Creator and muse
Of my fractured longing,
And inaudible harmony
Of this brittle song,
Mine is the heart you will miss
If you hear when I sigh like this
The more that I speak of your name
The more you ought to be ashamed
That heedless of your call
That after all
The echoes sink into the abyss
You aren't who the saints proclaim
But after all
Anonymous
Appear! Appear!
I need you out here
Sit in the shadows I cast
As I vegetate in some invisible light,
Senseless, poor,
Plugged up and disconnected,
Neither awake nor asleep
Maybe there is nothing I can do
You have crawled into a fish
I wish that you were not
So far away inside of me.
Oh, but for you,
Whatever you wish,
Let it be.
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14 comments:
Some of us are but a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of something more.
Ah, yes, but to be something more than a shadow's ghost ... that here is the cry.
The shadow of a ghost cannot break free from the ghost. Some things are what they are.
The shadow imagery really has a hold on you. That interests me.
You and I are neither beasts nor gods. We are called to be human, which is a very small but also very great thing. The poem leans on the smallness to the point of despondency, but it is also a rejection of despondency ("Oh, but for you,/Whatever you wish,/Let it be").
In my moments of doubt, I cry out for God to be God so that I can be fully human. In my all-too-human condition I question the ways God will be God and how God is present. "I wish that you were not/So far away inside of me" -- that says it all.
So far away inside of you! This surprises you? Before being human, you are a significant fractal first. Distances can become infinite within a simple fractal structure. You should take a look at Mandelbrot's The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Tie this into your current theological questions, and there might be some intriguing findings.
"Before being human, you are a significant fractal first." How do you pray over something like that? I will begin with the fact that "fractal" and "fractured" share the same root. ("Creator and muse/Of my fractured longing....") We grow by being broken again and again. We become human by being broken. We become holy by being human.
God is at the end of my journeying. But the end is infinitely distant, and the end itself is infinite. This doesn't surprise me, but it weighs on me sometimes.
I'm going to think about your insight musically. Listen to King Crimson, "Fracture" and "Frame by Frame." That's how I hear and understand what you are saying about distance.
I don't know anybody else who has read about fractals. You are a mystery to me, Anonymous.
They may share the same root, but have very different meanings. The fractal is highly significant in nature, and ourselves. I would venture to guess that Mandelbrot could open up a new vantage point for your questions.
You mistake my musings for questions. I don't question the why or how of the paradoxical nearness/distance of God, or the mysteries and mechanisms of nature. I accuse God -- I do not like the situation -- but I don't deny, dispute, or puzzle over the reality of what I am perceiving.
Look at this prayer again, this time from the perspective of a lonely lover. I don't think you're really reading my concerns.
A lonely lover is a self contradiction and cannot exist. One is either one or the other, but not both.
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large—I contain multitudes.)"
Walt Whitman
Logic is getting between us, Anonymous. Every lover, at last, is a lonely lover. Every lover. Human and divine.
The ones I love and the One I love are so far away inside of me. And I fear that the more I open up to other people and to God, the lonelier it will get. Loneliness is the risk of love.
You say every lover is a lonely lover. If God loves, then is she lonely as well?
Yes. The God who loves, the God I love, she is the loneliest of all.
It is so strange. If you know God is lonely, then you have been in contact with her, which would mean she is not lonely, yet she is by your word. While this does not compute, it is most certainly human in nature. What a puzzle you are Anthony.
Well, it's kind of like this correspondence, Anonymous. We are in contact with each other, but we're really not in contact with each other. We "touch," but we don't. By my word, this is indeed a lonely exchange. I don't know how you feel about it, but it feels lonesome and one-sided over here. To you I should also want to say, "Appear! Appear!"
But if that is not to be, then so be it. I will keep posting more pieces of myself for you and other readers to puzzle over.
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