a rough translation of time folded on time

Thursday, May 08, 2014

error discovery

A child responds to a question with a correct answer. The answer is also incorrect. This is the short circuit of the world in nuce.

We make correct judgments about others. Our correct judgments are erroneous themselves.

I judge and feel judged. The more I feel judged the more I judge. I must be punished. Someone must be punished. I must pay. Someone's going to pay.

Into this Mexican standoff, Christ came and told us to put down our judgment. Let go of the throat. Unclench the fist. Relax. Breathe. Pause. Empty your mind. Consider the part of prayer that is listening. That requires silence. Especially the voice inside your head and my head, the voice that spurs on to vengeance, that fills overflowing with righteous indignation. Such righteous indignation, rage, wrath. Dies Irae - for those keeping score.

Saturday, May 03, 2014

my western travels

When I flew out West I didn't know what to expect. I have actually flown out West three times: the first two times for brief periods, one and three months; the last time was for seven years. I could say that I flew out one way, conservative, and returned another way, liberal. That simplifies things too much - labels don't account for how our lives are controlled by signifiers. These popular labels we give ourselves and others are merely the orientations a person assumes toward words and ideas; what makes us up as persons are much deeper mechanisms - mechanisms that are fiercely tied to emotions: I witnessed this in that though a political and theological orientation changed, my anger remained. What I've experienced here, over many years, is that ideological content often is a placeholder of fantasy.

I am fascinated by this: that I've been prey to my emotional attachments so long. For the last 10 years I feel like I've been emerging from a fog, a mental numbness, a detachment from myself. I could not begin to enunciate all the ways Jung, Freud, Becker, Lacan, Zizek, Merleu Ponty, Barth, Barthes, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Schleiermacher and so many others have helped me. I would have to include poets and authors - Pound, Gaddis, Percy, Markson, Pinchon, Seidel, Cavafy, Berryman, Hall, Kenyon, Eliot, Auden, Ashbery, Wright, et cie.

When I was working as a chaplain in North Carolina, I owned my narcissistic wound. Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child helped - as well as a paper written by Richard Sennet and published in October magazine in 1977. This was not an easy time for me, nor an easy thing to do. It has not been the last difficult thing I've had to do, but it has made those things less difficult, less emotionally vexing.

running bee hinds feet on high, places

there's only the sky above and the earth beneath: the atmospheric movement of energy from the equator to the poles evidenced in weather; the " temporary" hardening of molten material from the interior evidenced in plate tectonics and sea floor spreading. We create transcendent symbolic signifiers within religio/consumerist structures to distract us from our own life's brevity and the inevitability of death; such signifiers distract us as well from integrating our humaness among each other in communities of care

Sunday, March 30, 2014

he describes himself as adept with language, while prone two Freudian slips, malaprops and bungled axions

Thursday, January 30, 2014

wit

What follows is a comment on a cartoon my friend, Joey, posted on FaceBook:

a family is traveling

and the young boy in the back seat states that he needs to pull over, because -

he has ennui.

My Response

" I inherited weltschmerz from my dad; he picked it up in Germany during the Hungarian

crisis -we would pull over, but my sense of dread and foreboding only increased. Pulling over

at state rest areas was the only relief - An der Grenze. I knew you'd understand, Joey -

this cartoon, so innocent, brings so much emotion to the surface for me. As always, it's either

Being or Nothingness. No Exit next 37 miles!"

I'm not posting that cartoon here. You can construct it better in your own mind. Instead I've included a meditation on my favorite Revolutionary war heroine, Molly Pitcher. Molly Pitcher invented the Molly-Toffed cocktail, which was instrumental in several pitched battles of pitched bottles. She also invented the curve ball - a means of firing artillery around a corner.

Don Quixote faces off with the entrenched commercial interests of the chief city of the "empire state of the south". When I first read that motto in the World Book encyclopedia ca 1968, I was a bit taken aback: I'd never heard that motto before. We were the Peach State, the Peanut State, The State of Denial - but this ascription toward empire was news to me. It says something about the South -

that Georgia is its Empire State.

Above is a photo of a photo my dad took of his mother and sister preparing dinner shortly after his father died. I guess this (its context of grief) from the date on the print, knowing that my dad had returned from Europe around this time. The lighting in this image is so wonderfully balanced. Note, at the top, the light bulb which hung down from the ceiling. This photograph has so many right things going on with it. I often wonder how my dad didn't go into photography professionally. I know it has to do with expectations. He grew up in a family where the possibility of being creative as more than a hobby was foreclosed.

I painted this 14 years ago. I am painting Kierkegaard now.

Otherwise, I haven't changed.

This is where I'm from.

Friday, January 24, 2014

a meeting at the cross roads

This afternoon, on the seminary campus, I ran into two old friends, who, since I call myself Nostromo, I'll name Miguelito and Claude. We assume hardy aliases here on today's frozen turf. So auspicious was the moment that I set the timer on the camera: allowing me to pose us all together.

Claude took the device and captured Miguelito and me demonstrating proven stewardship techniques.

Then a standard shot for our professional dossiers.

Next Miguelito took some snaps of Claude and me.

I can't remember what we were talking about here - but our arms were waving significantly [not pictured here].

Finally Miguelito demonstrated how through applying theological pressure points known only to the most echt-gnostic tribe, he is able to make Claude's head explode.

Let this be a warning to novices and neophytes.

Claude then demonstrated the technique of "slaying in the spirit."

Something I attempt only after several shots of Lagavulin.

Thursday, January 02, 2014

monologue

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

a bevy of recent work

Some examples of work completed in the last few months. I've posted them all separately before. I've joined them all here together for anyone to peruse through at once. My memory may be faulty on some sizes. Titles are provisional. I selected the opening word "Delusional" based on my love of John Berryman's poems, in particular this Dream Songs. His last collection before his death referenced Delusions in its title. At 53 I consider my life is shaped by my fantasies and delusions in a perhaps predictable way. 30 years ago I was immersed in finishing up my BFA in preparation for my MFA. I knew everything and was a master of time and space. I've managed to keep drawing and painting all these years since; enduring some rough patches, some cul de sacs, but these last several years have been a true blessing. I look forward to 30 or more years drawing and painting - greedy for time.