Waeting for the Don

I lie awwake in darkness, tiemless.
The song uv a berd, like a breef stanza,
     And then a retern tu silens.

I am in the Pallas.
Faent liets flikker down mennee kerving hallz,
     But reelee, I am not serten....

Konstant dowt.
My iyz attune tu such suttel chaenjez
     In shaddoez, in silensez.

But reelee, du I kno enneething?
My feengerz gro numm in the darkness,
     Feeling my way allong koeld wallz.

I take a step.I stand.
     I slolee konsidder.

Now it iz Dawn.
A sharp hunger,
     But thare iz no food...

Moeshenless the klowdz, az my thots.
The sun this moment rizez abbuv horizen,
     Porz its lite in my windo.
          But this iz not the lite that will help me see.

Annotations

I bike and bus to work everyday. On the bus I do my pleasure reading. This morning I just finished The Inner Journey: Views from the Hindu Tradition edited by Margaret H. Case. The book is a collection of articles from the exceptional periodical Parabola, http://www.parabola.org/. There are at least two other Inner Journey volumes, maybe more.

Coming home I reviewed all my annotations and poetic sketches. Here are a couple of things I liked:

A proverb(?):
Excessive piousness is a cloak of evil.

An image (originally written in stevespell, but this normspell version loses little of the innuendo):
O plagues of Egypt, o boils and sores!
What punishments are these and who am I to suffer?
I who glory in my works,
Who elevate myself. Holy am I,
Who strip the earth in my conquests.
Mine, all this is mine!
Now I am exposed in my doings.
My self-awareness all boils and sores.
I, Pharaoh, in defeat return to my palace
With the cowards who stood at the edge of the sea
And would not plunge into war.
I return and my slaves jeer,
My maidens turn away. What am I?
I cast myself down on the silk sheets,
On my downy bed. My crimson blood
Seeps into the subtle, elegant weave
And warp of my private places.

Two Undefinable Equations

While pondering whether time, like energy, may be non-continuous, its passage being, thus, a series of discrete quanta, I came to this conclusion: there are two fundamental conundrums that mediate all knowledge.

The first:
Time and space are not pre-existing, distinct phenomena. They are interlinked in a determinate way. The equation linking them, like the reciprocity of electricity and magnetism, would show that they are, in fact, two manifestations of a single phenomenon. However, we do not have the means to step outside the space-time continuum and observe and measure the interrelationship. Thus the equation showing their reciprocity must remain undefinable.

The second:
We can be certain that the distinctions between mental and physical, or mind and body, are illusions. Consciousness is the continuum in which all human experience is embedded. As such, mind and body are reciprocal aspects of the continuum of consciousness. However, here again we cannot step outside consciousness, and thus we are entirely unable to determine the boundaries between mind and body, and more generally, self and non-self, dream and non-dream, real and unreal, truth and fantasy. However convinced we are of the verity of our experiences, and the truth of our beliefs, in fact, we live in utter indeterminacy.

And it is in this state that we must proceed, perhaps more humbly than we have been inclined, as a species, up to now.

This is the new face of my Shivvetee.com courtyard. I kinda like it! Unfortunately, it probably won't be installed before summer, 2009, when I'll have the time to do the rest of the artwork for the rooms behind the doors.

audio version of Nishmat

On January 25, 2009, I posted a poem entitled Nishmat. Here is a recording of it, set to the melody of my favorite version of the prayer, as I learned it from my beloved teacher, Reb Victor Reinstein, may he go from strength to strength.