In the warm darkness, sheltered beneath a lid of bone, nourished by a salty soup, a collection of certain cells send electrical impulses rushing along a neural circuit.
A thought is born.
By the billion, by the trillion, human thought waves circulate, some becoming speech, others never passing the lips. If there is a God, He interprets all of them, spoken or unspoken we are told, whether in Hindi or Hungarian or the clicks of an African Bushman. How unfathomable, then, the interpretation center of His divine mind!
So many of our thoughts are dull, petty, gross or even evil. And yet, among the filth and tedium, shines now and then a grain of mental gold. What of the thoughts that gave us Moonlight Sonata, or the extant verses of Sappho? Or air conditioning? The polio vaccine? What of the inspiration that led to the deliberate fermentation of a bitter little bean and the blending of that substance with sugar and vanilla to produce what we now call chocolate?
If there is a God, did He take pleasure in the pattern of neural circuitry that resulted in the radio, ravioli and rhubarb pie? Does He sense and savor the beauty of the unique new rythm, as we sense and enjoy the tangible results of it?Do evil thoughts and deeds poison a place, do they taint it with terrifying miasma, like some kind of toxic gas, that later become interpreted as paranormal visitations?
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
A Thought is Born
Monday, June 4, 2007
My daily devotion
The nice thing about having one's own blog is that one gets to set the rules and those who don't like it, or who find it repetitive, inane or annoying, are free to go somewhere else.
So I am going to blog for a moment on my absolute, most-favorite subject in the world and if it bothers you or you think you've heard it before or you find it juvenile, tough. And be warned: I shall probably do it again.
I absolutely adore Women. I find their presence fascinating, their thoughts compelling, and their existence salvatory. There are maybe three Women in the world, of the thousands who show up in my daily life, in the newspaper or on tv, whom I actively dislike and perhaps if I knew them better, I might repent of that sin.
This is not just a drooling, sex-sort-of-thingy. I hope that I have matured beyond that since my youthful awakening to the wonder of Women in the world. It is the whole package -- body, mind, soul, emotion, the absolutely divine essence that animates every molecule of the double-x chromosome Being -- that captivates me.
In the last 24 hours, I have been able to provide some needed assistance to an older female friend in a nursing home, which should disabuse anyone still thinking that it's all about sex. I have given a ride to work to another female friend today, a pleasure indeed -- a goddess riding in my humble car, warming its seat with her bodily presence and exhaling her gentle breaths into its airspace.
I have gazed upon the beautiful artwork of a young African-American girl from the inner city, which I will be able to publicize on her behalf; and I have looked into the beautiful blue eyes of a woman from Texas who paid my office a visit -- as I did so, I imagined the Texas bluebonnets blossoming in the vistas of her memory.
I am blessed indeed.
A little country now and then
Every so often, I tune into the only "country" music station in my adopted metropolis and listen for about an hour, until they start repeating the same songs. 95 percent of it is either gooey junk with no discernable beat or melody, or stupid songs about the glories of getting drunk. But about 5 percent of the genre consists of incredibly poignant, powerful songs to which the likes of pop and rock never compare.
My favorites:
"Concrete Angel" and "The Little Girl" -- both about child abuse.
"Independence Day" -- about the horrors of domestic violence and one woman's solution.
"Watermelon Wine" -- an exquisitely beautiful oldie by Tom T. Hall.
"Buy Me a Rose" -- a slightly less old song by Kenny Rogers, about rekindling an old relationship.
"I Will Always Love You" -- Dolly Parton's original, a thousand times better than Whitney Houston's version.
The other day, I heard another, don't know who it's by, don't know the name of it yet, don't even know for sure whether I interpreted it correctly or not, but if I did, wow ...
Starts out sounding like another one of those guilt-producing songs about being sensitive to the homeless, a well-worn theme for the genre. Young guy's at a bridge and sees some homeless guy. They interact briefly -- you get the impression that the old fellow shares his street wisdom about everybody life's mattering and that the young guy gave the homeless guy some change and went on his way feeling better.
But then comes the kick-in-the-heart. The young guy was actually on the bridge getting ready to kill himself. The homeless guy convinced him not to jump -- it was the worth of the young guy's life that he was trying to emphasize. And though the old guy went back to his alley and his trash burner barrel, he had done something to feel good about on that day, something that truly made even his bleak existence valuable.
After the Ballet
Can anything in the universe
compare to the beauty of
Woman Dancing?
No supernova in galactic bloom
no slender fawn nosing spring grass
no thundering waterfall
no temple of ivory and gold
Can compare to Her
can approach Her
for perfection of grace
for glory of form.
Her senses are keen
every muscle in tune
She first embraces the stage
then, birdlike, escapes it.
Hazing Hell
Why is it that in every gathering of human society, from a girl's summer camp to a fancy private boarding school for boys, that people feel the need to create the hierarchy of hell?
I've been reading the autobiography of a classic English scholar -- and even the bare hints he's given of his schoolboy life at some British boarding school, circa 1910, sound horrifying similar to the way inmates behave in a maximum security prison.
Newbies are forced to do menial and humiliating tasks for the more senior members, and even in the most strait-laced-appearing of places, homosexual relationships are rampant, as means of promotion or survival.
