Ramadan

The rock behind the rock we're on
was hidden from our point of view
until it caught the setting sun
and nothing but a sliver to
paint shadows on our faces and
give us a dusky hint of who
we are at night:  we're all the same,
imperfect sinners turning to
the stars, a cross, a crescent moon
and taking time for penance: you
have Lent and we have Ramadan
and each of us is hoping to
make it to heaven somehow and
get through life on this rock we're on.

I don't pretend to understand
the purpose of the fasting or
the reason we should watch the moon.
I guess it meant something before
they called it Lent or Ramadan,
before we rested faith upon
the Prophet's revelations or
the resurrection of the Son,
but this is what we're looking for:
salvation past the ceremonies,
focus in our daily worship,
sustenance beyond the sunset,
anything to make us more
at peace and not at odds upon
this hot, dry dessert rock we're on.

from Stillwater Symposia

Moleskin 3.6

In 1974 the world started creeping in. This was the year Nixon resigned, right after the Tribune published the Watergate tapes. I had apparently lived a sheltered life up to this point, rarely if ever hearing people use “expletive deleted” in their conversations, and suddenly here was the president for all the world to read, absolutely full of it. Prior to this, for all the craziness going on in our country in those days, I only seemed to notice the upbeat news: watching the first moonlanding at Hank and Vi’s Minnesota cottage, for instance, or sharing Dad’s late interest in the Beatles. Even when he went out and bought John Lennon’s Imagine, I heard none of the blue chords, only the harmonies. Even Give Me Some Truth was a cool sort of anger. But then came Tricky Dick, daring me to take a peek behind the curtain.

Passing Storm

Great storms 
are not the final storms 
no more than sweet calms 
are the ever after; 
any more my faith turns 
toward eternity, 
trying so hard to see 
around the bend.

Earth, sun, river and wind...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth, something woven in
To every calm and storm.

This time 
won’t be the only time,
neither the first rhyme 
nor the closing chapter,
more and more I move to 
the perpetuity
of things that never change 
and never end.

Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
The more I move the less I know, but 
Truth, where I want to go,
Is with me all the time.

I AM
as certain as the journey journeys on,
each setting sun returns to where it rose,
each river flows into a timeless sea
and endlessly the wind replenishes.

I AM
as certain as the ground I stand upon
a fire within me burns eternally
and living water pulses through my veins
and hope, the spirit in my soul, remains.

This storm 
may be a passing storm,
but let the rains come
and let me feel the thunder
and let its music be 
part of the symphony
of where I’m going to 
and where I’ve been.

Earth, sun, river and wind...
Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth: it's where I want to go.


from Turning the Metaphor

Chasing Wind

The walls shake with anger.
The wind wakes the dead, stirs
the sleeping, makes it difficult to dream.
The world’s moment blows against
This house: letting be known
What is so frequently forgotten:
We stand at the whim of nature
And we breathe as the wind allows.


from Turning the Metaphor

A Cast of Characters

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), line 111






          “My nerves are bad to-night.  Yes, bad.  Stay with me...”

                    This is the fifth directly quoted passage of The Waste Land, after THE SYBIL’s 
                    wish to die (TWL Epigraph), THE HYACINTH GIRL remembering how she 
                    was named (TWL 35-36), THE POET calling out to his reader STETSON (TWL 
                    69-76), and THE NIGHTINGALE’s inviolable cry (TWL 103, and see TWL 
                    203-206).  Only three more direct quotes will follow: single lines from THE 
                    LOVELY WOMAN (TWL 252) and the Tempest’s ARIEL (TWL 257), then the 
                    songs of THE THREE THAMES DAUGHTERS (TWL 292-305).

                    With a total of fourteen lines (TWL 111-14, 117, 119, 121-123, 126, 131-134), 
                    THE NERVOUS SPEAKER has the most extended of the quoted passages, and 
                    it is interspersed, sans quotation marks, by the responsive dialogue of THE 
                    SPEAKER’S COMPANION.  The two speakers hear one another, so the lack 
                    of quotations of the companion appears to be simply a means to distinguish them.  
                    This also happens, though without interactive dialogue, after the Hyacinth Girl 
                    speaks (TWL 37-41), and the two passages are even related: “I knew nothing,” 
                    says the Hyacinth Girl’s respondent (TWL 40); “Do you know nothing?” the 
                    nervous speaker retorts (TWL 121-122); the Hyacinth Girl’s respondent observes 
                    “your hair wet” (TWL 37) while the nervous speaker mentions going outside with 
                    her hair down (TWL 133), after which her companion considers that it might rain 
                    (TWL 136).

                    Separately, several other characters appear without quotation marks, often in 
                    pairs: before this, MARIE and a GERMAN COFFEE DRINKER (TWL 5-18), a 
                    PROPHET speaking to THE SON OF MAN (TWL 19-30), a VIGILANT SAILOR 
                    (TWL 31-34, 42), MADAME SOSOSTRIS (TWL 46-59); after this, LIL and a 
                    BARTENDER (TWL 139-172) and the blind TIRESIUS (TWL 215-248), endured 
                    by the Lovely Woman. 

                    Beyond these, there are no clearly distinguishable speeches in the poem, though 
                    myriad other voices, or “fragments,” as the Poet suggests (TWL 431), can be
                    heard within the flow of musings and allusions.  One could cast these fragments 
                    as separate characters, but really they are more reflections of either the Poet, 
                    e.g., THE FISHER KING (TWL 182-202 and 424-426), or the city around him: 
                    e.g, BABY-FACED BATS (TWL 380-385)

                    There are also at least six prominent characters in the poem who do not speak: the 
                    spoken to Stetson (TWL 69-76), the Cleopatra-like QUEEN (TWL 77-110), MR. 
                    EUGENIDES (TWL 207-214), PHLEBAS THE PHOENICIAN (TWL 312-321), 
                    THE WALKING COMPANION (TWL 360-366) and a BLACK-HAIRED
                     WOMAN (TWL 378-385).

                    So who is the nervous speaker?  There are ambiguities tying all the characters
                    together throughout the poem, and here it is no different: by the context of dialog, 
                    the nervous speaker would seem to be the Hyacinth Girl or the walking 
                    companion; by appearance she might be the lovely woman or the black-haired         
                    woman; by her melancholy she could be the Sybil or the nightingale or one of 
                    the Thames daughters; by her spouse-like behavior she could be Lil or the 
                    queen or, with an external reference, Eliot’s wife Vivienne.  Perhaps most 
                    conclusively, within the continual stream of fragments she, or he, would seem to 
                    be an extension of the Poet himself.


                    from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Talk of Wind and Nothingness

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 111-138 







          “My nerves are bad to-night.  Yes, bad.  Stay with me...”

          “Speak to me.  Why do you never speak.  Speak.

                    See William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.1.127-138 (the son addressing the ghost of
                    his father):

                    HAMLET

                    Speak to me.

          “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

                    People are forever ASKING QUESTIONS, aren’t they? The question is left
                    unmarked in TWL 112 above (Why do you never speak), but questions are
                    regularly punctuated at TWL 20, 34, 72ff, 113ff, 131ff, 164, 299, 360ff, 402 and
                    426. Questions are also alluded to by the epigraph and by TWL 26, 30, 48, 118,
                    182, 186, 309, and 400.

          “I never know what you are thinking.  Think.”
          I think we are in rats' alley
          Where the dead men lost their bones.

                    See TWL 194-195: “And bones cast in a little low dry garret, / Rattled by the rat's
                    foot only, year to year.”  Rat’s alley was a World War I slang term for battlefield
                    trenches.  For more on RATTLING BONES, see TWL 22, 116, 195, 316 and 391,
                    and see Ezekiel 37:1-9:

                    The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the
                    LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,  And
                    caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in
                    the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man,
                    can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest. Again he said
                    unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear
                    the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will
                    cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you,
                    and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you,
                    and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. So I prophesied as I was
                    commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and
                    the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews
                    and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there
                    was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy,
                    son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four
                    winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

         “What is that noise?”
                              The wind under the door.

                    Eliot’s note: “Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still?’”  See John Webster, The
                    Devil’s Lawcase 3:2 (1623).  Two surgeons come upon a man being stabbed,
                    ostensibly to death; the surgeons consider how they might make money off of the
                    perpetrator by promising to keep quiet, when the victim groans.  They first pretend it
                    is only the wind they hear, but they know better and quickly realize that by healing
                    the victim they can profit from both sides.

          “What is that noise now?  What is the wind doing?”
                              Nothing again nothing.
                                        “Do
          “You know nothing?  Do you see nothing?  Do you remember
          “Nothing?”

                    See Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.4.128-131:

                    HAMLET

                    Do you see nothing there?

                    QUEEN

                    Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.

                    HAMLET

                    Nor did you nothing hear?

                    QUEEN

                    No, nothing but ourselves.”

                    Images of BROKENNESS, EMPTINESS AND NOTHINGNESS pervade this
                    poem. See TWL lines 22, 40, 119-126, 173, 177, 303-305, 385, 389, 409, 410,
                    417 and 427. Compare these lines with the humble thoughts of Kurtz’s “last
                    disciple” in Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3:

                    I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody.

                     I remember
                              Those are pearls that were his eyes.

                    Eliot’s note: “Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.” This is Eliot’s quiet hint tying the hyacinth prince
                    of TWL 37 (“Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, your arms full
                    and your hair wet”) to the drowned sailor of TWL 48 (“Those are pearls that were
                    his eyes,” alluding to Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.402). 

          “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”

                    Wondering about being “alive, or not” follows TWL 39-40: “I was
                    neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing...” which alludes to Dante Alighieri,
                    Inferno 34:25:

                    I did not die, and I alive remained not.

                                        But
          O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—

                    See Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.2.342 (Folio ed., 1623):

                    HAMLET

                    O, I die, Horatio.
                    The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit,
                    I cannot live to hear the news from England,
                    But I do prophesy th'election lights
                    On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice.
                    So tell him with th’occurrents more and less
                    Which have solicited – The rest is silence.
                    O, o, o, o.

                    In the earlier Quarto editions, Hamlet’s words end with “silence” (compare TWL
                    434, ending this poem with “Shantih shantih shantih”).  See also TWL 172 for an
                    allusion to Ophelia’s farewell words ("Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,
                    good night, good night"), from Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.70-73.

          It's so elegant
          So intelligent

                    See Gene Buck & Herman Ruby, The Zeigfield Follies, That Shakespearean
                    Rag (1912):

                    That Shakespearian rag-- Most intelligent, very elegant,...  

                    See also Clive Bell, Since Cezanne (1922), crudely criticizing what he called a
                    “RAGTIME LITERATURE” adopted from the Jazz Movement by, among others,
                    Eliot, “whose agonizing labours seem to have been eased somewhat by the
                    comfortable ministrations of a black and grinning muse.”  But here Eliot's "rag"
                    passages are dissonant and the comforts superficial, as socialites talk of their day
                    plans (TWL 131-138) in a snippet conspicuously placed between the emptiness of
                    a domestic difference (TWL 111-126) and the barside talk of a soldier’s return to
                    his wife (TWL 139-172).  These uneasy bits are interspersed with a brief chorus
                    that disguises Hamlet’s fading breaths (TWL 128) and a string of pub farewells at
                    closing time that echoes Ophelia’s morbid goodbyes (TWL 172).  There will be
                    more songs in the poem’s next section, and they will become less oblique, but this
                    is, for now, as musical as it gets.

          “What shall I do now?  What shall I do?

                    More questions, and more Hamlet allusions. See Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.4.57,
                    for the son's reaction after his father’s ghost appears:

                    HAMLET

                    Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

                    See also Hamlet 3.4.178, when the Queen fails to see or hear her late husband’s
                    ghost, even after her son challenges her:

                    QUEEN

                    What shall I do? 

          “I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
          “With my hair down, so.  What shall we do tomorrow?
          “What shall we ever do?”

                    Eliot would later pose a SHAKESPEARE VS. DANTE comparison in his essay
                    Dante: II. The Purgatorio and the Paradiso (1929):

                    ...Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent
                    and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper
                    degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.  And a further wisdom
                    is reached when we see clearly that this indicates the equality of the two men.

                    For a similar take, see Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of
                    Ulysses, 1934:

                    ...When the question, often put, ‘If on a desert island what one book?’ was again
                    raised, Joyce said: ‘I should hesitate between Dante and Shakespeare but not for
                    long. The Englishman is richer...’

                    But see Joyce's recapitulation in Richard Ellman, James Joyce (1959):

                    ‘I love Dante almost as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is
                    ballast.’

                                                The hot water at ten.
          And if it rains, a closed car at four.
          And we shall play a game of chess,
          Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

                    Eliot's note: 

                    Cf. the game of chess in Middleton's Women Beware Women.  

                    See Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess 1624); and see also 
                    Middleton, Women Beware Women (1657), in which a girl is seduced 
                    while her mother in law is kept busy in the next room playing chess.

                    For lidless eyes, see Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Inclusiveness (1881):

                    The changing guests, each in a different mood,
                    Sit at the roadside table and arise:
                    And every life among them in likewise
                    Is a soul’s board set daily with new food.
                    What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood
                    How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
                    Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
                    Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

                    May not this ancient room thou sit’st in dwell
                    In separate living souls for joy or pain?
                    Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
                    Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
                    And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
                    Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

                    For other GAMES OF CHESS, see Shakespeare, The Tempest, 5.1.172,
                    where Ferdinand and Miranda are discovered playing chess; and see
                    also Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isolde, tr. Jessie Weston
                    (1899), in which a young Tristan seems to impress the masters of a merchant
                    ship with his chess skills, but as he loses himself in the game they steal him 
                    away to sea. 


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with Annotations (and other explanations): Talk of Wind and Nothingness, Hamlet's Rag and What Shall We Do?

God in the Abstract

God

             adj.

I AM:     considered apart

             from concrete

             existence

             or

(AM I)    a specification

             thereof.

I AM:     theoretical;

             not applied

            or

(AM I)   capable of being

            put into effect.

I AM:    thought of

             or

(AM I)   stated without 

            reference

             to a specific

             instance.

I AM:     Fine Arts. with

             nonobjective

             design, form

             or

(AM I)   content.

with apologies to Concise American Heritage Dictionary, 1980.

from March to December

Every Thought Is a Prayer

How about this:

Every thought is a prayer to God, and every prayer has an answer within it.  God is with us all the time, and when we remember this and believe this, his spirit responds in us and directs us.   God directs us as long as we acknowledge his presence (Proverbs 3:6), but when we forget this, where are our thoughts, our prayers?  Even then, God is still with us, waiting for us to call on him again.

Every thought is a prayer, how about that?  But every day —isn’t it a shame? —we spend so much time being thoughtless.  And still God is with us, waiting for us to come to our senses, to think, to pray.

God is more than an abstract thought, however.  The proof is not, and cannot be, my own, but it is this: our thoughts do not sustain themselves.  One private thought cannot sustain another, yet there is an answer, always, like the voice that came to Moses and said “I am.”  God is an answer.  Yahweh is the answer to our prayers.  God is not a thought; God is “I am,” the answer.

But what about the so-called great thinkers of the world, those who say they do not pray because “there is no God”?  God is still the answer, waiting for the question to be asked, the prayer to be prayed, the thought to occur (There are thoughts that have not yet occurred, even to the greatest thinkers).  Every thought is a prayer, I said. 

So what about the thought that God does not exist (and who has never cried, “Where are you, God?”)?  Isn’t this simply thinking without direction, aimlessly pondering, oblivious meditation?  Thoughtlessness, really.  And still God waits with an answer.  Is there a God?  Yes, Yahweh says, I am.


from March to December

Moleskin 3.5

Meanwhile we always had our dad’s living arrangements to remind us to be thankful. In the course of two years, before finally leaving the Chicago chapter of his life story, Dad lived in a series of three gritty, minimalist spaces, mirroring a temporal nightshift existence. The series showed gradual improvement, from the third floor inner city SRO with wire mesh in the windows and boilerplates across the ceilings to, eventually, the suburban arrangement with a roommate who was singularly record-obsessed, with wall to ceiling milk rates full of vinyl. My brother Dan and I (Josh at four and five stayed with Mom more) spent weekends at each of these places, but it was the middle one, the Dolphin Motel, I remember most. It was a small room with water stains and signs of rodents and a bar/lounge off the lobby, but it had a pool! And it was here at the Dolphin that my dad taught me to enjoy the simple pace of a Saturday game of Scrabble —with an eleven year old allowance to use the dictionary as much as I needed.

From My Journals: Thought

The thought occurred to me that things will never be the same.  

This wasn’t a pessimistic thought, either.  Josh has realistic hope of a lasting remission.  Don went to work today; he’s feeling much stronger and it makes me consider that with the extent of last week’s pain for him followed by this week’s recovery, the chemo might really be doing what we want it to do.  

So I thought: what if Don’s tumor disappeared and Josh’s remission were complete?  Things wouldn’t be the same; they would be better for the ways we would —and will! —be stronger: in spirits, in confidence, in faith.  There is, of course, a “best case” scenario, to believe that Josh and Don will live forever.  And why not?  By faith, God promises that they will!  

For now, however, I will continue to pray.

from March to December

From My Journals: A Prayer In The Middle Of It

Faith: such that I long for, a faith of such power to give me the strength to recognize my weakness, to repulse all illusions of my own credits, to relinquish my whole self —faith to say no more me, just God.  Faith, trust, that I could walk within every shadow of darkness, that I could believe that light awaits me, that darkness will be defeated.  

God, you lay it all out for us.  You give us a one word direction and it ought to be easy.  But I... the self gets in the way, and yet you have given us the self, too, God; you leave us all sorts of mysteries and then you give us this mind, that wants so much to know.

Thank you God, for the promises you have given Josh today and for the strength you have given to Don; for the smile you have given to Parul today and for the grace you have given her family.  Thank you God for everyone close to me —Annie, Mom, Dan —and thank you too for everyday people, most of whose names I do not know, but thank you God for their patience —your patience —and acceptance of a man with measly faith.  I am afraid to be weak, God, and I am afraid of relinquishing myself, even to my maker, but thank you God for your ears and your hand and your presence.   Thank you for your strength and your smile and your grace, your light and your direction. 

P.S., just one thing more:  God bless my studies and my tests this week.  I need you.

from March to December

From My Journals: A Conversation

“I talk to God a lot.  In the shower, in the car.  Some people might call it prayer, but I like to think of it as a kind of thought process, a figuring out.”

“Does he hear you?”

“God?  Sure.  God hears us whether we’re talking to him or not.”

“Hey, Joe, come on, what makes you think God would take the time to listen to you?

“I don’t know, Jim.  I don’t know why.  I just know he does.”

“How do you know?”

“He answers.”

from March to December