Gain

Success! I have advanced through the entire year, and I’m finally within reach of advancing to the next one. But it didn’t happen without effort; every day leaped out at me like a scowling samurai, and fought to trap me in its moments. I battled them down, three hundred and sixty five (so far) in succession, and moved on to the next. Most of those days, I have to say, never had much of a chance to hold me in their grasp. Only a dozen or so actually had a shot. And some of them I can’t even say why any more, what that special spark was that almost captured me. I do remember a couple of days, in early October, when the sky was bright and clear, when the temperatures were warm, the trees were in their first blush of autumn; these days embraced me and I thought I could happily stay within their confines forever. And the sun went down, and the sun came up, and those days were gone. I had escaped them; a miserable escape, perhaps, when the succeeding days were not so clear and bright. So here I stand, on the bridge to a new year, past all those ninjas; and all I have to show for it is my freedom.

Waiting

The new year, still in storage, prepares for launch. Its strangely lascivious look bodes ill for the future.

Withdrawal

I like to go to the bank, go inside, walk up to a teller, and take out money. I decided this a long time ago. There was very nice young woman at the local branch of my bank. The other tellers were nice too, but she was my favorite. Within the formal restrictions of the relationship, we became very friendly. Of course, there was a barrier between us, literally, and she was under glass. I met her at the drive thourh, but she was so nice I started to come inside. She went to another bank after a while, and I stayed behind, but I still came inside for my transactions. I see her once in a while still. But I thought; I am entrusting this institution with my money, and they are using it while it is in their hands to conduct strange and awful business activities, and all I want in return is that when I come in to get a little of it to walk around with, that there be a living person to count it out and hand it over and say hello. So i have never used an ATM, and I have never moved to online banking. I go to the bank for my money and withdraw a little human society while I’m there.

Conduct

Upon entering a residence for the first time, remove your hat and, if asked, surrender your coat to the host.

Current will flow more freely through wires of certain pure metals than through air, ceramic or rubber.

The baton should be as readily visible to the timpanist as to the concertmaster. Take care that the trombones are paying attention.

The representatives of the opposing armies shall permit their horses to proceed at no more than a modest trot; the flag of truce shall be carried conspicuously and any such weapons as they are permitted to bear shall be directed in a non-threatening manner.

While discussion should flow freely, the meeting should proceed in accordance with the written agenda and in a timely fashion.

The Power of the Great

There was a woman, lovely, intelligent, educated (Mount Holyoke, I think); she had a lively and spirited career in the Big City and after a time she met a lovely, intelligent, educated (Yale; then Columbia) man with a lively and spirited career. She fell in love with him and he with her and they married and settled down in New Rochelle, just like Rob and Laura, only she still had her career, at least for a while. For they were blessed with a child, their Richie; and she took a leave of absence from her job and stayed home for a while. And she just adored him, so much so that she couldn’t bear the idea of going back to her career just then. This little baby, so eager and alert and just as smart as a whip.

And he took his first steps, and she was there; and spoke a little word, and then another, and she was there. He grew very fast, it seemed to her; and she coaxed him into using the potty like a big boy and applauded him when he did it. Once in a restaurant he annonced in stentorian tones for the whole crowd to hear that he had to go make a boom boom, and she was not embarrassed, but proud of her little man. Her husband was mortified.

Well, money was tighter, with just the one income, but they managed to put a little aside and go to the seashore for a few weeks that summer, and they took a cottage at Beach Haven. It was lovely, the sun shone and the waves crashed and the little boy played in the sand; he would go down to the breakwater and look in at the little creatures in the swirling waters, and he would go to the edge of the ocean and a wave would roll in and wash over him up to his knees and he would laugh and run away.

One day they were there on the beach, this woman and her beloved toddler child, and suddenly a great wave roared out of the wine-dark sea and pounced upon the two of them; and as the tumult and uproar ebbed away and all was as it had been, there were no longer two on the beach, but one, for the boy was gone.

The woman screamed aloud and shouted to the heavens; “Please, Oh you Powers, oh please! I am bereft! Do not torment me and ruin me but return my child to me!”

And as if in answer yet another great wave roared in and pounded her and the beach and all was concealed beneath the spray and the rumble; and as it went back, this wave, into the sea, the miracle had happened, and the child had been spit up from the belly of the ocean.

And all was quiet except for the gentle sussurrus of the surf. Then, hesitantly, softly, the woman spoke again.

“He had a hat…”

Attraction (Sensation)

Attraction (Sensation)

Parallel: To Magnets. Metaphor, pulled out like taffy until it snaps.
Iron Bars (are to) Men/Women :: Comets (are to) Thermometers/Barometers.

I strode once, weary, up a hill,
and gazed over the crest –
I spied a distant watermill
All ruined and distressed.
The ruins bade me tarry there
But I had far to go:
The waters ran without a care
As they had, years ago.

Sensation (Attraction)

The light defines the vision. Planetary influences are to be discounted.
Consider :: Action / Perception. The Influence = The Value.

Descent into the Underworld; Virgil (is to) Magnet :: Beatrice (is to) Anemometer.

Toads cross the roads
And bury the risk.
They squat on the answer
And color the task
Which, like a house,
Looks out on a pasture:
The pasture looks back
With its cow-confused doubts.

The mass of the rotating body is directly proportional to the ambient metaphor employed to describe it.

Cessation (Contraction) || (Confession) Reaction

Adversity, Weariness

Sorry I didn’t write; you know how it is, the day just gets away from you. I had to work very hard, very long, very late on Wednesday night. then I stopped off for a quick drink and everyone was dozing off so I went home. Overslept my usual wake-up time but was still at a deficit, full of confused thoughts and a scampering headache that hid behind the furniture of my mind when I tried to catch it. It was warm and clear, very picturesque, with the snow still in patches on the ground. A sentimental Christmas picture.

I went down and opened up the church and made coffee for myself, the pastor, and his wife; and then we celebrated a quiet Christmas day service with about sixty others. Locked up, went home, and ended up sleeping some more.

I woke up still weary, groggier and still chasing that headache. Pulled myself together for Christmas dinner. I got to my friends’ house just as the other guests arrived. They were dressed up; I was in jeans and a sweatshirt. The home was beautiful and the dinner was lovely and the conversation was interesting, irritating, amusing and bizarre (sequentially, not simultaneously), and before I knew it it was getting dark. The teenage son played with his Wii which is really a more wholesome activity than one would think. I left a little after six, after a lovely dessert.

Stopped off at another friend’s house for a minute and ended up staying for hours, through another Christmas dinner and dessert. Grandma had been discharged from rehab and she and her care-giver were there. Daughter was browsing the internet for a puppy for her brother to adopt. My friend dozed in the chair. It got to be after ten and I went home. Straight to bed.

That’s all for now. It’s another day, I’m still tired and groggy but it seems like the headache is gone.

Decay

Look at the pretty snow! Look, look, look. David has a job. He moves the snow. Move, move, move. Sometimes the rain falls on top of the snow. When it gets cold, it all turns to ice. David hates the ice. He wants it to go away. Today is Christmas Eve, and when it got cold, the rain turned to ice. It turned to ice on top of the snow. It turned to ice on the sidewalk. It turned to ice in the street. David was not happy. David has other things to do today besides fuck around with ice. Fuck, fuck, fuck. If it gets warmer, then the ice will start to go away, and David can deal with all his other Christmas Eve jobs. If it doesn’t go away, then David will just want to die. Die, die, die. And be buried. Decay, decay, decay.

The Army

The Army comes out only at night; they’re always there, in hiding, but as the greater light leaves the sky, and darkness descends, it emerges. They come out one by one, at first, and then, by the dozens, hundreds and multitudes. The cavalry outermost, and then the infantry further in, making a majestic circle around their captain. they sing a silent song of peace and of all the armies ever known this one alone has waged no war. The heavenly host, the array of the stars, dancing a stately quadrille, by the night and by the year, ceaselessly, until the earth itself ceases to be. And they sing: Glory.

Conflict

Markowitz famously observes that “[e]very Social Conflict is the arena for three mutually antagonistic forces: the Establishment, the opposition which seeks to overthrow the existing Order and replace it with one of its own, and the tendency towards increased Social Entropy which all Social Conflict engenders….”; and it is certainly true that these three forces exist on both an individual level and on the level of the vast historical movement. (In fact these forces are at continual work within individuals, and on smaller scales as well, but the point is tangential.) Conflict, it should be added, is not a continual state in human affairs, though it is virtually so on the larger social scale; in communities, nation-states, and on the world stage. Now, the Establishment, so called, and its opposition are alike in that they are each trying to force a particular condition or set of conditions in the future to occur, and they are both ineffectual and impotent because Social Entropy assures that neither future will fully come to pass. Let us take an example.

The Roman Empire was a Hegemonic Establishment almost without parallel, and it exercised the full extent of its will toward the indefinite extension of the Empire through time and space, and the suppression of opposition forces; but it was unable to suppress Chaos, which is not a force and is the opposition of the Oopposition as well as the Establishment. One Opposition movement, that of the Jewish nationalists under the rule of Rome, sought to roll back the Empire in their tradition territories and restore their defunct kingdom. These mutually antagonistic forces collided and were in open and bloody conflict for decades; and in the short term, the Romans appeared to have defeated the Jewish nationalists, who were in fact obliterated and cast to the seven winds. But, in the longer term, through a series of unforeseeable events, set in motion by some decidedly minor individuals, a splinter of the Jewish nationalist movement became a tiny cult which soon achieved widespread popularity throughout the Roman Empire. And this movement, unpredictably transformed but still strongly Jewish in character, in turn transformed the Empire and became its imperial religion. In effect, Rome turned into its opposition, and then vanquished itself.