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Nicole Dec 2018
Dear Bri,

I've put this letter off the longest
Because it doesn't come from anger
And although it may resemble it
It does not come from regret either
This letter just comes from my soul
From me
From a place I can finally trust

This letter differs from the rest
Because I want it to be a mix
Between explanation and closure
And the others I didn't want them to read
But part of me hopes you do see this
I just finally think I understand
Why I had to leave

First of all
I never used you
Not one time
You learned that I'm fiercely independent
And I hope you know it was never
Ever
Ever
About money for me
Or about your home town
Or your fathers property
No that relationship was about love
I loved you

See, the thing about love
The thing I didn't know about
Was that it changes over time
There are not always sparks
Even so, those fade eventually
And from there you must create deeper ties
Connect to one another on a new level
That is the point at which I failed

I know you hated how
I always explained my behavior by my past
And for that I am not sorry
What I am sorry for is the fact that
I did not step up
I did not know how to grow with life
How to let go of the pain
How to move forward
Instead I hid the pain behind drugs
Legal and prescribed
And behind other people's affection
I pushed away the pain
Because it hurt way too much
I was not ready to face it
I had no idea how to do that
And by not accepting my real feelings
I not only blunted the unhelpful ones
But the pleasant ones as well

By not dealing with my past
By not allowing myself to heal
I could not have allowed myself
To love you

It's been over a week since
I wrote the first half of this
It's hard to find the right words
It's hard to open my heart
On something so sensitive
As a love that I ended prematurely
I want to let you go though
We both deserve to be happy again
And I am, most days
But I need to acknowledge my heart
Allow myself to be sad one last time
I want to be entirely honest with you

You've been the hardest person
For me to let go of recently
Now that you live in town again
I think about you a lot
When I'm driving through campus
Past the engineering building
When I'm walking back to my car
Memories constantly surface of us
Like when you left that phone number
On the windshield of my car
And it was to some Pizza Hut in DC
Or driving through the town where we lived
Surrounded by white snow
Singing different parts to Pentatonix
Or when we spent Christmas with your family
And we connected through the calm of a place
So far from the city
As we chopped down a tree and
Played video games under warm blankets
Or even when we sat on the edge of a cliff in St. Francis
And I told you I felt nothing when we kissed
So so many memories
Of love
Of pain
Of a connection
Of my best friend

And it's not that I want to be together again
We are very different people and
I really am happy again
And I don't want to make you sad
Or make you feel anything bad
Because no matter what I care about you
I just need to reprocess everything
With the recognition that
That relationship would have lasted
If, back then,
I were the person I am now

See,
We may have been entirely different
And we definitely had our issues
But you were right when you said
That I couldn't commit
Because I couldn't commit to myself either

I couldn't love myself
I couldn't believe in myself
I couldn't process the trauma
I had no idea how to
I didn't know what to do
I felt only pain all of the time
Underneath everything else
I always had a sadness hanging onto me
I was emotionally unavailable
I didn't know how to love
I didn't know what love meant
Because I never loved myself
And I don't believe that line
That you can't love someone else
Until you love yourself first
But it sure makes it easier

Back then,
I didn't trust myself
So I let everyone else lead my life
I never questioned the path either
I just accepted life as it was
Because I didn't believe that I could change it
Which leaked into our relationship
Because if there was something I needed
Or something I was unhappy with
I could have tried to talk about it
I made the choice not to

I used to self-sabotage a lot
Before I realized that I didn't have to
I could feel those urges anytime
But that did not mean I had to carry them out
I lived entirely by my emotions at that time
When I was sad, nothing could be positive
When I was angry, I had to let it out
I did not even consider that
My actions and my emotions
Are two entirely different things

I have grown so much since then
I'd like to hope you'd be proud
Because despite anything I've said or done
I still care about how you feel
And how you see me
I'm always tempted to check your writing
But now I can distinguish between
My helpful and unhelpful urges
So I do not allow myself to try
You deserve your privacy
And I deserve to not let these residual feelings
Interfere with my life now

I just want you to know that
I messed up when I hurt you
I made a choice for us both
Instead of sitting down together
To talk and figure out how we both felt
I don't think I could have figured myself out
If I hadn't left when I did

Because since then
I went through a toxic relationship
That empowered me almost as much as it broke me
And I hurt some people along the way too
I thought I loved people I really didn't
I did acid and developed positive habits as a result
I actually take care of myself now
And most of the time I like myself
Often I even love myself
I stopped doing drugs
I finally trust myself and
I listened to myself for once
And I'm changing my career path now
I learned to be mindful of my feelings
And to not take them out on those I love
I learned what love means
I developed more compassion
I learned to be assertive
And entirely honest and real
I learned who I am

And now I'm here
An entirely different person
Writing a final letter to you
A person who I loved
Who's also entirely different now
But someone who could have been my forever
Once upon a time

But I'd like to believe in fate
And trust that all of this
Is exactly what needed to happen
For both of us to grow into ourselves
And I can't speak for you
But you will always be in my heart
Thank you for the years we spent together
Thank you for teaching me that life isn't all bad
Thank you for being there for me
For being patient and kind and for loving me
Thank you for being you
I truly hope that you find happiness
I wish you peace and love
And everything good
And I wish the same for me
Charise Clarke  Jun 2010
Perfume
Charise Clarke Jun 2010
Limbs littered the earth, her negligee no longer lay in his soldier’s
world; he would do anything to smell her perfume
once more. What day was it? Ahhh…Monday,
the perfect first date, a moon-
lit walk on a beach. He felt like a train
about to crash and nobody was dancing.  

She felt alien alone in their home. Dancing
was impossible and she stared at the photo, a soldier’s
face, not his own. Limbo was a train
journey that never ended. Billboards advertising perfume
and the never ending sun, the never ending moon.
The name of the days changed but Monday

was no different from Tuesday or last Monday.
She wondered if disabled people thought dancing
ridiculous. He could return disabled…the moon
was full tonight, she wondered if he in his soldier’s
uniform would be admiring it remembering her perfume
and not side stepping dead bodies feeling like a train

wreck. How many poor driver’s of trains
were haunted by suicides, faces looming out, the Monday
blues? And some women will never afford perfume
and would never be taken out dancing,
it did not console her. She was one of thousands of soldier’s
wives all gazing wistfully at the unhelpful moon.

She dreams of werewolves howling at the moon,
of him passing through a dark forest on a train
coming back to her, having thrown his soldier’s
gun, stamped in the mud, rejected. But she was the gun, Monday
and no letter had come and her nerves were dancing,
she knocked over her most expensive bottle of perfume.





He was dead, she would never replace the perfume.
She would smash bottles sticking her tongue out at the moon
throwing herself around in life, dancing
like a boat in a storm, occasionally consider suicide by train
but she would never do it. Saturday, Sunday, Monday
all days trooped past like the heavy march of a soldier.

The word soldier stank of cheap perfume and
everything was mundane especially the moon.
People hurry her by like late trains, only a few whirl past dancing.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ
:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -
Lucia May 2012
As I flit from A to B - Candleford to Larkrise
Laurieston to Gatehouse of Fleet
I flit, spit from A to B
Calling all Bluebells
assist me in my move -11th May, '11
Let Fairy Fawn be fair and true
and pure with humility
For his Fairy Lu - La Fee Lu
could get so blue
if he is not on time

All praises Bluebells
He is here

T'was but a year since
I'd wished upon a
Castramond Bluebell
in April 2010

And now we sit in utter Bliss
Ensonced in historical Dunblane
Fairy Fawn paints on and on
And I just sit, dismiss
All negativity, anything dark
I know that light will disperse the unhelpful hearse
darkness, death and dour ways
Disolve in the sun this late spring morn
Let Bees Browse among the Heather Blooms
Like love now maturing from twenty-eight days to a year and day
4th of the 4th 2012
emmaline Apr 2016
Kurt Queller uses narrative criticism to analyze Mark 3:1-6, the healing miracle story in the gospel of Mark.  Queller’s narrative criticism includes “echoes of the Exodus liberation narrative” , echoes of Deuteronomy’s covenant language and Sabbatical provisions , intratextual echoes in Mark , and independent echoes in the other synoptic gospels.  Queller uses these echoes to fill in the gaps he finds in the story of Jesus healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath.
In the beginning of his criticism, Queller lists the gaps in Mark 3:1-6’s narrative that he seeks to fill: the meaning of the withered hand, Jesus’ reason for healing on the Sabbath, His reason for considering the withered hand life-threatening, why it is a choice between good and evil, et cetera.  He begins filling these gaps by referencing intertextual echoes of Mark 3:1-6 in Exodus.  Jesus’ command to the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:5, “Stretch out your hand,” is echoed in Exodus 14:16 where God commands Moses, “stretch out your hand.” When the man with the withered hand stretches out his hand, his hand is restored. Likewise, when Moses stretches out his hand, the Reed Sea parts, resulting in the restoration of the Israelites’ freedom.
Queller’s reference to this echo in Exodus, paired with other echoes he mentions in Deuteronomy, helped me begin to understand Jesus’ insistence on healing the withered hand. Queller was able to use the echoes to fill in the gaps I previously could not fill. In Deuteronomy 15, God’s covenant requires liberal lending and debt forgiveness to the poor on the Sabbath year. God reminds the Israelites that He delivered them from Egypt in verse 15, and He claims that this is the reason for His liberal Sabbatical law. Thus, this Deuteronomic prescription for Sabbath observance is a continuation of the Exodus liberation narrative. Queller mentions these echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to draw a larger narrative framework for understanding Mark’s controversial healing story.
In my initial reading, I recognized that a withered hand is not necessarily a matter of life and death. Like Queller, this was a gap that I initially set out to fill. However, I was unable to fill this gap in a way that completely satisfied my confusion on the matter. Queller’s larger narrative framework for this passage led me to a better understanding of why Jesus considered the withered hand worthy to heal on the Sabbath.
According to Queller’s filling of the gaps, the withered hand is an affliction that can be compared to the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt. The withered hand also embodies the economic predicament of the poor, who remain enslaved to their debt to the rich.  Such enslavement could be a death sentence, which is why the Sabbath requires the liberation of slaves and debt forgiveness of the poor. It seems plausible to me that a withered hand could cause a man to be enslaved and/or perpetually poor. This line of reasoning, provided by Queller’s larger narrative framework, allowed me to truly see how the Sabbath could require Jesus’ healing of the withered hand.
Another gap Queller and I similarly set out to fill is the question of what constitutes as doing good and what constitutes as doing evil on the Sabbath. This gap also arises from Mark 3:4, in which Jesus asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to ****?” (Mark 3:4 NIV). In his analysis of this particular part of this particular verse, Queller points out a small important detail that I originally missed. Mark 3:4 does not set the frame for a passive, inner choice between good and evil.  The literal wording says, “to do good or to do evil.” The choice between good and evil on the Sabbath thereby requires action.
While recognizing that required action is problematic for the restful nature of the Sabbath, Queller supports his assertion by referencing Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30’s prescription for obedience of the Sabbath repeats the active command, “do it.”  Queller illustrates the parallelism between Mark and Deuteronomy by placing Deuteronomy 30:14 and Mark 3:4-5 in a figure side-by-side.  Deuteronomy 30:14 says, “The word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, and in your hands, to do it.” With this commandment as the framework, Mark 3:4-5 spells out the Pharisees’ failure to do good; It says, “But they were silent . . . grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man: ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out.”
From this, Queller concludes, “The ‘word’ to be done is already ‘in [their] mouth’ – but they refuse to say anything in response; it is ‘in [their] heart’ – but their heart is hardened against it. It is ‘in [their] hands, to do it’ – but as Jesus turns again to address the man, our attention is directed back to an inert hand, that, in its current withered state, seems unlikely to do anything.”  From this I am now able to conclude that which constitutes as doing “good” on the Sabbath is acting on the word. The word is completely accessible to us, and we must use our mouths, hearts, and hands to act upon it.
This gap of good and evil action that Queller helps fill also provides further evidence for the necessity of Jesus’ healing of the withered hand. Since the hands are required to carry out good action in obedience of the covenant, the withered hand is an affliction that can breach said covenant. Queller asserts that the withered hand symbolizes “the tangible embodiment of [the Pharisees] unwillingness, despite the ‘nearness’ of the word, to do it.”  Jesus, by necessity, must heal this affliction to show the Pharisees how to act according to the law of the Sabbath; “The stretching out of the hand then becomes a ‘witness against’ those who have chosen to forgo or even prohibit action because of exclusively sacral concerns.”  Without the preceding narrative frame of Deuteronomy, such significance of the withered hand for the Sabbath covenant was impossible for me to comprehend.
Though Queller is certainly helpful in providing evidence that enables understanding of the withered hand’s significance, there are parts of his criticism that I find contradictory and unhelpful. This occurs when he references echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to provide a framework for understanding the Pharisees’ silence in Mark 3:4 and hardness of hearts in Mark 3:5. He first relates the Pharisees’ hardened heart in response to Jesus’ plea in Mark to the Pharaoh’s hardened heart in response to Moses’ numerous pleas in Exodus. In my concordance work, I also made this connection. However, Queller and I differ in the conclusions we draw from this observation.
Queller draws from Deuteronomy to provide framework in conjunction with Exodus for understanding Mark’s interpretation of the Sabbatical law. He references Deuteronomy 29:19, which warns against thinking one can receive the blessings of the covenant while breaching it in the inner wanderings of the heart. This passive infidelity of the covenant brings God’s curse to the innocent as well as the guilty. Queller uses this context to explain why his literal translation says Jesus “co-aggrieved”  with the Pharisees because of their silence and hard hearts. The Pharisees’ passive, inner breach of the covenant invoked God’s curse on them, as well as the innocent Jesus, according to Queller.  
When I analyzed Jesus’ reaction to the hard hearts of the Pharisees in comparison to God’s reaction to that of the Pharaoh, I realized that the same Greek word was used to describe Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath. However, the consequences of Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath do not relate as clearly as Queller would lead one to believe. As a result of the Pharaoh’s hard heart, God’s wrath leads to the Pharaoh’s ultimate demise. Jesus’ resulting anger from the Pharisees’ hard hearts, on the other hand, catalyzes his decision to heal the withered hand. This action ultimately leads to Jesus’ destruction alone. Jesus, the innocent character, does not fall to the mutual destruction of the Pharisees, per Queller’s argument. I see no destruction of the Pharisees at all. Instead, Jesus restores God’s blessing of the guilty by becoming the recipient of God’s wrath in their place.
This conclusion, though differing from Queller, is consistent with his interpretation of the withered hand. Queller writes, “The withered hand embodies covenant curses invoked against those refusing to ‘open [their] hands’ in liberal lending, instead killing the poor by freezing credit in view of an impending sabbatical debt amnesty” . If the withered hand embodies God’s curse against the Pharisees, then Jesus revokes this curse when he cures the withered hand. Furthermore, the larger narrative framework of Mark’s gospel echoes this conclusion. Jesus’ crucifixion ultimately pays the debt of sinners and liberates them from God’s wrath.
Kurt Queller’s narrative criticism uses intertextuality, a narrative tool that “evokes resonances of the earlier text beyond those explicitly cited”  and “requires the reader to recover unstated or suppressed correspondences between the two texts.”  Such intertextual echoes he references from Deuteronomy and Exodus provide a larger background for interpreting Mark’s healing controversy. This granted me the ability to fill many gaps in the narrative that I was unable to fill prior to reading Queller’s criticism. In a footnote, he explains that his “metalepsis” uses such intertextual echoes for analysis, and, “In narrative, the resultant new figuration operates at what Robert M. Fowler calls the ‘discourse level.’ Metaleptic signification is thus transacted between an implied narrator and an implied audience – as it were, behind the backs of the narrative’s ‘story-level’ participants.”
The intertextual and metaleptic tools that Queller uses for his narrative criticism have proven to be very insightful and helpful for my understanding Mark 3:1-6 in an entirely new way. Even as I disagree with Queller on certain parts of his argument, these points of disagreement pushed me to deepen my own individual reading of the text. In comparing my argument to Queller’s, I realized just how far my initial interpretation was able to go. This narrative criticism answered a lot of my questions and filled many gaps. However, most of my conclusions about the implications and ultimate consequences of the text remain unshaken.  
Bibliography
Queller, Kurt. “Stretch Out Your Hand!” Echo and Metalepsis in Mark’s Sabbath Healing Controversy. Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 4 (2010): 737-58.
This is a narrative criticism in conversation with Kurt Queller's criticism. The in-text footnotes didn't transfer to this website but all quotes are referencing his work, which is cited at the end.
The parrot has 3 billion neurons in its brain
We have 86 billion
And most of mine are busy
forming unhelpful pathways
Misleading my good intentions.
Still, 3 billion neurons
seems like enough room for a few
unruly pathways


The parrot can repeat phrases
Which we thought to be
pretty cool
So we trapped him
and put him in a cage
And in our living rooms
Alone


The parrot knows how to survive happily
Within his world
Within his world, with 30 others of his kind
And a partner for life.
In his world
he would fly with his flock
To trees to pick fresh fruit
Now he perches on his own
And picks dry fruit out of a bowl.
In his world
he would prune his partners feathers
He would look after her
And she him
Now he perches on his own
And prunes his feathers
until there are none left.


Its an unhelpful neuro pathway, you see?
Some form of OCD?
Maybe its a way to cope?
Maybe its the brain spiralling
Trying to figure out what to do
Because it can't be a parrot anymore
It has to learn to be a toy
A talking point
And the parrot doesn't know how to be that
He only knows how to be a parrot
Birds belong in the wild, not in our homes.
Westley Barnes Jun 2012
It's a shame how you must have aspired me to become the child you always wanted
in the months and days before  I was born,
before reality had its chance to construct the person I would become.
when the happy news was first heard of a new child in a new world,
who would be brave and cheerful and kind
and above all sporty,
the kind that would make an impression,a born leader and dutiful follower
a proud patron of the family name.
We would have much in common and I would remind you of yourselves
at such an impressionable age
and I would achieve all you had hoped for.

But perhaps this is the great tragedy that parents stumble upon in this constant letdown of a life.

You were lucky that I was an easy child,never keeping you up at night and never causing trouble,
but the fact that I was lazy,introspective,morbid,
cowardly,unat­tentive,unhelpful,bookis­h,obsessive,
uni­nvolving and unsatisfied
made me realise how much I must have let you down.
I sigh too much,I read too much,I'm so full full of sarcasm that I cannot take anything seriously,
I never want to be the focus of attention,I never eat enough,I dont care about trends,
I dont care if people comprehend me.

I must be impossible to love.

Thats why I have decided to never have children.
They could never be what I would expect of them.
I could never love someone who I was ultimately responsible for,
someone who I could indoctrinate into my own idea of happiness.
John F McCullagh Sep 2013
In a long happy marriage
Sometimes bedtime grows stale
Once toe curling *** fades
As libidos doth fail.

We both have tough jobs
And two kids of our own.
Sad, we both want to sleep
When we’re finally alone

The man at the store
Said “I have just the thing.
You really should try it-
makes your *** life take wing!”

It wasn’t a **** flick
Or a blue pill to swallow,
Just a tiny transmitter
to hide in her pillow.

At night, as she slept,
The salesman explained
My subliminal message
would be fed to her brain.

With her passions inflamed
She would turn to her mate
Like the once nubile bride-
Leave the rest up to fate.

So I made a recording
With a saucy suggestion
Then looked forward to bedtime
hoping for the res-errection.

My bride’s a deep sleeper,
(A good thing since I snore)
The tape’s played two weeks now
And I still haven’t scored.

I completely was baffled
That salesman assured
That no “wood” would go wasted
No ***** ignored.

Instead every night
About two thirty nine
I’d slip off to the bath
Where the “beat” would go on



I resolved to return
The unhelpful device
Before the guarantee ended
And I’d be out the price

Imagine my shock,
imagine my dread
When I found the transmitter
in my pillow instead!

Seems my wife had decided
To play with my head:
“Honey, go f8ck yourself,
If you wake me, you’re dead.”
marital aide fails hubby
I see the pain
Has marked my face
I am nothing
If not a disgrace

The lines that I
Have long drawn
Make me tired
And so I yawn

I look at all this mess
There is no outcome
And so I guess

This is just how it is
Nothing else to this

But I hate that thought
That these relationships
Are simply for nought

I don't want to believe
That this is true
But that's how it seems
Judging by the view

But maybe the view is wrong
Maybe I need to look
For a little bit longer
And maybe the outlook will change

I long to be close
To a human soul
And have each other
Truly know

The inner workings
And the outer show
But instead in my heart
The distance will grow

I am unsure
If its worth the risk
I am not pure

Perhaps that is why
Everyone will fly
Away from me
When they see
Who I really am
And my life is a sham
I am not me
Or who I want to be
But i long to grow
And to show
The world all my work
To let them all look
What the demon took
And see how I went on
And continued living
But yet no one know
And so I am alone.
Random nothingness my poems seem to be getting worse and worse the more I write.
Max Hale Apr 2012
Come Glastonbury, demand your suitors
Eliminate the negatives of their days
Show the signs of cheer and promise
Crystal clear and sun bright
The walkways between the tiny shops
Where escaping through to back doors and out
Inside spirits claim your soul
Wrestle your pathetic reliance on consumerism
Your slavish concern for fashion
And your unhelpful TV dinners
There in Glastonbury only truth is spoken
Revealing the weaknesses of our human frame
Our minds that suffer from prejudices and bigotry
Cleanse your soul, become yourself
Give up the senseless living that has dominated
And driven our daily chores and lifestyle
Discard them all and believe that man
Is just a tiny part of this cosmos
A spirit and energy of the completeness
Not the embodiment
Not the utmost but a small part
Perhaps a much lesser being than any other...
Despite everything we are special
You are special in your individual capabilities
Each soul a grain of stardust
Waiting to be reunited in the cosmos
With the rest of the wonderful plethora
Be calm in the knowledge that you
Your heart and soul
Are one and only
Unique
Even today in Glastonbury
Becky Littmann Jul 2014
Today is one of those days
My mind has sooooo much clutter
I don't know where to even begin
My table I sit, staring blankly at my notebook
Waiting for some sort of words to come out
But blank the paper still stays
Sloppy words, quite unhelpful, I mutter
It's so loud in my head, I wish you could listen
My eyes glaze over when into the clouds I look
Thoughts going floating all about
& truly I reassured you that my words are quite real
& tell you how high my anxiety level rose
My attention spans is worse than a hyper active, strung out crack addict
Who is in Walmart's clearance section
Up & down up & down sliding clothes back & forth over five times
Sometimes things feel so surreal
Almost like a mirage I suppose
.....**** every two minutes there I wander off distracted
If it doesn't catch my interest quick, then it's see ya later attention
.....ooooh glitter, shiny sparkles oh so pretty wind chimes

Well that helped unblock my daze
My mind just needed to choose where to start
It was something in the clouds that ignited a brain spark
& all of sudden my mind was like "where are my pens?"
No more distant stares, sitting in front of blank paper
.....ooooooweeeee.... Goodness I  really gotta remember to blink during my gaze
Yes, that would've been smart
Then maybe every blink wouldn't open up so heavily dark
& I could clearly walk without blindly step by step suspense
I am just a day dreamer kinda creator
E Nov 2023
Driving on the road every day is how I connect and see those in my community. In a given month, I pass by thousands of cars. Why is it that I feel the most alone in transit to my destinations?

Driving recklessly, driving with suicidal intent, driving under the influence are all acts of violence. How can I make these same people care about themselves and the people in their life if they are unforgiving in weapons of destruction?

I ask those to take "sonder" into their commute. Do you see the man 300 feet away in the car with his wife and children? Do you see the breast cancer survivor in the pink car with their eldest daughter? Do you see the bicyclist doing their daily commute? Do you see their life outside of their commute— their love, their hobbies, their favorite books and songs, and their trauma?

We should all hold space and reflect when in passing. To be mindful and present, we are equally human, with drive and something that drives us. We need to start giving a ****.

How are we supposed to care for one another when all that surrounds us are displays of violence? It’s more than the overt displays—recklessness and abuse towards ourselves or others, hate crimes, police brutality, genocide, institutions of slavery.

When certain events enter into the collective consciousness, because we are forced to witness them; these acts tend to remind us we are disenfranchised. We are silenced. We are powerless. Until we mobilize and resist in acts of love.

Let me remind whoever is reading this: we criminalize and demonize those who give sanctuary, those who educate and speak their truth, those who feed the unhoused, those who do work on the ground, and those involved in policy.

We think little of those with degrees, fixations, and aspirations dealing in social justice, social studies, and sciences. To commemorate and value everyone as a human being is far more important than aspiring to become the next billionaire.

I don’t wake up and dream about wealth. I dream about people feeling safe and having resources on hand if they ever encounter a crisis. I dream about others committing to mutual aid and bartering practices as a way to help one another but also resist. I dream about shutting off our devices because we can call out unhelpful discourse and disinformation. I dream about others having a shared trait to discuss than to find every reason to think they’re so different.

I think I understand what finding community means. Though I haven’t talked to enough people, I can envision community as reaching over to the next person and actively hearing them, seeing them, and being there how you can. Community is being heard, community is finding love in places you thought you couldn’t, and it’s giving a ****.
we need solidarity right now for all disenfranchised and oppressed peoples on this world, and i don’t see how we can do that without caring at the local, state, or national level. i ask that you make a new friend, find genuine connections, and spread beam of lights into people. for those who are depressed or otherwise cannot do it’s easily, i see you and i hear you. i love you, even if you don’t know me. you matter and your life matters. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free.

— The End —