Terrific collection of attempts at languaging mystery around incarnate language: https://maney.us/blog/2014/12/28/meditations-on-the-incarnation-from-select-church-fathers-and-doctors/
Category: being
St. John Chrysostom: Homily on Christmas Morning
This is another post I made during Advent four years ago, which bears repeating. I have read this sermon by St. John Chrysostom (late fourth century …
St. John Chrysostom: Homily on Christmas Morning
the songs i do not know (iii)
Tell me the songs you don’t know
Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song
Light…makes some things seen, makes some things invisible
-SIR THOMAS BROWNE, IN B-Q, OF SILENCE AND SONG
iii. inside the other
.
i walked
caves, hollows, holes
reaching in
wondering, wandering,
exploring
.
wherefore?
in whom?
this forest-stream-mountain
rain
cloud or animal
species
perhaps kind
world
.
else
.
eye, crotch, finger, part
leg, mouth, buttocks, cleave
begin
in prayer
darklight arithmetic
and and and
also
more
.
a line
emotion
an happening
or even
event
what is called
beginning
again
what feels like
entering, entrance
entry
way
.
fuel
to the opening
.
i walked
in prayer
singing
nothing
known
listening
still
to answer
.
call
response
(“Tell me,” she said)
of songs
you do
not know
(“i don’t,” i said
i do
.
begin
again
before
where now
already
The Songs I Do Not Know (1)
“Tell me the songs you don’t know.”
Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song
“–knowledge is made by oblivion.”
Sir Thomas Browne, in B-Q, Silence & Song
clips, or snippets,
the known as partial
notes
signifying
the experienced
gesturing
hymning (nearly celebrating)
its reverse –
everything
unknown
i didn’t know
the sounds of
as they were
always changing –
ever never
.
so i made noise
my shapes
transparently novel (novice)
windows
framing, marking, visibling
all i do not know –
every word an icon
view-finding
all it’s not
.
Image
Sound
Landscape
Intention
Meaning
Clarity of
.
definition
None
.
thus every song i sing
i sing of what i do not know
or hear or dream or feel
i think
but do i tell of songs
i do not know
or sing not knowing?
.
would i recognize
unknown
song?
do i?
sing?
.
it’s hard to tell
meaningful questions
from questioned
meanings,
meaning
tones
notion
her eyes
the water
sky
adroit
wonder
or passion
.
not known
i sing.
Language/Life
This is the same struggle – (LanguageLife)
this mis-match, trans-mesh, between media (their mediums)
.
A woman arrived – beautiful.
First thought: why isn’t language like her?
no – why isn’t language Her.
The difference. Media.
Eventually I felt this about music, painting, photography.
Eventually I felt this about perception, expression, myself.
.
i.e. Why isn’t one thing another to the same effect? Why doesn’t one temporally unified multiplicity (perception) correlate adequately in another?
.
My writing, these shapes, lines, movements, and possible sounds and touches and sayings are ever as real as hers, (equal), but not her (different) <in so many ways, sort of> <and not many ways, kind of>
.
There is animated material in motion with layers of perception – interpretation – impression / meanings. And here as well.
But they are not the same,
metaphorically, experientially, actually.
And they are.
(We are, species-level, carrying similar realities in similarly leaky containers).
And we aren’t.
- Effect (1)
- Affect (2)
- Mode (0)
- Artifice (N+1 / N-1)
- Occurrence Happening Being (=)
We are.
And aren’t.
Same Difference
.
Language lives. is alive. is not life. is life.
As also language.
And not.
She and I are. And are modally identified. Materially.
And are categorically for many striations,
same.
And not.
Effect. Affect. Also same difference, everywhere within scales. Eventually, no difference?
Eventually…only same? In a thin layer, deep and thickly.
Undone. Coordinated.
Same difference.
eventuates:
AND – – – – OR – – – – NOT
(same differencings, as each require equal potentialities)
.
Endless.
This is a slippery slope of a flat plane.
.
Therefore I love the “Book of Idolatry,” “truth,” empirical methods! Same differences, endlessly, potential, infinite variation and similitude. Swerving curves of identity deranged.
Lo how the mirror distorts in its clarity.
The painting clarifying distorted.
Voila.
Another.
The same.
Again.
Differently.
.
One might suppose differing due to activity – close circle – if static could be posited or possible we’d see (as we are seen). But seeing is active. As is that seen.
therefore, indeterminate
that is, knowably unknowable
i.e. uncertain in its certainty
Voila!
What?
same difference
BEING
matters
A Womb-bomb Psalm
Blessed be the name of the Lord –
sweet carrier of the womb –
fiery cauldron,
cold and dark
within the pit.
.
Blessed womb-bomb,
threatening peril,
life-giving
horror of wonders –
inside
.
that terrible cave
in the belly
the heart, the brain
like a virus,
a cancer,
a seed –
.
herewith do we praise thee –
our lives
and surround –
impenetrable everywhere,
blessed immersion
and thundering calm
.
go forth
quiet conquer
of light
veiled in darkness –
a pit, a cave,
o glorious sky!
Quiet. Dampening.
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray
Mary Oliver, Five A.M. Pinewoods
Rain, snow,
damper pedal.
softening…
slowing…
so that sound
may
rise –
Arise quiet sound –
its feel –
tonight, now,
then
a melancholy birth,
nostalgia and utopia
again, combined.
.
Sustain.
Cabin Reflections (July 2022)
Between
(sky and birds), between
(enclosed and contained),
between the not existing and the sleepless
there are no obstacles.
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia
it’s hard to make sense
outside of the world
or in a larger world
things don’t register
in expected ways
.
the pace is all different
and nothing is counting
time, space, and motion
do their thing as one
the human happenings
.
don’t make sense
or seem separate, divorced,
a frantic scale
the earth holds quietly
.
even words dissolve
and transform
like breezes
and bird-calls,
not meaning the same
.
passing, passing, held
passing, passage, hold
i imagine at Heidegger’s hut
he was murmuring
these things, being
.
hard to make sense of it
with reason or belief
a stance
but easy sense
outside
.
Where do you listen?
What are you listening
with and for?
How do you listen?
Silently, with wing-beats
aflutter
water moves
.
i move
out of my head
into the rest
of me, my skin
an open passage
my organs trudging
patiently, waiting
blood moves
.
accordion chest
filling my limbs
hands holding
feet touching
grounded
.
lay back
all in
an other
with / in / of
this world,
here.
One Day
“One day I want to write,” I say to myself, every day. This is one of those days. And also what it is to write.
The Cosmos of Aziff / Polly C. McStupor
Polysemic Stupor 