buddha_gazelle's Xanga

cold in Cali

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:41:14 GMT

I'd forgotten how absolutely frigid Southern California is... and the sky here is so overcast and grey all the time.

In these ways, I miss Florida something awful. But in all other ways, it's good good good to be back. The wedding on Saturday was glorious. I want to write about it but am just too much in awe right now. The streets of South Central still feel like home, the food is still to die for, and my old job just seems so... so right.

But good golly, it's cold!

in the shadow of LAX

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:11:23 GMT

It's like I never left.

I came back to St. M's yesterday and am here again today, volunteering. As soon as the day begins the phones start ringing and folks start filling up the office. I plunge back into the fray instinctively and it's only when I'm halfway through a tough phone call that I suddenly realize, Lord I've forgotten how to do this. I'll have to run to the others for reminders on policy, fund availability, procedure for documentation, and so forth. Or I'll be in the middle of setting up an appointment in Spanish and forget obvious words like hoy. Been three years since I've used that language.

It really feels like coming home. And they want me back.

But I don't know.

current threat level is Orange

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:37:13 GMT

howdy from the Ft. Myers airport. I'm on my way to Los Angeles.

freedom, liberty

Fri, 02 May 2008 18:21:08 GMT

Dear family and friends,

I used to send out regular updates on my life and have neglected to do so for a rather long time now. But I've been answering so many questions individually in the past few days, that I figure it's time for a mass email.

As most of you recall, I've been in the Master's program in Linguistics here at the University of Florida since the fall of 2005. After many months of struggling, prayerful consideration, and listening to the advice of many folks I love and trust, I've decided not to come back to UF for the time being. On paper I'm actually quite close to graduation, but have made zero progress in the past six months and need a break for the sake of my own well-being.

The department wants to see me graduate and is leaving the door open for an eventual return; at this point I just want out but am certainly not going to slam that door shut. But for now, I need to be elsewhere.

It's a familiar and welcome relief to have no idea what's coming next-- I've often been in such a situation, and it's a comfortable place to be. My lease expires at the end of May and I won't renew. Several options have presented themselves, and as yet I haven't decided which to choose or where to go.

This email address is still good, and I expect to be using the same cell number for at least a few more months. So please, please do stay in touch.

Take care,

me

Kweli

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:16:56 GMT

Kristo amefufuka!

GOD IS DEAD

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:16:50 GMT

and we have killed him.

Μνήσθητί μου Κύριε ἐν τῃ βασιλείᾳ σου

Magdalene

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:11:17 GMT

I.

As soon as night descends, we meet.
Remorse my memories releases,
The demons of my past compete,
And draw and tear my heart to pieces,
Sin, vice and madness and deceit,
When I was slave of men's caprices
And when my dwelling was the street.

The deathly silence is not far;
A few more moments only matter,
Which the Inevitable bar.
But at the edge, before they scatter,
In front of Thee my life I shatter,
As though an alabaster jar.

O what might not have been my fate
By now, my Teacher and my Saviour,
Did not eternity await
Me at the table, as a late
New victim of my past behaviour!

But what can sin now mean to me,
And death, and hell, and sulphur burning,
When, like a graft onto a tree,
I have-- for everyone to see--
Grown into being part of Thee
In my immeasurable yearning?

When pressed against my knees I place
Thy precious feet, and weep, despairing,
Perhaps I'm learning to embrace
The cross's rough four-sided face;
And, fainting, all my being sways
Towards Thee, Thy burial preparing.

II

People clean their homes before the feast.
Stepping from the bustle of the street
I go down before Thee on my knees
And anoint with myrrh Thy holy feet.

Groping round, I cannot find the shoes
For the tears that well up with my sighs.
My impatient tresses, breaking loose,
Like a pall hang thick before my eyes.

I take up Thy feet onto my lap,
Wash them clean with hot tears from my eyes,
In my hair Thy precious feet I wrap,
And my string of pearls around them tie.

I see now the future in detail,
As if it were stopped in flight by Thee.
Like a raving sibyl, I could tell
What would happen, how it will all be.

In the temple, veils will fall tomorrow,
We shall form a frightened group apart,
And the earth will shake-- perhaps from sorrow
And from pity for my tortured heart.

Troops will then reform and march away
To the thud of hoofs and heavy tread,
And the cross will reach towards the sky
Like a water-spout above our heads.

By the cross, I'll fall down on the ground,
I shall bite my lips till I draw blood.
On the cross, your arms will be spread out--
Wide enough to hug the whole wide world.

Who's this for, this glory and this strife?
Who's this for, this torment and this might?
Are there enough souls on earth, and lives?
Are there enough cities, dales and heights?

But three days-- such days and nights will pass--
They will fill me with such crushing dread
That I'll see the joyous truth, at last
I shall know Christ will rise from the dead.

-- trans. Avril Pyman, from "Magdalina" by Boris Leonodovich Pasternak

Bad Days

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:21:15 GMT

When Passion Week started and Jesus
Came down to the city, that day
Hosannahs burst out at his entry
And palm leaves were strewn in his way.

But days grow more stern and more stormy.
No love can man's hardness unbend;
Their brows are contemptuously frowning,
And now come the postscript, the end.

Grey, leaden and heavy, the heavens
Were pressing on treetops and roofs.
The Pharisees, fawning like foxes,
Were secretly searching for proofs.

The lords of the Temple let scoundrels
Pass judgement, and those who at first
Had fervently followed and hailed him,
Now all just as zealously cursed.

The crowd on the neighbouring sector
Was looking inside through the gate.
They jostled, intent on the outcome,
Bewildered and willing to wait.

And whispers and rumours were creeping,
Repeating the dominant theme.
The flight into Egypt, his childhood
Already seemed faint as a dream.

And Jesus remembered the desert,
The days in the wilderness spent,
The tempting with power by Satan,
That lofty, majestic descent.

He thought of the wedding at Cana,
The feast and the miracles; and
How once he had walked on the waters
Through mist to a boat, as on land;

The beggarly crowd in a hovel,
The cellar to which he was led;
How, startled, the candle-flame guttered
When Lazarus rose from the dead...

-- trans. by Lydia Pasternak Slater, from "Durnye Dni" by Boris Leonodovich Pasternak

The Second Death of Lazarus

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:06:31 GMT

gah, I'm way behind on my regularly scheduled Passion Week postings. Let's pretend that it's still Saturday:

The Second Death of Lazarus

Folklore relates he was afterward rarely known to smile.

Since then, I can only see the world as through blue, transparent water.
I recall more after the event, when I felt like a thatched guest in my own
thatched home. Everything there felt like a tomb. I'd exhume the creased loam
from under my gray nails, peer beyond the crowds, the faces, the imperators.

The husks of my winding sheets lay piled in the dusty corner of the bedroom.
I sat quiet at the table like a gold-framed object of art, tolerating the stares
of the curious, while my sisters on each side kept stroking, stroking my hair.
My winding sheets, the hollow of a man bereft of the dead groom.

When I reached before myself and plucked dark, glistening grapes--
and ate slowly-- some felt it was a statement. For me, it was enough
to keep arranging my hands. Some men looked down, rough
with rejection; others wanted details of the passage. I could draw no maps.

My Lord spoke, and his voice, too, was faraway. I just kept hearing
a distant muse, strains I couldn't place or grasp-- the gauzy melody
yet calling, but which I still can't define or forget. I accepted being newly
alive but you have no idea what you give up for life, the dream unclearing.

My body still feels like the absence of a line drawn through white flour.
I was the earth, the chaff of wheat scythed, beaten back to shape, breath,
movement. Eventually, everyone I know left me to ponder my second death
by default. What mystery is left to where I've been before in its gray hour?

Years later, some still recognize my eyes. Yes, I'm the dead one who came
to fear life more, who somehow missed that brief blaze of paradise,
until the sizzling shock of a voice beckoned me to open my eyes,
move back to the cavern, off the slate bed, to hobble out stiff and lame

into starkness. Then, what do you do when your savior brings you back
only to leave himself? What can you do but go on? People say I seem
always distracted, not fully listening, as if I'm dream-
like, half-waking to something else, not totally there or here. I wore black

clothing, the new century's vestments. I moved to green Cyprus, too sick
of Bethany, and established a half-life there. I served as an old bishop
for Kition, the city of aqueducts. Its water's melodic song gave me hope.
I kept an ear to the narthex, listening for a voice again, a strain of music,

pining to meet the widow of Nain's son, or Jairus' daughter-- asleep
or dead-- at least, to compare notes. I wasn't the only one resurrected.
Apostle Peter raised Tabitha from the dead. But I left alone and protected
the Cypriot reposed. Why deprive them of what I had known? Let them keep

what I glimpsed. There's more of the truth there than in the gossamer lies
of this scant life. The second time is manna. I want the last and crowning amen.
To hear the next, transient calling, to be a final old man, waiting to die again
smiling and simply this time, keeping an eye on the frail-blue, revoked skies.

--Nicholas Samaras, from IMAGE #43

lolcat

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:31:30 GMT