eight twenty eight

I put a piece of chocolate in my mouth and glance at the coffee’steam. I glance a thought at the ways God moves and put another piece of chocolate in my mouth. Sipping carefully.

I know that in the sea of things that God thinks, I’m a very tiny boat. But when he glances a thought, like sea-breeze, and I scramble to pull in the luff, even scrape my knee, it’s like a piece of chocolate in His mouth.

And I agree that sheep like we have gone astray, that we like sheep bend knees and neigh for greener pasture and for stiller waters and God’s posture is often taciturn.

Dear Swiftness,

Meet me in my daydream and show me the Way (Home).

Yours etc.

right before band of horses played.

god when i wake from sleep

god when i am moribund

god when i've got more joy

and feel it's on the increase

make me throw my bed away

make my grave implode (or something)

make me know that i've no friend like you

(and you no longer call me slave)

as the sun begins to shy from day bright

as the streets begin to lax from day drives

as my heart begins to scuff and drag

down the shore to water's edge

evoke in me a merciful revival

evoke in we a fast forgiveness

evoke in all our little hearts

a journey towards a resurrection

as sin sets on approaching hill

as doubt creeps eerily nigh

as my weary vantage

overshadows every single good thing known about self

insight a riotous evac(uation)

insight faith that will eclipse

and reminisce beside this weary boy

the great lengths you strove to bring me peace

by tony hoagland, a really great poem.

America

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud

Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes

Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,

He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them

Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds

Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,

or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,

It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills

Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were

Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,

Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad

Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes

And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”

And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,

When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable

Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you

And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you

And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand

Which turns the volume higher?

tom wudl meets jan van eyck meets vero meets helplessness blues

And of course a weekend in vero beach is as it has always been- slow, uneventful, tiring as hell, full of frustrating (in the best way) conversations. My brother is moving from vero in a week’s worth of days so he’s been wrapping up a year’s worth of classroom rules, lesson planning, assignment grading, student and faculty relationships, you know running the gamut that is correctly labeled finishing well.

One of my fav things he did during his last week before his seniors graduated was host a meal during his morning period classes (which they called the 2^nd and 3^rd thanksgiving. He had students organize who would bring what and they ended up with skillets making pancakes, bagels getting shmeared, and coffee flowing like tide (I wasn’t there but his description laid out a royal spread). On top of it all was somewhat of a class finale led by mike where he handed out awards that he created for the most memorable moments, shared laughs, but also awards for students who truly put forth effort. My personal fav award was the “Kenny Award, (or the reason why snacks are not permitted in class award)”. Kenny was the fictitious student spoken of throughout the year that always made a mess of his desk whether that be with a bottle of orange juice or baggy of dorritos; I think the award actually went to a girl who brought a large box of ritz crackers, knife, and a jar of pb and was creating an outrageous 10 o’clock snack one day when Mike was at the board with his back turned. After ten or so of Michael’s awards, students took a few cracks at letting their teacher know what he had meant to them. Of course, all that I recant in this blog is second hand, but I just really got the picture that it was all beautiful resolution to a long and taxing year for students and teacher.

I’m not sure if she received an award in his class or took a stab at the round-the-horn thankyou session, but a foreign exhange student from Germany wrote Michael a card that has been sitting on the desk in his room since I arrived. I either physically pick it up or just remind myself of its charm near every time I walk thru his door. It’s a simple card, no extravagance in design, just pure genuine thought with a date, greeting, and salutation in respective predictable locations. However, attached to the other side with scotch tape is a cut-out, most likely from a national geographic magazine, of a painting by Tom Wudl entitled, “The Birth of Jan Van Eyck and the Extent of His Influence…1988-1989.”

Of course a good deal of my present and future appreciation of this painting is due to the fact that Michael’s student took the time to scribble a letter on the back of a thin yet sturdy white 4x7 sheet of cardboard attaching the ng cutout to its posterior, nevertheless, I believe it would have slain me had I stumbled upon it in any circumstances.

Wudl’s painting, the pasted and cropped (sadly) photo overhead, places Jan Van Eyck at the smack center (I will not attempt even the slightest of serious criticisms on this piece in this blog though it is something I do intend to do at some point (most likely via wikipedia)) and with 6 arms outstretched in varying positions, his eyes near closed as if he’s reminiscing a thought he’s hoping will break the silence of the mind of whoever views the piece. Eyck is standing on the base of a mountain, lightning crashing overhead, baby falling, air balloon rising, cityscape, waterscape, mountainscape, treescape, every strata of society zoomed in, broken off into squares, spliced in till one can hardly imagine any motif…rockets...ornithology…sailboat (full career). All great stuff and again, no serious criticism here, but I just want this. I want to get really deep into the way of living and influence that this painting epitomizes, emulates, encourages. I want a full-orbed glance at all the beauty there is to find in this life.

Our weekend in Vero presumably came to a close this morning, after daily happy hour visits to Waldo’s, chucking the Frisbee on the beach yesterday, hanging till late with Josh, Mike, and Kevin. breakfast this morning at the French diner will cue our exit this afternoon and my eyes will cringe again on Tuesday morning un-rested and unsettled discontent and malaise with frustrated eyes careening this way and that at the lives everyone else has figured out, after spending memorial day painting a fence in pompano, I’ll wake and perform my duties all over, as “a [dis]functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me,” (fleet foxes).

i wrote the above entry three weeks ago and never posted it, thought it needed more editing, it did, but i'm not going to do it. mj leaves tomorrow for el salvador and as he heads out to work with a school and church i think of Van Eyck and his charismatic look at life and living well.

link to view painting in full beauty http://www.lalouver.com/html/group_08_3/05.html

wendell berry, "the mad farmer liberation front", new fav

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

five twenty one eleven

it comes in waves unattached

to location

in brain

and in heart

daytime trains barreling thru cerebrum (no one understands how)

in the heat of day- with black earth caking my sunburnt skin (head to toe)

it starts three inches deep

between my sternum and backbone

and it moves down (sometimes slow, today quickly)

around the outer edge

of an upside down spire (with the upper part where the lower part should be)

reaching the base (as it only can in the inverted case)

then returns skyward

it is in lover’s epic smile (the postlude to a colossal fall)

or the face of child (realizing the bubble gum at the bottom of the screwball)

(not yet) knowing the certain fullness of the state we’re in

it is not the luff, the leech, nor foot

nor any composite hoisted for ardent haste

rather

it is the wind

the breeze

the oceans sister

moving above, moving down from Fa(r)ther above (pronounced like love)

moving down from the clouds till right above the granite ocean

sister loves brother

yeah (with aspiration) it’s true

breath that in deep (then pause)

they work together

and brother loves sister

that’s also worth breathing in deep

they make mother proud

Father is chock-full of delight

hokey pete!