20180831.0430

It falls to us, as is in stories told,
To cross the moats, to be both brave and bold
In giving aid to those who wisdom hold
And in so doing Stupid God to fight
That would in darkness swallow wisdom's light
That otherwise would be to our delight.
Its followers may number more and more
And rush forth, waters from cracked dam outpoured,
Yet floods have washed across the land before,
And, if with challenge, made enriched by silt
Floods left behind them, farms have been rebuilt
And homes set straight from waters' enforced tilt.
But prompting challenge often evokes wrath;
Wisdom-finding is no easy path.

20180830.0430

The light that wisdom gives is free to all
Who would upon it make a sincere call--
Yet free, too, is to be Stupid God's thrall,
And no sincerity does it demand
As Stupid God, in power, spreads 'cross the land,
Pooling where the ivory towers stand
And edifices readier to use
By public hands, and seeks to them abuse
Or force those who would tend them to recuse
Themselves from public life. Of them, no few
Already hope to shun the public view,
And so it becomes too easy to hew
Them apart from that support they need;
Their cries for help grow easy not to heed.

20180829.0430

As, even now, I feel those powers fade
That I to end of writing verse arrayed,
And I look out upon the world afraid
To see how orange small-hand folk undo
The works done well before them, to my rue
And others' who would do as I would do,
I look upon technology of hope,
As others have described it, and cope
As best I can, instead of knotted rope
That some will seek to seek to halt their fall.
I know that all about us spreads a pall,
Upheld by those who would build towers tall
And live in them alone, and others spite.
I still contest it, work by wisdom's light.

20180828.0430

Yet I cannot for others choices make
Unless I would from them their reason take--
And so the cause 'gainst Stupid God forsake.
In thinking not the spread of power lies
That Stupid God would use to make a prize
Of all the world, and every one decries
Who would the rule of Stupid God oppose
That which thinking sends to its death throes,
And from constraint of thought that one arose
Against whom I would fain array that might
As has been given me, for my delight
But now must be repurposed to the fight
'Gainst ignorance, though I think I will fail,
Knowing what that fight has to entail.

20180827.0430

I have long striven, helping people learn,
Not so much that they might money earn
As that they may help us all make a turn
Aside from that path on which many walk
And on which some are dragged, though they would balk
At going where they have to hear such talk
As Stupid God promotes and wants for prayer.
That veneration takes far too much air;
To offer it yet more would be to err.
From such faults I try to people keep,
Yet ever through wall's cracks some air will seep,
And some will suck thereto, too soon to leap
Into full folly with abandon true.
Ever I such failings come to rue.

20180826.0430

But though no man of faith I claim to be,
That means not that I do not hope to flee
That which I would avert and keep from me,
And so against the Stupid God I pray,
And with these lines the effects to allay
That come from giving that one every day
That by its so-called blessings would deny
The light of reason. That one, I decry
In strongest terms, and yet, I know that I
Am but one voice, and that voice, few will heed,
Despite its saying what will many need
To hear, that rightwise thought may feed
And in its feeding once again grow strong,
And with its strength, more people bring along.

20180825.0430

No man of faith am I to praises sing
Of one who's claimed to be the heavens' king
And blessings thereby on myself to bring--
Far less a seeker of reward am I
Than one who seeks to injury deny
And risk to minimize--oh, no, not I.
It is enough to do to let things pass
Without them biting sharply on my ass,
Without my being by Stupid God harassed.
The servants legion of that god assail
Me from day to day, and, without fail,
They add to challenge all our lives entail;
To summon something other things attracts,
And once they're out, they're damned hard to put back.

20180824.0430

O, Stupid God, avert your eyes from me,
And elsewhere look, that you would others see,
For many truly seek you out in glee,
And surely they do number such as you
Can put them to whatever you would do,
Such tasks as having done would lead to rue.
Already do I labor long to be
A person such as from you would be free,
A person who to learning'd gladly flee,
And I do stumble often on that road
As I do rush to pay off what is owed
In tolls for me to tread where knowledge flowed.
Your gaze, a foot thrust 'twixt mine on that path,
Turn otherwise, and spare me from your wrath.

20180823.0430

Though now an orange face Stupid God wears,
Speaking lies about which no one cares,
It seems, and from abuse, nobody spares,
It has worn crowns, not just the over-combed,
And wallowed in the mire. It's often homed
In houses of worship, spired and domed,
And within iv'ry towers it is found
That stand aloof from towns that them surround
And with them seek to find no common ground.
There is no place the Stupid God can't reach,
And hardly student it won't gladly teach.
Resisting it must fall to every, each,
And not all to resist have what it takes--
Yet they it must, and we, find for all sakes.

20180822.0430

When Stupid God appears in any guise
And good work of the mind full-voiced decries,
And thoughts of human growth thereby belies,
Too many flock to hear the words thus said,
Letting non-ideas fill each head
Of those there present; they then those things spread,
A metastatic cancer of the mind
That chokes out thinking life that it does find
And discourse in its tendrils seeks to bind.
No chemotherapy has yet been found
That keeps that cancer from going around
The body politic. No longer sound,
It falters, falls at feet of Stupid God,
The which contentedly will, seeing, nod.

20180821.0430

The Stupid God's anointed came with glee
That many had hoped not again to see:
Joy from those who think that folk should be
Divided, ranked by color of their skin
Of whether they grow hair upon the chin,
And think that doing otherwise is sin.
If sin there is to be found in the world,
It lies in seeing that foul flag unfurled
That 'round a shameful pole had once been curled
But should instead have been cast into flame
And rendered into ash, and held in shame,
And only to be spat upon be named--
Yet Stupid God's adherents hold it high,
And while they do, they seem safe under sky.

20180820.0430

The Stupid God has many forms beside
The orange face which now does woe betide,
Many guises under which to hide,
Though they are not constructed with great skill,
The hollowness concealed that will not fill,
But, yawning, echoes sounds that make souls ill
And from illness proceed that few would treat
Who have from their long illness found defeat
And by their willing sickness have been beat.
It is true some will strive to find a cure
For that condition they too long endure,
But most are all too happy to immure
Themselves in Stupid God's foul aft discharge,
Bathing in the pool it makes grow large.

20180819.0430

Yet those who serve the Stupid God have this,
That they well do what their devotion is,
For to act stupidly does take no whiz;
It needs but only doing as was done
In early days when things had scarce begun
To be improved from their initial one.
It takes no skill to stay in but one place,
To from new knowledge turn away one's face,
To be wrong rather than have to replace
What was known before with better known--
To admit that what was had ere grown
Might not be such as should be carved in stone.
And with such ease comes struggle to amend,
To make such change as on which right depends.

20180818.0430

Who bow before the Stupid God do not
To their deeds or words give too much thought,
Lest they in right-wise reason find them caught;
They think that logic them supports, indeed,
And give to other factors little heed,
But reason does more than just logic need.
It stands upon more legs than one, for one
Alone is far too easily undone,
Yet to those other legs they've not begun
To see their way, unless they them support--
And so they hypocritc'ly comport
Themselves as they for Stupid God cavort.
They think themselves to games with lives to play,
Exulting while they know that they yet may.

20180817.0430

From fault to fault the Stupid God's endorsed
Unerring seems to chart a jagged course
Through which he steers with no hint of remorse,
And him his cronies, gathered 'round, do cheer,
Even as they cannot help but hear
The cries of those who've been wronged, far and near,
Through all the deeds they've done while given grace
By Stupid God to hold exalted place
While sprayed-on orange coats the wrinkled face
Of that small-handed one Stupid God chose.
It's all too clear how such a one arose
And clearer daily what threat he does pose,
But all unclear is how much we can do
To right the wrong he is, that many rue.

20180816.0430

A name is known and named by the wise
For wisdom in a woman in one form.
Not for a number is she named,
Though in advance of one named for eight
She stands in sibilance beginning.
As with the eighth, she early comes
As ruling Romans would report it,
Emerging from an herb abroad
To stand with those who soyez sage,
Now saying strength and right, she.

20180815.0430

New to the name that was known before,
A son in the stream that once crossed the sea
And branched in its bounties so often before
Arrived not to elder, but instead to younger
Who donned the name of the den-braving dream-speaker,
Son of the scion of that stream's flowing.
The town where in Texas topaz emerged
In utmost abundance offers a word,
Where the scribe of a sequel, a savage
After the old and yellow acclaimed,
Gathered good words, and by garland is lauded.
What one does in stone, the other in plays
Another word offers. Say what his name is.

20180814.0430

Eighth of the name from earlier emerging--
As rumored in Rome while it ruled widely--
In feminine form for all to acclaim,
And named to that number, known thence as such;
Following first from the father's line,
Stymied the stream of sons that had gone;
Amethyst enjeweled and in violet flowered,
More than a month ere the meeting expected
Did that one get delivered, though not in despair.
One who has wit well says the name
Of who, under curls, herein is hailed.

20180813.0430

On the Friday just past, my family welcomed a new member to it; my brother's fiancé was delivered of their son. It is cause for celebration, and rightly so; I am pleased to be an uncle (again) and my wife to be an aunt. Our own daughter, the enviable Ms. 8, has long been excited about the prospect of the new baby, as well. And when we went to see the family on Saturday, she squealed with delight at the sight of her new cousin, while my wife and I spent some time contentedly holding the boy and fussing over him and his parents. My brother and his fiancé looked exhausted, as I am sure they were (and will be for a while, yet), and my nephew did a lot of sleeping, so we did not stay overly long—but it was decidedly good to see the three of them.

Doing so put me in mind of when Ms. 8 was of such a size. (To be fair, it was a while after she was born; she joined us five weeks ahead of schedule, and she weighed less than five pounds—while her cousin came in at nearly eight and a half.) There are times I miss it, to be sure; there is something special in the feeling of a new life in one’s arms. But I am far happier to have a daughter now who talks to me (even if she talks back more often than I might prefer) and who is more and more capable of carrying on conversations. And watching the ways in which how her mind works changes from day to day is both enthralling and satisfying; I find myself continually amazed at her creativity and the perspective she offers—although I know she does not yet know how special it is that she does so.

As I look with pride upon my daughter and joy upon my nephew, I know that my brother and his intended will have quite a time of it. I have every confidence that the two of them will do well, in all. They’ll falter along the way, as all parents do, and they will be stymied by some of the challenges their new son offers them, challenges neither they nor anyone else could foresee. But they will meet them, and they will grow, as he will, and I look forward to seeing how all of them do—as well as to being the one who gives his brother’s kid noisy toys. For there are many my brother gave Ms. 8 for which I have yet to take revenge…just as there are many things he has given my daughter to her good and mine, and for which I will be glad to repay the favor.

I write again, then, the last thing I told my nephew when we left him cradled against his father’s chest yesterday: Welcome to the family, kid. It’s gonna be a hell of a ride. And we love you.

20180812.0430

The direction in which I mean to take this webspace remains unclear to me. Given that the other is occupied with sober discussion of things I read and consider, I am not certain that I want to keep using this one to write essays. My essay-voice is pretty consistent at this point, and it seems an unneeded and unhelpful duplication of effort to write more essays here and there; I should focus my essaying there, where it attracts the kind of attention I want it to have. (Indeed, August 2018 has already been the best month for that blog since I left Oklahoma--and there’s a fair bit of it yet to go!) As such, this webspace should remain a sort of creative side-project, one where I put most of my efforts towards genres other than essays. I think it will work better that way.

The issue then becomes one of what genres should receive attention. I find that I enjoy writing poetry, even if the verse I put forward is banal and pat. The limerick cycle was a pleasure to do, both because I appreciate being able to carry forth a longer-term project and because I enjoyed the challenge of playing with that form. I find sonnet-writing also enjoyable, although those who have looked at my sonnets will note that I follow an uncommon rhyme scheme in them (and writing triplets is strangely difficult). Verse patterned on West Saxon models is also a joy, though I note that one recent submission of it got comments to the effect of being too much like prose. (To be fair, I think the commentator believes poetry has to rhyme.) Which will inform a longer-term project such as the limerick cycle, I am not certain; I am not sure any of them will or ought (though I have the notion of returning to a particular strain of sonnets I’ve addressed before, as well as a longer alliterative verse piece that’s been bouncing around in my head for years).

I’ll continue to mull over the matter, of course. I’m not ready to set aside this endeavor, so I have to figure out something to do with it. (It’ll be verse, such as I’m able to write.) And I always look for commentary on what I put out here, hopefully such that I can use to improve what I do as a writer in multiple genres. If I get enough of it, I might even be able to gather some things up and compile them in a way that I can actually support people better for it. I hope to do such things, among others. And I’ve commented enough on other people’s work that I should expect to get some commentary and feedback on mine; indeed, I long for such things, and since I can’t seem to find a writing workshop that I can meet with and will remain in place long enough to do anything, I have to turn all my hopes towards this medium. May they not be in vain!

I can always use additional support.

20180811.0430

I've mentioned before, I'm sure, that I was going to be a band director when I grew up. Working to that end meant I was supposed to practice my horn (which I did not do enough, admittedly) and perform at the several concerts each ensemble gave each session. I'm certain I've mentioned elsewhere that I've started playing again, meeting with a local community jazz band and practicing music, such as I'd not done in years. Today will be the first public performance by that band (though people have been listening to us practice for a while, now); we'll be playing for a back-to-school bash, and attendance is expected to be high for the event.

I confess to being a bit nervous about it. I'd not played in anything resembling a serious fashion for some sixteen years when I picked up a horn again, so it's been that long since I've played in a performance of any sort. There are thoughts that I'll not be good enough, that my reeds will split or I'll drop the horn (and, since I play a bari sax, that's no happy thought). Maybe it'll happen that I play the gig with my fly down--unintentionally, like in the one class I taught so long ago. (I've told this story, haven't I?) Or something else will happen that I don't want, and things won't go so well as I want them to go.

But I also know that many, perhaps most, of those in attendance will not care. They'll either not know enough about it to notice small things going oddly or be wrapped up in the other events at the bash (bounce-houses, school-supply giveaway, food) that errors will escape their attention. Or they'll be happy that there is a band at all. And there is the fact that the gig is a free one; we're not being paid for the effort, except insofar as practice space counts as pay. If things go badly, then nobody's out anything except the time, and the attendees at the bash were mostly going to be there, anyway. (Some of us in the band have families who'll be coming out to offer support, but that's a relatively small number of us.)

And it may well be the case that we play well today. I certainly hope that it is; I've put enough practice time into it that it's possible, perhaps even likely. I'll not hex the whole damned thing by assuming that it will be good--that way lies madness--but we're playing decent charts that we're spent some time putting together. We've sounded good in practice more than once; it's not unreasonable to think it might happen again, and when it matters. Because it will matter today; the first performance will do much to assert the band's reputation, so making it a good one will be important.

Like I said, I confess to being nervous.

20180810.0430

On the Sunday just past, my wife, Ms. 8, and I attended a family reunion. My wife's family has been in Texas for a long time; her maternal family immigrated while it was still Mexico, and I'm given to understand that her paternal family has been in the area at least since it was Spain. The reunion was of a large chunk of the former, and it pulled in people from across Texas and a few points outside the Lone Star State. So far as I know, a good time was had by all--not in the least dampened by the rain that wet the reunion area. (It's the Texas Hill Country; a good rain is always welcome.)

While my wife's family does such things every year--multiple times each year, in fact, with the different branches of the family having them at different times--my own family does not. Funerals and weddings are really the only times we gather en masse; some holidays will see some groups of us meet. But there is no regular meeting, no time that we get together just to do so. And there are reasons for it. When we've tried such things in the past--there're a couple of times I remember--they've not gone terribly well. Too, there are fewer of us than there once were; the birthrate has slowed in the past couple of generations, while it seems death has been coming more quickly.

How I ought to respond to such is unclear to me. The happy reunion of my wife's family proceeds in no small part from decades of doing it; starting such a thing among my family would not have that history behind it. And it would have the aggregate history of the smaller-scale interactions across the family--which interactions have not always been happy. There is this, too: we do better when we are working. Many of the fondest memories I have of my family are of us doing some kind of construction or home improvement project together, putting our combined energies toward making things better, laughing along the way and eating together after. But there are only so many of such things available, and money for materials is not as abundant as could be hoped.

I'm accustomed to the matter, of course. I am not sure how it will affect Ms. 8, however. She is much more an extrovert than her father, which serves her well in many ways, but it means she needs contact with people far more than I. She thrives on it, and I try to give her such things as she thrives on. (It's part of why she's enrolled in the classes she is.) Whether having more such reunions would help her thrive more is unclear to me, though. If they go well, then they would clearly be to her good. But I am not at all sure that they would go well; among others, I am absolutely shit at hiding how I feel about things, and I know my daughter responds to my moods.

The uncertainty about how to proceed annoys me.

20180809.0430

Some of the projects I've worked on have occupied fair stretches of time and substantial amounts of attention. As an undergraduate, I put together a role-playing game (not that it was any good) and an article-length paper about it for the honors program where I studied; doing so took me more than a year. As a master's student, I wrote a thesis; it took about a year. As a doctoral candidate, I wrote a dissertation; it took me three years, and I need (still) to go back and revise it for some kind of publication. (Maybe. I don't know that I'm still enough in academe for it to matter.) And I recently concluded more than a year of putting out limericks in an attempt at a heroic narrative.

Each time, I have felt some sense of accomplishment at having drafted a project and carried it through. Each time, too, I have felt as if I ought to have done more and better than I did, but I am given to understand that that is something common among writers. (I fancy myself such a person.) Each time, though, I have felt somewhat adrift and bereft when I was done. With the undergraduate work, I had graduate school to look forward to, but the months between were somewhat aimless and fuzzy, the days blending into one another not so much seamlessly as jumbled together, and I am somewhat disoriented even as I think back upon it. With the master’s thesis, I moved straight into the remaining coursework for my doctorate, but it took me some time to get my head turned such that I could work on the dissertation project. Once that was done, I floated again. (And that was the fatal flaw in my search for academic work; I had a job, and I did not look for others until I felt forced to do so, when I ought to have done it as I was wrapping up the dissertation. But that is another matter entirely.) And when I finally abandoned the idea that I would have a full-time academic job, I felt untethered, ungrounded, unmoored, undirected again.

In the wake of ending the limerick cycle, I feel such a sense again, if not so sharply as in the past. There are other long-term concerns that occupy me, to be sure; there are games in the offing, there is a community band that has graciously allowed me to join it and which continues to tolerate my presence within it, and there is Ms. 8, who deserves all the attention I can give her and more. Having them helps; if nothing else, I can make the empty feeling ring with the sounds of other work getting done. But echoes soon fade, and when the games are done for the day, when my horn is put away, when my daughter is asleep, I know that I will once again search for something not yet clear to me.

That I will find it, I know. That does not mean the searching is a fun thing.

20180808.0430

It has been quite some time since I've put any prose, lucid or otherwise, into this webspace. Most of what I've done over the past more-than-a-year has been my series of limericks that worked to be something at least resembling a heroic narrative, and that seems to have ended, now. I might return to that kind of project in the future, of course, but for the moment, I'm going to turn my attention elsewhere. There are enough other lines of inquiry, enough other paths to take, for everyone to have something to follow again and again, and I think I'll wander somewhere different for a while.

The thing is, I don't know that I want to lock myself into essays here. I've been busy in my other, more formal, blog, attending to such things regularly and often, and while I used to do such things in this webspace, too, I'm not sure it's an appropriate venue for it anymore. Indeed, matters are far different for me now than when I used to hammer out 500-word pieces here (and when I could do so in some twenty minutes, which is no longer the case for me). I don't live in New York City, I don't have regular access to what I did then--or even, in the main, what I did when I lived in what I have to consider exile in Oklahoma. (Hm. Perhaps a reflection on that feeling of exile.) And I do not know that it is to my benefit to maintain both the other webspace and this one--and the other is doing far better in terms of readership than this.

Some time ago, I asked those who read this blog if it would make sense for me to maintain it and the other. At that time, I was told that it did, and so I kept this thing going. I've enjoyed having the outlet, to be sure, but I'm not sure that I don't already have the outlet on the other blog. I don't have much of anything here that I'm exactly keen to have hidden, after all, nor do I exactly abstain from making some...interesting occasional comments on the other blog. But I am not certain I want to let this blog go, either. I've been doing really well with it this year, in terms of keeping posting regular and thorough; I've not missed a day yet. And having more projects helps me to do more writing, which is a good thing. It can hardly but be. (Unless you don't like what I write, in which case, why are you reading this?)

Close to twenty years ago, now, I had to take a speech class in high school, and, for one assignment in that class, I memorized a passage from Hamlet. Not the soliloquy, no, but Claudius's later private lament (3.3); it has stuck with me, and I find myself in pause where I shall first begin, being to double business bound, either keeping hold or letting go. Advice will be welcome (though I make no promise that it will be heeded), and your continued reading, in this or other venture, is greatly appreciated.

20180807.0430

But now the tale is said and done
That too long ago was begun.
Others could be told
By those who are bold
Enough to succeed what’s been sung.

20180806.0430

In such ways do things often go;
How much a fight might leave to show
Can never be guessed
Or fully expressed--
At least in no way that we know.

20180805.0430

The last person that she would fell,
The one to who she was death’s knell,
Received no such grace,
Was left in a place
That noone remembered to tell.

20180804.0430

The townsfolk did Erdewyn mourn
Whose body for them had been torn;
Although far too late,
They called her a great
Person, and memory’d sworn.

20180803.0430

Though she her opponent had slain,
That foe to her had done the same,
And who had fallen first
Was by noone rehearsed--
But they felt themselves much to blame.

20180802.0430

When, then, they came to the site
Where Erdewyn had made to fight,
They did not expect
To find it bedecked
With her amid bloodshed’s delight.

20180801.0430

When some townsfolk ventured out,
They did so not thinking to doubt
That Erdewyn won
What she had begun--
That she had put the Scald to rout.