From Beowulf:

 Life is transitory;

     Light and life together hasten away.

My Conscience.
     Whispers from the fallen,
          It sprouts a bud.
From the seed planted within a dream.


Thrust into prayer.
     Rationalized by desires,
          A contract between flesh and darkness.
There's no other choice.

Quote For Memorial Day

Quote For Memorial Day

MAY 26 2014 @ 7:31AM

by Matthew Sitman

“I am afraid to forget. I fear that we human creatures do not forget cleanly, as the animals presumably do. What protrudes and does not fit in our pasts rises to haunt us and make us spiritually unwell in the present. The discontinuities in contemporary life are cutting us off from our roots and threatening us with the dread evil of nihilism in the twentieth century. We may become refugees in an inner sense unless we remember to some purpose. Surely the menace of new and more frightful wars is not entirely unrelated to our failure to understand those recently fought. If we could gain only a modicum of greater wisdom concerning what manner of men we are, what effect might it not have on future events?

It is exceedingly unlikely that I shall ever be able to understand the why and wherefore of war. But sufficient reflection through the mirror of memory may enable me to make sense of my own small career. The deepest fear of my war years, one still with me, is that these happenings had no real purpose. Just as chance often appeared to rule my course then, so the more ordered paths of peace might well signify nothing or nothing much. This conclusion I am unwilling to accept without a struggle; indeed, I cannot accept it all except as a counsel of despair. How often I wrote in my war journals that unless that day had some positive significance for my future life, it could not possibly be worth the pain it cost,” – J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle.

Gazing west from atop this mountain bluff,
Across the Pacific Ocean.
Imagining my heart is not in pain,
That you're sitting here next to me.

        Where our spirits can truly fly free...

To feel your hair against my cheek
As we lean against this tree.
You're the answer to every question I seek,
How I wish we could always be.

        Where our spirits can truly fly free...

I have built a place
     I have always known.
Finally I am home.

There are no curves,
     All the roads are straight.
The doors open wide.

Food rests on the table, 
     Warm water available for bathing. 
I am home.

Women laugh, 
     Men share stories. 
Children play in the meadow.

Everything is free
     And nothing is spent.
I am home.

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out for another is to risk involvement.

To expose feelings is to risk rejection.

To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.

However, risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing, has nothing, is nothing.

We may avoid suffering and sorrow, but we cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.

Chained by our certitudes, we are slaves. 

We have forfeited freedom.

Only the person who takes a risk is free.

Your need to be free pulls at your soul.

To feel the wind in your hair,

Lifts your spirit high above.

Walking barefoot across the earth,

Feeling more than the soil beneath your feet.

Sensing all that has gone before.

You are the current in a river,

Each swirling wave a sense of your own being.

A scent in the breeze.

The warmth of life drenched by the Sun.

I sit in a world of four walls

Staring through a pane of glass.

At a sky alive with stars.

I wonder which one you are beneath tonight

A Gypsy lost in time,

Or a Rebel searching for life.

When skimming through a book in an used book store, I locked into an essay by Helena Andrews. It’s called “Reserve,” and it’s about the mask that black women learn to wear as girls. She imagines a black woman moving through a city, negotiating the looks of others on the subway. “She seems to be doing more than everyone else by doing so much less. Your eye is drawn to her. She acknowledges your presence by ignoring it. She is the personification of cool by annihilating your very existence.” 

What drew me to Andrews were these four sentences, which articulated something that I have thought about black cool for a long time, which is that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Black cool is part of society in general, part of white society. Black cool is the tip of African-American culture’s engagement with the broader white culture. Black cool only works the way it works because it’s part of a relationship. Look at Andrews’s scene more closely. The woman, getting attention, rejects that attention, and as a result gets more attention. Cool has an additional dimension, too, which is that it buys time. In an uncertain social situation, where the wrong decision can have disastrous consequences, cool lets you stay a beat behind while you settle on the path of least destruction. Taken to the extreme, cool can be sociopathic; taken to the right levels, it’s a supremely intelligent mix of defense mechanism and mirroring. 

The idea of withholding attention is central to most human interaction, of course: The person with less interest in any relationship has the upper hand. But go wider. In talking about cool here, we’re not just talking about a man and a woman on a subway. We’re talking about a black culture and a white culture, a subculture within a mainstream culture. 

Let’s go back to the word: cool. Cool doesn’t mean a lack of temperature, exactly. It doesn’t mean low affect or indifference. It means cool heat, intensity held in check by reserves of self-possession. Cool is social engagement masquerading as a kind of disengagement. As a result, in any display of cool, there is a slight hint of threat. What if the mask is lifted and the heat released? That threat can be physical or sexual or intellectual, but it’s always felt. Look: That person has power that he or she is not using. Think: What will happen if he or she uses it? React: I don’t exactly know, but I better keep watching to find out. 

To step away from black cool for one second into the broader concept of cool, it’s worth noting that reserve is less possible than ever. Think of John F. Kennedy. During his life, there was a gentleman’s agreement to protect his privacy and the office of the president. That permitted cool. These days, privacy has been melted down. Social networking, instant journalism, and culture of humiliation have turned the private-public dynamic inside out. That hurts cool in general.

Trust the one who sees…

     Sorrow behind your smile.

          Love behind your anger.

               Reason behind your silence.

It’s hard not to fall in love with someone,

When you see the mixed up parts of my soul.

When you understand the darkest corners of my mind,

When it’s four a.m., and you call because you know I'm not asleep.

Imagine you awaken with a second chance.

     The blue jay continues to hawk its pretty wares,

          And the oak still stands, spreading glorious shade.

               If you do not look back, the future never happens.

How good to rise in the sunlight,

     In the prodigal smell of pesto and eggs on toast.

The whole sky is yours to write upon,

     Blown open to a blank page.  Come on!

         Get up!  You will never know who’s down there

              Poaching those eggs, if you do not get up and see.