I used to have this feeling, now and again, that while I wasn’t looking, reality was being changed out from under me. There were passages that I was certain were in the Bible, but reading it and re-reading it, they were not to be found. Songs whose words I seemed to have heard before saying one thing, suddenly, upon hearing them again, they said something else entirely. Words were added, words were changed. There was once where I had thought that the entirety of Atlas Shrugged had been replaced by a completely different story, and there was at one point while deep in my madness that I could peer into the alternate reality where the text was what I thought it was supposed to be. I suppose this is what is called paranoia. Because it turned out that the story I had been expecting was actually the plot of a different Ayn Rand book, The Fountainhead. The conspiracy never turns out to be real. And reality is what it is.
deep in exile, to turn in place
the will to action rising in my bones
i emerge fully formed from the wind
as whispers clothe me in silk
the magic of persistence
to wield the rivers into the stone
while time lifts off every surface
until the beginning is lost
and change becomes a ghost
here at the foundation of the world
where the lamb was slain:
my lord, my lord, when is now?
Yesterday has burned itself out: I gathered its ashes and spread them out over the river of time. Today is the eternal now, that which began too far back for anyone to remember, to end somehow that no one wants to think about. Tomorrow is the dreaded desire, it is the quiet dawn, it is not as new as it used to be.... I imagine these to be the three fates of before, during, and after; and I have often wondered why their faces look to different directions, as if they never talk between themselves at all, blindly tossing the day from one to the next without thinking of the consequences of occurrence. Or perhaps it is only one fate, after all, constantly shedding her skin every passing dawn. And as I grow older, it seems to me that the day is getting shorter and shorter, to become at the end of this my life the single instant that lasts for all eternity.
Who deserves life? Who deserves death? Who deserves anything they get, and how do we decide? How do we weigh any of the balances, and is fate ever fair? Surely, a penny for your thoughts is a bargain, depending on how you come about that coin. And none of us will ever earn enough, I think, to be able to purchase one day’s experience in these precious hours of life — which we all get for free. What is worth, itself, that we should fight wars for it and over it? Is it rarity? Is it beauty, is it truth? Is it sensation? Is it, after all is said and done, an arbitrary thing? Or is what true worth is, the ability to give away that which we covet? That we do not deserve life if we fight for death? And what is the dollar amount that will purchase a gram of distilled love? We may think we can answer this last, to find, after paying all our gold for such a product, we have gotten what we deserve: to believe in cheap alternatives for what is priceless, and free.
of aching beauty
as resounds the justice bell
a perpetual symmetry
and dreaming in signs
the cipher in a rush of focus
fix paperclips of destiny
how in the infinitesimal meanings
the infinite is expressed
factors of the strange
in dreamlike simplicity
driving into the stream of thought
the blessed awareness
of love unknown, of its wonder
Every once in a while, a little of someone else’s world opens up, enough to take a peek in. You can see for a second a glimpse of that person’s problems, his worries, get a sense for what is important in his life, what’s pressing on his horizon, even what things he pays no attention to. You may not know this person at all, but for that little while where you look in, whether through some phrase that slips out in an email or a mention in a phone call, that person is a person, just like you. You relate. You two may be living different lives — completely different lives — but you are both living lives; you both are fully human beings. The window doesn’t stay open forever, and perhaps that’s a good thing, because I think we do not have room to live more that one life at a time.
I sometimes think about such windows when I hear about death on the news. When I hear of some number of people being killed in some sort of horrible occurrence, man-made or otherwise, I think about how all these windows have closed for good. The numbers do so little to convey that for each one of these within the statistics, there was a life there. There were years of experience, good and bad, that that person went through, digested, handled, folded and stapled. And there are years, now, that such a person would have gone through, but have no chance of doing so now. But here, too, such thinking is fleeting. We have none of us hearts large enough to handle the true total of tragedy in this world, or even that we hear about. We move on, thankful for the glimpses.
there are meanings that swiftly enter and leave
or that scurry at the precipice of any understanding we have
which we ignore, to think we have a handle on things
thousands of events we have scant awareness of at all
yet we tell ourselves that we are not blind
as the world speeds by, millions of people we do not know
as the world changes, and we are surprised by the speed
as we dream of a world we think we deserve
as we pass from one life to the next, vacant of stare
I still secret messages sent from on high in the numbers that I read. I also have had strange experiences with the fortune cookie application on Facebook. It has been right a bunch of times. Very strange. Indeed. These events cannot completely turn my skeptical eye, but they do make me take a second glance. For I am not totally in the column where I discount every single attempt at augury — having seen the future several times in my experience. But the numbers are sort of a dodgy business. They in and of themselves are not enough for me to believe something will happen, but they do point at times to things imagined or hoped for. I wonder if they truly mean anything at all, the chance encounters with these symbols I use for scrying. I know that I am a fool, but every fool has his day. Maybe there is a secret there, after all, which I am not reading right. Or maybe it is just the message to look harder at what all is around me. Not to ignore any clue that comes my way. For there are sometimes signs one is at peril to ignore.
Late repentance is seldom true, but true repentance is never too late.
– Ralph Venning
If you would be good, first believe that you are bad.
– Epictetus
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
– Oliver Goldsmith
He that waits for repentance waits for that which cannot be had as long as it is waited for. It is absurd for a man to wait for that which he himself has to do.
– William Nevins
He who is sorry for having sinned is almost innocent.
– Seneca
Repentance hath a purifying power, and every tear is of a cleansing virtue; but these penitential clouds must be still kept dropping: one shower will not suffice; for repentance is not one single action, but a course.
– Bishop Robert South
Self-condemnation is God's absolution; and pleading guilty, acquittal at his bar.
– Cyrus Augustus Bartol
There may come in your life the opportunity to take a chance on a hopeless hope, that something in you for no rational sensibility believes in the coming of a miracle. God help you. For all your soul may come to be in tune with a song you cannot hear, but are positive must be true, and heaven sent. What would you stake in such a thing? Would you put all your chips in the pot, and let it ride? Fools like me might just so do, ignoring any sense of practical reasoning... to find that, even though heaven itself were insuring the miracle was so definitely to come to pass, that the same wiser hands had made you keep some of your wages safely in other banks. For such is the wisdom of a heaven like that. And where your treasure is, there your heart will be, too.
