Happiness is important, but it is not the most important thing. If anything, love is the most important thing, and this does not always lead to happiness. And that must be about the most talked about thing ever in the history of anything: love. There are periods myself when I can’t stand to hear that word, or see it in print, so many people abuse the lingo. I realized some time ago that I know nothing about love, and perhaps this is Socratic in the knowing nothing of it: do you even know that much, yourself? I’d perhaps like to add to that that it is all feeling, but I might also venture that that is too close to knowing, even. How many times have I said that I would speak no more about love, for how can I spout on a subject where I hold no baseline competence? It is perhaps a zen thing, that we understand it without knowing why. Oscar Wilde told us that the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. And such things that great, perhaps we have no chance of truly wrapping our minds around them. Perhaps then, at best, to let love go, and ride in its wave. Love, and think not how it is we do.

Know God in your heart.

i wake and i am desolate in my hope for that hour, as if crashed
is it only through the lenses of pain the proper things are magnified?
we squeezed all the liquid suffering into the ink of our poetry
turned the page as it was burning, to forget every single mark
where time is forged, a new hour was molten and hammered out
now the minutes will not bend, the future can no longer be closed
the pieces of us scattered out in the dirt: we grope the sharp edges
as if to assemble a soul, my soul, there is glue everywhere, drying
i thought i knew how i was put together, like my father’s watch
though even that i had pieces left over when crouched over it
sweating the small stuff, how could it possibly be so complicated?
and the new hour comes, and we are not ready, the eyes over us
...and there is booming laughter, the doom passed by, a new hope
“forgive me father, i have sinned,”: no more pain, please: just
or whatever. i understand a little of how these things work

I have seen skies that were like the grandest paintings, surreal in their vivid blue, with clouds that seemed to have been shaped by angel wings. Then there were others that were more mundane, some that seemed almost fake, as if the real one were out for cleaning somewhere, and some placeholder poster were filling the space of the masterpiece. It’s just air, though, isn’t it? With the specific chemical mix that scatters the light so that it is the blue that we know? But of all that is of the world, there is nothing more otherworldly than the sky, nothing else that evokes all the kinds of dreams that matter. Even after taking it for granted for years and years, there comes that moment when one looks up and is amazed: why it is that they are called the heavens.

You’re in my mind all of the time
I know that’s not enough

– U2

Odilon Redon: Flowers

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Despite what anyone might tell you, the world is a popularity contest. But it is still up to you to care that this may be so, or what the outcome of the vote turns up. And although it might be good for one’s character to be on the passionate fringes, of core and dedicated minorities, there is something to be said for understanding what just everyone is talking about. One might suppose that as with anything, treat such things like popularity with a program of moderation. To follow every mass trend is surely to suck out what remains of your soul by way of your wallet, but think not that to keep to all the byways of life is always the truest course. Crowds may sometimes like strange things, but there can be wisdom in the mass mind. As a guide, it is no rocket science: try to remain true to yourself, even if everyone else is going the same way, too. There might even be a certain nobility to like what everyone else does, believe it or not.

And what might this noble Lord do of more worship and joy to me than to show me (that am so simple) this marvelous homeliness [i.e., naturalness and simplicity]? Thus it fareth with our Lord Jesus and with us. For truly it is the most joy that may be that He that is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is lowest and meekest, homeliest and most courteous: and truly this marvelous joy shall be shown us all when we see Him.

time unfolds into a flower with infinite petals
the sky washes away to reveal the silver gears underneath
i stare inside myself so intently that i burst into light

Thank you, Lord, for the good I do, for surely if they are blessings, they can only come from Your hand.

When I empty myself of myself there is room for the Spirit to dwell. For I am not but iniquity, full of failure and lies. I know that when you look upon me, I seem like a good man, but when I see myself superimposed on the model of True Man, one Jesus Christ, it is clear that I am all lack. That I am a twisted reed blowing in the wind, that took root in nothing until my Lord picked me from the dirt. I know that I have done nothing good in and of myself, for goodness — true goodness — is unknown to those who are blind, like me, only a perhaps random consequence to his stumbling around. For when I empty myself of myself, and the Spirit comes like wings upon my heart, truly I may be a child of the Most High, I who though sometimes rebellious and stupid, knows to Whom he belongs. Who knows the voice of his Lord when He calls, to whatever end.

There are days when I feel I could climb to the third Heaven.

There are nights when I am afraid of my own voice.

There are times where I feel as if my skin is not mine.

There are dreams that can’t be followed, that lead nowhere.

There are pictures worth less than a thousand words.

There are words no pictures can do justice, like “love”.

There are lives that are rich simply by choosing to believe.

Don’t push me ’cuz I’m close to the edge

– Grandmaster Flash

Anselm Kiefer: Jerusalem

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on a clear day, i can see past forever
though this is merely an illusion of my pride
wondering succinctly about time
i know this is a fruitless subject to understand
when not instead living in its course
we have all been there, at the crossroads
and some went here, and some went there
some even went back to the beginning
and started again, with greater determination
but less turns of the wheel left to unwind
i myself did not begin until much later
when all else had been exhausted
and the only way left was salvation
dreaming now of what i might have been, how
i would have been lost and not understood
that i knew nothing, felt none of it
went through the motions of living
and been a ghost without a house to haunt
wandering from island to island
where i would lay down my rags and dream
about how i am just now, like this