THE FATHER'S RESPONSE

we have a fundamental disagreement here ... you think all life is gradable when with any two instances one will be higher than the other ... you're a most moderate man and you do your trimming from the edges back in towards the center ... where of course you have a lovely central park ... here on the edges you are right it's cold and almost airless ... there's pain and there's indignity either one given its moment worse than the other ... but you should be careful before you interrupt two people talking ... one of them might be too important that you should interrupt him ... two people talking you think you know the one but you have no clue of the other ... then too some topics of conversation some conversations themselves are too important for you to interrupt ... and you're right ... seen from this distance some words are higher than a world of others and they're out here on the margins ... words you can't understand because you say we mumble ... ways of speech manners of expression you cannot see ... a conversation you're not part of ... just we two ... like all of us ... like no one else ever

Question: Who are 'we two'?

IN THE NEW AGE CHILDREN SHALL ADVISE THEIR PARENTS

come on dad pop out of it we need your room ... it's legal now all you have to do is answer some questions and sign a paper ... it's like going to a home but it's a virtual home ... all right all right you don't have to decide now take a couple of weeks and we'll talk again ... for what is life after all but one force flowing through the stem and each of us a flower on the branch ... flowers open they fade they die ... the sea comes in the sea goes out ... why the hesitation to go with the tide ... how else does the world get on ... take a couple of weeks settle your affairs ... the family will get together ... we'll have a feast ... then we'll see you off in style with dignity and just a little pomp just the way you like it ... what's the alternative ... tubes sticking out and going into places they should never be ... months on your back but worse when you get up ... no time to reflect to put your things in order ... this way you get to wear your suit before the funeral ... hell man it's a hell of a way for a hell of a man to go

THE PACRIST'S POSTED DISCLAIMER

I'm not trying to tell you what to do ... the message can take care of itself ... it's an old boy now and if it's right you'll agree ... as long as you understand ... and that's my job here ... to set each post out as if it were a puzzle in vocal pieces ... trying to keep the number of syllables down in deference to the truth ... seeking some fun along the way through sound and grammar and sense ... striving carefully to come to the right conclusion ... except for the last post which is what I mean by fun in the way of a joke ... it was fun for me ... it's not my job to be overly original as if to pretend to any originality at all when I say upfront that I'm derivative ... well everybody is ... on food and water for instance ... for me it's reading that after food and water sends me to school and work to learn and to think ... and that's the thing that informs the vocal pieces ... which when you've got the rhythm and you follow the pauses come to a conclusion for about ninety seconds ... so you see my stall is off the main thoroughfare and I don't get much custom ... I wonder why ... is it my locution

CONCLUSION OUT OF THE ADOLESCENCE OF SPIRIT

what makes the mind so interesting ... it transforms matter ... what makes the spirit so interesting ... it transforms mind ... by transform I mean give it something it did not have before ... direction ... enthusiasm ... if this is an ascending scale what does the next transformation do ... what can be brought to spirit that it didn't have before ... only one thing its existence ... if this is an ascending order and ascending mind and spirit have already played with and at times mastered universal good and evil what can additional grace add after that ... but simple existence ... to bring order by seeing it first and then bringing it out of chaos ... to find still room for virtue despite the vice ... operations like these cover all that's ponderable ... but derivatively ... you can't shout ... you can't laugh if you're not alive ... what then is life ... just the most advanced form of being ... or just that Being's bare necessity ... that this Being before any quality is is alive ... it's almost creepy this great big eye never blinking always open always watching alive aware while I go tumbling through time

RESURRECTION HUBRIS

this I that's me I can't remember when it first began ... but I find he's hired a score of staff maybe more ... clerks with messages it seems more to them than to me ... so I now sit with the calculator in a backroom upstairs trying together to figure the first one out ... out meaning simply not here now ... gone ... but to others not to myself ... their gone continues while mine will not return ... my gone used to return is in a new sense of now ... elsewhere ... never to return ... and I have gone with it and now I go with my chances ... perchance to meet with what I deserve ... the discomfort or distress the horror or the peace the end ... for either the calculator or for me ... or my perpetual confinement ... or my reward ... neither the calculator nor I can figure out what it must be not to be ... doesn't seem to be a corner we could handle on it so it's only natural to go on instead and figure a new life ... you might get a handle on that ... a new life a resurrection ... and where do we get this natural hubris ... must be in the genes or the chemicals the gift the grace of endorphic hope

endorph = the drug the brain makes which when released precludes panic with calm

THE FAILURE OF FAITH AND REASON

Caiaphas and Pilate how should they have acted ... how could why should this Jesus be spared ... he blasphemes ... he's a handy scapegoat acceptable to both conservatives and rebels ... his followers will not fight ... he is of particular good use to us just now ... the state the religion they thrive ... it's the conclusion we strive for ... how do you explain why they were wrong ... they seem to be political and theological pro's ... what's wrong with that ... the wrong was not in their intention as it is given to us to measure but in the consequent itself ... they killed God ... how do you measure that or we them ... to pass sentence in this case is as much as to judge God ... I'd rather skip that temptation ... if we may not sit as judge may we sit as jury ... no ... juries are judges of the facts ... what then if we are not to judge it are we to do with it this death of God ... understand it ... support it ... carry it your own heavy dark brooding about it and carry the thing itself as the center of civilization because it's the center of creation ... the death of God ... hear it in your mind the final agonal shout from the cross

agonal = the death rattle sometimes exploding in a shout

ON THE LIST FOR THE CT

sometimes I lean back and see the good and bad sides inside me fighting it out ... I don't mean good and bad ideas ... I mean whole populations inside me ... some fighting for me and some against ... I know there's a sense I'm an important part of history ... and of the struggle between civilization and barbarity ... yes it's not an exclusive set ... it can almost be said of a blade of grass if you're speaking materially ... but I'm not ... nor do I have any personal standing in the world of ideas ... my citizenship there is very probationary ... I might be a digit in a long statistic in some book no one reads any more ... but none of this is so in the spiritual sense ... we can't all be heroes or rulers of state ... but every single one of us despite all the training we've received will not shake the nagging sense in which we are great and worthy of the struggle between good and evil itself ... a sense in which we too like truth are eternal ... not because of the clever things we've said or understood much too late ... nor for heroism ... but for the company we keep

THE SEMI-MEME'S LAMENT

the inner circle and the outer ... holding the true steady and looking for something new ... life begins within molecular change ... combination birth and decay ... and sometimes ... almost it seems ... that all this movement and becoming is all that counts and I'm what they call an epiphenomenon ... I'm real ... in a sense ... just as real as the molecules are and certainly as real as their movement ... but the point is epiphenomena have no effect ... and neither do I ... epiphenomena are beside the point ... the point being phenomena ... so we really don't count ... but we do cohere with other epiphenomena ... but none of us counts ... it's true ... but our coherence can be a thing of beauty nonetheless ... oh sometimes we get flashes of real correspondence ... cause and effect ... but they pass ... and it's all we can do to get someone who at least pretends to understand ... and that's real coherence ... this pretense ... they don't have to be there ... but our thoughts entwine ... they call them memes or the third world and say they have an effect ... I don't know ... I don't know ... but they do furnish a room

AS THE WORLD TURNS

modernity is like tapdancing on a rubber ball ... you have no firm ground beneath you ... thing is modernity has been tapping on that ball for 2500 years ... even as humanity indulged her ... but with only one foot ... the other foot ... to modernity ... is nothing but a ball and chain to its flight ... Heraclitus taps his toe always round Parmenides ... and Plato is brought to ground by Aristotle ... someone talks about change ... the other mentions eternity ... someone says I've got all these forms you can fill out to stop this insane motion ... someone else answers get real ... modernity isn't so much wrong as it's going round in circles ... not so much flat as losing its dimension ... like an ember dying out ... please she says listen to my song ... and taps a melody to some arcane code