Archive for July, 2014
john 1:1 at w’edia.
this mac-book is new today.
it resembles Legion.
its name is (hereby)
Mephistopheles.
Fisto, for short.
trouble mousing around. bailing.
Introduction
(Lines 1—40)
God (as I choose to call my higher power)
Grant me an audience for half an hour
And I will, if I can, do all the rest.
My subject is the story I know best;
I mean my own. It starts in a motel,
The night of my divorce. I felt like Hell.
Think of a pilot, learning how to fly,
Who, though he should know better, flies too high,
Then falls in the Atlantic and is drowned.
His body and the plane are never found.
There’s something like our marriage in that story,
The way it shoots to misery from glory.
The similarity might not be strong,
But, as to suffering, I’m never wrong:
Divorce is brutal. Trust me when I say
I’d rather be that pilot any day.
Lisa, in a voice that tore my heart,
Had told me, “From now on, we’ll live apart.
I’ll keep your stuff till you’ve got your new place.
The First Street house is mine. I want my space.”
And so, a stranger in my own home town,
I left my room to have a look around.
Across the street, a Big Red liquor store
And Waffle House. A porno shop next door.
“The restaurant then. For now, I’ll do what’s right.
I’ve got no strength for sex and drugs tonight.”
The waitress, call her Ruby, perked me up.
I never saw the bottom of my cup.
A refill and a smile, and off she’d glide;
She wore her sixty years with grace and pride.
“Why look upon myself and curse my fate:
I couldn’t stand to only serve and wait.
I’ll bet that woman’s life is harder still
Than mine, by far. And, if I only will,
I could throw all my misery away
And love my life the way it is today!”
If that was true—and I don’t think it was—
I proved myself an awful fool, because
For years I didn’t love my life at all.
The story starts with my decline and fall.
here’s a pdf of marta flanagan’s
we are unitarian universalists flier.
i picked up a hardcopy version on sunday;
one of those 8{1\over2}\by11 folded-twice-
-the-short-way jobs you see in flier-racks
in all manner of waiting-room-like venues,
with three, what i’ll call, “panels”
on each side of a standard sheet:
the front “panel” has white letters
on a red background and the rest have
red letters on a white background;
the only non-typographical graphic
elements being three UU “chalice” icons.
sez “WELCOME” under the chalice on the front,
tipped at a jaunty 45^{\degrees} angle like the
“banner” and “foldover” cover-elements you see on
magazines. anyhow. i can get behind most of this
stuff. mostly without much embarrassment.
in this context.
i mean, well, look: *any* statement beginning
“we” immediately calls for… or, anyway, usually
brings forth in me… the question “who is this
‘we’, you’re talking about, there, anyhow?”, but
in this case “we” more-or-less obviously means,
“we UU’s”; score one for the flier.
“we believe”? well, one has longsince learned that
people hardly ever say interesting things about
their belief systems on cue. you’ll learn more
about their inner lives by asking ’em about what
they love. but they’ll lie about that, too, usually.
ask ’em what they *don’t* like and you can get some
pretty good accuracy pretty quick sometimes, though.
anyhow. (where was i?) the flier gets a pass here
again, for the same reason: i found this in the
front room of a church, for heck sake. people
actually do show up in this building wanting
to know exactly this, “what we believe”. some
of ’em are shy to actually *ask*… i know *i*
would be, and i’ve more than hinted at one of
the reasons… so we do very well, in my opinion,
to offer suchlike fliers in plain sight.
but “we believe people should”
is something of a deal-breaker.
i’d rather not believe people “should” do *anything*.
whenever i find out one of ’em thinks *i* should do
anything, that’s usually trouble for me and i don’t
like it. golden rule; game over.
i don’t say they *shouldn’t* spend their lives thinking
about better and better ways to push people around;
that would be hypocritical. but i damn well *wish*
they’d, you know, consider in the bowels of christ
that throwing-first-stones might be, i don’t know,
deeply fucking *wrong*. so, you know, just for me,
just for today, i’m not giving anything like full
assent to any “belief” with a “should” in it (until
more context is given; “if you want to learn any
advanced math, you should think about how equations
work” doesn’t give me much trouble, for example).
back to the document at hand.
“we believe people should be encouraged to think
for themselves.”
(but, i guess evidently, by using *our* courage
to do so.)
i’ve offered such encouragement *many* (many!)
times in my working life (and a little in
“real” life, too, i suppose). heck, i’ll
even urge anybody thinking they’d like to
try teaching to do the same.
the generous error.
strange loops indeed.
one song
two chords
three frets
four verses
one story
two versions
three gods
four horsemen
one people
two jews
three opinions
four gospels
one planet
two choices
three directions
four dimensions
the livingston review 