A Single Layer

'a nation' - czeslaw milosz - 1945 The purest of nations on earth when it's judged by a flash of lightning, But thoughtless and sly in everyday toil. Pitiless to its widows and orphans, pitiless to its old people, Stealing a crust of bread from a child's hand. Ready to offer their lives to draw Heaven's wrath on their foes, Smiting their enemy with the screams of orphans and women. Entrusting power to men with the eyes of traders in gold, Elevating men with the conscience of brothel-keepers. The best of its sons remain unknown, They appear once only, to die on the barricades. Bitter tears of that people cut a song off in the middle, And when the song dies away, noisy voices tell jokes. A shadow stands in a corner, pointing to his heart, Outside a dog howls to the invisible planet. Great nation, invincible nation, ironic nation. They know how to distinguish truth and yet to keep silent. They camp on marketplaces, conversing in wisecracks, They deal in old door handle...

Reading Les Miserables (very slowly), I am fascinated by the Bishop's encounter with the dying revolutionary in the first book. The revolutionary, named only G--, debates the justification of the French Revolution with the uncharacteristically indignant priest: 'Monsieur, forget not this; the French revolution had its reasons. Its wrath will be pardoned by the future; its result is a better world. From its most terrible blows comes a caress for the human race.... Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.' Strange words, looking back. The wrath of the revolution has never been pardoned. We have only condemned it more and more ardently as time has passed - even though we would have condemned the persistence of the monarchy just as vehemently had it not been cut short. The French revolution had its reasons; so did the gulags; so does the Sudanese gove...

last year i thought about making this and didn't. this year i really am. rock on. this is also, as far as i can remember, my first self-referential hyperlinked blog post.

thankful for the taste of coffee new each morning and for clementines and oranges, citrus in each varied form thankful as my sister sits upon my slumbered feet thankful as my brother barrels through the sea to me the clouds lumber bustling barrels across the sky grace, expanse, and breath, and rain - stupify (my mother used the word flummoxed in a sentence) (and chris discusses agave nectar across the table) big dogs and bad cats - cornucopia hats apples for candles - bottleneck handles blankets on my angled bed bobbypins netting across my head wind for weather, walls blow down merry and honesty rebuild the town thankful for pages for binding and books for worlds that remind me how he looks when he offers saving grace with his eyes love with his smiles, patience with sighs in this world it comes in the clouds and the rain, the bad cats, big dogs, and citrus the same love in measurable things, in weights and in flavors the tangible kisses of the concrete saviour

I need to work on capitalizing in my blog posts. When and why this started to slip, I don't know. But I correlate the disappearance of capitalization with an increasing self-consciousness about my own words. A sort of 'please don't take this seriously or hold me accountable for my words' approach to blogging. Rather like my actual speech - when I start thinking that I'm not saying anything important or interesting, or if I think my words might be easily contested or disapproved of, I let them mumble away into silence. Let's not do that here. I know I'm always hyperlinking over to firstthings , which is silly since anyone actually interested in their articles would just read them regularly all by themselves. But yesterday, Reno was discussing this British band Show of Hands and he said something that seemed to clarify what I was frustrated about in previous post. (Removing random articles is not the same as uncapitalizing. It's more cute than careless. At...

i figure, if i don't check this for several months, i can spend a nice chunk of time reading nothing but its sweet, cynical pages without the inconvenience of realizing 'i read this already. why doesn't he post more? grr...' yes, 'grr' can be a realization, too. anyway, i am interested in the bit about white people in harlem objecting to the churches. the anti-religious tendencies of our po-po-mo america (that should be a new word. popomo. 'we get there fast and then we take it slow...' ahem... anyway) are really getting to me. i'm not offended or surprised. it just seems like someone, somewhere would recognize that it's just not very smart. maybe it's because my faith has always been so deeply entrenched in the process of enlightenment (not the 18th century kind), transcendence, exploration, mystery and revelation, inquiry, discovery, translation. there's nothing impulsive about it, nothing irrational - though much beyond explanation - ...

found somewhere on here

'Have no fear of robbers or murderers. Such dangers are without, and are but petty. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. What matters it what threatens our heads or our purses. Let us think only of what threatens our souls.' - Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

To begin with, I should clarify that I rather like Rob Pattinson. He seems like a good actor - from the little one can tell in Harry Potter - and I cringe inwardly at the simultaneous fandom and hatedom he receives from Twilight. There are two camps, and people tend to shift back and forth between them. The first is relatively predictable: he's the newest hottie, and everyone wants a poster of him on their bedroom wall (their are thousands available in various newspapers and magazines distributed over the course of the last week, so this is easy to accomplish). Cringe. The second is like it: he is NOT hot, not like Edward, not in the least, what are they thinking, he looks creepy not dangerous, he's supposed to be like a god, what are they thinking. Cringe. Poor fellow. Here are some alternative casting options. Too late, I know, but we all love airing our opinions regardless (and be sure to check out the photos before you assume): Jensen Ackles Ben Barnes Lee Pace

i really need to stop posting other people's posts of other people's posts, but in this case , i just can't help it. i laughed.

first things does children's books!!!

all i want for christmas are victorian film adaptations and frederic buechner books . i'm super easy to please.

fire burns Montecito yesterday

Think of it as a symptom rather than a cause. The euthanasia movement reflects a profound nihilism that has been spreading like a cancer throughout the West for the past hundred years. The extent of our societal illness was described succinctly several years ago by the Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne. Writing in the wake of widespread public support for Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer who murdered his twelve-year-old daughter Tracy because she was disabled by cerebral palsy, Coyne wrote: “A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.” -Wesley Smith, First Things

studying marxist literary theory in a classroom in scotland has little to do with understanding the workings of a socialist society, especially one that exists solely in the minds of the riled and disgruntled masses who have been raised so closely to the fat and mead of capitalism that they cannot tell where the good and the bad really come from. (long sentence with hazy meaning, i know.) so i like it when other people talk about it realistically and thoughtfully. it's refreshing.

to whom it concerns, i'm so small and square and awkward i have never once considered telling you what i think or h0w i feel in my mind there is no room for wondering over your response what is worse i know you'll never read this even though every post is a post-it sized hope for your distant attention. remember the dream with you at the top of the stairs or the one where you dove and washed me over with the wave of your weight against the water? please note, this is no poem but prose with a twitching return my insecurities. i wonder what i would write without wishing you for my reader knowing i would never dare to ask for your attention let alone affection. my imagination is just not that elaborate.

the crazies are slowly starting to sound more credible to my tired ears.

i've wandered and wandered far over the bens and wandered still further through cavernous glens because i was told with enough fortitude that you would find me or i might find you. but i've waded through rivers and drunk from the ponds, i've hunted with wolves and i've sifted through loam for my food and my bed - and then came the rain, that soaked me right through till the sun blazed again. once my skin shone as pale as a moon or a rose - now i'm burnt to the marrow, i am red to the bone. and all for a promise i could not achieve, you'd no power to keep, they'd no right to give. these twenty-five years of growing steadily wild, i know i should've spent some as a child, but i had no borders, no frame to stand in - no walls to define - no skin determined. now i hide and i hedge. i shift and i skulk. when hungry, i forage. when tired, i drop right where i am. take this heather off, this heather off of my lap. i'm tired of trying to find a softer way th...