Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman, whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat. She yelled,
Poof! You're a casserole! - and laughed so hard
she fell out of bed. Take care of her.
Next, confession - the dreary part. At night
deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.
They're like enormous rats on stilts except,
of course, they're beautiful. But why? What makes
them beautiful? I haven't shot one yet.
I might. When I was twelve I'd ride my bike
out to the dump and shoot the rats. It's hard
to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use
a hollow point and hit them solidly.
A leg is not enough. The rat won't pause.
Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back
into the trash, and I would feel a little bad
to kill something that wants to live
more savagely than I do, even if
it's just a rat. My garden's vanishing.
Perhaps I'll plant more beans, though that
might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.
Who knows?
I'm sorry for the times I've driven
home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.
Crested with mist it looked like a giant wave
about to break and sweep across the valley,
and in my loneliness and fear I've thought,
O let it come and wash the whole world clean.
Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair-
whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.
Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,
that nature stuff. I'm grateful for good health,
food, air, some laughs, and all the other things I've never had to do
without. I have confused myself. I'm glad
there's not a rattrap large enough for deer.
While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept
when I saw one elephant insert his trunk
into another's ass, pull out a lump,
and whip it back and forth impatiently
to free the goodies hidden in the lump.
I could have let it mean most anything,
but I was stunned again at just how little
we ask for in our lives. Don't look! Don't look!
Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling
schoolkids away. Line up, they called, Let's go
and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.
I laughed and got a dirty look. Dear Lord,
we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,
which is -let it be so- a form of praying.
I'm usually asleep by now -the time
for supplication. Requests. As if I'd stayed
up late and called the radio and asked
they play a sentimental song. Embarrassed.
I want a lot of money and a woman.
And, also, I want vanishing cream. You know-
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears. Although you see right through him,
he's there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that's clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe. It make me think,
sometimes, of you. What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes. As I fall past, remember me.
faith and truth an interesting look at the motivations for faith, the pursuit of truth and the struggle to come to terms with both, by seyed rezavi of monkeyx,
It is said that faith cannot exist without doubt and therefore certainty is the opposite of faith for in certainty one believes that all the answers are known, whereas faith requires serious doubts and uncertainties to allow the adoption of ideas despite the sincerest and most profound doubts. Faith without doubt is bigotry.
Yet in the practice of religion, doubt is often given way to Truth. If religion is an expression of faith, organised and formulised over generations, is it right to say that faith when enshrined in doghma becomes certainty? So is truth and certaintly incompatible with faith? [...]
accidental(?) deaths via salon, rasheed sahib, a new yorker and a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division died on the 18th of may when he was shot in the chest, not by an iraqi insurgent, but by a negligent chappie in his own division as the other fellow cleaned his weapon. agreed, accidents happen, the american soldier in iraq is not exactly having the time of his life and shit happens but to this extent? from an article in a regional tv station's website,
Since the war began in March, 145 troops have died in hostile combat circumstances. Those include ambushes, sniper attacks and bombings.
Over the same span, 115 have died from accidents. And more than half of those deaths, 59 have occurred since May 1, when President Bush declared the combat phase of the U.S. mission in Iraq essentially over. [my emphasis]
are the soldiers in iraq improperly/insufficiently trained? is the number of accidental deaths nothing to be alarmed about? is this just another twist on 'collateral damage'? i'm sure the administration has its own spin on these incidents, what i'd like is someone who's been through such hell and knows what it's like to tell me how alarmed we should be. as of now, i'm very alarmed.
advice talk is cheap. yap is what we do. coz its easy, and free, and some people actually read what we write! since i'm in a particularly deep trough of my creativity and giving advice is a great way to cover your own flaws, here's an earful for those starting up or making over,
use movable type and host your blog on some cheap web hosting service, if u r a cheapo unemployed loser like me you can stick to blogger, it is easy and thankfully customizable unlike xanga which i found suffocating after a while
use colors that are easy on the eyes, both for the background and the font, slightly different shades of the same color for the font and background is a really bad idea. my personal preference is a white background or some pastel color (like yaz's) with a dark font
use verdana or georgia. please.
keep the font at a comfy 10pt or 12pt, anything smaller is too hard to read, and especially scary when the post is long, larger fonts make even small posts look too lengthy and suggest frivolity
music? sooooo 90s, be it a weblog, a personal home page or a commercial site, a song clip when your page loads is an incredibly bad idea, it is jarring, irritating and completely unnecessary
see to it that your blog is 'usable', ie it is easy to navigate, comfortable to look at and loads fairly quickly. check if possible that it displays correctly in atleast three to four browsers, perhaps ie 4.x-6.x, netscape, mozilla and safari
i always add 'target=_blank' to my hrefs coz it allows people to continue reading a post while opening a link in another window. there are ways to give the reader the choice to open hyperlinks in the same or another window, but i just don't see why you'd want to go away from all the interesting stuff i post on ublog |smirk|
provide a link introducing yourself, your blog, the intended audience and the purpose of your blog. this is absolutely necessary, i almost never go back to a weblog which does not tell me anything about the author. even if you wish to remain anonymous, provide a rough background so that people atleast know what's going on
preferably, provide a section for feedback and comments for individual posts, this encourages reader participation and brings people back
get a counter, it helps you know what degree of readership you have, who links to you and what keyword searches throw up your weblog in google searches. this can be amusing (someone came to ublog searching for something akin to 'jewish underwear during world war two') and gratifying, it keeps you motivated
keep your blogroll under control, don't add a weblog if you liked one post, a good rule is to only have those weblogs that you read regularly, say once a week atleast
get involved, spend time on other weblogs, submit your url to bloglists like globeofblogs, weblogs.com and blogwise (links on the left)
what you write depends on the theme of your blog, you might be sharing life secrets or ranting about bush's foreign policy, just remember that if you'd like greater readership you'll have to give your post thought and research for it to make an impact on your readers
blogging offers the terrific opportunity to defend your thoughts and beliefs and to correct wrong impressions. i'm a muslim for example, and i've seen some really silly attacks on islam by those with a negative/flawed image of islam and i've used ublog to present our side of the story and to disabuse wrong impressions
never leave a comment for the sake of leaving a comment, say something when you have something to say, keep quiet if you don't. when there is something you feel strongly about say it but without being rude or offensive. in large forums it is easy to see your voice get lost in the din, a solution to that is post something on your own weblog with a link to the post you feel merits discussion
don't steal, when you quote, provide a reference
don't ask for money for your web hosting/blogging expenses, it is simply not polite. if you get a zillion hits a day like dailykos and tacitus, or if you provide really readable content like the sentimentalist or joelonsoftware, in other words if you have been instrumental in creating a community there is no harm in asking for the members of your community to support your efforts. a website that gets twenty to thirty or even a hundred hits a day can in no fairness ask for money, that's crude
do a grammar and spelcheck
don't do as i do, do as i say ;)
i'll keep this list going so if you have anything to add/edit/delete to/from it, let me know.
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
have i mentioned before how totally in awe of pablo neruda i am? his peotry is like the rhythm in my head that i cannot draw on paper, like happiness, only better. these days i'm leaving the writing and thinking to the fantastic blogs on the left (no pun. actually, yeah pun!), i'm concentrating rather, on listening :)
My eldest sister arrived home that morning
In her white muslin evening dress.
'Who the hell do you think you are
Running out to dances in next to nothing?
As though we hadn't enough bother
With the world at war, if not at an end.'
My father was pounding the breakfast-table.
'Those Yankees were touch and go as it was—
If you'd heard Patton in Armagh—
But this Kennedy's nearly an Irishman
So he's not much better than ourselves.
And him with only to say the word.
If you've got anything on your mind
Maybe you should make your peace with God.'
I could hear May from beyond the curtain.
'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
I told a lie once, I was disobedient once.
And, Father, a boy touched me once.'
'Tell me, child. Was this touch immodest?
Did he touch your breasts, for example?'
'He brushed against me, Father. Very gently.'
-- Paul Muldoon
i find the concept of confession rather strange, the idea that a supposed sin can be committed and then repented for by reciting a holy verse an arbitrarily decided number of times is odd at the very least. most major religions however, proscribe the practice in one form or another, perhaps in an attempt to console the sinner or maybe to load him with so much of recitation that he thinks twice before brushing against a woman again.
a new voice a dervish's dua is the latest addition to the blogroll, and andrew sullivan has been deleted, i find his posts either too shrill or too boring. in the six months that i've been blogging, i've occassionally come across some brilliant writers, people with such clarity of thought and expression it makes me want to crawl under a carpet and stop blogging for good. ideofact, the american sentimentalist, tacitus, al-muhajabah, winterspeak, billmon, maryam, excellent writers all, thank you very much.
posted by ubaid at 12:25 AM -
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Sunday, September 07, 2003
solaris solaris is one of the most spectacular movies i've seen in recent times, frame after luscious frame of breathtaking visuals, sustained suspense and a paper thin yet engaging story line. the treatment of death and after life, our visual and mental perceptions and the degree of credibility that we assign our faculties has been masterfully translated to the big screen by soderbergh from stainslaw's book of the same name. the movie also has a wonderful poem on death by welsh poet, dylan thomas, and death shall have no dominion, which goes like this,
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
