Some Chips

Chips 66


One was fake, like a broom. One was fake, though dense and solid. Maybe that's why the tower of Babel is a saga of failure.

Furthermore, according to the Bible, humans came to east of Shinar's land to uphold a high tower, so they were not scattered in various places and could be one in the language. But God became angry. The tower was overthrown. People rocked to various directions, and the language confounded so that humans could not understand each other anymore. That's destiny. An other holy book, the Qur'an, which does not speak of God's wrath, still reminds that God deliberately does not want everything into one, but different.

The difference gave birth to a language and formed of life. I imagine God destroyed the Tower of Babel. In horror and ignorance, people realized: since then there was something transcendental in the "different", the objects were so rich in diversity, just when they were so concrete.

"To whatever direction you turn, there is the face of God," the Qur'an said.

Maybe it's what is being said in Rainer Maria Rilke's poem, "We live and be here to welcome the concrete things, to say 'house, bridge, showers, gate, jug, fruit trees', and say it with more intense than the desires and dreams of the objects to be present in the world."

Coming as differences, not as similarity, not as the one.
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Chips 33

Anyone who thinks there is a shortcut in faith will find a stalemate in history.

Each time there are always people who wander and reopen the door to the desert where Moses - who were not allowed to see the face of God - trying to guess the will of the Lord constantly.

There, fixed signs are signs, not the truth itself. There are many things unfinished.

The desert is not completely defeated, and the veil is always returned as fog. Humans can get lost, but history shows that faith never gives up, even when God is not part of the bright objects.
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Chips 16

Poetry and death: in both there are limitations plagued by  promises. In case of death, the promise is an eternal life. In the case of poetry, the promise is a meaning.

But I'll never know, will the promise be fulfilled, even in poetry. As long as it's a poem, lyric poetry at least, feels like a dance, which derives meaning from the turn, different, engagement, and the contrast of various motion itself. It does not get the meaning adopted by a concept that has been prepared. There is no basic story. At its base there is only a pit, an "existence" which actually does not exist.

There is no clear end point and a speedy conclusion. The dancers and the audience can never tell what exactly will be submitted by a dance.

Such as dance, poetry-- also the language in general -- is an endless conversation. There is an implied promise of delayed meaning, even absent. In short, the history of word and body is history of two limited entities, induced by something infinite.

Indeed there are gloomy and scary in death, which is not found in the poem: extreme solitude.

I imagine the end of the day. On one night, there's row of bed. Coffin. We lay in the remoteness. Mon cher, je me sens très triste...

This is where the language, the language of poetry -- which never comes from a solitude -- has no analogy with death. Nevertheless, the death can't be separated from it. Can't be separated, but also can't be held.

As Orpheus  who was trying to raise the dead Euridice from underground nature, poetry is also trying to raise the death of remoteness. But failed, as Orfeus also failed. Death, solitude, natural underground, all of it almost completely still stays far away in there.
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Chips 12

Because the night is not completely impenetrable, also by drunk bats, typhoon nowhere and moon crazy, hope all stems from an attitude that does not complain at the boundary.

The more people know about the vastness of the universe, the more people see the earth being aloof, with humans and their remoteness.

The planet is just a speck of nodes that will quickly disappear. But at the same time, in a state -- that is practically abandoned -- lost and absence is not something extraordinary.

Life is so close and this nothingness is so magnificent.
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Chips 32

Each prayer has tension. Prayer is always moving between abundant expression and silence, between the desire to understand and a sense of wonder that is also respectfully. In front of the Divine, the tongue can not act.

If there's religious reviling the poem, it is because the religion forgets that poetry is also a kind of prayer. "At your door, I'm knocking, I can't turn away from you," I whispered it in the sense of relief and despair.

Poetry -- even in its darkest statement -- is a feeling of emptiness, but also an attitude of unrecognized gratitude.
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Mon cher, je espère que vous serez d'accord avec moi.

[CZ-lacalifusa03Jan15]