Oh, you old drunk motherfucker, fat and sightless in all of your ways,
groping like a worm through the shit you made, jealous and malicious over the shit you are, the
shit you were, the shit you ever shall be
world without end
Amen
why is it a crime to wrench a man’s throat open
and wouldn’t the police understand if I dipped you in lye
if i ripped out your eyes
slowly
you bastard
shut the fuck up
i’m talking now
and how would you like it if i carried out my dreams
ripped you into seams
i suppose you thought i’d sit silently
silently, for one year and one half i listented to motherfuckers
was fucked over by motherfuckers
sons and daughter motherfuckers
little baby motherfuckers
fuck that shit
next time you’ll get lit
i would like to ram a car through every asshole near and far
i would like to make you pay
for all the bullshit you’d like to say
if would take forcep and prong
just to rip out your fucking tongue
and i would laugh you all the way
to the hospital that way
the Morrigan is high tonight
don’t piss me off
get out my sight.
Good night.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
This was the love we shared
Tenderly like being ripped open
I pretended that you never cared
And you could not seem to leave me alone
I set you all on fire
You walked the wire
You spoke on pulpits to testify to me
And my
Love was rat poison
It made you curl up
And it made you scream
And you
You were unable to
Make me come
To make me cream
This was the love the that we had
You would slap me
And I’d make you mad
You’d throw a table
And I’d make a scene
I’d get the blow torch and you’d start to lean
Into the fire
Into the fire
And I
Was like your whiskey
And were like the drunk
And I was the Jim Beam bottle
You threw to the floor with a thunk
This was our love
Soft,
Like back seat fucking
This was the passion you burned for
Like the bishop for an altar boy
You thought I’d alter you
You thought there’s something in me
That was something like you
You spoke about all these deeds
You were never up to my speed
You never met my needs
By I thought I had to meet yours
And I
Was your confession
You whispered me into your rosary
And I was your emission
When you dreamed I caught your wasted seed
And this love
Was so nasty
It tore you up and split your shit in two
And now
Whenever you see me
Your face is red because the time that I fucked you
Tenderly like being ripped open
I pretended that you never cared
And you could not seem to leave me alone
I set you all on fire
You walked the wire
You spoke on pulpits to testify to me
And my
Love was rat poison
It made you curl up
And it made you scream
And you
You were unable to
Make me come
To make me cream
This was the love the that we had
You would slap me
And I’d make you mad
You’d throw a table
And I’d make a scene
I’d get the blow torch and you’d start to lean
Into the fire
Into the fire
And I
Was like your whiskey
And were like the drunk
And I was the Jim Beam bottle
You threw to the floor with a thunk
This was our love
Soft,
Like back seat fucking
This was the passion you burned for
Like the bishop for an altar boy
You thought I’d alter you
You thought there’s something in me
That was something like you
You spoke about all these deeds
You were never up to my speed
You never met my needs
By I thought I had to meet yours
And I
Was your confession
You whispered me into your rosary
And I was your emission
When you dreamed I caught your wasted seed
And this love
Was so nasty
It tore you up and split your shit in two
And now
Whenever you see me
Your face is red because the time that I fucked you
Monday, July 26, 2004
TENDERLY… LIKE BEING RIPPED OPEN
I finally faced my fears, or began facing them, and opened up the first of the two volumes I have of William Blake. I didn’t make it past his engravings. I was sucked in by them without getting to the poetry. It’s popular for teenagers to read “Tyger Tyger” and say how much they love Blake, but that’s just the tip of his work. Blake, like Yeats and Milton, was an epic poet, and like Yeats and other British authors of the last two centuries, his poetry embodied a complex mixture of philosophy and spirituality that evolved from a mixture of Christianity, British mythology, Greek though, and Judaism.
Like the Jewish Kabbalah, Blake’s work, and Yeats’s comes out of a dream. It is told with eyes half closed and heard in a half waking state. Blake’s illustations and poems are visceral, sometimes frightening. When he creates from what he has read in the Bible, he does it like a Kabbalist. Scripture is an untold treasure house of poems and myths, lust dreams and nightmares. What he produces is neither didactic nor comforting. There is no propaganda. To him the Bible was not handbook, but soulbook, and what he had heard and read from it is etched on his soul. So the art he produces is real.
There is a lesson here—all about the bringing forth of story. My worst work is “TV show work” reading a myth or an article, hearing someone tell me something, and knocking it off, doctoring it up and pasting it together to manufacture a cheap story. But real story, and it’s inherent visions, heavens and nightmares “come up” they come forth like Lazarus from the grave or oil up out of the earth. They come up from the insides after you have consented to let yourself be opened.
I finally faced my fears, or began facing them, and opened up the first of the two volumes I have of William Blake. I didn’t make it past his engravings. I was sucked in by them without getting to the poetry. It’s popular for teenagers to read “Tyger Tyger” and say how much they love Blake, but that’s just the tip of his work. Blake, like Yeats and Milton, was an epic poet, and like Yeats and other British authors of the last two centuries, his poetry embodied a complex mixture of philosophy and spirituality that evolved from a mixture of Christianity, British mythology, Greek though, and Judaism.
Like the Jewish Kabbalah, Blake’s work, and Yeats’s comes out of a dream. It is told with eyes half closed and heard in a half waking state. Blake’s illustations and poems are visceral, sometimes frightening. When he creates from what he has read in the Bible, he does it like a Kabbalist. Scripture is an untold treasure house of poems and myths, lust dreams and nightmares. What he produces is neither didactic nor comforting. There is no propaganda. To him the Bible was not handbook, but soulbook, and what he had heard and read from it is etched on his soul. So the art he produces is real.
There is a lesson here—all about the bringing forth of story. My worst work is “TV show work” reading a myth or an article, hearing someone tell me something, and knocking it off, doctoring it up and pasting it together to manufacture a cheap story. But real story, and it’s inherent visions, heavens and nightmares “come up” they come forth like Lazarus from the grave or oil up out of the earth. They come up from the insides after you have consented to let yourself be opened.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Reading Kabbalah Naked...
It’s almost two in the morning. I told myself I’d be in bed by now. But I’m still up and writing and there is so much more to write. The air is warm and thick tonight. The world is full of a thick darkness. I can’t come to the end of what I want to write before I climb back into bed. I’ve set to writing a long and rambling poem, totally blasphemous and slightly pornographic.
Kabbalah takes you into the place of terrors and the land of nightmares, and when I have been with Kabbalah I can see into that place and write out of it. There are warnings of too much study of Kabbalah, too much looking into the light or the darkness or what have you. But the truth is the smallest glimpse has you looking and looking, making connections, synapses snap together. It is sitting down to read the Old Testament in a very different way, freed from what keeps most Christians in the modern world from reading scripture: that they are SUPPOSED TO. Not that Ezekiel contains the finest stream of consciousness poetry along with Isaiah and Wisdom, not that the tales are some of the most engaging anyone will ever read.
And of course this attitude that does not allow for the Hebrew Scriptures to be taken as story and poem and sung record, but as rule book, comes from a CHRISTIAN and RATIONALISTIC understanding that story is unimportant, that stories are fancy and fancy is lie.No, story is absolute and infinite truth, layer upon layer of truth, the only way we can say what is without limiting it. Because, in a myth we are already knowing that what we say is limited. In a tale we are already saying things are contrived and so there is no deception in it.
And still you will say: how can a story be infinitely and absolutely true if it’s “just a story” and there are other facts that contradict it? If you ask that you have not been paying attention. Myth is infinite and absolute because and not despite its truth never being ultimate or exclusive.
It’s almost two in the morning. I told myself I’d be in bed by now. But I’m still up and writing and there is so much more to write. The air is warm and thick tonight. The world is full of a thick darkness. I can’t come to the end of what I want to write before I climb back into bed. I’ve set to writing a long and rambling poem, totally blasphemous and slightly pornographic.
Kabbalah takes you into the place of terrors and the land of nightmares, and when I have been with Kabbalah I can see into that place and write out of it. There are warnings of too much study of Kabbalah, too much looking into the light or the darkness or what have you. But the truth is the smallest glimpse has you looking and looking, making connections, synapses snap together. It is sitting down to read the Old Testament in a very different way, freed from what keeps most Christians in the modern world from reading scripture: that they are SUPPOSED TO. Not that Ezekiel contains the finest stream of consciousness poetry along with Isaiah and Wisdom, not that the tales are some of the most engaging anyone will ever read.
And of course this attitude that does not allow for the Hebrew Scriptures to be taken as story and poem and sung record, but as rule book, comes from a CHRISTIAN and RATIONALISTIC understanding that story is unimportant, that stories are fancy and fancy is lie.No, story is absolute and infinite truth, layer upon layer of truth, the only way we can say what is without limiting it. Because, in a myth we are already knowing that what we say is limited. In a tale we are already saying things are contrived and so there is no deception in it.
And still you will say: how can a story be infinitely and absolutely true if it’s “just a story” and there are other facts that contradict it? If you ask that you have not been paying attention. Myth is infinite and absolute because and not despite its truth never being ultimate or exclusive.
Friday, July 23, 2004
dedicated to Jackie Nelson...
you know who you are...
with him you’ll always wonder how real love might have been
but with me--
here’s the downer
you’ll never walk straight again
Don’t you know how filled with love i am for you? if i didn’t love you so purely,
like pure sulphur or unmixed radium, good whole uranium
i wouldn’t want to fuck you so badly
i wouldn’t need to fuck you until i was at the core of you, until over you and around
you all there was would be me and you would ever see me as the secret high priest
telling you eat my body and you will live forever, drink and drink and you won’t die
i’d never want us to exhaust ourselves in each other and on the bed and on the table
and in the shower,
in the car for an hour,
in deep private and in public
and i would not falter
to think of us behind the church altar
love,
this is how i love
there are no doves or angels singing
but demons howling as you take me, rake me with your press on fingernails on my back and
drum my ass until we pass
out.
Turn the light out
don’t you see i’m still an innocent man? innocent of shame,
pure enough to make you scream my name
to fuck you over and over again.
with him you’ll walk with your head up high
with him you’ll walk with your nose in the sky
you’ll never know passion or truth with him
but with me you’ll never walk straight again.
you know who you are...
with him you’ll always wonder how real love might have been
but with me--
here’s the downer
you’ll never walk straight again
Don’t you know how filled with love i am for you? if i didn’t love you so purely,
like pure sulphur or unmixed radium, good whole uranium
i wouldn’t want to fuck you so badly
i wouldn’t need to fuck you until i was at the core of you, until over you and around
you all there was would be me and you would ever see me as the secret high priest
telling you eat my body and you will live forever, drink and drink and you won’t die
i’d never want us to exhaust ourselves in each other and on the bed and on the table
and in the shower,
in the car for an hour,
in deep private and in public
and i would not falter
to think of us behind the church altar
love,
this is how i love
there are no doves or angels singing
but demons howling as you take me, rake me with your press on fingernails on my back and
drum my ass until we pass
out.
Turn the light out
don’t you see i’m still an innocent man? innocent of shame,
pure enough to make you scream my name
to fuck you over and over again.
with him you’ll walk with your head up high
with him you’ll walk with your nose in the sky
you’ll never know passion or truth with him
but with me you’ll never walk straight again.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Kabbalah
The study of Kabbalah hinges on a truth that most Westerners: Christian, non-Christians, conservative liberal, creationists, evolutionists would simply not understand about myth and story. Not that the Bible is a different sort of myth and story, or that myths are a SORT OF TRUTH but that stories are true and everything is real, therefore the Scriptures are read on many levels and all of these levels are held to be true. American religious thought is sadly shallow and often centers around two badly educated people arguing about if evolution happened or not, or did Jesus REALLY feed five thousand people. Kabbalistic thought is mystic and slightly more sophisticated.
Did God make the world is six days? Of course not. You know better. Of course he did that’s what the story says? What the story says means something different? What is God? What is a day? Are all appropriate answers with question upon question. Kabbalah is the serious initiation into God’s Torah. I use a Hebrew Bible for it.
Much of it does not center around a Bible, but around a book which had never been fully translated: the Zohar. The Zohar reads like Allen Ginsberg’s' Howl meets Green Eggs and Ham attached to the Gospel of Thomas and The Story of O. Men waste their semen in sleep and are raped by demons. Wives cook the resulting children and eat the them for dinner. Mysteries are unsolved but produce still more questions.
Kabbalah is best studied in your sleep, in the passions of the body. It comes to life in your visions and in your dreams.
Kabbalah is not Bible Study. Bible study centers on the idea of reading a text in the hopes of “getting it”. Bible study is a chance for you to expound upon “how you feel” about this passage or prove that it proves what you believe. Both are fruitless tasks, completely different from Kabbalah which presumes that very few conclusions are definite, and translates to English as the phrase” that which is received.” You cannot study Kabbalah. You must receive it, and sometimes you receive very little. Kabbalah is not studied. It is dreamed. It is hearing the Bible for the first time and realizing that it is a series of tales fit only for children. Hence why Christ said you must be a child to receive the Kingdom of God.
The study of Kabbalah hinges on a truth that most Westerners: Christian, non-Christians, conservative liberal, creationists, evolutionists would simply not understand about myth and story. Not that the Bible is a different sort of myth and story, or that myths are a SORT OF TRUTH but that stories are true and everything is real, therefore the Scriptures are read on many levels and all of these levels are held to be true. American religious thought is sadly shallow and often centers around two badly educated people arguing about if evolution happened or not, or did Jesus REALLY feed five thousand people. Kabbalistic thought is mystic and slightly more sophisticated.
Did God make the world is six days? Of course not. You know better. Of course he did that’s what the story says? What the story says means something different? What is God? What is a day? Are all appropriate answers with question upon question. Kabbalah is the serious initiation into God’s Torah. I use a Hebrew Bible for it.
Much of it does not center around a Bible, but around a book which had never been fully translated: the Zohar. The Zohar reads like Allen Ginsberg’s' Howl meets Green Eggs and Ham attached to the Gospel of Thomas and The Story of O. Men waste their semen in sleep and are raped by demons. Wives cook the resulting children and eat the them for dinner. Mysteries are unsolved but produce still more questions.
Kabbalah is best studied in your sleep, in the passions of the body. It comes to life in your visions and in your dreams.
Kabbalah is not Bible Study. Bible study centers on the idea of reading a text in the hopes of “getting it”. Bible study is a chance for you to expound upon “how you feel” about this passage or prove that it proves what you believe. Both are fruitless tasks, completely different from Kabbalah which presumes that very few conclusions are definite, and translates to English as the phrase” that which is received.” You cannot study Kabbalah. You must receive it, and sometimes you receive very little. Kabbalah is not studied. It is dreamed. It is hearing the Bible for the first time and realizing that it is a series of tales fit only for children. Hence why Christ said you must be a child to receive the Kingdom of God.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Cursing Psalm
Goddamn Joseph Daley!
Goddamn him Goddamn him!
Goddamn Aileen Cokely!
Goddamn her fat ass and her horrible wardrobe. Goddamn that little slut, Catherine!
Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn!
Goddamn Notre Dame’s undergraduate program for making such little bitches.
Fuck them all.
May they go to hell! Let them burn in hell!
They are in hell! Let them take their fucking hell from
the rest of us.
God fucking damn them all!
Goddamn Joe deCant! Goddamn Gerlac O’Loughlin, Goddamn Vincent Bataille, Goddamn Tim
Kelly, Goddamn Luke Armour! Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn all of these fuckers!
God fucking damn them. God damn people who hide behind the cross of Christ and you
know--you KNOW they don’t fucking believe in it.
Goddamn the little ushers at mass on Sunday! Goddamn the Folk Choir! Singing those songs
they know they don’t believe! Goddamn the priest for trying to snowjob the fuck out of us. God
damn the servers, esepcially that little fucking prick with the glasses!
Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn them all!
2.
Goddamn the war in Iraq!
3.
What is curious is all the things I do not wish to damn. Surely there are other people, places,
things, institutions that I am not happy with. And yet, I have no wish to damn them....
4.
Goddamn global warming!
Goddamn Saddam Hussein!
Goddamn George Bush!
Goddamn NAFTA!
Goddamn Roe V. Wade!
Goddamn the fact that sodomy is still a crime in Texas!
Goddamn all the men who fucked over my female friends.
Goddamn all the men who fucked over my gay friends.
Goddamn nuclear meltdowns! Goddamn forty-thousand children dying of starvation everyday!
Goddamn all of this shit!
5.
Goddamn that Tibet is still not free!
6.
Goddamn the bastard who fired my brother, Nick! Goddamn him roving around like the Son of
Man with no place to lay his head while the birds have the air and foxes have their holes.
Goddamn that Bill is in Arizona when I need him now.
Or would like him here now!
Goddamn the Devil!
Goddamn whatever he did to make all the people I hate into the people they became.
Goddamn whatever turned you and you and you into what you are so that we are at war. So that
we cannot be at peace. I am a Holy Peace, not a Holy
Let’s-sit-down-close-our-mouths-and-fucking-pretend-they’re’s-not-a-problem!
And that’s why,
ironically,
we won’t be having peace.
Why we’re at fucking war!
7.
Goddamn this fucking war!
Kevin,
I hate the fact that I hate you.
8.
And the congregation says: “Selah!”
9.
And King David having slain his tens of thousands lays down his sword and says, “Shalom,
shalom, Amen.
And I say:
Part 10.
God bless Rachel
and bless Griffin
and Cody playing outside their house, secure in their love.
Love still pure,
all of seven,
may they possess the love of seven year olds their whole life long.
It is the love of seven year olds which will stand against all this darkness.
Bless my mama who just took her dialysis bags out--I can hear her doing it--though she
know’s it’s easier for me.
Bless my papa who still ain’t bought coffee
Bless Linda, and Joni and Sarah at the library, bless the public transit system, bless the
sun ,the moon ,the trees who talk to me if I listen, the sweet eternal wind.
God Bless me.
Bless all my brothers and sisters. The ones who agree to be my brothers and sisters.
Bless our tears for all the motherfuckers who hurt us.
Bless the motherfuckers who hurt us.
Bless us when we are hurtful motherfuckers.
Goddamn Joseph Daley!
Goddamn him Goddamn him!
Goddamn Aileen Cokely!
Goddamn her fat ass and her horrible wardrobe. Goddamn that little slut, Catherine!
Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn!
Goddamn Notre Dame’s undergraduate program for making such little bitches.
Fuck them all.
May they go to hell! Let them burn in hell!
They are in hell! Let them take their fucking hell from
the rest of us.
God fucking damn them all!
Goddamn Joe deCant! Goddamn Gerlac O’Loughlin, Goddamn Vincent Bataille, Goddamn Tim
Kelly, Goddamn Luke Armour! Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn all of these fuckers!
God fucking damn them. God damn people who hide behind the cross of Christ and you
know--you KNOW they don’t fucking believe in it.
Goddamn the little ushers at mass on Sunday! Goddamn the Folk Choir! Singing those songs
they know they don’t believe! Goddamn the priest for trying to snowjob the fuck out of us. God
damn the servers, esepcially that little fucking prick with the glasses!
Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn them all!
2.
Goddamn the war in Iraq!
3.
What is curious is all the things I do not wish to damn. Surely there are other people, places,
things, institutions that I am not happy with. And yet, I have no wish to damn them....
4.
Goddamn global warming!
Goddamn Saddam Hussein!
Goddamn George Bush!
Goddamn NAFTA!
Goddamn Roe V. Wade!
Goddamn the fact that sodomy is still a crime in Texas!
Goddamn all the men who fucked over my female friends.
Goddamn all the men who fucked over my gay friends.
Goddamn nuclear meltdowns! Goddamn forty-thousand children dying of starvation everyday!
Goddamn all of this shit!
5.
Goddamn that Tibet is still not free!
6.
Goddamn the bastard who fired my brother, Nick! Goddamn him roving around like the Son of
Man with no place to lay his head while the birds have the air and foxes have their holes.
Goddamn that Bill is in Arizona when I need him now.
Or would like him here now!
Goddamn the Devil!
Goddamn whatever he did to make all the people I hate into the people they became.
Goddamn whatever turned you and you and you into what you are so that we are at war. So that
we cannot be at peace. I am a Holy Peace, not a Holy
Let’s-sit-down-close-our-mouths-and-fucking-pretend-they’re’s-not-a-problem!
And that’s why,
ironically,
we won’t be having peace.
Why we’re at fucking war!
7.
Goddamn this fucking war!
Kevin,
I hate the fact that I hate you.
8.
And the congregation says: “Selah!”
9.
And King David having slain his tens of thousands lays down his sword and says, “Shalom,
shalom, Amen.
And I say:
Part 10.
God bless Rachel
and bless Griffin
and Cody playing outside their house, secure in their love.
Love still pure,
all of seven,
may they possess the love of seven year olds their whole life long.
It is the love of seven year olds which will stand against all this darkness.
Bless my mama who just took her dialysis bags out--I can hear her doing it--though she
know’s it’s easier for me.
Bless my papa who still ain’t bought coffee
Bless Linda, and Joni and Sarah at the library, bless the public transit system, bless the
sun ,the moon ,the trees who talk to me if I listen, the sweet eternal wind.
God Bless me.
Bless all my brothers and sisters. The ones who agree to be my brothers and sisters.
Bless our tears for all the motherfuckers who hurt us.
Bless the motherfuckers who hurt us.
Bless us when we are hurtful motherfuckers.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
FINE
Everyone here will do well. I know it. Now it’s evening. The day is ending and I am thinking of all of my friends. Annie, I know you will get past this crap. You’re so strong and you keep on loving. Frema, you know I cannot thank you enough for all the hard work you do for me, after yu have done the hard work at school and the hard work at the office. I know you will be exactly the writer you want to be and Andrew, you may not know it, but your very desire is making you the writer you need to be. In time you’ll know everything you need to do. I know you’re thinking: but I’ve already given things time. Give it more time. You can’t make a thing happen before it’s time. There’s no good from that. Trust me. David, you really have no idea how good a guitar player you are, and that’s your trouble. You idolize other people too much and don’t understand your skill. Once you trust your voice and find your vocal range (which is probably a lot higher that you’d like it to be) you will soar and no one will be able to stop you. Everyone will idolize YOU. How does that sound?
Everyone here will do well. I know it. Now it’s evening. The day is ending and I am thinking of all of my friends. Annie, I know you will get past this crap. You’re so strong and you keep on loving. Frema, you know I cannot thank you enough for all the hard work you do for me, after yu have done the hard work at school and the hard work at the office. I know you will be exactly the writer you want to be and Andrew, you may not know it, but your very desire is making you the writer you need to be. In time you’ll know everything you need to do. I know you’re thinking: but I’ve already given things time. Give it more time. You can’t make a thing happen before it’s time. There’s no good from that. Trust me. David, you really have no idea how good a guitar player you are, and that’s your trouble. You idolize other people too much and don’t understand your skill. Once you trust your voice and find your vocal range (which is probably a lot higher that you’d like it to be) you will soar and no one will be able to stop you. Everyone will idolize YOU. How does that sound?
Monday, July 19, 2004
HOME
The sun is high at six in the evening as the train pulls into South Bend. For the last half hour of the ride it has raced along the tracks, across the green fields and through the trees and the little hidden rivers. As the train turns into our city we all look out on it and at the setting sun as if we’ve never seen a Walgreens, never seen a Masonic Lodge, never seen a landing strip before. We are all filled with wonder and gladness to return home.
No matter how good the trip was, no matter how enjoyable the journey to friends or place may have been there is nothing like the journey home and the walk into one’s own house. There is no relaxation like that the body takes when the feet plant themselves on the floor and seem to reach, like plant roots into the ground and draw up strength from being in this place: home.
People who have never loved their home don’t understand. People who have never been rooted to a palce cannot know what this is like. To come home and say, “New York was nice, yes. But it wasn’t South Bend. To travel to Amsterdam and say, “Well, yes, there were plenty of museums and the canals were lovely. But you can’t get two packs of Marlboros for four dollars at the Speedway gas station.”
Americans are addicted to rootlessness and in love with places they don’t belong. We are supposed to like our big cities and our individual lives and run from our families and the places that sustain us. But two days from Chicago were two days I couldn’t see the sky, and felt disconnected from the land. The neighborhoods on the North End now aren’t like the old neighborhoods, or like my neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else and everyone’s sister and mother and grandmother, where everyone is tangled together in invisible webs. Here, in my city there are buses and trains and cabs but courtesy is not simply a formality. You WILL see this cab driver again. So you’d better behave. This bus driver is your girlfriend’s cousin. So you are connected. Everything is related to everything. The woman at the cigarette shop with not charge you for what you bought today because she likes you. The librarians will wave your fines. If you ask a waitress for free dessert she will think about it a moment, and then come out with one. Money is not quite as powerful as sheer decency. On the busy streets of down town lawyers wave to you, the trolley drivers lean out their windows and shout to you. You must give to the bums because, yes… they know you. You are wholly responsible, wholly cared for, wholly a part of this city and, therefore… whole.
The sun is high at six in the evening as the train pulls into South Bend. For the last half hour of the ride it has raced along the tracks, across the green fields and through the trees and the little hidden rivers. As the train turns into our city we all look out on it and at the setting sun as if we’ve never seen a Walgreens, never seen a Masonic Lodge, never seen a landing strip before. We are all filled with wonder and gladness to return home.
No matter how good the trip was, no matter how enjoyable the journey to friends or place may have been there is nothing like the journey home and the walk into one’s own house. There is no relaxation like that the body takes when the feet plant themselves on the floor and seem to reach, like plant roots into the ground and draw up strength from being in this place: home.
People who have never loved their home don’t understand. People who have never been rooted to a palce cannot know what this is like. To come home and say, “New York was nice, yes. But it wasn’t South Bend. To travel to Amsterdam and say, “Well, yes, there were plenty of museums and the canals were lovely. But you can’t get two packs of Marlboros for four dollars at the Speedway gas station.”
Americans are addicted to rootlessness and in love with places they don’t belong. We are supposed to like our big cities and our individual lives and run from our families and the places that sustain us. But two days from Chicago were two days I couldn’t see the sky, and felt disconnected from the land. The neighborhoods on the North End now aren’t like the old neighborhoods, or like my neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else and everyone’s sister and mother and grandmother, where everyone is tangled together in invisible webs. Here, in my city there are buses and trains and cabs but courtesy is not simply a formality. You WILL see this cab driver again. So you’d better behave. This bus driver is your girlfriend’s cousin. So you are connected. Everything is related to everything. The woman at the cigarette shop with not charge you for what you bought today because she likes you. The librarians will wave your fines. If you ask a waitress for free dessert she will think about it a moment, and then come out with one. Money is not quite as powerful as sheer decency. On the busy streets of down town lawyers wave to you, the trolley drivers lean out their windows and shout to you. You must give to the bums because, yes… they know you. You are wholly responsible, wholly cared for, wholly a part of this city and, therefore… whole.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
FIRE
I've been to Andrew's site and it always gives me hope. Or rather I should say he gives me hope because he's got that raw longing to do great things that most people think is unhealthy after eighteen. Today Andrew's article is called "A Writer?" and now that it is official and I really will be going back to school in the fall and taking many courses which are centered around the repsonibilities writers have to be communicators and builders, there are a few things I'd like to say about what I am attempting to do.
A few days ago a dear friend of mine read my novel. This is saying a lot because anyone who is a writer knows that the last people to sit down and read your work are dear friends and family. And he wrote to say what it did to him, how it affected him, and I felt blessed because that's when I realized I had finally come to the stage I wanted to reach. Even though I didn't know I was going toward that place. Not until he told me. Before I wanted to be good. I wanted people to think I was good. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that I needed to be a bard and a bard ought to be a servant. When David said he laughed a little and cried and little and even felt like an ass a little, and I realized that this is what I was doing. I don't even say trying to do, but doing. Reaching into a very real part of myself to pull out something very real for people. Something so real and hot that you might burn your fingers on it. Any of you who has read Witch's Blood for some time knows that I would love to be very, very famous and make some money and I'd like all of you, my fellow bards, to do the same. But I don't have any prractical advice along those lines. The advice I have for you is: don't settle. Don't resort to silly how-to-be-a-writer formulas. There is a force out there and inside yourselves friendly to an artists who does not settle and who strives to honor his or her gift by honoring the people around them. There is a force that keeps and upholds those who walk with the fire.
I've been to Andrew's site and it always gives me hope. Or rather I should say he gives me hope because he's got that raw longing to do great things that most people think is unhealthy after eighteen. Today Andrew's article is called "A Writer?" and now that it is official and I really will be going back to school in the fall and taking many courses which are centered around the repsonibilities writers have to be communicators and builders, there are a few things I'd like to say about what I am attempting to do.
A few days ago a dear friend of mine read my novel. This is saying a lot because anyone who is a writer knows that the last people to sit down and read your work are dear friends and family. And he wrote to say what it did to him, how it affected him, and I felt blessed because that's when I realized I had finally come to the stage I wanted to reach. Even though I didn't know I was going toward that place. Not until he told me. Before I wanted to be good. I wanted people to think I was good. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that I needed to be a bard and a bard ought to be a servant. When David said he laughed a little and cried and little and even felt like an ass a little, and I realized that this is what I was doing. I don't even say trying to do, but doing. Reaching into a very real part of myself to pull out something very real for people. Something so real and hot that you might burn your fingers on it. Any of you who has read Witch's Blood for some time knows that I would love to be very, very famous and make some money and I'd like all of you, my fellow bards, to do the same. But I don't have any prractical advice along those lines. The advice I have for you is: don't settle. Don't resort to silly how-to-be-a-writer formulas. There is a force out there and inside yourselves friendly to an artists who does not settle and who strives to honor his or her gift by honoring the people around them. There is a force that keeps and upholds those who walk with the fire.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
THE CREED OF SAINT THOMAS
I believe in one God, a divine mystery
Beyond all definition and rational understanding,
The heart of all that has ever existed,
That exist now, or that ever will exist.
I believe in Jesus, messenger of God’s Word,
Bringer of God’s healing, heart of God’s compassion,
Bright star in the firmament of God’s prophets, mystics, and saints.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
The life of God that is our innermost life,
The breath of God moving in our being,
The depth of God living in each of us.
I believe that I am called to be Jesus’s twin,
Allowing myself to be a vehicle of God’s love,
A source of God’s wisdom and truth,
And the instrument of God’s peace in the world.
I believe that God’s reign is here and now,
Stretched out all around us for those
With eyes to see it, hearts to receive it,
And hands to make it happen.
I believe in the community of God seekers
In all the religions, as well as outside of them,
The great prophets, mystics, and saints,
And those just beginning their spiritual journey.
I believe in a future on this earth when all
Will be God-centered and God-conscious,
When will learn to live in love and peace,
In the fellowship of brothers and sisters.
I believe that in death, life is changed,
Not taken away, and that we will go
From step to step in God’s life, God’s love,
And God’s glory for all eternity. Amen
-- Ron Miller
I believe in one God, a divine mystery
Beyond all definition and rational understanding,
The heart of all that has ever existed,
That exist now, or that ever will exist.
I believe in Jesus, messenger of God’s Word,
Bringer of God’s healing, heart of God’s compassion,
Bright star in the firmament of God’s prophets, mystics, and saints.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
The life of God that is our innermost life,
The breath of God moving in our being,
The depth of God living in each of us.
I believe that I am called to be Jesus’s twin,
Allowing myself to be a vehicle of God’s love,
A source of God’s wisdom and truth,
And the instrument of God’s peace in the world.
I believe that God’s reign is here and now,
Stretched out all around us for those
With eyes to see it, hearts to receive it,
And hands to make it happen.
I believe in the community of God seekers
In all the religions, as well as outside of them,
The great prophets, mystics, and saints,
And those just beginning their spiritual journey.
I believe in a future on this earth when all
Will be God-centered and God-conscious,
When will learn to live in love and peace,
In the fellowship of brothers and sisters.
I believe that in death, life is changed,
Not taken away, and that we will go
From step to step in God’s life, God’s love,
And God’s glory for all eternity. Amen
-- Ron Miller
Friday, July 02, 2004
In driver's ed, as you take more and more exams, watch more and more movies and sit closer together with people you are tired of, eventually everyone becomes crankier and crankier. Toward the end of the thirty hours emotions, especially among the boys, are flying high. Girls tend to do a thing because it needs to be done, and their lives are hard enough as it is. Each boy is in driver's ed not because a car gets from point a to point b but because a car will make them sexy, independent, respected. They have all of next year to realize how wrong they are. Most of them came in like stags at mating season, ready to butt heads. Now they are all wearing thinly veiled looks of annoyance with each other. In America, at least, conformity is the main obsession of men ,especially very young men. And the fact that most men are really nothing alike fuels the mutual dislike hovering around this room.
Blake gets up to ask Zachary is he is gay or not. To my surprise, and this tells me how much thigns have changed since I was a teenager, Zachary says he is, and leaves it at that. In my opionion Zachary's would have done better to invest in acne treatment for him as opposed to driver's ed, but that's just my opinion. His horrible complexion isn't winning him any friends and I can tell things are hard enough for him as they are.
Adam, who is the youngest person in the room, probably, has just turned fifteen and looks like he is already too old for these people, like hiugh school is really a huge waste. I'll miss him, but in the end he's about it. I know I overanalyze. Yes, I know, but I think how there were really only five people worth knowing and I didn't get to know most of them. How it's weird that we live in a place where you can spend two weeks chumming it up with someone and then never see them again.
I remember my friend Amber from back in college: "Chris, I don't know you think I should make friends. As soon as the semester's over we'll never see them again, so what's the point?"
Amber, I'm inclined to agree with you as I ride home on the bus with all of these experiences with all of these people I shared a life and close quarters with for two weeks who I will never see again.
I have jsut come off the bus and am coming down Notre Dame Avenue when I look up and see Matt standing their in his jeans and his thin shirt walking a chocolate lab bigger than himself. He is my neighbor. For two years now I've seen him pass by my window and up my block wondering what kind of kid he was. He was one of the only ones I didn't know. A year ago he came into Sacred Heart looking sort of vacant and I allowed him into the pew where we were sitting. But I don't think I've ever heard him speak. There has always been a great gulf of me the much older and he the much younger. Today he is standing there with his dog, looking at me, waiting.
He sat across from me in driver's ed.
And I am reminded that in my field, when I star school in the fall I am like to have Adam's mother for a professor and maybe Spencer's father. And maybe the whole point of it is that you don't know what leads to what. You don't know what the B is that comes after A. You just know that here is life, and you have got to live it. Hopefully with joy, and if you do a million surprises can come your way.
Blake gets up to ask Zachary is he is gay or not. To my surprise, and this tells me how much thigns have changed since I was a teenager, Zachary says he is, and leaves it at that. In my opionion Zachary's would have done better to invest in acne treatment for him as opposed to driver's ed, but that's just my opinion. His horrible complexion isn't winning him any friends and I can tell things are hard enough for him as they are.
Adam, who is the youngest person in the room, probably, has just turned fifteen and looks like he is already too old for these people, like hiugh school is really a huge waste. I'll miss him, but in the end he's about it. I know I overanalyze. Yes, I know, but I think how there were really only five people worth knowing and I didn't get to know most of them. How it's weird that we live in a place where you can spend two weeks chumming it up with someone and then never see them again.
I remember my friend Amber from back in college: "Chris, I don't know you think I should make friends. As soon as the semester's over we'll never see them again, so what's the point?"
Amber, I'm inclined to agree with you as I ride home on the bus with all of these experiences with all of these people I shared a life and close quarters with for two weeks who I will never see again.
I have jsut come off the bus and am coming down Notre Dame Avenue when I look up and see Matt standing their in his jeans and his thin shirt walking a chocolate lab bigger than himself. He is my neighbor. For two years now I've seen him pass by my window and up my block wondering what kind of kid he was. He was one of the only ones I didn't know. A year ago he came into Sacred Heart looking sort of vacant and I allowed him into the pew where we were sitting. But I don't think I've ever heard him speak. There has always been a great gulf of me the much older and he the much younger. Today he is standing there with his dog, looking at me, waiting.
He sat across from me in driver's ed.
And I am reminded that in my field, when I star school in the fall I am like to have Adam's mother for a professor and maybe Spencer's father. And maybe the whole point of it is that you don't know what leads to what. You don't know what the B is that comes after A. You just know that here is life, and you have got to live it. Hopefully with joy, and if you do a million surprises can come your way.
Well, these last few weeks have been a gift, but an exhausting one. Now that it's over I can't imagine how I got through driver's ed. It was one hell of an ordeal. Now it's over and now i'm glad. What's left is the part I wanted, the six hours of driving where they swing up to your house when you want them to in a nice car and then drop you off and you don't have to get up at the crack of dawn.
Today I felt like it was my last day of high school. That was the longest day out of all four years. I distinctly remember hating everyone and feeling that this was the hugest waste, that I couldn't wait to get away. The last two weeks have taken me back through that place I almost forgotten and helped me deal truthfully with so much that was in the past. There were many people I liked, many I didn't. Some experiences were great, many were boring. I was often happy. Other times I was cranky beyond belief.
Above all what makes me happy is getting to be an adult again. I always preferred adulthood to any other period of life. Some people in their twenties tend to look fondly back to the womb. I never will. The best thing about all of this is getting to be a grown up again. Because i look young enough I didn't look ridiculous in driver's ed. I looked fifteen years old. And even when people knew I wasn't... well, when you're fifteen you can't see much beyond a fifteen year old's world. In that class I was fifteen. I wasn't a writer. I wasnt' a graduate student with a degree in English Literature and religious studies. I wasn't a shaman or the poet in residence of Saint James Cathedral. I wasn't the founder of Foot in the Door Press. I wasn't even anyone's friend. Because everyone else's friends went to so and so high or so and so junior high. All of my friends live in an adult world. Very little that meant anything to me could have meant anything to these kids I sat with day after day after day. In the end I felt too old, like I didn't belong. I felt as if I were doing time. And the funny thing is: that's EXACTLY how I felt in high school.
Today I felt like it was my last day of high school. That was the longest day out of all four years. I distinctly remember hating everyone and feeling that this was the hugest waste, that I couldn't wait to get away. The last two weeks have taken me back through that place I almost forgotten and helped me deal truthfully with so much that was in the past. There were many people I liked, many I didn't. Some experiences were great, many were boring. I was often happy. Other times I was cranky beyond belief.
Above all what makes me happy is getting to be an adult again. I always preferred adulthood to any other period of life. Some people in their twenties tend to look fondly back to the womb. I never will. The best thing about all of this is getting to be a grown up again. Because i look young enough I didn't look ridiculous in driver's ed. I looked fifteen years old. And even when people knew I wasn't... well, when you're fifteen you can't see much beyond a fifteen year old's world. In that class I was fifteen. I wasn't a writer. I wasnt' a graduate student with a degree in English Literature and religious studies. I wasn't a shaman or the poet in residence of Saint James Cathedral. I wasn't the founder of Foot in the Door Press. I wasn't even anyone's friend. Because everyone else's friends went to so and so high or so and so junior high. All of my friends live in an adult world. Very little that meant anything to me could have meant anything to these kids I sat with day after day after day. In the end I felt too old, like I didn't belong. I felt as if I were doing time. And the funny thing is: that's EXACTLY how I felt in high school.
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