystery, but I would rather have them then not; and though some might say that it is like a drug I use to cope with a meaningless world, I say that I just don’t see things in that way. I was of scientific bent before my conversion, so let me just say that I understand that some theistic arguments have tended to be of circular logic. But I might point out that there are paradoxes that exist in a universe devoid of purpose, as well — and perhaps one might not look at things in quite that way, too, rather that one believe he is at least not resorting to emotional crutches to deal with the world. I would rather, though, in my way of looking at things, find the miraculous — not in something like walking on water, but in the everyday things and happenings, which we do not notice simply because they happen every day. The more we find out, through science, etc., the less we can deny that these are miracles indeed: and such speak my eyes.

I imagine that dreams are a nice way of telling us how lazy we are.