since feeling is first

by e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Grow Up

Wooden Secret

I was in the wooden secret

high and stage right service tunnel.

You beneath in white.

Welcome to the Big Apple Dinner Theater. 

Previously, there with family,

A halting procession of forced inflection.

You two should try out

she said again.

Ignoring the signs as mothers do,

thinking instead of what is best.

It was then that I saw you.

Later, the tryouts.

Anxious harried persons erect like ranseurs,

Hustled by the personnel in fours and fives.

Yes and next and are you ready? No?

Instead I begged to come and simply watch again.

And so the next night set up in the curtain booth.

There were cues which I surely missed.

Left rope right rope follow the script,

surrounded in graffiti and counting lines till you appeared.

She elbowed you and pointed to my perch together giggling.

There was a vast contestation of parts

the following Sunday afternoon. But

no svelte arms no almond eyeballs -

maybe it's a sign. 

I never went back who knows what happened. 

Notes III

In adherence to the internal logic governing such experiences

And I’m like, “rude girl why you so babies”

Well served by

Artfully enunciate the particulars of my embarrassment

Linked // wooden platform

            Sat at the edge, feet dangling beneath unseen knees

            Clenching to describe progress/kicking

Coiled tin viper

What would be required to arrest this state?

A constant broadcast signal

Reliable

Relatable

Communicatable

A tread inconstant

The Attribute!

Imagined ß---à Real

            A firm rooting in the real

            Less interesting? More productive? More stable?

            How does this relate to empathy if imagination is required for empathy?

If you love something, hurt it

If it leaves it wasn’t meant to be

If it stays, hurt it some more

Liquid in cups cracked vessels betraying their amputure rising like glass stalks in clusters in groves of wet luminescence around us

these are people

Perfection is attainable

Sorrow is beautiful

I wanna be Valjean but I’m still Javert

Post and lintel with a wide load, built to bear

Built to care, built to stare

I lost control of half my face

That was the half that was least appreciative

They ran a train on your self-esteem

Prepare to repel boarders

Set pikes to repel charge

Pulchritude, swerve

Mammon, blowing horns at Jericho

Touched his face compulsively like he was hiding behind a branch; affixed cheek to palm by twine or circumstance

Problems

Lists

I make lists. Compulsively. Part of my relationship with writing is the desire to preserve information. Looking back I see no throughline because I forget. I forget things that shouldn't be forgotten.

And so I write things down before they're gone. Albums to buy, movies to watch, groceries. Phrases. Behavioral protocols. Workout plans. Gift ideas. Symbols. Quotations. I even keep lists of things I want to spend time thinking about later. Really process and possess. Here are some of those things:

• Social Deviance - flaunting of norms is the staple of the ego complex
• Heteroglossia - the coexistance of multiple narrative voices decentralizing authority
• Homophily - tendency to associate with those who are similar and reinforce preexisting beliefs
• Rehearsal - relationship between psychopathy and rehearsal
• Hegelian Cycle - thesis, antithesis, synthesis
• Foxes vs. Hedgehogs - I have no idea what this was about
• Neil deGrasse Tyson - "History is replete with people attempting to layer their own philosophical elegance onto the Universe."
• Galvanism - ancient theory about the possible electrical basis of nerve impulses
• Stendhal Syndrome - psychosomatic illness resulting from exposure to art or beauty
• Gödel's incompleteness theorems - any system that does not contradict itself is inherently incomplete. There is no complete model

Humility

Recently I've been experiencing what could be described as a crisis of doubt. I was listening to Duncan Trussell, and was reminded of some things long forgotten. I was less calcified once. 

My position on religion, on faith generally, is well-codified by now. I have the talking points down. It is a solid platform. There are footnotes and addenda. It is perfectly defensible. Is it true? Well, that’s something else altogether.

It’s no secret that I’m angry. Beneath the cake-up make-up I’m seething from the moment God is mentioned. I go to church on Christmas because it means so much to Mom, but I spend the whole time vacillating between boredom, smugness, and disgust. I sneak glances at one of my exes as she chats with parishioners and shushes her kids. I think about how she’s holding up rather well, all things considered. I wonder if her perversions have abated or evolved. I try to text discreetly.

I otherwise avoid the matter entirely. But when that hate flares it’s ugly. I know it. I’m not proud. You may well have seen me three or four drinks in and nipping at my own lips spitting bitter shit. Religion is the bastion of the stupid, the base, the fat and bleating boors. A cudgel used to disfigure children and spread horror. The root of wars and the death of thought and the great barrier to social advancement. Throw them to the lions. It’s that real rage that only comes from disappointment. Losing Jesus was like finding out about Santa Claus and the wound bleeds still. Even when dormant it’s a sign of tectonic activity.

In calmer moments this is presented as a matter of humility – that religion in any sense is an unimaginable act of arrogance. That any human could dare claim to know the secrets of the Universe, we who know so little and the little we know so hard won. It is an act of childish fancy that deserves no more than a pat on the head.

Even more troubling than arrogance is the ingratitude. That a person could consider the vast panoply of splendors that is experience in all its forms, that he or she could take in all the colors and all the words and all the dawns and all the gasps of new life and acts of sacrifice and songs of devotion and the array of quanta and the waltzing of the cosmos and conclude:

"This is not enough. I need something more."

It’s quite an argument. But there is something to be said for scientific humility, as well. There are two types of scientists, those who labor in the trenches and those who dig them. The men and women who conduct the daily business of experiment and inquiry need not worry overly much about upsetting the apple cart. They conduct themselves within a framework that has been provided for them by their forebears. Sound familiar? Certainly they may question this or that, and may publish some very serious paper about some very serious matter and so eke out some further thrust of territory and enlarge the field.

But what of those who redefine fields entirely? The paradigm breakers who are willing to face ridicule to pursue a seemingly mad venture? Often they fail. Usually. But those who succeed are renowned as great, and does not that greatness require faith? It's imaginative work. It's construction. It's fantasy. And when that separation from the flock is met with rebuke what else but faith can sustain that fantasy?  

Is the absence of faith a weakness or a strength?