Lent

Repentance. Metanoia. Turning. Pirouette, some say. But that's too cute to capture the roughness of sackcloth. Or the smell of soot. Or the revolting fall of the body toward the grave. Mordecai in his humble suit, gravity pressing his body close to ashes. The violent, nauseating attention to the fact of dust. That I am come from it and return to it. Thud!

So as I wear the sign of Cain, I know I need to scream like Abel. To leave my middle class decorum, and wail. To beg, to scream, and to implore. To lament. Oh, the clarity of honest tears. I am pride, I am sloth, I am lust, I am greed, I am anger. I am unclean, I am unholy. I am dead man walking. I am scattered bones rotting in the valley. So, Please! Please! "Like the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress..." Please! Breath me!

Packs and Pyramids and Sand

They say respect the person because of the office. But can one respect the system that mounts such persons in such offices? A political pyramid scheme would be a bit more tolerable. The pyramid implies some minimal order, strategy, or coordination. The only order we’ve got is that of the pack. The loyalty of hunting parties. But that’s ok, because the hunters are supported by the order of the invisible hand. The economic pyramid. Do you really have to be an Egyptologist to question the rectitude of the pyramid? Ants keep building, ostrich keep digging, hyenas keep hunting. Such a beautifully lubricated system even allows the snake to throw his hissy fit. I don’t mean no disrespect. I’m just laying words. I say "irrectitude"! I'm the master and slave of triple redundancy.

rats

Rats!

Cat and mouse

A cat crossed my running path. An exquisite feline. The muscles still visible underneath the fat. A Medusa with a beer gut. Domesticated cat gone wild. Hard worker, hard player. She stares me down from accross the street. I am sure she fed on the likes of me in any of her previous eight lives. I am still running, matching her stares, but she she turns away. I am sure it is in disgust. Like she's run my route, like she knows my line. But I know that fat, staring, or running, we are all in the grips of our defensive mechanisms.

Some Sorites and a fox

My running route is littered with animal carcasses. Asphalt flowers at various stages of decomposition and stench. I think about the obscene speeds that disrupt natural rhythms, and soon find myself in the grips of the Sorites. I am a standstill carcass, the inescapable logical conclusion. The thought supervenes on throbbing muscles and bones moving at about nine miles per hour.

Across the wooden bridge I see a fox. It is in the middle of the biker lane, licking itself. I have never been so close to a fox before. I rasp my feet on the ground. She disappears into the woods. A subtle fall aroma drifts over my face. I breath in. Deeply.

A king in heat

The politician acted. The prophet spoke. Will the king heed?

of doves and serpents

Innocent as a dove and crafty as a snake. That's what I'm supposed to be, apparently according to AR and Jesus. Innocent as a dove but dumb as an ox does not seem to cut it. The vulture (so predatory), the hyena (so polluted), and the beaver (oh, so industrious) are also excluded. Innocence is axiomatic, but combined with shrewdness? And of which kind: venomous, constricting, or domestic?