[Book.]

Then, slowly, focus. But it is night, and I can make the shape of buildings: a skyline across the starry sky. It is a familiar scene, and I realize that I am looking out my apartment window, out into the city. Considerable time must have passed, though I am relatively certain that it is not the next day yet. Where have I been? What have I done, but walk? The light is not even on, and it is merely moonlight streaming in that has any glow. I go to the lamp, and see that it has tipped over; I prop it up and turn the switch. Along the shelves across my walls, my various figurines have been toppled by the shaking this morning, some having fallen completely off, and are on the floor. Even the piles of my clothes seem to have shifted. Everything changes.

Most boundaries are imaginary.

in the mystery of difference is the form of things
such are the most fundamental particles of information
which comprises the quality, and the causation of all

I cannot pray in the name of Jesus to have my own will; the name of Jesus is not a signature of no importance, but the decisive factor. The fact that the name of Jesus comes at the beginning does not make it a prayer in the name of Jesus; but this means to pray in such a manner that I dare name Jesus in it, that is to say, dare to think of Him, think His holy will together with whatever I am praying for.

Night falls, and suddenly I awake, as if from a thousand years slumber.

Night falls, and the rhythm that has been low emerges from the ground.

Night falls, and I can imagine infinity with a single look upward.

Night falls, and I am singular, separate from the crowds under the light.

Night falls, and all the questions seem unanswerable and distant.

Night falls, and it is as if it has been night all along, that day was a dream.

Night falls, and the final hope is still with us, to when death itself will die.

[Book.]

I am a question mark, looking for a question. As I walk, all the world before me now becomes as the gray of oblivion, all my sensation becomes numb like sleep; I walk on and on, keeping without falter the onward progression of this self, and I now am unable to discern anything of what I come upon nor remember what I pass by. The day does not care, and hours tick on, I am sure. What planes of existence I may have crossed escapes me, the mystery not only being that the null takes over, but how I keep going on when this slice of the universal experience happens for everyone else in the world, and not for me. For I have become a living ghost, and time has no meaning when in this sleep that does not dream. When traveling in the underworld that was before there was a heaven and a hell.

I’ve got it all here in my head
There’s nothing more needs to be said
I’m just bangin’ on my old piano
I’m getting in tune with the straight and narrow

– The Who

Max Ernst: Cocktail Drinker

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the question forgets the thousand implications
the only concern is this single handle to the mind
to connect the words into a taut, sharp formation
breathing only to invoke the voice, and its sound
because all answers must come from somewhere
even a lie has its logic, though the truth, principle
to satisfy the upturned phrase, please or deny

Effort itself is a gift.

The Fisherman

In an old land far off, a salty sea churned beyond the shores. There was a man who fished the waters out in that sea. Every day he woke before dawn, in darkness setting out, out into that broad expanse, casting his nets all day, and when he waited (between the time when he let the nets out and pulled them back in), he dreamed. He dreamed with his eyes wide open, understanding that they were only dreams and nothing but the air of his mind. He dreamed of never having to wake before dawn to set out to the ocean, never to need to cast his nets out and pull them in, that he lived far inland in a great mansion and that every need he had all he needed do was snap his fingers and they were done. He dreamed this every day.

The man had a wife, and he had a son, and he never talked to them about the dream he had. Time passed, he grew older, and his son grew up enough to bring out with him to fish. When he did this, the man had no time to dream his dream, because whenever he looked as if his eyes were drifting off, his son would ask him what he was thinking of. Embarrassed, he would always say that he was thinking of the boy’s mother. Then he would change the subject, and he and the boy would talk of this and that. As the days and weeks passed, the man felt a change come over him. He didn’t mind so much waking before dawn, going out to fish, because he had his son with him, and whenever he was about to float off into his dream, the boy would bring him back down, and they would talk of this thing and that.

One night he had a dream, but not that old one. That old dream had faded away by now. He dreamed he was out in the ocean with his son, and they were fishing. When his eyes started to drift away, his son asked him what he was thinking, and then they talked about this and that. And the fisherman couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or he was awake.

It is so easy to be proud. So easy to think that we deserve all the miracles that we are given. Exactly because we are given such great things that we think ourselves as great, the more we have, the more we forget that they were not our own hands that created them out of nothing. Truly, we are none of us worthy of life itself, an infinite gift packaged in a finite form. The eyes we look out of, the imaginations of childhood, the color and texture of a rose. I might pray that the Lord take away the wonders of the everyday, to give them again so that I might appreciate them, but then I know that given a short time afterwards, when I bask in comfort again, recovered from the pain of the previous loss — that I would forget. And wonder I, truly, how many countless things I take for granted, that we don’t notice the miracles every day because they come every day.

All angels, all saints, all the devils, all the world shall know all the deeds that ever thou didest, though thou have been shriven of them and contrite. But this knowledge shall be no shame to thee if that thou be saved, but rather a witness to God — right as we read of the deeds of Mary Magdalene [as] her witness to God and not to her reproof.

the effort is not sealed upon its completing, not yet
for any art is merely abandoned, never the ultimate
and dreams often drift through waking eyes, undone

We were moving mountains
Long before we knew we could

– Leon Jackson

Max Ernst
2 Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale

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Souls better than we have paid more and gotten less.

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
                – Andre Malraux

The one true measure of a successful adventure is returning home safely.
                – Ronald Polly

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.
                – Buckminster Fuller

True religion invites us to become better people. False religion tells us that this has already occurred.
                – Abdal-Hakim Murad

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
                – Gustav Mahler

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
                – Henri Bergson

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
                – Rene Descartes