A mysterious message

I'm grading papers. They're good, most of them. I just finished reading an A paper deconstructing an ad for the Navy, branding itself with Navy Seals. On the works cited page, handwritten, perhaps for me or perhaps not were the following notations for three Bible verses.

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Romans 8:39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 Timothy 2:4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

Am I being subliminally converted? My student must have known that I would look them up, right? Are these notes to himself? Is this some "goof" on me that I don't realize, some practical joke that only these post-post's understand? Is it a reference to Tila Tequila?

I like the first two a lot, and the idea that no matter where you are or what you do you are fundamentally inseparable from the divine. Or something.

In which I publish a poem my readership has seen elsewhere for the sake of its being available at this web address

What Color Is It?

If it hits you
(hits without hands like light
and thirst)
and doesn't stick
(does light stick? or thirst?
or knuckles?)
Is it something or
pronoun without antecedent
yawning through history
a blade of grass itching a bare back
or waking crying
or summer's warmth
teasing open the legs
of my first love?
true?
Is it God or True Love?
or a hurricane on Jupiter that's as old as all love?
Is it the future?
The next raindrop to fall
the next tick of a clock on a wall
that will live
longer than I
but hasn't lived at all?

Is the shadow of it itself?
stronger larger softer lower
than knives and fruit and the saddest thing in the world
(nothing is more than anything)
when you stroke my face
I feel it
(something)

Part of an e-mail I sent my father

One of the problem with my manic downturns is that I try desperately to convince everyone, including myself, that I'm not just dealing with a manic downturn. I use my rhetorical power to make everything bigger and real-er than it may actually be. Or not. I do think that regardless of the positive changes the world has made in the last fifty years, we are still doomed to global catastrophe--and when I say global, I guess I mean American because most of the globe is already in catastrophe--whether it's gas or food shortage, or a violent shift in the power centers, or what I think is the inevitable (is anyone going to disarm? does the world seem like the kind of place where people just toss weapons aside?) doom of nuclear technology. Right? The only people who tell you that things get better are economists. I guess I have faith that humanity will survive, but the excessive consumption, spiritual emptiness, lack of engagement, lack of responsibility, and downright meanness I see everywhere and every day cannot continue endlessly. I think it'll take a Chinese army of hundreds of millions to take Bubba's truck from him, or insist that Trevor eat the same cheese as everyone else. And there are kindnesses in the world. There are people who mean really well and dedicate their lives to helping selflessly in the cause of love and respect for experience. And there's natural beauty and art and music and literature. But none of those things control The Button. The Button is in the hands of chauvinistic religious fanatics who've tricked their constituency into medicating themselves into submission...

I am feeling better today. I just need to remember that what's wrong with me is always just a combination of factors that become overwhelming. What do I want? Some divine hand to pat me on the back for being a good person? To be one of the first rats off this sinking ship? I've been thinking that what I'm going through now is delayed heartbreak over the Peace Corps. I was so close to having an opportunity to get into the fight in the developing world, and I screwed it up. Twice. And it hurts. And I know you'll say that I'll still be helping in NM, and Mexico is developing, etc, but it's just not the same and I think I have to mourn for a while.

In which I begin...

Honesty is essential. Too often, I move through my life with senses clouded by the fogs of anxiety, thought, self-criticism, self-aggrandizement, alcohol, sexual frustration, sexual satisfaction, money, pain, and pleasure. Honesty is the sword that cuts through our belly armor of coins, truth what pours out, sticky gaseous nauseating truth.

To be honest, I write this "blog" (probably the last time you'll see me use the ugly word) not as cathartic expression, not as masturbatory egocentrism, not even as an attempt to grasp at human communication through a medium which makes such connection impossible, but to charm a generous and affluent audience.

To that end, I begin, inauspiciously, with the caveat that many of these entries will be first drafts, that the failures of wisdom and language are the result of failures of revision. I beg you, as yet anonymous patron, forgive my uncouth expression of half-formed ideas, have faith that I can produce voluminous and profitable and sophisticated prose (and poetry!) at prices that will bring you back for more.

Read William Blake's "The Tiger" for the allusion in the title of my "blog" (damn!)...I think it suggests that I am a tiger or God or both. Or that we all are.

And to remember, from Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Why We Can't Wait, "Right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant." If we can live it, we're already there.