Tag: Contemplation

AUSTERE HOUSE

Beginnings stretch outward.
A trembling breath lingers.
Silence gestates
before the word is spoken.
The air holds still,
struck through with sensation,
as the unseen gathers
toward its trembling.

What do I see?
A shadow
escorted like a cenotaph,
a face dissolved
through clouds of doctrine.

What do I hear?
The long decay
of a voice grown old,
a quarrel flowering again
in the rooms of forgetting;
names abandoned,
a litany of the missing,
whose silence now
cuts more savagely
than their speech ever did.

What do I know?
I carry
the weight of not-knowing,
and raise from absence
its austere house.
Less than I imagine,
less than I understand.
Yet more
than I dare remember,
I hold.

Gilt Wood, Oil on Panel

gilt wood
oil on panel
a moment eternal
light plays with shadow
color quickens flesh
the face outlasts its maker
the dead regard us still

Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) (detail)
Jan van Eyck, 1433
Oil on wood (oak), 26 × 19 cm

Of a Man, His Dog, and a Stick

The immeasurable joy that a pup feels upon spying the perfect stick—though is not every stick perfect?—to seize it between the teeth, to trot about in triumphant exaltation, to preen and prance, to clench and cherish it as though gold, or life itself, were held within the jaws, precious beyond all things. If only I could delight in anything with such unfeigned enthusiasm—as that stick, its discovery, its seizure, its hold.

Ah, to find such rapture in the ordinary! To greet the world not with suspicion but with wonder, to see in the roughness of bark and the scent of earth a treasure beyond price. She asks no meaning of the stick, no purpose beyond the play; she does not weigh its straightness nor lament its splinters. She exults simply because it is there—because it can be grasped, borne, and shared with the wind.

And when I feign to take her most prized possession from her, she does not crouch defensively nor guard it with wounded pride. She startles not in fear, nor suspects deceit, but spies instead an opportunity for play—for spirited contest, for joyous fun. A game of keep-away, of chase, of tug-of-war, of tag. The stick becomes not a treasure to hoard, but a bond to share, a spark of communion between kindred souls who, for a moment, forget the hierarchy of species and simply are. How effortless her wisdom seems: to turn every threat into invitation, every grasp into dance. What the world calls possession, she calls participation; what we call loss, she calls laughter.

Laugh I must too, for in her play I am carried back to youth—when a stick could be anything the heart desired: a sword flashing against unseen foes, a spear cast toward the sky, a knight’s lance, a shepherd’s staff, a trumpet summoning invisible armies, a conductor’s baton commanding the symphony. How endless were the shapes of imagination then! She reminds me of what I once possessed without knowing its worth—the gift of invention, the sacred power of play.

And so I laugh, though a tear is not far behind, for the years slip away like autumn leaves on the wind, and I remember what it was to live so lightly. She, in her wisdom, has become my teacher—her joy a gentle rebuke to my solemnity, her play a sermon on the holiness of delight. If ever there is grace to be found, it is in such simple acts: a stick, a chase, a glint of sunlight on the grass, a heart unburdened by purpose. Perhaps salvation lies not in grand design, but in this—to love a stick as though it were the world, and to find, in that loving, the world made whole again.

Lifted by the Trumpet’s Breath: On Music and the Aural Trinity

The first sonorous caress that flows from the trumpet at the opening of this exquisite piece elevates heart, mind, and soul toward the heavens—tickling the senses, stirring the intellect, and penetrating the depths of spirit. The sound of the music then envelops me whole, encompassing my being as both serene comfort and nourishing balm.

Over the years, I have found the greatest pleasure in musical compositions that awaken what I have come to think of as the aural trinity—heart, mind, and soul—music that refuses to address only one dimension of human experience. There is the tickling of the senses, that physical, almost tactile delight in pure sound; the stirring of the intellect, where architectural beauty and mathematical precision reveal themselves; and the penetration of the spirit, that ineffable movement beyond analysis into pure being.

And if, by chance, anyone should wonder at my musical inclinations, I can offer no clearer explanation than the thoughts above. Yet I hasten to add that the genres and traditions encompassed within this aural trinity are far greater and more varied than one might suppose—and surely different for every individual.

Three Morning Meditations

When I awoke this morning, I found that I had, as usual, a productive night of contemplation while I slept. Three meditations were ready to write, and write I did. Here are the results.

I. On Being

The contemplation of being—its beginning and its ending—rather than being itself, is humanity’s fascination. We exalt its creation with ceremony, and we weave endless tales of its defeat, as if death might be outwitted by story. We fear its ending with such intensity that we grant it more weight than the fact of life itself.

We revere its beginning with awe, we dread its end with terror, yet the middle—being itself—we profane with neglect.

We curse the day, the hour, the minute, for the slightest disappointment or inconvenience, real or imagined; the weather, our companions, our labor. We curse the brevity of joy, the length of sorrow, the depth of our feelings, the complexity of our thoughts, the idleness of time, the busyness of our brow. All that is given becomes a target of our disdain.

Yet here is the paradox: if we are so careless with being itself, why then do we revere its beginning and tremble at its end? Why fear the loss of what we do not value? Why guard so jealously what we daily scorn?

The truth is simple, if difficult: life deserves more than our curses. If we cannot greet each moment with wonder, let us at least receive it with gratitude. If not embrace it as miracle, then with appreciation. If we cannot bless every hour as holy, let us at minimum acknowledge it as gift. For being itself, squandered though it may be, is all we have.

II. On Equality and Power

Men will not endure the scourge of equality with those they deem beneath them. They will sooner suffer the loss of station and status, wealth and power, even willingly and against their own interests, so long as those they despise remain below them. The humiliation of parity weighs heavier than the burden of deprivation.

The clever puppet masters—those who truly govern—have always known this. They stir enmity where alliance might have been, teaching one man to scorn his neighbor, to measure himself not by his own condition but by the imagined inferiority of another. Thus, the poor man may rejoice in the poverty of one poorer still; the dispossessed may take comfort in the greater dispossession of another.

And so men pit themselves blindly against those who should be their allies. They are content to yield treasure and status to the puppet master, provided only that they may stand athwart the “inferior.” Thus do they squander their strength, mistaking themselves for masters of destiny when in truth they are but marionettes in another’s play.

III. On Tears and Salt

There is salt in tears. Salt—the preservative—preserves remembrance. Even sorrow is instructive to heart and soul, for grief keeps memory alive.

So it was with the wife of Lot, who looked back for love of her daughters, lost to the destruction of divine wrath. Preserved in salt, she became remembrance itself: a monument to sorrow, fidelity, and the peril of divided love.

Thus every tear carries its trace of preservation, holding fast what might otherwise be lost: a fragment of love, a lesson of pain, a reminder that sorrow, too, endures as teacher.