lemon-water light

from "catholic" by franny howe (the best american poetry 2004)

1.

what can you do after easter?
every turn of the tire is a still point on the freeway.
if you stand in one, and notice what is all around you, it is a pile-up of
the permanent.
the churn of creation is a constant upward and downward action;
simultaneous, eternal. if you keep thinking there is only an ahead
and a behind, you are missing the side-to-side which gives evidence
to the lie that you are moving progressively.
if everything is moving at the same time, nothing is moving at all.
time is more like a failed resurrection than a measure of passage.

2.

the drive from the I-5 along melrose to sycamore.
the drive up la brea to franklin and right then left up to mulholland.
the drive along santa monica to the rise up to the right and sunset.
the drive along sunset east past the billboard of the man on a saddle.
the drive from the 405 up onto la cienega and the view of hills.
the difference between nirvana and nihil.

3.

thomas aquinas was an itinerant thinker. his thinking rolled like a reel.
it went forward as a movement backward. his thoughts may have been
placed on the side like the eyes of many intelligent animals.
to mitigate pain he recommended weeping, condolence by friends,
bathing, sleep, and contemplation of the truth.
he was the ninth of nine children and sent very early to a monastery.
the dominicans luckily had no rule about staying in one place. so he
could walk from city to city, italy.

4.

legal thoughts were developed by the dominicans when they were
assigned the job of creating penitential acts that matched each sin.
they had to study humanity closely and seriously. thomas took on
this task and it became his life-work, his summa, his body of words
that he called straw in the end. something to burn.

5.

human nature: what is it?

the source and the destiny of each life are the same: an unknown
that is unknowable. unknown before; around and unknown now;
and unknown after unless already fully known before.

every act and thought has to be measured against this that has no
limits. why?

because the failure to grow and flourish and develop is a terror; to
die prematurely without having found any consolation for
disappointment is an injustice.
a person wants to be known, to add up, to be necessary.
the only way to assure that this can happen is for there to be a way
to study each action in relation to its immediate objective and to its
surrounding circumstance: who, what, where, by what ends, why,
how, when. you can by these terms measure your action in the
world, but its final objective remains the same: unknown.

6.

for some meditation, contemplation, prayer indicate that there is
an emptiness already built into each body and it is that which
(paradoxically) makes these persons feel at home in the cosmos.

7.

for others the hoarding of capital signals a loss of desire for any
more knowing; it substitutes numbers for objects. it creates a safety
net out of figures.

8.

the taste and smell of an action, any action, comes from its objective.
this is the strange thing about relationship. what you desire is
what creates your quality. you are not made by yourself, but by the
thing that you want. it is that sense of a mutually seductive world
that an itinerant life provides. because you are always watching and
entering, your interest in fixtures grows weary and your strongest
tie is to the stuff off to the side traveling with you.

9.

lemon-water light of california. flattened with big boulevards and
wandering men and women depleted at bus stops. back alley
bungalows. a terrycloth sash, evidence of neglect.

. . .

11.

passions are eliminations, but they are critical to the body's survival,
because they attract, command, and absorb; they make
vigilant. hope and fear, these are the two passions that loom
behind all the others. i know a man driven by fear, and another one
deluded by hope.

12.

pain interferes with your ability to concentrate. a priest told me to
prepare for the end while i am still mentally ordered. old age can
scatter the work of a life-time. probably people should go sannyasa
as soon as they retire, and become wanderers, contemplatives, ones
who act charitably all the day long.

13.

an ethics of intentionality must stay at a practical, measurable
level, and never become abstract. don't ever argue principles, my
father told me. stay with the facts.

14.

these scribbles? stray ends? ardor's droppings?

illness has its own aura. and one who adores haloes can smell and
see the aura of illness. a thick swimmer. through the door, an odor.
a mystifying stiff. millions of them world-wide.
geese are going over, raw as a jet stream, the windows open and a
stick finger plunged into a science jar. seedless.

nature exists in a deep sleep, eden's sleep. this is why watching and
hearing the wind in the trees or the waves brings such peace. if
natural light is the imprint of divine light, the word divine is
unnecessary.

15.

in some form or other, the deformity of the form is always potential
as opposed to immanent. perfection requires attention.

16.

asshole or jerk? which one gets to be president.

you know the man by the punishment he deserves and doesn't get.
he can actually perfect his sin with malicious intent and no one will
even notice.
because we have an infinite disposition for wanting the good.

. . .

20.

i can't believe i can see. i can't believe i can hear. i can't believe i
can speak or think. what are commodities but evidence of lost
people. you cannot love a bathrobe so what can you love about
your own texture.

. . .

24.

evil is the privation of good in any subject, it is a weakness and a
lack. this is why it is compatible with capital.
it may lack reason, or heart, or conscience, or empathy, it is a sign
of incompletion, it is an exaggeration of one quality at the expense
of others that must be banished in order for that one to thrive.
intention is hardly distinguishable from morality. it colors the
action that comes from it with the shade of the desired end. the
sad thing is that you can apprehend your goal as good and be
wrong. most of the time this is what happens and so you have the
problem of judging yourself in terms of both intention and desired
end, when things go wrong.

25.

where did i go wrong? at the same place everyone else did?
why did i end up living in unhappiness for so many years? unhappiness
was the desert, literally and figuratively.
trees that don't move. sun on dry dog turds. black immobile
shadows. temporary infinity.
this was not home because my interior landscape was composed of
wet, watery images -- soggy brick, flowerpots, begonias, big morning
glories, sloppy roads, and turbulent skies.
but something worse, generally, was occurring in the world around
me, as it also occurred in me. the restlessness, the consciousness of
a disappearing base and goal, the lack of home and civic engagement.
i loved no city that i recognized.
anything can happen under these conditions. nuclear bombs, dirty
bombs, small-time random murder, and abduction.

. . .

30.

all hope depends on possibility. nothing much more. (but you
can't have hope outside of an active sense of justice; and this
complicates the processes.)

both buddha and jesus preached contradictory messages depending
on whom they were speaking to.

31.

the egyptian women lied in order to protect the babies of the
hebrew women. god rewarded them for their lie. he gave them
houses on earth. moral ethicists are disturbed by this hypocrisy on
god's part. but this is one way the notion of "person" is born. how
is it lost?

32.

the intellect is contemplative.
voluntary ignorance is a terrible social sin.
the embrace between faraway, freeway, and very near is air, breath,
oil, here.
mouth and food. going somewhere you don't want to be. how does
the will work. i don't want to go where i am going!
peripatetic effusions.

. . .

34.

sometimes you are privileged with a glimpse of the other world,
when the light shines up from the west as the sun sets and dazzles
something wet. the world is just water and light, a slide show
through which your spirit glides.

reason is the dominant weapon of oppression. (reason versus person)
reason without the other values becomes evil.
reason where it lodges in me as an anonymous individual is
still oppressive but it works best in harmony with other passions --
people are depending on me is the main one.

but if i were president, i would reason the world into horrific war
because i would not let myself feel compassion or hope. i would
eliminate passions that contradicted my reason.