The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

To be each other’s psychopomps; perhaps I’ll carry you, perhaps you’ll carry me.

Lately. The weight of my short but not so short life hangs on me. Hamlet was a young thirty, as will I be, as will I be. Life goes this way. Life goes that way. How many books I have read this past year? Caught by work again, caught me sleeping; a few here, a few there, not moving the ball forward.

A couple pretty girls. The love of my life again, again. Twenty nine.

Taking tests for no reason. Up here in New York. Having fish and pie and tests, did I mention tests. Malls. Couldn’t raise your children up here, they’d grow up a little too white, a little comfortable, safe within the suburbs. The world burns outside, but I am safe within the suburbs.

People knock on my door. I solve small problems for them. I draft strongly worded letters to other short men, and they draft strongly worded letters in return. I have a small apartment, but pay my bills on time, mostly, mostly. Wish I was back there now. I wish I was back there now.

Twenty-nine years old. A somewhat simple life. Not the messiah by a long-shot. Try to do little evil. The world grows sad around me. I feel ok. Not happiness. Maybe just the numbness of a broken heart. A broken soul.

JB, the Existential Hero, the Edward Yellow, the Edward Williams, the Novelist, the Tale-Teller, the Latter Bard — where did he go? Whence? Left in Greensboro, with those other ghosts? And who is this? The man who wears my skin? The slave to science. The Reasonably Prudent Man.

For what? For why? Whence danger? Whence risk? When the sky opens, none of it will matter and all will be lost — so why not rage now and risk now and revel in the taste of life of on my tongue while I still have a tongue to taste with? Where shall I go next? To what purpose?

onward, christian. onward.

The internal view from my bedroom. Writing. Stories. I’m going to tell a story about a woman and the thing that happened to her. That an office devolved into sides, and the trouble-makers were rousted.

Baby, this boy in Brooklyn makes me sad.

and I find, theodicy from theists:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1569142/jewish/Coping-With-Tragedy-in-Borough-Park.htm

Nice to know they don’t let the Good & Active Generative Force of the Universe (aka God) off the hook for this one.

I on the other one do, and simply say that in God’s mind and dream all things are possible, and that the Great Power has granted us free will, and leaves us to our devices, but with the evil, he has given us the means to fight it, to stamp it out, to heal it, and evil will persist, and beings, just like me, will always sometimes find themselves trapped in a dark and terrible and horrible and dwindling existence, one that shakes the very marrow of our bones, and in that extremity, we will pray for salvation, we will pray to be saved, and we will not get salvation, and we will not be saved, but nevertheless, our prayers will be heard, and until the moment the False Child or the Senseless Child rips us away from God and destroys our souls, we will nevertheless be in His Presence, and to have been in that Presence, in other words, to have Lived at all, will have to be sufficient paradise.

All souls sing, and all prayers are heard, and we carry the lifeforce of the universe in all of our souls, and though many songs are beautiful and only a few are dark, all songs are heard by God, and listened to, and loved, accordingly. V’Ahavta.

You shall love He That Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.

Here, at the end of the world. The very limit of our histories. Phones were called, our voices crossed the distance, slightly slower than the speed of light.

(I, the I, have a small pain in my toe from where I stubbed it against a slightly uplifted sidewalk granite flat)

Haven. Here. Now. Not then. 2011. Science fiction, hypothetical year, fiction to myself. Next to Her, H with a capital H. Still using the Great Letters, Roman scratchings, may as well, here, in the realm of Khenti-Amentiu, Lord of the Sunset Lands.

Speak Gilgamesh, tell me of the one you lost, tell me of Enkidu, and your journey past the edge of time to palaver soft with the one who’ll never die.

And Gilgamesh returned to Uruk, and rebuilt its walls, and capped its towers in bronze parapets, and walked its walls as his bones thinned out, and black hair turned wisdom-white. And then he slept with his fathers, his bones interred, and stayed a moment longer, till they were dust, and then the city that was dust too, and sands came, and prophets, and riders, and other cities, golden, clay, great, and not great, other kings, other Gilgameshs, other Enkidus, great, and not great, ages of darkness, ages of light, and then and then

This. Here. For a moment.

Another will follow. And then another. Temporary guardians of the sacred flame. We the living clothe and embrace the Living Force, and then sloughed off like the serpent’s skin and return to dust. We dance for a moment, together, and it is meet of us to smile, for that moment, while we are dancing, as long as we are dancing.

I am here, now. I would not have thought it then, and I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. Well, I’ll be in Philadelphia. The city of the brothers. Not here, the new safe place. Love. Love. Love.