Multiconstruct

I’ve had a pretty relaxed weekend going into it with a sick day. Gave me permission to take it easy even though its really nice out there. Its been a beautiful Fall and I am thankful, also for seeing gratitude lists start to come out. Its a nice time of year for a lot of reason. I devoted yesterday to crushing a novel which is something I haven’t done for a while. I knocked out most of “Peshawar Lancers” by S.M. Stirling. One of my favorite authors, I like his novels on The Change, post-apocalyptic fiction.

This is straight up alternative history. Set in modern times but in a world where a meteor broke up over the Northern Hemisphere in the mid 19th century, leaving Europe and North America in a three year winter and decent into cannibalism. The British Empire makes an Exodus to India, South Africa & Australia mostly with the heart of the Empire in India. So you end up with sort of a steam punk world with slower advancement airships, Victorian culture with a nice cross pollination of the cultures of the subcontinent.

Nice setting for an adventure story with the villain being the Russian cannibalistic Satan worshiping state church with girls they have bred who can see the future. Charming and fast paced story and I learned a little bit about Hindus and Sikhs. Can’t beat that, but it killed my productivity yesterday.

I did get some laundry hung and started turning the second half of the cold frame. Finishing that is my next project. Today I’ve devoted to puttering and cleaning house and the house certainly needed it. Got the place swept out, could have used more but I gave it a ‘lick and a promise’ as Grandma Trapp used to say. I find everything is connected to everything else and start cleaning and it can suck up my whole day. I miss Amee’s whirlwind where she could just knock stuff out. I am stuck slowly plodding along, stopping to ponder what I find, stymied on where to put stuff, etc, etc, etc.

Today though I did find a steno pad with some poetry I haven’t posted. I wrote this riffing off of Ignatius of Loyola’s bit on humility out of his Spiritual Exercises, which I still haven’t completely read. I was at a conference at some type of Catholic institution and they had a library and I pulled it off the shelf and read a random page on humility that shook me to the core pondering it. It heavily influenced this poem as I tried to assimilate its implications.

Ignatius was a bad ass and a powerful dude. I later bought the book but read how your supposed to be coached through them on a retreat and its better to not know what’s coming. I took it and a bible with me on a 2 1/2 week backpacking trip and worked them in a bastardized way. It was life changing. I felt I had to back off (I was going for the whole deal in a 30 day give or take deal) or risk making a permanent severance with the mundane world. Wasn’t quite ready for that nor did I feel it was necessary.

But setting all that aside I had only read the one page once when I wrote this which I guess I’m calling “Like cigarettes speak for the dead”:

Like cigarettes speak for the dead

They always have

Even since before the world was broken

But at least kittens still work

And many other Sunny Things

Fly high, some higher

Than they’ve ever flown before

Icarus wings perhaps

But at least we’ve known the Sun

And the Son remembers

Someone’s got to decide

If when, if then

I remember, am remembererd

I live, I live, I live

Humility in a poet takes reading

Ignatius of Loyola

Spelling it all out in 3 paragraphs

A thinking man can understand

Humility is the exercise of the will

For the purpose of promoting the will of God

As you follow the pursuits

Only accepting material gratification, social standing

Yea, life itself in a way compatible to the GOOD.

A noble path of humility indeed

Which only the best of us abandon ourselves to

And know the bliss of a clean conscience

In a world gone mad

With violence and control

Ego projection, ego projection, ego projection

Of course you haven’t forgotten

They were the happiest days of your life

We will always be one

And other evil lies said in the language of Action

In the real world

The real fucking world

Fucked up shit goes down.

Its happening right now

All around us

And the deeper path of humility

Cries out for us

For us to walk the path

(To)For the perfect world

That’s coming

Or walk away

And heal and mourn

And watch and pray.

When the final destruction comes

Lurches closer to being

Both or either

I don’t know

But all 3 demand

Us walk the past of

holiness and we’ll

take riches or poverty,

Happiness or unhappiness,

Respect or rancor, as

Secondary to the quest

For the perfect world

Knowing god

As only two loving

Beings can love

Hugging, not being hugged

Remembering and remembered

Image reflection

You know the Kingdom of God,

At hand, within you,

Many mansions, many mansions, many mansions

And real life with its

Treasures and responsibilities

And pleasure gratifications

Are all set aside

Treated as the same

Whatever occurs

In our place in the unfolding of divine will

The few that walk this holy road

For exercise if nothing else

Can choose a third path

Of striving for the divine plan

With all your heart, mind and soul

For so is love perfected in us

And whenever possible

To follow the path of the low

The poor, the reviled

The ignored, until even our

Death serves the divine will.