Love and Trouble

Wee hours.

In my dreams, I see the retirement of our church pastor as an opportunity for me to enjoy my life, throwing off the yoke of religion. It’d be like Goethe’s Faust, following Mephistopheles on a romantic adventure into love and trouble. On the other hand, I know it’s not realistic for me for my heart’s desire to come true— unless I can believe my numerological life path. Twenty years ago I completed a workbook in numerology, a book I put in the trash during a weak moment, yet I remember some of the information it gave me. Still, my skeptical impulse says it was all hogwash, regardless of my desire to believe it. How often does a person get their heart’s desire, as if fate could just hand it to them? Perhaps you have to believe it, and then its realization is up to you as a self fulfilling prophecy. It’s like programming your own unconscious mind.

According to the book, my soul number was a 5, and 5 would dominate the last stage of my life. Its symbol is the pentagram, and it is characterized by sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Was the workbook really suited for “complete idiots?”

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Nature Replaced

Quarter of noon. When I consider climate change, I think that the spiritual stuff makes no difference. All of our religious ideas are thrown into turmoil as we stand by and watch the fruition of scientists’ predictions over the past 40 years. What are we supposed to believe now? No one seems to know. As yet, there are no generalizations for us to steer by. I can only advise people not to have children, because life on Earth will be insupportable at some point, and before then, radically changed. It is pleasant to dwell on the past, on the era of arena rock, or to read books written centuries ago. It’s nice to reflect on times when there were butterflies and honeybees, and bird life abounding. But today is not the same, and tomorrow is imponderable. Still, now more than ever we need a bard for the future. Someone must come forward and do today what Whitman did 150 years ago. There are still stars to guide us, even if they turn out to be global position satellites. Maybe we can build a “machine messiah” to be the voice of reality, and maybe it will croak “nevermore” like the raven in Edgar Allan Poe. “Computerized clinic for superior cynics / Who dance to a synthetic band / In their own image their world is fashioned / No wonder they don’t understand.” 

Body Language

Four thirty.

I finally figured out what causes my insomnia: it can be no other than the Vraylar. It’s a side effect of the medication. Probably there have been other ones as well, and I just didn’t recognize them. I bet constipation is one. Here it is the wee hours of the morning, the sky and everything cloaked in blackness. The sounds of the railroad faintly reach me. It feels cold because the furnace is turned down. Aesop lies on top of my feet. Fifteen minutes have already elapsed since starting to write. One thing I’d like to remember is the importance of body language in social interaction. A live presence, a meeting in person, is much different from something solely verbal. Our gestures and every movement of face and body express ourselves. This didn’t dawn on me until I met with Ron on Friday afternoon. As any impressionist writer knows, so much is said in the silences. What words or musical notes don’t say, the silence implies. And the same for body language. It reminds me that I am responsible for my facial expressions and body movements. Dependence on electronic communication had obscured from me the truth. For meeting in the flesh there is no substitute. In this sense, DH Lawrence has been absolutely right. No machine, therefore, will ever be able to feel anything. Do machines have body language? The question sounds absurd. Lawrence is amazingly farsighted for his century. He spoke a prophecy for all of us, one that we haven’t heeded. I daresay we never will.

Jerusalem

Trailer living has been one damn thing after another; in fact life in any style has been like that since the fire last March. There’s been no reprieve, no rest for me. It’s been a real tribulation and test. If it ever comes to an end, the home I’m going to will be transformed, foreign to me, hence not really like home. It’ll be something new but new is good. Perhaps my tribulation is a microcosm of the Great Tribulation predicted in Revelation? Some people believe such things. In that case, my new home is suggestive of Jerusalem in a modest way, a holy place. Living in it will be prophetic of a much bigger kingdom come, a universal revolution. But of course I could be having a delusion of grandeur. Still the comparison to the New Jerusalem, God’s coming to dwell with us, may serve as inspiration to see me through to the end of my crucible, which again is a miniature for the universal cataclysm known as the Apocalypse. The main thing is not to be afraid, but go meet it with faith and hope. “Now the feast and celebration / All of Creation sings for joy / To the God of life and love and freedom / Praise and glory forevermore… For God has come to dwell with us / To be one great people of God / To make all things new.” Surely He is coming quickly!