tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58394942012-01-30T06:54:48.851-05:00absolutely null and utterly voidPaulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.comBlogger8811100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-80315625160515923332012-01-28T17:06:00.005-05:002012-01-30T06:50:08.451-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-70076636386287099982012-01-21T12:41:00.006-05:002012-01-21T13:58:08.684-05:00

The "Comfort Zone," of course, is that place out of which we are perpetually encouraged to get ourselves, usually for someone else's idea of our own good, that "good" often being some species of alleged personal growth and transformation. Those who inhabit the introverted, shy and reclusive side of the human spectrum will know what I mean. Since childhood, we're admonished: come out of your

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-87331865959200053952012-01-15T19:20:00.002-05:002012-01-15T19:30:22.437-05:00

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that "Belief in God" refers to linguistic usage, that "God" is a word that somehow situates or orients the varieties of human reaction to the "that there is something rather than nothing" -- awe, fear, anguish, gratitude, joy, curiosity, rebellion, anger, despair, hope, love. So, then, what is "God" without the humans that designate "God" ? Is that a

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-68069863084044214532012-01-07T12:16:00.005-05:002012-01-07T13:07:08.390-05:00

It goes without saying.What an opening phrase ! Even against such classics as In the beginning was the Word or Call me Ishmael it bravely stakes its paradoxical claim, begging us to interrogate the It goes even as we enter the wordless silence to which it points. In winter the weeds go without saying, pod by pod, stem by stem, into the ground. Some are pulled rudely into a kind of saying by my

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-33702125508519196232011-12-31T19:31:00.000-05:002011-12-31T19:37:11.097-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-82762614098706340532011-12-26T09:28:00.003-05:002011-12-26T09:34:55.142-05:00

The wave, poised like a writer's cramp, overhangs a pismiry rogationof pilgrims on a green bridge. Look --a parasol or two, a red chop,something like Golgotha or Fuji smoking on a jaded horizon. Their song, halfwaybetween a boatman's yo and ho,part miserere nobis, part deo gratias,hovers on the wind. Providence, brethren,is slippery. The stuck handdrips something like sweat or muskand the

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-22868337082219480122011-12-22T16:59:00.002-05:002011-12-22T17:06:55.518-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-31226182320181696062011-12-17T16:35:00.004-05:002011-12-22T17:06:24.169-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-54359433592313574072011-12-17T10:00:00.000-05:002011-12-17T10:46:21.687-05:00

Yesterday morning I glanced at the printer in our little office. I had not been printing, nor was I intending to print. But there was unaccustomed text in the little window:No help available for this.There it was, sudden & unbidden, the answer to the relentless, unyielding, inchoate question of my spiritual life. No help available. For this. For the overwhelming, de profundis clamavi of a

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-22120062940959773542011-11-27T18:10:00.003-05:002011-11-27T18:30:37.203-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-23547649445057786972011-11-25T08:24:00.003-05:002011-11-27T18:33:21.368-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-1262859796539546362011-11-05T13:11:00.006-04:002011-11-07T06:15:44.222-05:00

I keep having these little epiphanies lately, micro-piphs I suppose one might call them, or petit mal seizures of the imagination. Today, in the shower I think, it struck me that I have been assuming that after the desert -- viz. my recent metaphysical anomie -- there will be something else -- a paradise, maybe, or perhaps simply a return to the old, familiar and comfortable neighborhood.I mean

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-3136199949197167482011-10-23T15:00:00.001-04:002011-10-23T15:25:44.577-04:00

The autumn garden is a fury of being and becoming. Birth and rot coexist, and, inbetween, riots the great, yearly going-to-seed.But still, as Dogen said, there is firewood, and there is ash.The sky is the color of iron. We launch our hearts at it. At our feet, dirt the swallows them, fallen and red as abandoned tomatoes. Love apples, some say. Love is blue says the old song. The autumn garden is

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-76016725395633989162011-10-15T13:34:00.007-04:002011-10-15T13:55:56.574-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-26792910892459674752011-10-10T15:23:00.001-04:002011-10-10T15:30:25.652-04:00

Although I hoped otherwise, I knew last Sunday's sermon would not present my view of the text.It was the parable of the wedding guests. First, the elite are invited. Not only do they not give a shit, but they rampage and kill members of the wedding. So then the hoi polloi are invited. The eagerly accept. So far so good. JC is down with the hoi polloi.But the host notes one guest who is not

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-47180340881734458432011-09-23T13:19:00.002-04:002011-09-23T13:55:54.884-04:00

My face before my birth and after my death. The weeds and I, particularly in the fall, sit with this koan. They seem to be making more progress than I could ever hope to make.I walked home from the auto mechanic's shop this morning, using the Honda's several little miseries as an excuse to absent myself from work. As I passed a long-vacant lot on downtown's outskirts, I admired the late summer,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-10597678815741130512011-09-17T12:21:00.006-04:002011-09-17T19:38:47.294-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-67793984525825448442011-09-10T08:05:00.011-04:002011-09-10T16:46:50.298-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-13229072677859536942011-09-04T18:08:00.000-04:002011-09-04T18:11:22.884-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-78179975988230768802011-08-29T06:48:00.001-04:002011-08-29T06:51:22.511-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-22290661949139500922011-08-23T15:29:00.000-04:002011-08-23T18:29:05.793-04:00

The act of finding out what will suffice : Wallace Stevens said this about poetry, and it is equally applicable to religious life. This, I understand, is a rather heterodox and relativistic view of such matters which are often said to involve indisputable Truth, revealed Truth inscribed in stone, not provisional near-sufficiencies written in light on water. What will suffice is, by

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-53684320490491130782011-08-19T13:55:00.000-04:002011-08-20T14:22:47.254-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-44757429039047278522011-07-31T17:23:00.006-04:002011-07-31T20:36:35.855-04:00

Photography calls edges into question. The macro lens, with its maniacally shallow depth of field, demands a steady hand, a calm atmosphere and a swift and accurate executive decision as to where to focus. I, for one, am not usually a blurred foreground kinda guy. But only rarely do conditions perfectly conspire. And, of course, there are happy accidents: the photographic subject claims every

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-6000089154895512472011-07-25T14:37:00.006-04:002011-07-27T07:01:32.610-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-51600637885408002832011-07-24T12:26:00.000-04:002011-07-24T19:47:37.477-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-37524686019956850222011-07-04T14:58:00.004-04:002011-07-04T15:10:35.646-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-62370485268364426802011-06-30T06:29:00.003-04:002011-06-30T06:49:31.632-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-80531152995066070752011-06-25T16:24:00.011-04:002011-06-25T19:10:17.752-04:00

The atmospherics were perfect, cool, still, cloudy. I'd just found my blue slicker so I was ready for rain should it arrive. It has been raining for days, chill damp rain that makes me grateful for a reprieve before the bright, hot summer sets in. Today I woke to thunder and downpours, but they had stopped and the weeds were calling me. I drove up Prospect Hill, an old ski and woodland oasis in

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-9771447949860673842011-06-20T09:00:00.001-04:002011-06-20T09:11:18.668-04:00

A walk beside running water is good, and a walk downstream from falling water is better. Water is a fine accompaniment to whatever song might be running through one's head.Salve Regina, I sang under my breath, up to the point of yet unmemorized Latin and neumes. It seemed right to be singing about banished children of Eve in the woods; it seemed right to be addressing mater misericordiae as I

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-68047826626124943622011-06-15T06:56:00.003-04:002011-06-15T07:10:39.240-04:00

Closing in on the intended one-a-day for a month.dints

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-87337769866846702142011-06-04T18:04:00.002-04:002011-06-04T18:20:52.995-04:00

I have been on a long, strange journey, a journey through weeds and cathedrals, a circular journey which, like a dream, ends in waking. A damp, unseasonably warm week depletes itself in storms, clogged and rumbling ears in vertigo. And, voila, suddenly all is ordinary and convalescent, bright and still. Stand on your own two feet, sit on your own two cheeks. Everything returns to the body. The

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-5516988872353781332011-05-29T12:40:00.000-04:002011-05-29T12:42:45.098-04:00

Photography is a physical sport. There is the hefting of the camera, of course, and the precision of framing the shot and holding the camera motionless. Between elbows, shoulders and knees, not to mention obliging tree trunks, railings and rocks, the body can become a perfectly respectable tripod. And, squatting on one's heels at full closeup, one can even eschew the focus ring, and rock back

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-9175631676285253612011-05-21T16:01:00.000-04:002011-05-21T16:27:22.974-04:00

One day of sun after seven of rain, drizzle, fog, downpours and dampness is enough to turn the mind toward summer. I spent the morning weeding and digging and planting along the front walk of the big, old stone church on Main Street. Passersby waved and greeted, and one joined in the weeding, all seeming pleased at being alive in a world where there are flowers and sunshine and people with whom

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-86303993320734309732011-05-20T11:44:00.017-04:002011-05-20T16:10:26.966-04:00

I was looking for asylum, that much I know. I was looking for, as Philip Larkin wrote, "a serious house on serious earth." And if I couldn't follow Thomas Merton into Gethsemani, signing onto the closest thing to it that would have me would have to suffice. Note how little this original impulse had to do with Jesus. I was comforted by the Dalai Lama's famous advice to seekers: look to your own

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-58424227072913422052011-05-14T14:19:00.009-04:002011-05-15T19:14:19.554-04:00

That there is something rather than nothing. Note that it's a declarative, not a question. We can interrogate that declarative, but we must not transform it into a question, especially one prefaced with "why." That way madness, or at least mauvais foi, lies. Leave "how" to science; let science run with it as far as it can go, into complex regions light years beyond my understanding. I appreciate

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-65570513069392591712011-05-07T18:00:00.000-04:002011-05-07T18:16:38.630-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-36702306385291221882011-04-30T10:02:00.007-04:002011-04-30T17:46:19.973-04:00

Riding the night bus is an exercise in disembodiment. The blue, molded plastic seats conform to no known human configuration. The voice that announces the stops is pre-recorded and GPS-driven. The city flows past, behind glass, beyond a river of cars. Eye contact is non existent. Eyes are closed, averted, affixed to various species of electronic devices. We are home here, we ghosts. We steal

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-11850891771564258672011-04-29T17:35:00.008-04:002011-04-29T18:45:33.146-04:00

When I turned 59 two months ago I resolved to stop struggling against and apologizing for my particular way of being in the world. There is some urgency to the task. I must confess that the approach of the next decade of numbers is terrifying. The dislocation of feeling no different than I did at thirty and yet being looked at with the reifying and patronizing gaze reserved for the "elderly" is

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-8914542706419045732011-04-23T18:06:00.001-04:002011-04-23T22:27:51.808-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-28522485135135826722011-04-16T17:15:00.026-04:002011-04-17T18:53:09.259-04:00

I. CondemnedII. Given His CrossIII. First FallIV. Meets His MotherV. Simon of CyreneVI. VeronicaVII. Second FallVIII. Daughters of JerusalemIX. Third FallX. StrippedXI. NailedXII. DiesXIII. Taken DownXIV. Entombed

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-13280015732929033432011-04-15T06:31:00.002-04:002011-04-15T06:33:03.523-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-2584488839628671862011-04-14T20:04:00.001-04:002011-04-14T20:07:23.473-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-7715577287425052542011-04-14T06:44:00.000-04:002011-04-14T06:46:00.200-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-68487419447436559372011-04-13T06:58:00.000-04:002011-04-13T07:00:51.438-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-89184681437421636402011-04-12T07:05:00.000-04:002011-04-12T07:06:28.768-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-39682997092245933912011-04-12T06:55:00.001-04:002011-04-12T06:57:25.419-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-42440627579759337172011-04-09T13:52:00.004-04:002011-04-11T06:41:19.289-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-30485209209986616342011-04-02T10:50:00.012-04:002011-04-09T14:21:38.208-04:00

A fort- and gratuitous rhyme is as cool as a word with two disparate etymologies. There are no accidents, it has been claimed, but of course there are. Still, having risen, once, from a workday as a ghost is worth considering. Having wafted, whiffed, waffled, even. A house of toast is a house of waffles, no ? A joke about breakfast, a Eucharist; fey, vaudevillian, ursa saltatrix -- enough modes

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-36139419882448626282011-03-28T15:46:00.000-04:002011-03-28T18:53:56.047-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-56686295233233625742011-03-26T19:05:00.000-04:002011-03-26T20:12:10.113-04:00

I looked up from my work late Friday after the dust of an excruciatingly busy and exasperating day had settled and I thought: I have become a ghost. It was a startling thought, clear, discrete, hallucinatorily delivered, like the first thing glimpsed when surfacing from a near-drowning. I stared at the bright yellow cable connecting my laptop to the mainframe computer. It hadn't prevented my

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-29701842291792346412011-03-06T12:51:00.009-05:002011-03-06T17:10:35.258-05:00

Yesterday, for the first time in weeks, I went to the river with my camera. These are the final days of winter, when the only hint of spring is the lengthening light, some swollen buds, and the rarest of green shoots. The world is dessicated, fractured, withered, gone skeletal. The bike path is still mostly under snow and crisscrossed by downed trees. It's a most congenial landscape, of course,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-35224507783047052612011-02-02T18:00:00.000-05:002011-02-02T18:15:03.019-05:00

These days, these harsh and snow-heaped brilliant days, I think often of the Biblical dyad: heart of stone, heart of flesh. There's a rock in my chest, the size of a heart, the size of a fist. A cold and petrified thing, like a clump of tar that the snowshovel dislodges, then cracks in two. I've been picking a fight with everything -- with sleep and with waking, with belief and with unbelief,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-55252493536473070972011-01-17T10:48:00.008-05:002011-01-17T11:22:02.914-05:00

When I get religiously out of sorts (as I have been most religiously of late) I find myself turning back to Thomas Merton. He is, as Alan Ginsberg said of Walt Whitman, my "courage teacher." In his journals he documented in great, intimate detail how he lived out his complicated and often conflicted vocation: monastic, solitary, writer, contemplative, pacifist, public figure and cloistered

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-81623518571537249232011-01-15T17:33:00.007-05:002011-01-16T14:01:25.398-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-91493557239450713052011-01-12T08:57:00.001-05:002011-01-12T09:05:34.276-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-24003448730874923762011-01-08T09:05:00.001-05:002011-01-08T09:06:58.228-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-55657459146809292552011-01-06T06:52:00.001-05:002011-01-06T06:57:56.944-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-67975569485098963442011-01-02T15:05:00.004-05:002011-01-02T15:10:42.726-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-6241592551136898522010-12-31T18:24:00.005-05:002010-12-31T19:10:53.935-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-38746428346338262832010-12-27T09:37:00.010-05:002010-12-27T13:32:05.891-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-8762894443506167762010-12-20T09:36:00.022-05:002010-12-22T19:43:38.911-05:00

...Now that my ladder's gone.I must lie down where all the ladders startIn the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.I have been walking just outside the bounds of Advent, a personal rogation, interrogation even. Out here the weeds, each according to its kind, become skeletal, become dust, become slime. I say farewell; I photograph a corpse; I slit a long pod and feathery oblong seeds sift out. In

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-69346941063465768442010-12-18T15:44:00.000-05:002010-12-18T16:28:59.650-05:00

The crash in the night was not unexpected. Anyone with cats -- let alone 5 cats as we have -- comes to expect the occasional proverbial nocturnal bump. But this one was different, louder, closer, more complex, clearly a whole collection of things plunging to floor from the top on my dresser. I turned on the light.Zelig, holy one, a rambunctious, young tuxedo cat with comically large back feet,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-66944739845961857912010-12-12T15:53:00.004-05:002010-12-13T19:30:46.515-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-31479242091584620802010-12-03T18:24:00.006-05:002010-12-04T13:04:42.067-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-20646165715191110212010-11-28T18:17:00.003-05:002010-11-28T18:24:09.645-05:00

That she'd rolled out of nothingness seemed queer,but there was much to occupy her days,and fiat lux exacted math and faithmagnitudes beyond imaginingeven for a poet, which she was,if only of a minor minor sort. Home Ec and English Lit prepared her well.She decked her hearth and pages in grand style --bloom-heaped wicker's always a la mode --and made the midnight sky a picture bookto ease her

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-74629067389511791582010-11-25T20:00:00.000-05:002010-11-25T19:46:13.500-05:00

The Boston Globe came today with a mountainous packet of ads reminding me that all three variants of my seasonal Noelophobic cri du coeur -- it's not even Halloween/Thanksgiving/Advent yet ! -- will all outdate and need to be replaced with my signature holiday inchoate whimpering.It did not help to read about an internet phenomenon that had, so far, been off my radar screen: the mommy blogger

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-38460301114416237042010-11-08T06:05:00.000-05:002010-11-08T06:06:53.545-05:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-75538950930335294272010-11-07T12:18:00.002-05:002010-11-07T12:27:12.285-05:00

Who has no house now will never build one.-- Rainer Maria RilkeThe autumn's past. This is the house I've built.A roof, a floor, four walls, a door, that's it,sub code, badly measured, unvarnished, raw,overly apophatic, you'll complain,but even a window would be luxury,a campy tribute to an enthused age, when casements spilled their buttery, mullioned light into the obscure forests of our selves,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-74288158120875193592010-11-06T09:56:00.001-04:002010-11-07T17:02:06.232-05:00

It's Autumn, and time for the old theme: Self-Portrait with Self-Portrait, or, Two Paulas, one with a big, black prosthetic eye. I am bound by my body and my history. Maybe that's why I so admire the autumnal community garden, a dilapidating shanty-town of cultivars and weeds.At the bedrock is Blue Willow, and the child dreaming herself into the quiet blue and white ceramic landscape. The child

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-8740342031982092010-10-30T12:24:00.010-04:002010-10-30T15:09:01.300-04:00

I blogged about my pink pajamas in early 2004, their decrepitude, their squalor. Now, nearly seven years later, the pajamas have reached crisis level, a defcon 5 of wardrobe malfeasance. They have reached the point at which DK has begun to object. I have to admit that, as the waistband increasingly detaches from the legs, the pajamas -- all aesthetics aside -- are approaching non-functional. They

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-110160621558564262010-10-23T13:00:00.001-04:002010-10-23T15:04:38.597-04:00

My office window, high and narrow and stuck shut, looks out upon a rock ledge. Last year, as part of an major drainage project, the hospital did extensive work on the ledge, including removing some of the dwarf trees that had taken root in it. I can still recall the shock and grief I felt when I came in one morning to find the graceful, slender birch that had bisected my rocky view cut down to a

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-35406539074463322082010-10-08T06:54:00.000-04:002010-10-10T06:27:40.124-04:00

Neither arch- or seraph-, too old for cherub, more drone than anything,you punch the guard clock of your night watch,pushing the allowanceof fatigue and indifference,and haul your yellowinghalf-stripped unflappable scapulae behind youand over me.

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-81540840867986977232010-10-07T06:39:00.003-04:002010-10-07T06:44:17.183-04:00

Piss Verses, or Even YouNo, I do understand. Circumstances do lead to conclusions.To the desire for something episcopal. One can only take so much of this standing around before someone finally slams the door.Take magenta, for example. A photo of a field of ice plants, just a filler in a medical journal, between the piss jars and porphyrins.No one would ever let such naked retina into the Paul

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-55751742843319002802010-10-06T07:15:00.002-04:002010-10-06T07:19:02.908-04:00

Pears heat/that presses up and blunts/the points of pears H.D.The pear tree behind the poorhouse is so laden with bottom-heavy volumesthat it seems spattered like a green pane, with drops more of combustion and gravity than pure water is -- more like candlewax, or tears, which are also

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-21347077775842324222010-09-30T06:56:00.004-04:002010-10-03T17:39:08.878-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-35181998705699589432010-09-25T12:41:00.013-04:002010-09-25T14:24:40.997-04:00

The harvest is past, the summer is ended,and we are not saved. -- Jeremiah 8:20 , Proper 20, year C, RCL, 17th Sunday after PentecostI began my return journey to Christianity with Thomas Merton, smitten with his beautifully and thoroughly articulated retreat from the world: not so much smitten with his faith or with the object of his faith, Christ, but with the

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-51658665747413337682010-09-18T08:12:00.000-04:002010-09-18T13:30:07.907-04:00

Religion is a vexing enterprise. For example, I opened Merton's masterpiece, "New Seeds of Contemplation" and read -- a man cannot enter into the deepest center of himselffortunately, most of the men who try this sort of thingChrist prayed that all men may become One you and I and all men were made to find our identity in the One Mystical Christthere are 2 things that men can do about the pain

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-66999627643249016552010-09-05T15:30:00.005-04:002010-09-05T19:18:10.999-04:00

There is a ubiquitous pleasantry afoot, which seems to have replaced "you're welcome" as a response to "thank you," and that's No problem. It's mildly annoying. It implies that the whole transaction could well be viewed as a "problem" but for the incredible generosity and kindness of the utterer of "No problem." A problem, etymologically speaking, is something that is thrown forth -- something

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-33559163971718981352010-08-30T16:00:00.000-04:002010-08-30T16:04:32.631-04:00

August is making one of its signature last stands: bright, hot, in-your-face summertime. It's picked the Clairol shelves clean of Midsummer Green and is thinking of buying a motorcycle, or at least a leather motorcycle jacket. But it hasn't convinced me. Evening comes early, and the cricket song's at the andante that precedes largo. The DCR landscape crews have once again rampaged through and

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-7508305761035759572010-08-26T17:03:00.009-04:002010-08-27T19:48:43.675-04:00

Against the claims of solitude there is image --the reciprocating love of eye and world.

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-53692735989162426722010-08-25T14:42:00.008-04:002010-08-25T16:12:02.514-04:00

We'd planned four days in Falmouth for two main activities: for Camerawoman, taking pictures of weeds, and for Bicycleman, bicycling. As we set out, all meteorologic signs were ominous,as were the usual semiotics at the approach to the Cape. Over the years we'd stayed at the Resort many times, including the year we had to evacuate with Hurricane Bob nipping at our heels. The joint was, the

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-85153396931689415912010-08-21T13:58:00.001-04:002010-08-21T15:29:56.616-04:00

In August, in the meadow just over the hill, I found the fullness of time. Time and space have as many outskirts as Dante's hell had circles -- the outer darkness, beyond the pale, the city limits, the marginal, the liminal, places of exile and ostracism, beyond-the-end-of-the-line places. "She's over the hill," they say, casually, dismissive, relieved not to be there themselves. And, yes

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-4473953678718336632010-08-13T20:09:00.002-04:002010-08-14T13:56:21.762-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-17194012010949641552010-08-07T17:00:00.000-04:002010-08-07T17:29:37.459-04:00

We weren't even out of Massachusetts when the traffic jam hit. It was Saturday morning, summertime, and the populace was hell bent on recreating itself. We certainly were, DK and I, headed toward the White Mountains. As I gazed morosely out of the window, I wondered whether a black plume of smoke up ahead had anything to do with the current unpleasantness. It did. The fact that a gaggle of

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-22128364090291359152010-08-02T06:55:00.000-04:002010-08-02T06:55:12.591-04:00

What, I have been asking myself of late, is an asocial type like myself doing in such an anthropocentric religion as Christianity ?This must be what I have heard called a "neuralgic" point: one of those body bits that zing unpleasantly when touched, like the carpal tunnel or the not-so-funny bone. Or, by analogy, a philosophical sore spot. I had nightmares, as a child, of impending, smothering

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-75447754451962849832010-08-01T13:44:00.002-04:002010-08-01T15:19:44.819-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-46730404574458169902010-07-23T20:19:00.005-04:002010-07-24T09:07:16.087-04:00

We're going North today, to the White Mountains. Back in the day, in marriage #1 to Outdoorsman, it was a favorite haunt. Outdoorsman and I were spectacularly ill-suited to one another, but I am grateful to him for the camping trips and the mountain hikes we took. I can recall the smell of campfire, and the splendour of the Milky Way seen without interfering lights, and, today, thinking about my

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-376443769889649142010-07-17T16:00:00.000-04:002010-07-17T16:05:23.562-04:00

This is the month in which, every two years, the Daily Office presents readings from the book of Joshua, including such fodder for Lectio Divina as "Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and asses with the edge of the sword," the "they" being the Israelites, and the Commander-in-Chief for said genocide being God.This is when baby, bathwater,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-8747048217673768622010-07-06T19:21:00.000-04:002010-07-06T19:32:46.300-04:00

This is the sort of day when simply uttering the two syllables "polar" is like an intercessory prayer. Bipolar is twice as cold. And scold me, if you must, for appropriating a dreadful affliction for my own, literary purposes. Hell, just yesterday, I railed for long minutes about the former Charles Street Jail being made into an incarceratory theme park hotel with the ironic name "Liberty." It's

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-83739683675157386452010-07-04T17:32:00.000-04:002010-07-04T18:29:10.947-04:00

I sit here sweating at the unsavory confluence of a patriotic holiday and a heat wave; the rattly fan, more noise than cool, is drowning out Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D-minor. We had church on the lawn this morning, and it was lovely. Needless to say, I'd been skeptical, being of a mind that church isn't church unless it's in a ruined cathedral in which it is snowing. As a large black

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-7194528864280716912010-06-24T19:33:00.011-04:002010-06-25T13:59:51.774-04:00

When, in confirmation class a few years ago, the priest described the Trinity as a "perichoresis" or a dance, the image was supplanted in my imagination by that of a subatomic particle -- an unseen thing comprised of relationships, attractions and repulsions, within a quarky cloud of strangeness. And now that I've offended both the theology community and the atomic physics community, let me

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-54200657496084798912010-06-19T17:27:00.008-04:002010-06-19T19:47:44.813-04:00

So here comes summer, the green festival of decline. It's about time. It's all about time. I turn the wheel of my iPod to "Hello darkness my old friend," and then "Losing my religion," scanning the time horizon with my spyglass for the shorter cooler days and longer nights whose anticipation must get me through the upcoming long, hot, green Dionysian Advent. I come away from the Church History

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-30581034981174385942010-06-12T13:32:00.000-04:002010-06-12T16:32:24.089-04:00

Dark, damp, thundery. The basement cul de sac of litter boxes and laundering machines is cooler than the upstairs house, and darker by dint of the U-shaped light bulbs, temperamental as prima donnas, that, more often than not, decline to ignite. The smell of detergent -- a specific type, bought in unaccustomed bulk just for its blue, sharp, soapy non-floral fragrance -- recalls my Bubbi's

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-88776474014437269522010-05-30T10:38:00.001-04:002010-05-30T17:39:38.594-04:00

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-2098589860477717412010-05-17T17:00:00.000-04:002010-05-17T17:14:13.317-04:00

Looking up at last from the tasks at hand, I feel the old bracing dislocation of coming to -- to what ? A self that has been so engrossed in those tasks that it has forgotten itself, and seems for a second newborn, blank and strange. What to call that ? Depersonalization ? A touch of the divine ? Or simply a neurological frisson, a whiff of vertigo ?Cue the old bit of Neruda -- a veces me canso

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-60366966227037798512010-05-01T17:00:00.000-04:002010-05-01T17:47:44.034-04:00

Every spring, as faithfully as a Saint's Day on the liturgical Kalendar, it recurs: my impulse to cling to winter, to the season of cold, dark, snow and skeletal branches. So, needless to say, my ears perked up at last week's Gospel reading: It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.I gazed past the candles, Eastertide's abundance of them, and past the altar

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-5473398071545121722010-04-10T18:46:00.000-04:002010-04-10T18:51:15.290-04:00

My first husband and I met in a hospital. He was a nursing student, I was an intern. After two years and random vicissitudes, we made the ill-considered decision to wed. We were, after a brief excursion to Chicago, back at the same little hospital. The excursion and return were both fraught and conflictual; the return was, at least on my part, a desperate default whose repercussions I feel every

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-58808307088368149322010-04-01T16:01:00.006-04:002010-04-01T17:49:42.279-04:00

The riverwalk, today, was a riverslosh. As water leaked through my 35-year-old LL Bean boots, I couldn't help imagining my soggy walk as a prelude to tonight's footwashing liturgy. I'd spent the morning setting out bowls and towels, as well as removing the tarp from the organ and the towels from the sacristy sideboard that had been set out to catch invading rain. The errant river, receding, has

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-39250694111967411592010-03-31T13:36:00.007-04:002010-03-31T14:43:28.035-04:00

I sort of noticed a few weeks ago that good old Haloscan -- the free comment system I've used here for the duration -- looked a little different. Sure, sure, I thought, transiently annoyed when it failed to recognize me, but, you know, whatever, things change and all that. When, today, I received 3 spam comments here from Twitter from 3 strangers -- one in japanese -- all shilling "js-kit" which,

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839494.post-28235791066254197232010-03-27T16:03:00.000-04:002010-03-27T17:10:18.797-04:00

It rained hard and long, so hard and long that even the waterfall was swamped. I swung by before work to see the river at full flood. Around me, the geese honked and strutted; I wondered whether it was the disconsolate honking of parents whose nests had been washed away. A gloomy thought, perhaps, but my lenten desert this year has been one of distraction and distraction breeds gloom, or, at

Paulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08662032255136738684noreply@blogger.com1