Ode to Entropy

All change distributes energy
spills what cannot be gathered again.
Each meal, each smile,
each foot-race to the well by Jack and Jill
scatters treasure, lets fall
gold straws once woven from the resurgent dust.
The night sky blazes with Byzantine waste.
The bird's throbbing is expenditure,
and the tide's soughing,
and the tungsten filament illumining my hand.
A ramp has been built into probability
the universe cannot re-ascend.
For our small span,
the sun has fuel, the moon lifts the lulling sea,
the highway shudders with stolen hydrocarbons.
--John Updike

During the past year or so, I've been learning a lot more about entropy after losing the use of my air conditioning because of a drainage pan leak, after watching the hole in the siding of my house grow larger under my "temporary" fix of paint and duct tape, after being without running water for a week or so, and after spending three days or so without power in the aftermath of a rather big storm.

Now my water heater has started leaking.

I've shut it down already, lest the trickle become a flood at some indeterminate point (probably soon). So, no more hot baths until I can afford a new one. Am not sure when that will be.

More than one of my friends has offered to help me out. I've been thankful for the offers but have declined. "Pride is evil," one tells me. Well, it's all I have at the moment, even if it's been buried under a mental haze more often than not for the past few months.

Now, finally, my strategy of self-sabotage in the wake of challenging circumstances has succeeded in whittling away at my options, until I have no choice but to act, to earn more money, to do something, anything, rather than just succumb to inertia and depression and coping mechanisms that no longer make sense.

I just need a week's worth of energy and a clear head. I'll find the right lever. I'll find where to stand. The world will move.

Happy Easter!

eggses, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Resonances

Veit ek at ek hekk vindga meiði a
netr allar nío,
geiri vndaþr ok gefinn Oðni,
sialfr sialfom mer,
a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn.

From the Hávamál.

Looking ahead

Am starting work on my five year plan. Grace only gets you so far. It's time to work.

packing heat

packing heat, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Do not fuck with an airship pilot.

Break in the weather

I don't know where all the anger came from this morning or what was the source or if there were any actual targets. All I know is I've stomped around, seething, hurting, angry.

I'm tired now. But, I'm feeling calmer, more at peace, finally.

Two

Bell Tower

I have seen, desolate one, the voice has its tower;
The voice also, builded at secret cost,
Its temple of precious tissue. Not silent then
Forever--casting silence in your hour.

There marble boys are leant from the light throat,
Thick locks that hang with dew and eye dewlashed,
Dazzled with morning, angels of the wind,
With ear a-point for the enchanted note.

And these at length shall tip the hanging bell,
And first the sound must gather in deep bronze,
Till, clearer than ice, purer than a bubble of gold,
It beat in the sky and the air and the ear’s remorseless well.

--Léonie Adams

The Broken Tower

The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn
Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn
From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.

Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
Antiphonal carillons launched before
The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?

The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
Of broken intervals ... And I, their sexton slave!

Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping-
O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! ...

And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

My world I poured. But was it cognate, scored
Of that tribunal monarch of the air
Whose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
In wounds pledges once to hope - cleft to despair?

The steep encroachments of my blood left me
No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
As flings the question true?) -or is it she
Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-

And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
My veins recall and add, revived and sure
The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
What I hold healed, original now, and pure ...

And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slip
Of pebbles, - visible wings of silence sown
In azure circles, widening as they dip

The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower...
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.

--Hart Crane

Grumblings

I am a-weary, and I grow sick of the status quo in my life; A current of dissatisfaction runs deep. I deserve more than I have, and I'm not speaking monetarily per se.

The weather doesn't help. For months, it seems, the days have been dim and gray more often than not. I crave light. Most days, I'm fighting neediness and depression and chemical noise. I just don't write about them as often as before.

Practice wore me out yesterday. I've not been fighting as hard or as long as I used to. These days, much of my time has been spent working with our novices. It's starting to show.

Kiełkowanie rzeżuchy (cardamine sprouting)