Cylanders II by Mg Roberts

i decided i was a ball of clay                                                                                           spherical                                                                                                temperamental                                                                                           poetic   i was a thing to be held and not known a grid of interconnected variables saying, me, me, me, me, me   what goes around, goes around again pote/ port/ pot                              soil a skyline scored in                    slip there are so many ways to situate oneself as vast sagging field                                                           giving shape to meshwork of soldered ideas cylinder it doesn’t matter and yet what you hand down, over, hand out is just one-way to live   in stressed and unstressed shifts i am one edge away from disappearing              an expanding idea, a space                   where more space                                        is making space is this sympathy vs. empathy? such landslide where is this all going? all this                                                                              orbiting round to                                                                                               become                                                                                           a dinnerplate turned                                                                                               in                                                                                           on itself

when the roll is called up yonder

 When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more,
And the morning breaks, eternal, bright and fair;
When the saved of earth shall gather over on the other shore,
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.

When the roll is called up yonder,
When the roll is called up yonder,
When the roll is called up yonder,
When the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.

On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise,
And the glory of his resurrection share;
When his chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies,
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.

Let us labor for the Master from the dawn till setting sun,
Let us talk of all his wondrous love and care;
Then when all of life is over, and our work on earth is done,
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.

Why the Problem of Pain Is a Problem

We all want to know why we have problems in our world. We all want the world to not cause us hurt. We are reminded of people who have died. This fills us with endless horror and pain. We could just try to live with our pain, but that is not how we can  live. We humans feel that we have to cut ✂ our life down to small bits. When we cannot do this, we feel that we have to blame someone. We feel that God has let us down. God is always blamed here. Yet this also brings pain. God is good. Satan is bad. Everything ok comes from God. God can't do wrong. Yet we have horror with out end. To say that God is not involved is not possible, since God is everything. To say that God is not good I not possible, because God defines good. If God does not allow things, then they do not happen. It is to say that He is not powerful. Or that He is not good. Perhaps we could say that the problem is not with God, but with the fact that He doesn't follow Greek logic. Think on that.

The other problem is that we think that we can prescribe our way to others, that we can superimpose our hurt on others. We must call people who do such evil! Hurting people do not want answers. They want to cry, to just scream in pain. Let them do that. Do not try to give them answers.

alone by edgar allan poe

“Alone”

By Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

The Meaning of тоска

“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.
"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”   - Vladimir Nabokov

Always Is Not 4Ever!

Exactly how long is forever? Exactly how long is always? Forever is something that does what it does as long as ever is. Always means something that lasts in all ways, and lasts ever. These terms are not the same. Also for always is also not the same thing as always, because it is now mediated by for, making it a duration.

We are the Chosen Ones!

Trump the President has recently discovered that he is the Chosen One, which is a title that is usually used in some sort of Messiah sense of the word. It is a term that implies that one has entered into a cult of a few knowing persons, who, because of some ability or an other, have become destined to great things. We can think about Neo from the Matrix, or Darth Vader, or the two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve in Narnia, or even Like Skywalker. One can even think about Socrates or Adam, or Peter or the Buddha or Jesus. But Trump? And how does his job at working this out with China count as being something worthy of making him the Chosen One? Does he have an inflatable ego here? Perhaps, we have gotten it all wrong, and he does have some kind of a Chosen One Purpose to do, but I doubt it. It does make one think about how these Chosen Few have to suffer through fire 🔥 and ice 🍦 and slay dragons on some quest. Could Trumpy  Bear Kill a dragon? Hmmm.....

The Divine Right of Kings by Edgar Allan Poe

The only king by right divine
Is Ellen King, and were she mine
I'd strive for liberty no more,
But hug the glorious chains I wore.

Her bosom is an ivory throne,
Where tyrant virtue reigns alone ;
No subject vice dare interfere,
To check the power that governs here.

O! would she deign to rule my fate,
I'd worship Kings and kingly state,
And hold this maxim all life long,
The King — my King — can do no wrong.                         

Sonnet—To Science by Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

   Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

   Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,

   And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

   Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Free your Mind!

free your mind. You do not need to do what you are told to, just because you are told to. you do not need to believe everything that people tell you. you need to learn to free your mind. Just close your eyes and say, "I am myself, and myself is alone!" Repeat that over and over. You can also try the "fear is the little death" statement from Dune.

The Fracture of Nothing

Nihilism is the belief of nothing. It is the belief that nothing has any real existence or any real importance. It is the belief that we cannot understand the reality that we are in because of our emotional attachment to it. And emotional attachment s keep you from understanding the world. We are slaves to our passions. We are slaves to our passions. World War I taught us that the Romantic view of the Past, the view of dulce et decorum est was just silly. People die in wars. People die in wars in rather unromantic ways, such as gas and VDs. We need to escape the Matrix. We need to free our minds. Nihilism can help us do that. It helps us see that the world is merely phenomenological. It is merely what can be seen, tasted and touched. Romanticism provides nobody anything but more and more babyish flirtations, and while flirting may be good for teens, it does not make a real life. We need a real world.