We carry weighted words not spoken, choked before a verbal explosion. When we remember ourselves, we remind the sentences not verbalized—a reversal inwards, which creates our sense of self, for better or worst. If our vocabulary’s lacking, we might never articulate and sort our own verboseness. Then the taciturn turns on us.
Clamber
Across the road darts a chipmunk and scurries, I would clamber to climb. Light-footed, almost floating, it appears to mock gravity. I battle the uphill of Harlem hills on my second ten-kilometer lap around Central Park’s loop. One day little chipmunk will join you in your levity.
Fungible
Lego loves lego, and builders love lego, and lego loves artists in abstract. Fungible blocks building imaginings which strip away senseless detail for sensible, sensational delight. Worlds arranged through simple shapes as they are mined into mind crafts or Minecraft. Squares are neat with other squares, joined in infinitesimal dreamwork.
Mirabilia
They come both in the utmost disruption or the crease in a canvass. Normality disrupted by the shiny bursting forth with and through forces unknown. It forces us to revisit the graveyard of our language, metaphors undergirding words long forgotten. Grappling with the agonizing awe mirabilia brings, we gasp and grasp beneath prose for our first utterance.
Singularity
Asian mystic traditions and Christian eschatology mingle into a silicon dream. The singularity realizes history’s technological forces, but as with any eschaton, it fractures the world. Unlike the spiritual revolutions of the past, however, all are not invited to take part. As a reality-denying elitist Gnosticism, it seems the perfect religion for those who have long ago forsaken contact with or care for the poor.
Fain
Goethe watches Bryant Park’s carousel. Children fain oblivious to the German laureate. Around and around, the joy palatable. A circular wonder for the watcher. Always and never the same repetition and difference. If only someone would gift Goethe’s bust with a hand. What wonders would he write of what he saw?
Catalyst
He crosses the bridge at Selma one last time. A giant once again laid horizontal to the asphalt—once bloodied, now encased with honors. We journey with him across the river, hoping to follow the linage he leaves of loving our enemies and sacrifice—the ever returning catalyst of love.
Nōn verbīs sed rēbus
Pictures that compose words, words that write images—have we ever lived in anything but a blended world? A picture is worth a thousand words; a well-placed word conjures up a thousand pictures. Around the circle goes. We reference, and the references become worlds—objects which outstrip and sometimes outlast us.
Adamantine
When did resolved hardness become a virtue? Was there some Thomistic meeting declaring unadulterated truth forever that I missed? If our short democratic experiment taught us anything, we should know how fragile and laborious it is to build societal trust. Any diamond-like society forgets one must invite the other to the table every day. Share a meal, understand their fears, hopes, and dreams, and build a community together.
Sojourn
O temporary visitor in between the already, yet, and who knows, there where we face our finitude. Yet, we yearn After Finitude, the title of Meillassoux’s excellent book. Might we forgo our dogmatisms and ignorance into possibilities? Turn our petit peu into peut-être?
