Words, warmth, and peace

You wander...
You wander through the mindlessness of ether, you wear your trousers rolled, and you see words and images combining and confusing the odd zeroes and ones that supposedly make meaning in the void, your activity limited to a vacuous stare patiently negotiating the occasional and listless flicking of a screen.

Ah, but you still got your old yellowing books, armour, and a rusty sword, dear, and your love for the fantastic, for unusual, unheard-of adventures which once opened up vast horizons, the end of which now can't be foreseen, even when the sound of the motor whirring in the background no longer resembles that of a giant windmill...

Where are you?
Long, long ago, in the company of Pantagruel on a strange beach, you had once encountered words frozen in time from the last winter. The people who’d spoken might be dead, but their words and whispers remain. You used the palms of your hands, breathed some warmth, and held the words close to your ears, and listened to their tales.

Remember? Remember and breathe...
Relax now and breathe. Breathe easy and deep like the man who dreamed of making a fire in the Jack London tale. The year’s almost over, home’s someplace called nowhere, and apart from intentionality, the smiling-faced pecunious people who are usually content with lighting candles and spewing useless words on violence are planning more harm. Others, too, are playing out their confused parts of the zealous activist who is unable to act for himself but can only act for others (“oh, the proletariat”, “ah, the exploited and dispossessed”) or for ends and abstractions (“world peace” and, yes, “global revolution”).

You know nothing will come of the candles and the guns, but smoke; dense, dull, congestive smoke.

Wishes for the dead, the living, and the half-deads...
Refresh your mind, please, once again, this time of the year when there’re only smokes and mirrors. All you’ve got is your memories, and a sobriety shaped by those memories that want meaningful words, and warmth. And a sense of peace- for yourself and others, striving to overcome their isolation, and still looking for meaning.

From a strictly secular and non-religious viewpoint, here’s me wishing you for the new year:

As-Salāmu `Alaykum (“Peace be upon you”) and warmth.

[Pix Credit: The beautiful artwork above is by Anthony Russo, a freelance illustrator living in Rhode Island. I found an illustration of his while googling, and I've been a fan ever since. Here's a link to Russo's homepage.]

Speak to Me

Speak to me when the stars are dead or gone
and the streets are emptied of the pained and painted faces
of reporters howling over their cameras,
when there's solitude of the kind
only you can imagine, a salty breeze playing
and there's always enough blood flowing in the sideways.
You know there're no words melancholic enough
only a strange twisting somewhere deep inside.

Speak to me when it's all over
when those moments of crises are past,
when the answers of pathogenic power are no longer
generalized narcosis or collective stupefaction,
the always delirious and disgusting manifestations
of faith in all its forms,
or when what they ask is only to be left out of it.
But us, what do we do?
Have we truly finished interpreting the world?
Or exhausted all old meanings, perhaps
to make a new point?

[Image: Death and the Mother, 1910, by Kathe Kollwitz.
From Allen Memorial Art Museum]