The Carol of the Burzee Rose

In the forest of Burzee grows
The blood-red bloom of the Burzee Rose.

Honey fire scents the air

Drawing creatures everywhere.

Blooms like fists, wounding thorns,
With saw-toothed emerald leaves adorned,
It numbs the nose and draws the skin
To touch and bleed and touch again.
      It is a wonder to behold,
      A present from the days of old.
     Still it grows in deep distress
     And every year it comes back less.

In a time already near
No one left will find it there.
Children in the woods for fun
Secret lovers on the run 
Will miss the scent as they pass by.
Someday soon the rose will die.
            In the heart of Burzee grows
            The shrinking wonder of the rose.
            Find it, find it, while you may.
           The best things all will pass away.

Talk with 45*

“Millions of illegal residents of this country voted for Hillary. Otherwise I woulda won the popular vote?”

Oh, and how to you know millions of illegal residents did that.

“Between three and five million.”

But what is your evidence?

“And they all voted for her I didn’t get a single one of those votes.”

How do you know that what you’re saying is true?

“Why would an illegal alien vote for me?”

No, no, I mean, how do you know any illegal votes were cast?

“There are many many many people who are registered in more than one state. Sometime two, sometimes three.”

Are you saying that millions of illegal residents are registered in more than one state?

“You look at the roles. There’s dead people still on them.”

But wait, wait, are illegal residents pretending to be dead people or are they registering themselves illegally?

“Millions of them.”

Because if people are impersonating dead people, there’s just as much chance they’re voting for you as for her. In fact in the one known case of double voting…

“You know the real unemployment rate is over 40%? But under me in just two, three weeks—something like that—it’s come down to under 5%. The people love me. I would’ve won the popular vote if not for the dead people.”

But how do you know? What is your evidence?

“I ‘lost’ the popular vote according to the lying, dishonest press. If they were honest, I’d have won it.”

That’s how you know?

“That’s how I know. You’re not part of the lying, dishonest failing press are you?”

Are you surprised that there are still people in this country who think you have the judgment to be president?

“Of course. I’m like a smart person.”

In that you and a smart person are both people?

“40 maybe 45% before the election, less than 5% now. Hey, you can’t argue with the numbers.”

All His Tuneful Turnings

This life allows so few of its myriad pleasures to each of us.
A child in a grand, expansive amusement park with limited tickets
And only a few hours to use them knows exactly what I mean.
You can only read so many of the books you want to read.
And you know the more you read the longer the list grows,
And that in the end your list of unread books will be
Longer than it has ever been. You can only learn so many things.
You’ll never master the guitar. You’ll never be as fluent in French as you’d like,
Although there you may make progress. And your garden will never be finished.
Nor will your house. Most of the places on earth you want to see you never will.
And those you do manage to visit you will barely skim the surface of.
You’ll never really understand how refrigerators work. Or cars. Or calculus.
You’ll always be amazed that some people can read scores or equations and smirk,
Knowing you could learn to do that too, knowing that you never will.
You’ll never reach your potential in baseball. You'll never know how far you could have run.
And yet, if you are fortunate and persistent and can control your wanderlust a little
You can learn to do one thing well. There is time for that, though you may never
Master it. And you can love someone well and long enough to make her part of you.
Twice as many tickets, double the time.

Seeing As, part II

Part of "seeing" lies in the object. Most of seeing lies in the seer. If you don't learn to see differently, you will always be looking at the same thing, whether that thing is a cat or skyscraper or a star, whether it's a politician or a preacher or a war. Seeing differently is what metaphor allows us to do. All I have to do is call touch "the sight of my fingers" and I open a new world of seeing, a richer knowledge of the world. Learning a second language or a third does the same thing, since all languages are just new sacks of metaphors. Meeting other people accomplishes this as well, the otherer the better. A man among women, a straight among gays a white among non-whites. If you only know your mother tongue, talk to someone whose first tongue was not that. She'll draw from her native sack of metaphors. She cannot quite help it. The poorer her English, the richer you will be. Let the others in or you will atrophy. "Conservative" is a fancy word for fear.

No, You Don’t Have the Right to Think “What You Want”

I’ve been repeatedly told, “you can think what you want, I can think what I want. That’s everyone’s right.” But what does that mean?

It is a reference to a legal fact still current in America in principle. It means the government can’t put you in jail or take your property or in any way punish you for your thoughts. We don’t yet have Orwell’s “Thought Police.” But that’s all it means. People say those words to me to cut off discussion. This makes it useful to them as a wall. Let’s agree to disagree. You and I will never agree anyway. See you later.

People implicitly understand that what they think is who they are. They are comfortably being who they are. The prospect of thinking differently, of being someone else, or some different version of yourself is frightening. Even if it's a better one. People can feel so comfortable in their homes that they would rather stay in them than move even if moving is an upgrade, even if it eliminates everything about your current place that you've been complaining about for years.

The problem is you don’t have a moral right to think whatever you want, and you don’t have a rational right to think whatever you want. The phrase “what you want” references desire. And desiring and thinking are two different operations. Certainly in humans they overlap and confuse each other like two radio signals competing for some part of the band. But this should be seen as a problem.

You have a moral imperative (not a right) to come to the best conclusions, and you have a logical imperative to come to the most accurate conclusions. Morally you must think in terms of the good, logically you must think in terms of the true. Desire shouldn’t enter into it.

If you say “you and I will never agree,” what you mean is that you will never under any circumstances change your thinking. You may justify this offense against morality and reason by saying that it applies equally to both of us--that you will never change your thinking and I will never change my thinking either. But it doesn’t. If the evidence leads to a conclusion that is not the one I currently hold, I have an obligation to change my thinking. And I will do it. I’d be stupid not to. If you can show me where I’m wrong, I will change my mind. If you show me that what I’m eating is poison, I will stop eating it. If you can show me that the conclusion I have reached goes contrary to my values, I’ll change my mind. (I may also have to adjust my values.) If you show me that my moral conclusion conflicts with my logical conclusion, I’ll have a problem. But something will give.

Digging in your heels may be fine for desire. Dig in your heels and keep rooting for the Cleveland Browns if you want to. It is however suicide to thought. And suicide to self.

Knock Knock Knock

She was almost out of wood. The woodman was supposed to come by later. She needed wood for the winter and wood for the cook stove. Grandma was almost sure she’d told him so. She was almost sure he’d said he’d come. But had she really told him, or had she just meant to? She was down almost to whatever was left in the box of kindling she kept out back under the eaves. These were hard days. And the larder was nearly empty as well. The coldest autumn she could remember. She rolled over, pulling the counterpane unconsciously over her head. The woodman would certainly come. The woodman brought his ax down fast, chop, chop, chop. Chop chop chop. The wood was flying, knock knock knock, knock knock knock…

That wasn’t the ax of the woodman flying. It was someone at the door. Someone was knocking at the door, a very strong, firm, masculine knock.

Grandma tried to sit. But she was too tired or too ill. She wasn’t sure. The headache that had sent her to bed early was still faintly there, ready to wake up. And she had to blow her nose. That could mean sick, but it could be from the cold. She swallowed hard.
Knock knock knock.

“Oh, Grandma? Are you there?”

Grandma shook off the clouds of sleep as best she could.

“Is that you, Red?” she called, or tried to call, but her voice was thin and apparently didn’t reach the door.

Knock knock knock.

“Grandma? Are you asleep in your little cabin, in your little bed?”

That wasn’t Red. A friendly male voice. Perhaps it was the woodman.

“Just leave the wood outside,” Grandma croaked.

“Oh, Grandma, open the door. I have a message. A message from Red.”

No, it was not the deep, businesslike voice of the woodman. It was a male voice, higher pitched, but friendly. And it had a message from Red.

“Please, sir, do come in. The door isn’t locked,” Grandma said.

Knock, knock, knock.

All Seeing Is Seeing As

I cannot see myself whole, never as you see me, not even in a mirror. I cannot hear myself as you hear me, not even in a recording. None of my senses report myself to myself as you see it, and not everyone sees it as you do. I cannot get outside myself to look. This same limitation exists between humans and the universe, not just that we can’t see all of it, which is obvious, but that we are part of it, and cannot see it but as ourselves. We cannot get outside it to look at it. And if we did get outside, we would not have eyes.

All that we perceive is an illusion: color, texture, sound—make your list—these are manifestations of memory on the machinery of the body. They seem real to us like the sounds a Geiger counter makes in presence of radiation, sounds that radiation does not make, or the low sounds that elephants make to elephants or whales to whales are sounds we’ve never heard, no matter what they tell you. It’s all a kind of representation, the information we get on elephants and whales and stars and planets and our own elbows and the napes of our necks and the smalls of our backs.

All that exists is energy, stored in matter or released into radiating space. We ourselves are only energy. Our senses translate various energies to forms we can use. This is the creative impulse at the very origin of perception. There’s no way around it, and no need to lament. The failure is also the possibility of everything we can try to know. But we must recognize it. All perception is illusion, translation, and there is no “real” way to see. To say God sees the world as it is is to speak the truth by way of metaphor—and not just because God lacks our physical eyes but because “to be seeable” is not a trait of the universe, not a trait of anything. Not even for God.

We eek our way to an enlightenment we can never reach.

Is anything I’ve just said true? Who can say? These speculations rest of upon the unconfirmable foundation of language’s ability to sort out what I have just said cannot be sorted. The best things we can say bump up against self-contraction, self-deconstruction. If my senses cannot tell me what the universe is really like, how can my language? What is the good of reason? Reason leads me here, as far as I can go, uncertain that I’m anywhere at all. Milton’s Satan flies all over creation but never leaves Hell. Flies and flies and flies and never moves.

There is hope—never assurance, ever only speculation, but there is hope. The hope is this: hat certain experiences work in tandem with this best conclusion that can emerge from logical speculation to bump our being against being beyond illusion. It’s just a guess. The experience of art, the experience of nature, the Romantic intimations that Russell laughed at who should have known better. The experience of math to those who really know it, the experiences of these flawed senses, what Nietzsche himself despite his atheism experienced in music, whispers that beyond the illusion is a reality to which we belong. When you hear a succession of notes and you can’t process how they pluck the strings of your being or why mere physical energy would make this possible, you have to choose whether to accept the thing the energy called music is telling you or you have to reject it. And no matter what anyone says, nothing in any discourse or language or discipline can see to tell you which way you should go.

Right Answers and Wrong Answers

You know there are many wrong answers. You are assuming there is only one right answer. Why? You're assuming if there is more than one right answer those right answers cannot contradict each other. Why? You're assuming the right answer is a complete answer, an absolute answer, and all other answers are incomplete, finite answers. But if there are no complete answers but only partial answers then the competition may be fierce and the winner to some degree arbitrary, if there has to be a winner, which there doesn't.