Evening Without Angels, by Wallace Stevens

(the Temple of Poseidon,

at Sounion, outside Athens)

the great interests of man: air and light,

the joy of having a body,

the voluptuousness of looking.   (Mario Rossi)

Why seraphim like lutanists arranged

Above the trees?  And why the poet as

Eternal chef d'orchestre?

                              Air is air,

Its vacancy glitters round us everywhere.

Its sounds are not angelic syllables

But our unfashioned spirits realized

More sharply in more furious selves.

                       And light

That fosters seraphim and is to them

Coiffeur of haloes, fecund jeweller--

Was the sun concoct for angels or for men?

Sad men made angels of the sun, and of

The moon they made their own attendant ghosts,

Which led them back to angels, after death.

Let this be clear that we are men of sun

And men of day and never of pointed night,

Men that repeat antiquest sounds of air

In an accord of repetitions. Yet,

If we repeat, it is because the wind

Encircling us, speaks always with our speech.

Light, too, encrusts us making visible

The motions of the mind and giving form

To moodiest nothings, as, desire for day

Accomplished in the immensely flashing East,

Desire for rest, in that descending sea

Of dark, which in its very darkening

Is rest and silence spreading into sleep.

. . . Evening, when the measure skips a beat

And then another, one by one, and all

To a seething minor swiftly modulate.

Bare night is best.  Bare earth is best.   Bare, bare,

Except for our own houses, huddled low

Beneath the arches and their spangled air,

Beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire,

Where the voice that is in us makes a true response,

Where the voice that is great within us rises up,

As we stand gazing at the rounded moon.

(again, pictures by me)

home again

Hi folks.

Just got back from a trip 

to the land of my birth:

Hellas

(better known in the Western World as 

Greece)

I was delighted to see

representations

of me

everywhere:

This is at Delphi - I'm the headless one;

however, at Eleusis,

I have my head:

and other parts, as well:

          more to come. . . . 

(the pictures, by the way, were taken by me)

Friend Ship

1.

I've made a few friends

in this lifetime, but not many.

Friendships, especially in the past

100 years or so

have disappointed me,

seared me

with agony

when I realized

the Friend thought

the Ship we had embarked upon

together

was meant to be captained

only by them

I had one friend

in the last 15 years

who I rather liked:

I met her in Ankara, and

early in our relationship

she asked me:

"So what is it that you want

from me?"

a question that startled me at first,

and I know she thought me

quaint

when I replied

"a friend."

I liked her frankness

but our friendship

did not last.  I

think she thought

that since I only needed a friend,

I would just always be waiting there

for her.

I didn't consciously end

the Friend Ship;

it just didn't sail

again, after I

left for other shores.

2.

I like it best

when my lover is my friend -

I find this most

economical.

However,

this can place many demands

on any man

who feels a woman is intended

for one purpose only.

I've learned this,

bitterly,

time and again,
to the point where,
recently,
I'd come to distrust
both
friendship
and 
love.

3.

In the last six months, I met

a new friend.

The temporary nature of our relationship

was apparent from the outset:

when I met her,

she was being treated for

terminal cancer.

She - her name is Linda -

startled me again

and again

with her honesty; hers was the kind

of honesty and faith

that I value and like to reciprocate.

She and I,

I believe,

agreed on what

it meant to be

a friend.

She welcomed me

into her life immediately;

she became a teacher and guide

to me

and I to her.

Little did I know that our friendship

would be cemented

in the act of her death.

She died early on Wednesday,

June 30.  Three weeks earlier

I had gone to a healing service

with her and her husband,

I knowing - perhaps more than they -

that this was most likely

a service to strengthen them

in their final weeks together.

She was very sick.

A week or so after that,

I learned her condition had worsened.

I called her home and learned

she was in hospice.

This is a very nice way Americans have

these days

of saying someone is

close to death.

Her husband told me she would

like to see me, but if,

for any reason,

I felt I couldn't visit

they would understand.

I could not not.

She was the first person I have met in decades

with whom I had felt such a kindred

bond.

On Monday, June 28,

I sat by her side.  I was humbled

by the love

I witnessed between

her, her husband, and her sons.

I wanted to say something

witty,

but all I could muster was

"thank you."

She seemed to want to reply

with wit,

and I saw her eyes scan

her mind for words as she

gasped for air.

And then she smiled,

and said:

"you're welcome."

She said her head was heavy;

her mouth was dry

from breathing.

She wanted water.

Her husband hurried to her

side, but she refused

him; she wanted me

to help.

I lifted her head, heavy

to her but light to me;

I held the glass; her fingers

leveled the straw.

She drank.

She was very thirsty.

Her husband fussed; she

waved his worry away.

I was there to help;

for that short drink

I was the friend she wanted

and needed most.

I rested her head back

on the pillow.

She wanted her head higher, and let

her husband help her then.

I watched them communicate

with silent gazes and whispers;

it felt so intimate,

but she insisted I come closer.

I sat with her for awhile,

just holding her hand and listening

to each 

inhale

exhale

inhale

exhale

inhale

exhale

with her husband too

who wept and listened,

hoping,

fearing

what would follow

inhale

exhale

I left her that way, and two

days later learned

of her death.

4.

She was a minister

in the Sufi Order.

Her memorial service celebrated

her many acts

of selflessness.

I sat and listened,

remembering

her head in my hand,

her gratitude

to me,

and mine

to her.

She is my latest great friend.

5.

My Lovely Linda

She taught me

to have faith
in love again.

God's Cycle

( skraelingalthing )

Once upon a time,

there was a god named,

well -- this god didn't have a name, since this God was 

Everything

and therefore didn't need a name,

but for purposes of my story I'll call this god

God.

Well, this God was a single God, 

thought I can't say It was

 solitary

because He was all there was;

She was Everything.

And when You're Everything,

you can't be Lonely.

But the thing is, 

since that God was Everything

He included the Desire

to have a partner

because part of Everything

is that particular Desire.

( isabella )

The thing with this God 

                          worth mentioning

is

That since He cannot have

all desires at

the same time,

She experiences emtions in cycles,

like a woman

or like anyone

who is tied in with the planets

and the moon. 

                            (women have stronger

                         radio impulses; it's

                   all part of being

                               maternal, and is directly

              linked to that 

             Love thing.)

But back to God, who can't

experience everything at once,

since Experience itself is just

one part of God --

kind of like an iPhone application --

and the other sub-experiences, like:

love                                  paying taxes

birth                        murder

death                  pain

happiness

trust

joy

have to get run through that 

Experience Application,

in order for God,

who is Everything

to experience Experiences

and, heck,

that takes time.

In fact, time itself was developed

by this particular aspect of

God, to help explain the 

experience of passing Experience through

what might, 

for lack of a better word,

be called the godPhone

( jewishjournal )

Luckily,

God doesn't have to use

that application all the time;

for instance, when there's

no time.

You see, it all comes at the same point

of Her cycle:

Experience Application and the

Need to Use It, and then the

Emotions & Actions & Events ---

all part of a great 

cycle

in the Womb of God.

( pregnancy.about )

The name of that point in God's Cycle

is Being, but God thinks that's 

funny

to call it anything, because God

needs no words

                            (words exist mostly

                                 to communicate about

                            what we don't have)

because He's Everything.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

So Once Upon A Time, our God entered that point

in her Cycle called

Being, which is preceded by

Becoming;

and she spat forth

Life, the Universe & Everything

and

Life, the Universe & Everything

was, well,

the Other Part of God

that comes into Being

because She 

was going through

that part of her Cycle.

( uslhc )

Inevitably, though, when one tiny part of 

Life, the Universe & Everything

is Man & Woman

(hereafter: Human)

you can be sure that something

is going to go wrong, because

the Human is

God imperfect.

That's right.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So God spat out

Being, and,

being God, but also the father

and mother both

of this young entity, 

said to Herself:

Well, Hell, I'm God, and I'm 

Everything, and therefore have

experienced Everything, so

I know how tough it can get.

I'm going to make some rules, 

to be kind to them -otherwise,

they'll have to learn Everything 

by their Imperfect Selves, and that's hell,

Hell,

and will take a hell of a

long time.

And I don't want to

stay in this part of my cycle forever

(it's painful, after all, because

it is that part of the Cycle.)

So God gave Humans

a simple rule about

a particular fruit, knowing

full well that His rule 

had Nothing to do with the 

fruit, but had Everything 

to do with the Rule. God knew,

because She's Everything,

that if the Being - we'll call it Creation --

could just follow that one rule, 

Hell, it would be

Paradise!  (In other words, that part

of the cycle would go by painlessly.)

And Hell, which is by the way another part of Everything,

spoke up through 

Another Application Called Satan

and said:

"What's that you say?"

And Hell knew that if He

coud convince 

that little part of the Creation

that is closest to God

(aka: Humans)

to break a rule, then

Hell would be around

for a little while longer.

( biblicalart )

And so you can just guess what that guy

from Hell did.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Well, God was -- no, not pissed,

but disappointed.  God

understood how strong

Satan and Hell could be since

that was a part of God: indeed

a Half of God.

So God was easy on the Creation

to start, and wanted to see

if they could correct

themselves, so God

transferred the Pain of the Being Cycle

to the Woman,

who already had to bear

the Burden of Guilt,

and God said: do it right now.

And God gave Adam a 

New Rule.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm not going to tell the

whole story that follows,

because

it's in the Bible;

in the Torah;

in the Koran: you

can read it there, and

when you do 

please note the number

of times

that God had to give

Another Rule.

Again and again, He gave new Rules,

hoping, each time, it would

be the last, and the Creation

would get back to being 

nigh perfect, and God could 

get on with Being Everything

and not fretting with this 

One Creation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Well, it just so happens

that when this particular Creation

was produced, the Experience Application

was aligned to randomly run

the sub-ap of Stubbornness,

and nearly every entity in this

Cycle had a Strong Streak

of it 

which meant they kept refusing to follow the rules.

( blurredhistory )

Now, it's not that God

got mad, because God is Everything

and madness or anger are just

isolated parts of everything; it's just that

God - being Everything -

had a lot more to do than

to hang out and help Her Creation.

So she got back to her Cycling.

But the thing with this God

of Our Story,

is that She continues to

go through the Being 

part of His Cycle.  And

whenever God goes through that part

of the God Cycle, God produces

Something, and Sometimes

that Something remains Perfect,

so it remains part of God.

And occasionally, the 

Something produced aka: the Creation 

is like Us,

and breaks the Rule

whiche means

the Creation lingers and gets older,

and - hopefully - wiser,

that that the next time God come through

this part of the Cycle again, the Creation

is Perfect, or pretty damned 

close to it, so when God says

What did you do wrong?

the Creation tells the Truth,

and God says:

Well, that's not so bad, after all.

If the Creation lies -

as it did in the Garden -

well, then it's damned to 

Hell and whatever the hell

Hell decides to do with them.

( boston.com )

But to help us out,

every now and then, 

generally when this God reaches

this point of Her cycle,

God sends out incarnations

of Bits of Herself, whose Sole Task

is to tell the rest of the Creation that

a) they're fucking up

and

b) give some gentle ideas

on how to stop

fucking up

in a nutshell.

But this particular

Creation was terrifically Stubborn

and kept ignoring the Rules,

in no matter what way, shape or form

She sent them.

God kept sending the Rules

in different forms and languages to the

different parts of His creation,

but they all just basically

say the same thing:

Be kind to each other

Don't take something that is not yours,

including someone else's life.

Don't lie.

The one thing that bugged our

Once-Upon-A-Time-God the most about

this Creation was that

this Creation was so 

strongwilled, it actually thought

that it was Everyting,

which, in fact,

couldn't be 

Any Farther From The Truth.

So after sending a few prophets to no avail,

God would come around to that part of Her Cycle,

look at what was going on with this Creation, and think:

Criminny!

This has to be one of the

most stubborn Creations

I've ever produced 

with my Experience Application!

And I have to admit,

She was secretly a little

Proud, because this was

and is a very strong Creation

indeed - nearly close to God in

Strength - and if this Creation

could get stronger, She might

get a chance, at her next most pwerful

return to her Being Cycle,

She might actually witness

something almost as Beautiful

and Powerful

and Truthful

as Herself.

                   You see,

                            an essential

                                          componenet of being 

                              Everything is 

                              Being Honest,

                                          because Lying means

                                              you're hiding something

                                                         and if you're hiding Somthing,

                                                  then Everything can not be

                    Present.

Well, anyway, this God's 

Belligerent Being has 

continued to be Stubborn

to the poin that every

particle in its composition

appears to be

at war.

And our Once-Upon-A-Time-

God is approaching

that part of her cycle,

and She's gone through every

emotion He could possibly

go through with her Creation -

so much so 

that part of God is thinking:

OK, so you think you're

Everything.  I'll show you

what it's like to be 

Nothing.  And you can 

stay 

Nothing

because there's plenty of room

for Nothing in Everything, 

but there's not much room

for a nothing that thinks

it's everything

in Everything.

But the Creation somehow thinks

that its mother would never do that

to it.  She loves the Creation, doesn't she?

After all, she created it, right?

Well, the Creation needs to realize

that somewhere in the multitude

of thoughts that occupy Everything

are these thoughts:

Don't Push Your Luck

also 

Make My Day

also

Two All Beef Patties Special Sauce Lettuce Cheese Pickles Onions on a Sesame Seed Bun.

Of course, these particular

thought data bits that now linger

and flit about in the deepest 

recesses of the 

Mind of Everything 

were produced by Us,

the black sheep of the family.

Us, the conjoined bits of all the disparate

elements of Creation, was

given a chance to work together, to overcome

and overlook difference and find 

something we could agree on,

and what did we produce?

( scrapetv )

A Big Mac.

Need I say more?

Another way to look at

the God of my story is this:

it's kind of like the cycling psyche of God

is just a giant

crap game, and if 

we're lucky, when

the application She uses

to Experience Being

comes into alighment

with God's creative center

again, we'd better just hope that

doesn't fall into alignment

somewhere deeper in God's psyche

at the same exact time, because

if that's what's there, well,

that's what she'll decide to do.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some elements of the Creation 

began to realize

that this was the problem,

and that they had kind of created

their own fate,

by putting such crazy ideas

into God's head, so they sought

to decide if they had the power 

to change how God might react

when she looked at her 

Stubbornest of Creations:

As a result of reading

some complex heiroglyphs

left by ancient civilizations,

and partaking in an elaborate

shamanistic ritual,

and well as some complex

mathematical problems,

they determined that the solution lay in 

action:

They should show God,

that they had finally paid

attention to Her Law

and learned from their Mistakes.

Their hope was to 

Make Her Day

so God will look upon her Creation 

and say:

Ah yes, it's part of me after all;

it's pefect!

And everyone would live

happily ever after.

Just a Cakepan

( kenoath )

Each personality has

two sides:

a good side and a bad side

or

a bad side and a good side

(everything's relative, eh?)

This is what happened:

When God created man

and woman

in his own image,

each was given the miserable task

of containing both

sides of God,

while also

being both sides of God.

 The good side is                    The bad side is

the side that                                           the side of inadequacies

has done goodness                       and insufficiencies.

it is the side of                   Of Guilt and

completeness               jealousy

But you see, both of these sides

are the two sides of The God;

for - don't forget - God had

to divide itself

in order to be able to

see itself.

It had to produce

its negative.

( meijer )

Think of it: it's like a 

cakepan; I saw one today;

it was shaped like a football

stadium - but as you know,

for a cake pan to produce 

a cake that looks like

a football stadium, it

has to be the inverse,

so too the creation:

what

God made was the inverse

of God -- God's opposite,

and that's what the universe

is.

Like a cake pan.

( meijer )

The thing is --

the problem with being human,

is we are created

in God's image,

which means

we have the unfortunate

task of containing two

sides, both good & bad

- the outverse & the inverse -

in our own psyches.

Each one of us has a good;

each one of us has a bad.

( cosmomagazine )

The thing that keeps us from

going crazy

over the fact

we have both a good and a bad

is a thing called

conscience.

Conscience,

of course,

is an abstraction;

it pushes us 

into the realm of that

which is not

physical.

We contain it in our

avatars.

It is

the location where

the energy from the brain

and 

the energy from the heart

meet;

if we must give it a location:

it's in the heart.

~ ~ ~

You see, we're just giant

multiband

radio beacons:

we negotiate frequencies

on different sites 

of our bodies.

If everything

is working,

we produce harmony --

better known as

love.

( scientificamerican )

People who have brain

damage

cannot do this,

because

the brain is the seat

of the master cylinder,

so to speak,

the apparatus

that helps us

maintain this balance

of frequences

and likewise produces

love.

Inversely,

some people 

have an excess of that capacity;

and on this earthly plain,

those people 

have their exact opposite

among those

who are depleted.

There is an extraordinary

uncanny

link

between two entities that are

absolute opposites.

They feel they are supposed to be

together,

because

they are like God together,

and there is a point

in their psyches

where they meet

precisely.

)(

Ideally, two exact opposites should meet

in order to find

absolute happinesss

)(

But don't despair;

if you have not found your exact opposite:

we are all linked;

we are linked

by something stronger

if we let that something stronger

be.

( kevinsblog )

Forgiving

Compassionate

Unselfish

If we could use that capacity,

which we are all 

capable of doing,

we could adhere

our oppositions

and be

the perfection

God wants us to be.

3.

You see,

when they ate that old

tomato,

Adam and Eve

came to realize

they were two

and this was complicated

by tthe two-ness they both

contained within

and both their bad sides

felt guilty,

but didn't know how to tell

each other.

That

was the nature 

of the fall  --

it's been our tasks

ever since

to rectify it.

4.

Cakepans:

we have to recognize

that opposition

is integral to

our 

identity.

and forgive

and forget

and to never

do

again.

( wildweather )