Apophenia 2

The ridge on my right
thumbnail is Hadrian’s Wall
as seen from Skylab.

Apophenia 1

The Virgin Mary’s face peed into the snowbank
under the lifted hind leg of the labradoodle
who lives three doors down was radiant (though crusty).

I thought of Serrano's Piss-Christ, which
I wanted to hate but couldn't because
it was beautiful. My neighbor who talks to herself

as she digs her Tercel out of the snowplow-banked snow
stomped Mary just as NewsTeam 4 was setting up
their camera--a desecration to prevent desecration.

Since they'd come that far in the cold, the cameraman
shot the new miracle of Trent Lott's pompadour,
created of snow and pee and a righteous boot heel.

I watched the news that night but the story never aired.
Instead, the broadcast closed with a human interest piece:
a young Seminarian who lost his nose & faith

in a botched hang glider landing in La Jolla. He now
professes that accidents are the natural effluence
of a rational cosmos perceived as chaos

via the narrow lens
of individual experience.
So help me God.

Memes We Like: Apophenia

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The identification of a face on the surface of Mars is an example of pareidoliac apophenia. --Wikipedia

Love Accordingly

Moment of Bliss: Soccamatic!

Two of my favorite things together: Wallace and Gromit and soccer! Who could ask for more. (Well, maybe a full-length soccer feature with the Preston North End Soccamatic...). Extra credit for catching all the name-drops: Nobby Stiles, Geoff Hurst, Stanley Matthews...use both sides of the paper if necessary.

I Can Think of Nothing More Perfect and Humane...

...than this expression of accepting with grace our temporariness and imperfection. To hold this view leads to a living humility that becomes empathy, forgiveness, and the wisdom to live connected to the eternal rather than the moment. I may post this every day. I will certainly repeat it every day until I can call it to mind in any moment when I am trying to control the uncontrollable, or judge others out of weakness. 

 ==================================

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

The Year I Almost Didn't Make It

My inner music-dork does love to create playlists in iTunes. Normally I just put a best-of together at the end of the year. But this year I decided to also create a monument to my turbulent emotional year with an iMix so you, too, could enjoy the experience of a strangely personal, uncomfortable, and largely inexplicable  experience, like visiting the The House on the Rock, but in my head.

So: explore, enjoy (if that's the right word).

Parsing Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” with Maggie (7) and Henry (5)

O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad

Maggie: Why are they saying Superman?


Hi. I'm not home right now
But if you want to leave a message
Just start talking at the sound of the tone

Hello? This is your Mother
Are you there? Are you coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home?

Well, you don't know me, but I know you.
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready.
Ready to go.
You can come as you are, but pay as you go
Pay as you go

Maggie: Why are they saying that?
Henry: Their mom sounds weird!

And I said:
OK. Who is this really?
And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes
This is the hand, the hand that takes
This is the hand, the hand that takes

Maggie: What is the hand taking?
Henry: It takes anything, Mags!
Maggie: I have to know what it takes!!

Here come the planes
They're American planes
Made in America
Smoking or non-smoking?

Maggie: You can’t smoke on a plane.
Henry: You smoke, Dad.
Me: A little. I smoke a cigar now and then.
Maggie: Smoking will make you die.
Henry: You don’t smoke too much, right, Dad?

And the voice said:
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall
stay these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds

Henry: What is that?
Me: Gloom? That’s like darkness.
Henry: The dark freaks me!

'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice
And when justice is gone, there's always force
And when force is gone, there's always Mom


Maggie: What is force?
Me: Force is making people do something.
Henry: Is force bad?
Me: Not always. Sometimes it is bad. Sometimes force makes people do what is good for them.
Maggie: It seems to me, because the hand can take anything, that this force is bad force.
Henry: It is freaking me.

Hi Mom!
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms
In your automatic arms
Your electronic arms
In your arms
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms
Your petrochemical arms
Your military arms
In your electronic arms

Maggie: This is where the woman is running from the bad hand.
Henry: I think it is a wolf in the woods.

...

Maggie: Is it over yet?
Henry: Play it again, Dad.
Maggie: Yeah, again!

Moment of Bliss: Ze King! Ze Premiere!

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke