Each of us contains our skeleton; we are amazed at how it moves us.

 

The poetry does not matter. It was not (to start again) what one had expected. What was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit? The serenity only a deliberate hebetude, The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

T.S. Eliot

Four Quartets

 For progress there's never a pause. 

 

 New Year's Day at the Obamachron. It's as quiet as the grave. I'm listening to William D. Hartung talk about the trillion dollar war machine. Once we find our feet, he says, we've got a lot of work to do.

It's a mix of ideology and greed. It's a trillion dollar war machine.

 I read a doctor in Gaza, still studying healing in the midst of genocide. In this practice there is merit, for all the world.

Many images disappeared this year. If they disappeared they must have appeared, but there's no trace. There's a trace in mind of what was and still is. Therefore, we say yes. Seeing things as they are, without seeing. We know some things without seeing, for we have seen things. We know what is, though we can't put a finger on it. Things come together as things fall apart. Things blow apart like stars. The heart is yet mirroring. This is reality, both out there, on the ground, and ungrounded, within us, down there, within us, beyond knowing. Known in such a way as this observing, not merely, not knowing, bearing witness, healing. Because of the artificial light we can't see the stars. They're still there as we are. Under the artificial landscape there is still the one ground, unknown and knowing.

 when you get to the end you begin again

 It's a love affair.

 What is our true nature?