The surrealist moral imagination is in arrears. That the Marquis de Sade was ever presented as a great moralist is itself bizarre. It comes out of the surrealist reverence for Freud. Freud posited -- following Schopenhauer -- that the universal will was a monstrous thing -- clawing out an existence based on sex and murder -- and that the id (Schopenhauer's term) was what we really are "at bottom."
Hence Georges Bataille wrote, "For those who want to know what we are at bottom it is essential to read Sade." Simone de Beauvoir wrote that Sade was a "great moralist."
Hinkmeisters.
How many people really want to injure their friends and neighbors? How many really want, as Sade did, to buy a prostitute just so that they could injure her?
That Sade was morally insane was apparent to everyone in the early 19th century, and that he is now held up as a great moralist at the beginning of the 21st century is another indication of how civilization is advancing backwards.
The moral imagination of America has been influenced by Sade via the French avant-gardes in the works of rock n roll performers and others, but it must still be very few who really regard Madonna or Marilyn Manson as actual role models.
We still see James Madison and Helen Keller as our role models in rural America. Madison is ours, Keller is ours, and underneath that the Protestant spirit of cooperation and sacrifice remains undiminished.
The moral imagination of surrealism was compromised due to the paradigms of Freud. We submit that for Freud and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, we will introduce James Madison, and John Locke and Helen Keller. "Lutheran" surrealism rests on a heart and is surrounded by a serene sky.
Apart from the universal will of Schopenhauer and its constant reference to a "will to power" we posit that there is another universal law in which compassion, mutual aid, and the possibility of tenderness are also at the very foundation of what it means to be human, and that it is this side that has increasingly separated us from the dinosaurs.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Sunday, July 25, 2004
I'm vacationing in the Poconos -- a pile of mountains just one hour or so outside of NYC. The extended family has combined for a food and talk festival lasting approximately one week. As a side trip my faction went to Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton apparently to visit a crayola factory but the baby fell asleep just as we pulled up. Too much excitement at present for the possibility of recollected tranquillity, but we remember with amusement John Updike's characterization of these mountains and their aftertaste in his imagination.
"buggy brown lakes"
Many Lutheran churches in the Bethlehem area. Giant granite structures with many elderly Germanic looking individuals standing around in their Sunday finest shaking hands today. The neighborhoods have turned Hispanic, but these folks still commute to their neighborhood church.
Went through Lehigh University and picnicked.
The main controversy at my brother's house is how a squirrel keeps managing to raid the bird feeder, and whether the .22 should be put to use.
So far we're just shouting at the squirrel to beat it and let the more colorful songbirds have a chance. A redtailed hawk circles distantly over the house. A bear has knocked down the fence twice over the last six months in trying to get at the large carp in an artificial pool.
"buggy brown lakes"
Many Lutheran churches in the Bethlehem area. Giant granite structures with many elderly Germanic looking individuals standing around in their Sunday finest shaking hands today. The neighborhoods have turned Hispanic, but these folks still commute to their neighborhood church.
Went through Lehigh University and picnicked.
The main controversy at my brother's house is how a squirrel keeps managing to raid the bird feeder, and whether the .22 should be put to use.
So far we're just shouting at the squirrel to beat it and let the more colorful songbirds have a chance. A redtailed hawk circles distantly over the house. A bear has knocked down the fence twice over the last six months in trying to get at the large carp in an artificial pool.
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Received today:
Tom Hunley's The Tongue, published by Wind Publications, 600 Overbrook Drive, Nicholasville, KY 40356.
The book's cover features the head of a cow in a daisy field with a rather large tongue protruding from his mouth. The style of the painting of the cow is a sort of pseudo-naive with a hint of an underlying humor regarding itself. The tongue then becomes a metaphor for something we share with animals and angels.
The poems share this underlying humor. Perhaps the genre could be early James Tate, or Thomas Lux, but the poems do not tend toward nihilism. There is instead a certain holistic view of a poem. Each poem says something, and usually something rather big, and in language that most could easily understand, but with the slight persiflage of the contemporary.
I read this one to Pastor Richard Niebanck. It is called "Morsels, Remorse, Morte" and it ends,
"every time I try to fall out of love, which is like
trying to fall headfirst out of a deep hole or
like that woman trying to return to a time when her
presence on the beach made men forget the waves
and their wives or like Judas looking for a way
to spend the pieces of silver he got
in exchange for the fractured remains of his soul"
(24)
Niebanck smiled appreciately and nodded his head.
Hunley recently got out of a Florida State University creative writing fellowship and is now teaching at Western Kentucky University. What I like about the poems is the hint of having survived the inveterate playfulness of the NY school and most contemporary schools with something of a skeletal religious framework. The above fragment I quote is what I suspect most feel like in this postmodern end-time in which money and desire and play is supposed to replace the sense that our lives are something sacred and with meaning. Hunley's playful surface belies a deeper quest for what it is that the tongue can do when it is not merely clanging like a cymbal, as St. Paul called the act of speaking in tongues.
One could read Hunley's first book of poems as a Pauline indictment of the general incomprehensibility of contemporary poetry. In Corinthians Paul upbraids the parishioners of Corinth for relishing their gift of tongues above the gifts of love and humility. Paul insists that five intelligible words spoken in the church were of more value than ten thousand words which no one can comprehend (Corinthians 12). The implication that the poet's license to speak uncontrollably and without conscious intelligence is an asocial and irreligious act that while not forbidden in the early Christian community was nevertheless discouraged.
Neither animal nor angel, the poet's tongue is neither ordained by God nor forbidden but it is an aspect of our freedom. Is there responsibility attached to this freedom? Hunley's investigation of lies, liars, science, mistakes, ecology, the movies, and so on, seem to wonder how far the poet dares to tread into popular culture without losing any and every sense of meaning. A Missouri synod Lutheran, Hunley's parallel with our own investigations is remarkable -- he lived in Seattle during the same time we did, and has gone on to get a higher teaching degree, married, and had a child without our once having met him! Naturally, like ourselves, he must face the last fifty years of poetry and wonder both how to fit in and how to change it, how to have his own say within it. The strongest and most interesting aspects of the book are when he confronts his religious heritage with the secular heritage, and creates a dialogue. At present these moments are a subtext in an otherwise richly comic poetry, but one senses the importance of an underlying earnestness which may yet become a burning bush in the wilderness of contemporary hilarity.
Tom Hunley's The Tongue, published by Wind Publications, 600 Overbrook Drive, Nicholasville, KY 40356.
The book's cover features the head of a cow in a daisy field with a rather large tongue protruding from his mouth. The style of the painting of the cow is a sort of pseudo-naive with a hint of an underlying humor regarding itself. The tongue then becomes a metaphor for something we share with animals and angels.
The poems share this underlying humor. Perhaps the genre could be early James Tate, or Thomas Lux, but the poems do not tend toward nihilism. There is instead a certain holistic view of a poem. Each poem says something, and usually something rather big, and in language that most could easily understand, but with the slight persiflage of the contemporary.
I read this one to Pastor Richard Niebanck. It is called "Morsels, Remorse, Morte" and it ends,
"every time I try to fall out of love, which is like
trying to fall headfirst out of a deep hole or
like that woman trying to return to a time when her
presence on the beach made men forget the waves
and their wives or like Judas looking for a way
to spend the pieces of silver he got
in exchange for the fractured remains of his soul"
(24)
Niebanck smiled appreciately and nodded his head.
Hunley recently got out of a Florida State University creative writing fellowship and is now teaching at Western Kentucky University. What I like about the poems is the hint of having survived the inveterate playfulness of the NY school and most contemporary schools with something of a skeletal religious framework. The above fragment I quote is what I suspect most feel like in this postmodern end-time in which money and desire and play is supposed to replace the sense that our lives are something sacred and with meaning. Hunley's playful surface belies a deeper quest for what it is that the tongue can do when it is not merely clanging like a cymbal, as St. Paul called the act of speaking in tongues.
One could read Hunley's first book of poems as a Pauline indictment of the general incomprehensibility of contemporary poetry. In Corinthians Paul upbraids the parishioners of Corinth for relishing their gift of tongues above the gifts of love and humility. Paul insists that five intelligible words spoken in the church were of more value than ten thousand words which no one can comprehend (Corinthians 12). The implication that the poet's license to speak uncontrollably and without conscious intelligence is an asocial and irreligious act that while not forbidden in the early Christian community was nevertheless discouraged.
Neither animal nor angel, the poet's tongue is neither ordained by God nor forbidden but it is an aspect of our freedom. Is there responsibility attached to this freedom? Hunley's investigation of lies, liars, science, mistakes, ecology, the movies, and so on, seem to wonder how far the poet dares to tread into popular culture without losing any and every sense of meaning. A Missouri synod Lutheran, Hunley's parallel with our own investigations is remarkable -- he lived in Seattle during the same time we did, and has gone on to get a higher teaching degree, married, and had a child without our once having met him! Naturally, like ourselves, he must face the last fifty years of poetry and wonder both how to fit in and how to change it, how to have his own say within it. The strongest and most interesting aspects of the book are when he confronts his religious heritage with the secular heritage, and creates a dialogue. At present these moments are a subtext in an otherwise richly comic poetry, but one senses the importance of an underlying earnestness which may yet become a burning bush in the wilderness of contemporary hilarity.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Friday, July 16, 2004
Summer books I've collected:
Wakefield, Andrei Codrescu
Tears & Saints, EM Cioran
Digressions on Poems by Frank O'Hara, Joe Lesueur
Christian & Oriental Philosophy of Art, Ananda Coomaraswamy
Thirsty, Swimming in the Lake, David Reynolds
Marianne Moore, Poet and Woman, ed. Patricia Willis
The Other Voice, O. Paz
I Think Therefore I Laugh, John Allen Paulos
Pausanias, Christian Habicht
The Colossus of New York, Colson Whitehead
Seek My Face, John Updike
The Hyphen, Lyotard
Puppet & Dwarf, Zizek
Goldbach's Conjecture, Apostolos Doxiadis
Selected Letters, Marianne Moore
Aesthetic Concepts, ed. Brady & Levenson
Art & Geometry, Dover Edition by ?
Divine Proportion, H.E. Huntley
Dover edition of EA Robinson
Paradise Alley, Kevin Baker
The Slaughter of Cities, E. Michael Jones
Always Now, Vol. 1, Margaret Avison
Wakefield, Andrei Codrescu
Tears & Saints, EM Cioran
Digressions on Poems by Frank O'Hara, Joe Lesueur
Christian & Oriental Philosophy of Art, Ananda Coomaraswamy
Thirsty, Swimming in the Lake, David Reynolds
Marianne Moore, Poet and Woman, ed. Patricia Willis
The Other Voice, O. Paz
I Think Therefore I Laugh, John Allen Paulos
Pausanias, Christian Habicht
The Colossus of New York, Colson Whitehead
Seek My Face, John Updike
The Hyphen, Lyotard
Puppet & Dwarf, Zizek
Goldbach's Conjecture, Apostolos Doxiadis
Selected Letters, Marianne Moore
Aesthetic Concepts, ed. Brady & Levenson
Art & Geometry, Dover Edition by ?
Divine Proportion, H.E. Huntley
Dover edition of EA Robinson
Paradise Alley, Kevin Baker
The Slaughter of Cities, E. Michael Jones
Always Now, Vol. 1, Margaret Avison
Thursday, July 15, 2004
THE MIRROR STAGE
I showed the baby to himself in the mirror
His eyes lit up with recognition
As if he had remembered to say something
He kicked his feet and opened his mouth
The baby likes to be walked around
And he likes to talk to everybody
Nursed
But the thing he likes best is the
Mirror
February 17, 2004
I showed the baby to himself in the mirror
His eyes lit up with recognition
As if he had remembered to say something
He kicked his feet and opened his mouth
The baby likes to be walked around
And he likes to talk to everybody
Nursed
But the thing he likes best is the
Mirror
February 17, 2004
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSION OF DELHI
Pine cones spiral along the curb of the Mormon church
The storm drain has a symbolic dimension?
The fire station and the highway department are dismally factual
Overhead the turkey buzzards soar in the gloaming
The sun illuminates the underlining of their wings
Death & the soul combined in a rare but crummy bird
Only Ben Franklin took turkeys seriously
American flags fly over every 3rd house
Lola says, "Jesus died on the cross.
But later on he felt better again, right?"
"Right."
I wanted to get on to better or easier topics
Prayer is something I don't talk about with Lola
Riikka says it's important
But God already knows what you want so why bother?
You enter into communion with the higher realm
That realm has been closed for repairs for 100 years
Now it's open again
It's no longer The Christian Century
So it's ok to be Christian again
Christ is closer to suffering people
April 6, 2004
Pine cones spiral along the curb of the Mormon church
The storm drain has a symbolic dimension?
The fire station and the highway department are dismally factual
Overhead the turkey buzzards soar in the gloaming
The sun illuminates the underlining of their wings
Death & the soul combined in a rare but crummy bird
Only Ben Franklin took turkeys seriously
American flags fly over every 3rd house
Lola says, "Jesus died on the cross.
But later on he felt better again, right?"
"Right."
I wanted to get on to better or easier topics
Prayer is something I don't talk about with Lola
Riikka says it's important
But God already knows what you want so why bother?
You enter into communion with the higher realm
That realm has been closed for repairs for 100 years
Now it's open again
It's no longer The Christian Century
So it's ok to be Christian again
Christ is closer to suffering people
April 6, 2004
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
The changes I've seen in my lifetime -- some good, some dubious. People have gotten heavier. Portions are supersized, and more people spend more time in front of TV and computer. It's hard to escape them, they're made to appeal to our brains, so we remain affixed, transfixed -- eating images as we suck down fatty juices and french fries and cheeseburgers.
The community has become somewhat more inclusive, I guess, on the other hand, just as it has relaxed standards.
Will anything stay the same?
When I first reenrolled in the Lutheran church I was expecting that at least the church had stayed the same since my departure during my adolescence. But in the Lutheran church there is exactly the same discourse as that within the English departments across the country, or should I say world?
In English departments the idea of studying the aesthetics of a poem, or a story, has vanished in favor of studying its politics. And in the churches, the idea of faith in God has vanished in favor of political action within impoverished communities.
How long has this been going on? When did it begin? Didn't it in fact begin in a sense with Christianity?
The Seattle poet Mike Kettner once wrote an important one-liner that went, "Tables once turned keep on turning."
What does Christianity mean? Is it conservative or progressive? When Christ overturned the money changers tables in a sense he could have been said to be a precursor to Marxism. But he also sent everything spinning so that nothing can stop.
My pastor a couple of years back said that at least the language should remain the same. At least we should continue to call God the Father, and Christ the Son. But this language is considered too patriarchal by many of the progressives. They want God to be called The Creator, and Christ to be called The Redeemer, as the language is more gender neutral.
Christ himself in the Gospels teaches us how to pray, by saying, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name."
Is Christ outmoded, and in need of an update?
Can we still call ourselves Christians if we no longer listen to the very words with which he taught us how to pray?
I contacted a former college prof named Philip Pfatteicher -- also a major Lutheran theologian. He said that he was a conservative in theological matters, but a liberal in political matters.
But more and more, the two have come together.
I myself am confused, as my heading "Lutheran Surrealism" would imply. Lutheranism is an older Protestant denomination. In some places it is conservative, and in others quite progressive. In fact we are split at about the same rate as the rest of the culture between the orthodox and the progressive. Surrealism was extremely progressive for its time, but at the end of his life Breton said that what humanity needed was stability, not more changes.
It all reminds me of the Jimi Hendrix song, "Well my mind is going through those changes -- it seems like I'm going out of my mind, yeah yeah."
The guitar explosion of the sixties -- the incredible creativity of Hendrix was matched by a considerable creativity in every domain of life.
Hendrix died very young, as did many of the most explosive members of that generation, and in the seventies -- when I was in my mid-teens (fourteen in 1970) I watched as so many of my friends died from drug overdoses, or disappeared after hitching a ride from a stranger, or finally blew their brains out because of what their minds had become after introduction to LSD. My mother warned me about the fashion plates such as Allen Ginsberg and Tom Hayden and said it would be better to listen to more established people, but frankly the established people like William F. Buckley seemed mildly boring at the time.
As I get older I tend to doubt everything that is said that isn't at least dated from Shakespeare's time. At the same time, I continue to enjoy all the epiphenomena of postmodern culture, and to these two tendencies this blog bears confused witness. I like Zizek as much as I like Augustine, but when it comes time to choose between the two -- I choose St. Augustine.
I am also interested in very ancient cultures -- the Japanese acceptance of boredom seems to be something our culture could use, and Indian food and Indian sitar seem to teach patience and a relish for less obesity-causing food, and a music that allows one to calm down instead of getting overly excited. The west could use a judicious influx of ideas from functioning cultures that have been around much longer. Indian cuisine and music, and Japanese boredom, seem to me to be very peaceful, and are perhaps an antidote to the flimsy notion that that which is "revolutionary and new" is also beautiful or important. We ought to think in five thousand year cycles instead of in terms of novelty.
The community has become somewhat more inclusive, I guess, on the other hand, just as it has relaxed standards.
Will anything stay the same?
When I first reenrolled in the Lutheran church I was expecting that at least the church had stayed the same since my departure during my adolescence. But in the Lutheran church there is exactly the same discourse as that within the English departments across the country, or should I say world?
In English departments the idea of studying the aesthetics of a poem, or a story, has vanished in favor of studying its politics. And in the churches, the idea of faith in God has vanished in favor of political action within impoverished communities.
How long has this been going on? When did it begin? Didn't it in fact begin in a sense with Christianity?
The Seattle poet Mike Kettner once wrote an important one-liner that went, "Tables once turned keep on turning."
What does Christianity mean? Is it conservative or progressive? When Christ overturned the money changers tables in a sense he could have been said to be a precursor to Marxism. But he also sent everything spinning so that nothing can stop.
My pastor a couple of years back said that at least the language should remain the same. At least we should continue to call God the Father, and Christ the Son. But this language is considered too patriarchal by many of the progressives. They want God to be called The Creator, and Christ to be called The Redeemer, as the language is more gender neutral.
Christ himself in the Gospels teaches us how to pray, by saying, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name."
Is Christ outmoded, and in need of an update?
Can we still call ourselves Christians if we no longer listen to the very words with which he taught us how to pray?
I contacted a former college prof named Philip Pfatteicher -- also a major Lutheran theologian. He said that he was a conservative in theological matters, but a liberal in political matters.
But more and more, the two have come together.
I myself am confused, as my heading "Lutheran Surrealism" would imply. Lutheranism is an older Protestant denomination. In some places it is conservative, and in others quite progressive. In fact we are split at about the same rate as the rest of the culture between the orthodox and the progressive. Surrealism was extremely progressive for its time, but at the end of his life Breton said that what humanity needed was stability, not more changes.
It all reminds me of the Jimi Hendrix song, "Well my mind is going through those changes -- it seems like I'm going out of my mind, yeah yeah."
The guitar explosion of the sixties -- the incredible creativity of Hendrix was matched by a considerable creativity in every domain of life.
Hendrix died very young, as did many of the most explosive members of that generation, and in the seventies -- when I was in my mid-teens (fourteen in 1970) I watched as so many of my friends died from drug overdoses, or disappeared after hitching a ride from a stranger, or finally blew their brains out because of what their minds had become after introduction to LSD. My mother warned me about the fashion plates such as Allen Ginsberg and Tom Hayden and said it would be better to listen to more established people, but frankly the established people like William F. Buckley seemed mildly boring at the time.
As I get older I tend to doubt everything that is said that isn't at least dated from Shakespeare's time. At the same time, I continue to enjoy all the epiphenomena of postmodern culture, and to these two tendencies this blog bears confused witness. I like Zizek as much as I like Augustine, but when it comes time to choose between the two -- I choose St. Augustine.
I am also interested in very ancient cultures -- the Japanese acceptance of boredom seems to be something our culture could use, and Indian food and Indian sitar seem to teach patience and a relish for less obesity-causing food, and a music that allows one to calm down instead of getting overly excited. The west could use a judicious influx of ideas from functioning cultures that have been around much longer. Indian cuisine and music, and Japanese boredom, seem to me to be very peaceful, and are perhaps an antidote to the flimsy notion that that which is "revolutionary and new" is also beautiful or important. We ought to think in five thousand year cycles instead of in terms of novelty.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Thursday, July 08, 2004
MORNING WITH IMUS
Awake in the Catskills
The trees look like Confederate soldiers
The Delaware river glides through
Trucks go up & down 10.
Turkey buzzards glide over the valley.
Flowers are not only symbols.
Federal Hill is a mountain of mole-hills.
Children upstairs watch the Wiggles.
On TV somebody named Imus laments the war.
How can we see the larger picture?
Lincoln saw it, too, but knew the cost.
Awake in the Catskills
The trees look like Confederate soldiers
The Delaware river glides through
Trucks go up & down 10.
Turkey buzzards glide over the valley.
Flowers are not only symbols.
Federal Hill is a mountain of mole-hills.
Children upstairs watch the Wiggles.
On TV somebody named Imus laments the war.
How can we see the larger picture?
Lincoln saw it, too, but knew the cost.
I AWAKEN
I awaken
I hug my daughter
At 8 the door is opened by the wife
I get oat bars & proceed down to my study
I write a note or two
I shower
I take Lola to Play-School
I come home & play with Tristan
I go to school and teach
I write some email
I go home
I put the kids to bed
I watch TV
I go to bed
In the morning I awaken
April 15, 2004
I awaken
I hug my daughter
At 8 the door is opened by the wife
I get oat bars & proceed down to my study
I write a note or two
I shower
I take Lola to Play-School
I come home & play with Tristan
I go to school and teach
I write some email
I go home
I put the kids to bed
I watch TV
I go to bed
In the morning I awaken
April 15, 2004
Spring
Federal Hill #3
The slightest hint of spring
Tomorrow the tax deadline
A light green in one hollow
The mountain dark
Tristan & I walked to the video store
The house we nearly bought is newly occupied
Tristan got a yellow lollipop
He walked well
He knows his numbers
He says every car has its own name -- license plate
He dances back and forth
He runs behind Lola attached to a jump rope
He laughs his eyes wild
Constant fear that I won't totally defend him
When the Martians attack
But I hope I will!
Federal Hill #3
The slightest hint of spring
Tomorrow the tax deadline
A light green in one hollow
The mountain dark
Tristan & I walked to the video store
The house we nearly bought is newly occupied
Tristan got a yellow lollipop
He walked well
He knows his numbers
He says every car has its own name -- license plate
He dances back and forth
He runs behind Lola attached to a jump rope
He laughs his eyes wild
Constant fear that I won't totally defend him
When the Martians attack
But I hope I will!
Perplexed
Christ is Risen!
My boy plays with Play-Doh
While we astonish ourselves
Us Doubting Thomases
Could the risen Lord walk amongst us?
Lola returns from the bathroom
She makes a blue flower out of Play-Doh
1st Corinthians 15:
Caephas, the 12,500 brethren
to James, the Apostle,
he appeared also to me, Paul says
Witnesses to the Resurrection
Do I believe this?
A crack in the wall of Death
There is a way to go home
Home, so that we may be imperishable
Together
church basement, Easter, April 11, 2004
Christ is Risen!
My boy plays with Play-Doh
While we astonish ourselves
Us Doubting Thomases
Could the risen Lord walk amongst us?
Lola returns from the bathroom
She makes a blue flower out of Play-Doh
1st Corinthians 15:
Caephas, the 12,500 brethren
to James, the Apostle,
he appeared also to me, Paul says
Witnesses to the Resurrection
Do I believe this?
A crack in the wall of Death
There is a way to go home
Home, so that we may be imperishable
Together
church basement, Easter, April 11, 2004
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
The Baby (Julian at 6 mos.)
The baby!
If you spend total time
The baby likes to have his knees kissed
He enjoys
The sensation of playful attention
But there isn't much to say about a baby
His tiny feet
His cute knees
His perfect blue eyes
His cheeks
His hair
It's too immediate to describe
He's not a Gothic Revival church to be studied
He's a baby
He likes to look in the mirror
He puts blocks in his mouth
He turns over and over
He doesn't yet crawl
He likes me to clap my hands softly
Oochi-papa, oochi-ma-maaa (I coo!)
He cries before sleep
He likes to nurse
He is very excited
If you are very excited
The baby
Enjoys 63% of his day
He hates to be left alone
To need his diaper changed
To be stepped on by accident
To be hungry
He's simply marvelous
He's marvelously simple
He's a cowboy and the mayor later on maybe
But today he's just a baby
April 10, 2004
The baby!
If you spend total time
The baby likes to have his knees kissed
He enjoys
The sensation of playful attention
But there isn't much to say about a baby
His tiny feet
His cute knees
His perfect blue eyes
His cheeks
His hair
It's too immediate to describe
He's not a Gothic Revival church to be studied
He's a baby
He likes to look in the mirror
He puts blocks in his mouth
He turns over and over
He doesn't yet crawl
He likes me to clap my hands softly
Oochi-papa, oochi-ma-maaa (I coo!)
He cries before sleep
He likes to nurse
He is very excited
If you are very excited
The baby
Enjoys 63% of his day
He hates to be left alone
To need his diaper changed
To be stepped on by accident
To be hungry
He's simply marvelous
He's marvelously simple
He's a cowboy and the mayor later on maybe
But today he's just a baby
April 10, 2004
Food
Oreos -- what is their insignia
Have you really inspected that?
They roll in a perpetual spiral on to the tongue
Melons, grapes, carrots are better for you
But they have no writing on them
Without a design eating has no meaning
We want it wrapped
My mind, mind, mind
I don't mind if I do
Mind your manners
Mind bending deliciousness
The comet that spins
Has no narrative
The Oreo cookie does
But what does it say?
I look close to read it
& its spins and spirals emanate from my eyes
Calories mount as I prowl the parlor
For meaning inside of cookies
My gut expands
There are flavors such as strawberry & chocolate
Flowers can be eaten & mushrooms
If I ate the whole universe would I understand it?
April 8, 2004
Oreos -- what is their insignia
Have you really inspected that?
They roll in a perpetual spiral on to the tongue
Melons, grapes, carrots are better for you
But they have no writing on them
Without a design eating has no meaning
We want it wrapped
My mind, mind, mind
I don't mind if I do
Mind your manners
Mind bending deliciousness
The comet that spins
Has no narrative
The Oreo cookie does
But what does it say?
I look close to read it
& its spins and spirals emanate from my eyes
Calories mount as I prowl the parlor
For meaning inside of cookies
My gut expands
There are flavors such as strawberry & chocolate
Flowers can be eaten & mushrooms
If I ate the whole universe would I understand it?
April 8, 2004
When people talk about "practical" jokes what do they mean by "practical"?
To me, the following appear to be rather "impractical" jokes:
Joy buzzer
Flower which squirts
Plastic vomit
Card tricks
short-sheets
Electrical shocks
Fake nose
Glasses which whirl
In what way could such things be said to be practical? Did they mean to say "practically" jokes?
To me, the following appear to be rather "impractical" jokes:
Joy buzzer
Flower which squirts
Plastic vomit
Card tricks
short-sheets
Electrical shocks
Fake nose
Glasses which whirl
In what way could such things be said to be practical? Did they mean to say "practically" jokes?
Monday, July 05, 2004
What are people doing when they talk?
Richard Niebanck -- a retired pastor of the ELCA -- remarked in conversation the other day that the antinomianism of the Lutheran tradition was its Achilles heel.
I've been thinking a lot about the radical separation between words and life. In the Polish-French theorist Pierre Klossowski's essay on Oswald Ducrot he argues that community is only possible during silent prayer.
What then are words for? do they block the fact that we cannot communicate anything to one another, and if we could it would be incomprehensible (Gorgias)?
Wittgenstein is always teasing about the boundaries of words -- how we call something white, but then we add a dot of red to the bucket of paint. At what point do we begin to call the white bucket of paint -- pink?
Calling birds dinosaurs seems another stretch. An odd affiliation. And yet scientists have decided that the hip bone is the structure that determines "dinosaur-ness."
What is happiness, what is work, what is play, what is poetry, what is God?
All these words seem to define something, and yet underneath there is another reality that is altogether difficult to set boundaries upon. Words set boundaries, but underneath those boundaries reality squirms and rarely fits its definition.
So perhaps silent prayer is the best form of communication -- kneeling in the pews and thinking of the Word.
Richard Niebanck -- a retired pastor of the ELCA -- remarked in conversation the other day that the antinomianism of the Lutheran tradition was its Achilles heel.
I've been thinking a lot about the radical separation between words and life. In the Polish-French theorist Pierre Klossowski's essay on Oswald Ducrot he argues that community is only possible during silent prayer.
What then are words for? do they block the fact that we cannot communicate anything to one another, and if we could it would be incomprehensible (Gorgias)?
Wittgenstein is always teasing about the boundaries of words -- how we call something white, but then we add a dot of red to the bucket of paint. At what point do we begin to call the white bucket of paint -- pink?
Calling birds dinosaurs seems another stretch. An odd affiliation. And yet scientists have decided that the hip bone is the structure that determines "dinosaur-ness."
What is happiness, what is work, what is play, what is poetry, what is God?
All these words seem to define something, and yet underneath there is another reality that is altogether difficult to set boundaries upon. Words set boundaries, but underneath those boundaries reality squirms and rarely fits its definition.
So perhaps silent prayer is the best form of communication -- kneeling in the pews and thinking of the Word.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Dinosaurs Reconsidered
"Dinosaurs were efficient walkers and runners, and most of the traits that identify them are found in the hind legs. The upper leg bone has a ball-like joint that fits into the hip socket... there are some modern animals that have all the characteristics used to define dinosaurs. These are the birds, which have inherited these traits" (1) from 101 Questions about Dinosaurs, by Philip J. Currie and Eva B. Koppelhus (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996).
The ball-like joint that fits into the hip socket matches perfectly the description of a turkey's leg. When you ask for a leg at Thanksgiving, therefore, you are participating in 200 million years of mammalian imperialism. As you sink your teeth into the delicious past (or repast), you must ask yourself whether this is in good taste, or merely tastes good.
Some believe that these questions are for the birds, and others that they are dinosauresque, but Lutheran surrealists believe that there is a secret lineage in evolution and that ethics and evolution are inseparable.
"Dinosaurs were efficient walkers and runners, and most of the traits that identify them are found in the hind legs. The upper leg bone has a ball-like joint that fits into the hip socket... there are some modern animals that have all the characteristics used to define dinosaurs. These are the birds, which have inherited these traits" (1) from 101 Questions about Dinosaurs, by Philip J. Currie and Eva B. Koppelhus (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996).
The ball-like joint that fits into the hip socket matches perfectly the description of a turkey's leg. When you ask for a leg at Thanksgiving, therefore, you are participating in 200 million years of mammalian imperialism. As you sink your teeth into the delicious past (or repast), you must ask yourself whether this is in good taste, or merely tastes good.
Some believe that these questions are for the birds, and others that they are dinosauresque, but Lutheran surrealists believe that there is a secret lineage in evolution and that ethics and evolution are inseparable.
Friday, July 02, 2004
POTATOES, THE GLOBAL TUBER
Creating lakes of butter
High in the clouds of mashed potatoes
Harkens back to the origins of the mashed potato
By Lake Titicaca in the Andes
I cut a slit in the wall of mush
And butter runs down the side like lava
Potatoes are rhizomes
Emblematic of continuity
Between generations
Beloved by grandfather & grandchild
Hundreds of years ago, the same taste
The same lakes of butter.
In China, Africa, South America & Europe,
Crowded around tables eating potatoes,
Just like we do in the USA
Lather em in butter, fry em in beans
5000 varieties! Slather on cheese.
Dice em or rice em, add pepper & salt,
Potatoes don't care, so do as you please.
Creating lakes of butter
High in the clouds of mashed potatoes
Harkens back to the origins of the mashed potato
By Lake Titicaca in the Andes
I cut a slit in the wall of mush
And butter runs down the side like lava
Potatoes are rhizomes
Emblematic of continuity
Between generations
Beloved by grandfather & grandchild
Hundreds of years ago, the same taste
The same lakes of butter.
In China, Africa, South America & Europe,
Crowded around tables eating potatoes,
Just like we do in the USA
Lather em in butter, fry em in beans
5000 varieties! Slather on cheese.
Dice em or rice em, add pepper & salt,
Potatoes don't care, so do as you please.
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