Forty Days

A Season of Grief, a Season of Rejoicing

November 9-December 20, 2014

For Barbara Beach Alter 
It is Christmas morning in Saco, Maine, where today Bett, Aaron, Emily, Thomasin and our beloved cousin Marie find ourselves gathered to celebrate our first Christmas without dadima (our name for Barbara Beach Alter).  Brother Tom writes that already in India he and Carol with Jamie, Meha and Cayden (the only of her seven greatgrandchildren Barry never held) have celebrated.  Today Marty and Lincoln join us in Maine.

This gathering of documents—notes, drafts of memorial services, poems, homilies—is my christmas present to each of you.  It is a record, certainly subjective, of grief and rejoicing.

John Copley Alter
1:14 a.m.
Saco, Maine 
November 9

Loved ones,
Barbara Beach Alter died peacefully at 2:55 Sunday morning (today).  Bett and I had the good fortune to be there for the final beating of her good strong heart.  She murmured charcoal.  The nurse who was bathing her afterwards noted how few wrinkles there were, and it is true.
For those of you nearby you may if you want visit Mom in her room at hospice this morning (until noon).  Visit? Darshan? Paying respects?
Bett and I plan to be there around 11:00.
Much love to all. A blessed occasion.
John

 
November 10

Matthew 5:13-19
Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

yesterday in the early hours my mother died her saltiness
restored all that had through the months of her old
age and convalescence obscured the lens of her life cleaned
away so that for us now more and more clearly
as we hear about her through the memory and love
of so many people her good works shine forth in
their glory but it is to the days of her
convalescence the days of her dementia I would turn our
minds those of us who spent time with her at
Wingate long-term care facility remember that Barbara Beach Alter became
at times fierce in her commanding us that ‘not one
letter, not one stroke of a letter’ of the commandments
should be altered do you remember that those of you
and us who were given the work and gift of
spending time with Barry in those days in that condition

remember for instance how fussy she became about the sequence
of food on her tray how impatient with us for
our trespasses and violations how adamant that we look forward
for instance and not back at her how she would
say stop holding my hand and saying you love me
you have work to do o she was almost impossible
and certainly incoherent and demented in her obsession with law
and procedure fussy impatient imperious I do not forget being
scolded reamed out put in my place for having somehow
failed to do what the ‘law and the prophets’ demand

Barbara beach alter in the days before hospice in the
nursing home and hospital and even if we are honest
in the final years of her life found herself caught
up in the rigidity of her anxious desire to be
faithful to the laws and commandments of her life and
that made her at times extremely demanding to be with

amen and the epistemological confusion of course the clash between
her reality and ours it was all an ordeal for
her and for those of us who kept her company

and yet and yet through it all and now as
that ordeal for her is no longer paramount as she
dances in heaven all the wrinkles and discomfort of her
life removed and forgiven Barbara Beach Alter kept the faith
living in the midst such that those who cared for
her most intimately the strangers all professed your mother blessed
us


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.



So, brother and sister, here are my thoughts about the memorial service(s).
Let’s find a time when we three can be present; that’s the most important thing.  My life is currently the least constrained by agenda and schedule.  And then the grandchildren, recognizing that Jamie may not be able to come.  So, our work is to find our when our kids are able to come. Bett and I are exploring that with our three, each of whom has some constraint: Emily, the cost; Thomasin, the piebaking demands, Aaron school.  But we are flexible.

Much love.

John



Walking in my mother’s wake today some trees
a gentle breeze some dogs a little boy
the neighborhood and I took joy from interaction

we are at best a fraction in love’s
calculation after all heaven I realize is not
above or below cannot be taught comes naturally

as death does walking in my mother’s wake
I found new allies learned yet again not
to take myself too seriously to be caught

off guard as a matter of principle and
not to insist that I understand but live
in the midst of forgiveness


in my mother’s wake I am reading these books for
some way to continue to knock on her door Wendell
Berry he can tell me some things and William Blake
he can take me closer and I remember she described
me once as an unused Jewish liberal so I am
reading about protestant liberalism but ham that I am also
reading Carl Hiassen’s Bad Monkey and Quo Vadimus that my
daughter left behind and mythologically Reflections from yale divinity school
no fooling Denise Levertov David Sobel Galway Kinnell’s translation of
Rilke some wake
 
November 11

Matthew 25:1-13
Jesus said, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

this morning in the wee hours my mother died one
of the wise bridesmaids whose lamp to the end was
full she carried always the flask of oil that is
joy that is the love of the kingdom of heaven
and of the bridegroom a flask always replenished by prayer
by devotion by a humble courageous living in the midst

she expected every day the bridegroom to come in other
words and she was also one who would never refuse
to share even the last drop with somebody in need

and at the end it is so clear the door
into the banquet hall was not closed to her as
it is not closed to any one of us foolishness
is to believe otherwise to believe that the bridegroom will
not come today in the early morning in the wee
hours that is when he comes in the midst of
other plans is when he comes even when we are
doing what we assume to be good work when we
are doing what gives us pleasure our duty joy comes
then unsummoned unpredictable random even according to all our best
laid plans my mother loved so many things her pleasure
included dancing late in her life terminally unsteady she invented
what we loved to urge her to do namely the
sitting jig and we grew up with images of her
Isadora Duncan dancing with white scarves in an enchanted forest

Barbara Beach Alter aka Barry aka dadima bari nani aunt
and daughter wife missionary is now I know dancing a
rollicking boisterous jig on the shores of a lake that
is as her grandson once confided to her god in
liquid form spilly Beach of course also dyslexic executive function
compromised she was but one who loved to be always
in the midst surrounded by loved ones some of them
absolute strangers she shared her oil because for her it
came welling up from an inexhaustible source a deep eternal
well of such illumination and laughter such giddy divine chuckles

for her there was to be no exclusion she would
not find the awful idea of being one of the
foolish applicable to anybody but happily she welcomed into her
midst so many it is hard to imagine how many

so there she is now a bridesmaid dancing for joy
in such elegant clothing with such perpetual brightness

amen hallelujah rejoice


sometimes I think she pulled us all out of the
magic hat sometimes I think she knit us all into
one of her theologically impossible sweaters and then with a
wink she passes through the eye of the needle and
is gone and we are left to play in her
honor endless hands of solitaire sometimes I think we are
no more than the hermeneutics of her life the epistemology
artless she was not her heart like one of those
magical meals for her then a doxology praise then praise
she knows salvation

what is a life’s work it is like a landscape
dotted with oases and gardens for the thirsty and the
lost it is like scraping through dry barren ground and
finding there suddenly not only the theology of paradise but
such seeds your hands ache to begin the planting what
is a life’s work what has been shut for too
long opens what has been shut for too long opens

a life’s work renews itself then with death the kernel
of hope that dies in springtime sprouting is what a
life’s work becomes
 
November 12

John 21:15-17
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.

I know my mother very much enjoyed having breakfast with
god and that the meals of her nursing home drove
her nearly crazy and that when at last she found
hospice o she again could imagine the feast of heaven
at which Jesus breaks bread with us and speaks with
such clarity do you love me more than these I
know it was questions as simple and overwhelming as this
that dominated her final days do you love me love
being  one of the last five words she attempted to
speak do you love me she wrestled in her last
months with epistemology and psychology and theology and all had
to do with whether she could answer unequivocally you know
that I love you and that she could say of
her life that she had broken bread with god we
all remember in her life those moments when there was
a great gladness an innocent acceptance of what lay immediately
in her presence now those months in the nursing home
tormented her in precisely this fashion that it was hard
to accept to be in the midst of such mediocrity
and woe to be innocent and accepting but now praise
god there she is a happy guest at the great
feast and we left behind bereft can acknowledge that she
loved god in her own fashion as best she possibly
could and do you remember being with her there in
hospital or nursing home and she commanding us to move
beyond holding her hand and saying we loved her and
to feed the sheep to do that work which will
make of this earth this here and now an outstation
of heaven Barbara Beach Alter loved god in her own
fashion as best she possibly could we remember that and
that memory is today like a great network a web
of love and inspiration o we would gladly one more
time hold her hand and say I love you but
we know also clearly I think today what the work
is to love our neighbor as ourselves to work for
peace and justice I think of my sister with her
colleagues in WEIGO and how her sisters have understood her
grief  let us break our fast together then glad for
the worldwide web that in these days is reading the
gospel of the life of Barbara Beach Alter praise god


feed
tend
feed
in exchange for his three denials Peter is given three imperative verbs
feed
tend
feed
this is the commission Jesus after breakfast on the shore of the sea of Galilee gives to Peter
twice he says feed
in the commonwealth of Massachusetts 700,000 people are hungry
1 in 6 americans are hungry
living in uncertainty about their daily bread
more than 18,000,000 in Africa
842,000,000 around the world go to bed hungry


Marty and Tom
The thinking about the memorial service is taking this slow and cautious turn, namely that we have three services (at least), one in Sudbury, one in New Haven (allowing Stan and Chuck and others to come) at First Presbyterian (with Blair Moffett we hope), and of course one in India.
The date frame appears to be somewhere between December 17 and 20, unless you have other thoughts.
The actual cremation happens tomorrow.  Lincoln, Bett, Alexis and I will attend, and then of course there is In the Midst on Friday.
Love you more than tongue can tell.
John


the thing with a life well lived is that many
people have partaken the way let’s say a river moves
down through any number of different lives all the time
sedulously seeking the shortest path to the sea to steal
a line from somebody or other meandering a watershed within
which so many of us find a way to live
our own lives nourished and for each of us the
river distinct and different white water the slow fertile meander
the delta and we say to each other this is
the composite river


sometimes I feel like a sleepwalker trying to run a
marathon sometimes I feel like a speedbump in a blizzard

an arrow in a wind tunnel sometimes I feel like

a hazard sign in an old age home sometimes I
feel like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to ride a tricycle

and sometimes those are the good days when identity is
strong like an icicle in a heat wave is strong

I try to read wisdom literature at happy hour scotch
and Solomon can’t go wrong I think and sometimes I

feel like crying
 
November 13

four days ago we were left alone there with your
body after your breathing ceased and the proud stubborn beating
of your heart and in those four days beloved mother
so much I would love to say to you and
share the antics of the squirrel late leaves on the
neighborhood trees music Orion the network the atlas of love
your life has left behind and all the words we
are the gospel of today and I would sit with
you there then in silence as I sit now four
days later vigilant insomniac aware that the kingdom of heaven
is not more complicated than singing than love than dancing

we are all dancing the dance lord siva teaches and
the s

i don't where i read, or heard it from... but from what i read, or heard, it became known to me, that Cain was a vegetarian, while Abel was an omnivore... when Cain laid his offering to god: vegetables, fruits... Abel offered at the altar a kosher sheep. so why would Cain attempt to **** Abel? was Cain a hindu? did he walk all the way to the Indus, and proclaimed a civilisation of polytheism? seems like that that's what might have "mythologically" happened. then again, i do remember my great-grandmother reading me a very beautiful version of the bible, with pictures... maybe that's a memory of seeing the picture of Cain offering vegetarian produce, while Abel offering the kosher slaughter of a sheep.

Northwest of Athens, once lost in the polis of religiosity and pagan worship, Lochnith followed the shoulder to find her on the cliffs of the Acropolis, where they had lost each other, after two thousand years since Theodosius would repeal by decree the Eleusinian rituals. Of rejection and unprecedented glimpse, Aerse was reclusive in her excessive desire to eliminate herself, being for both an unreality because he had possessed her by the neck devoid of the omphalos, causing the avalanche of their bodies and souls towards where they would supposedly perch on him. divine and Dionysian eschatological path leading to the Diokitís of Vernarth, supposedly going to the derivation of a catastrophe in existential decline but immortal Vernarthian, being a rhythmic hemlock with his Aquenio, who carried him from his right chest, for any pretense of being triggered to the encounter of Persephone, without her or he knowing why Eleusinus festering with Lochnith and Aerse as a single concentric whole in quantum beings of the dodecahedron and octagonal by straight or transversal line, which slipped away in the hypotenuse where the serpents were implicitly conceived, leading to relapses when they went to Aerse and wound up in his Hypomorphic spelling and Magna Mater conclave Mistérica, under the organizational power of his ministerial redemptive slogan and bordering on the intricacies that arose in sub-genres of himself procreating exultation in Vernarth's analogues, which were prolonged in eschatological purges and disagreements of the cult objective that must twist from the gender womb, but in magnetism of positive polarization and in a plethora of tendency that would eternalize after the cessation of assets decreed by Theodosius.

Aerse eminently half-dead with Vernarth, was after the compromise of repolarizing what was semi-human splendid into semi-gods from a bi-gender, which coalesced in a retrograde regenerative cult, to achieve reflorals in all the springs of the world, where they could be seen with Persephone in a Finnis that distanced himself from the ultra-earthly towards a dowry of profusion and disproportionate wealth, but not categorized as a mystery, rather as an unknown of a super method when poking the lanterns where no luminescent reflection of Aerse could be found by Lochnith, after getting lost in the polychrome figures of the acrotera, lying in the watery nitrosities of their rift and steepness of the acro cliff.

Biotics will influence Systematic Eleusis, of supernaturalness for all hydrogenated active elements, as prebiotics of the unknown remnants of the great sepulcher of humanity, where the true hecatomb of July has to be raised and a hundred oxen arranged in the new beings of the transitional oasis. The meager will of the annals will multiply in millennia of obscurantism, leading Lochnith towards a late, but exciting management of harassing in the search for Aerse, in a clear exo-mystery, already in the jaws of a night shouted by the reefs of Demeter for those who know about Persephone...?, even though it is an inventive fallacy of the addicted spirit in the correlation of rite and lineage. Every night that he convalesces, he will look insomniac in the servile promise of divinity in a visage that is undressed in his winepress and the festival of Boedromion, towards the born corporal position of a hierophant who dies from this mold and in which he does not renew Boedromion himself.

The iconography of Aerse was reflected in majolica transfused in the Eleusinian streams when Aerse was seen walking from afar floating in the meadows of the knoll, where he set himself up as cryptography of the lost cycle of the cliff when he separated from Lochnith, being able to expose his treachery mythologically and truly transcending epic, relating to the treaty between Zeus, Hades, and Demeter, for the rescue of Persephone, and after being dented on the beginning of the arcane that arose from that amorphous symptomatology. Aerse carried the stripped-down serpents still on her body as if a divine wind had to seek her out so that they would come out by themselves and unguarded, through lost eyes and secret testimonies resting from anarchy from where there is and will not be an Archon or governor, who in rapt trouble improvise a second after the third parties that cause amazement to see you in a process that could not have it of cursed detection.

Aerse, beginning as a Canephore intruder, came to meet her Adonis Lochnith, after the excesses of the self-inferred hypotheses by following him at the command of the gnosis consciousness in her detailing the Kikeon that made her psychotropic ally pale, from the closure of mineral light that was devoured by the numinous portent of the Mashiach, in the presence of herself on dominical or relative to the numen manifesting in eternal powers, before the numinous presence in the hieratic, from a man who looked at her fatherly or in the crass profile of Damien Hessiano, plotting in colossal and fascinating stealth. Here she surrounds him but does not come close and falls out of love, as a dilemma and granting herself an initiation towards a portal of twelve lunar months in Eleusis, for cyclical years and births where they bounce back to meet in the childhood of pre-pubescent that made them known as Aerse and Lochnitt. Here in the greatest trance of life in both beginning, it surpassed all the twists of the gestated penumbra that separated them by shaking of pain and confusion, still being divergent remains of leftover and uncooked serpents of the escarpment of the acropolis, until a meeting of the astonishing divine fire, and libertarian in two martyrs' tenderness that is purely re-propelling them back towards a new end, and muddy shine in a found paradise where the sea unfolds by masculine conscience, and pious is ratified in each flash of a striate, and of rediscovered calculometry in pairs of loves divided by the pendulum of the one who will only unmask the one who drives him away in his dominant ******, and in the misguided space of hieratic seducing in molecules of celestial structures, and urban public and private lawsuits that have never been crude, nor in ablution of simile sacraments of pagan gods, nor everywhere or whatever their dismembered remains parading I know through the creeks of Cefiso.

the way i see it, Islam is in an existential crisis, the sooner we get through this 2nd schism of Islam the better: since being exposed to western secular traditions and antiquated Marxist cognitive dissonance the better, this Islam teasing at both Marxism and fascism... this modern Islam ***** without any Sufi integrity... how does Islam even function by ostracising the Shia branch? my guess: like western seculars ostracising Russians... Christ's passion is who's subsequent lament? there's no room for apathy here: not direct antonym - because reincarnation is impossible in monotheism, therefore? oh: what could i be possibly insinuating, hmm? i went through my lamentation: and how glorious it was, yet impossible to be reminiscent concerning (it): having met the antonym of Xanthippe... who has allowed me to become... a play on masculinity is that which does, while women are: beings, men are the doings... yet there is this transitional grey area of: becoming... i am becoming; in Edie's own words - once finding: giving love and being loved... in my own words: since we can give closure to half of the war waged we can focus on the other war: that we have to battle mortality... but how easy was it to so easily write about it with hindsight... my god: was it worth all the trials and tribulations... i will posit that my lamentation was as glorious as that passion on the cross... if people will want to dangle an instrument of torture around their necks: i'd recommend dangling iron maidens. also (of due note, nota bene, appropriately) - does anyone not think that Islam is in a crisis? NOT... heresy heresy blah blah blah... so who wrote the Quran? last time i heard Muhammad (ha ha... funny knowing two tongues... mucha... fly... mad... mad fly Muhammad, frenzied Beelzebub) was illiterate, so who wrote those **** words and why do they spiral out into nuggets, haiku sized verses at the end? my guess is that Muhammad's first wife, Khadijah **** Khuwaylid wrote the **** book, the dutiful wife senior to ol' Mo... drown in the empathy of the orphan? my own father was "technically" an orphan... more or less abandoned by his mother and father, although with a father-orbiter... messy stuff this glue we call family: easier to dangle individualism on a stick of otherwise perpetual conformity to adhesion toward a "something or other" that is civilisation: to ensure that our ontology does not revert to the supposedly pre-history pre-civilisation of that Edenic glorified working appendix: i dare you talk to someone clued in on biology as nutrition and how we "evolved" to not have the biological capacity to digest plant foods for their fat etc. - those adhering to a carnivore diet - no one can be stupid enough to not think that poor Muslims don't see the degeneracy in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar or Saudi Arabia and think... where is talk of the "ummah" and Afghanistan and Palestine? i know of the "arguments" when it came to Poland and the migrant crisis circa 2016... all those ******* glorious instances of multicultural injections of "progress": but who the **** took the majority of the displaced Ukrainians? Poland did... not diverse enough? too, ******* white? if i can ask a question: rhetorically, can i hear an echo of the same question: dialectically? it's like that analogy of the tree falling in the forest: if no one hears it falling: does it actually make a sound? i'll ask a question rhetorically: in good faith... will i hear the same question (or thereabouts), dialectically?

my new favourite word, coming all the way
from a mouth in Malasia... no: Malaysia -
i should (maybe?) have known it,
but no: i didn't... until now...

etymology and the extinction of languages:
soft machines - computers and the inner
dynamic: unlike hard machines
those associated with hammers and cars...

i made the mistake of drinking three coffees
in the morning,
to **** off the buzz and nausea
i had to resort to a downer: a 8.2% strong
cider: which, unlike the alcoholic's
go to with 9% strong Carlsberg
is rather refreshing: since that low alcohol
sickly sweetness is lost
whereby a cider becomes a better alternative
to wine...

Christianity: i have no problem with it
surviving: as long as it is a religion
of women: for women...
Christianity doesn't appeal to my masculinity,
Christianity is not a religion for men...
i'll be frank: the best lovers are Christian
women...
i am not a Christian man...
i can parody Christianity with my ******
catholicism: which, like Irish catholicism
is an ethnocentric gimmick for...

heathenism, mingling with Judaic occultism...
i problem solve with a demand
for pareidolia... now i will have to use Greek
(and i blame the Greeks for this,
"blame"...
i'm more inclined to the heathen philosophy
the ancient children of Greece
that conjured up atoms without microscopes)....

παρειδoλια

    ah... that word i was referencing:

πετριχoρ -

              petrichor: the smell of rain...
from stone the golden fluid that was mythologically
the "blood" of the gods...
sunshine up my ***...
        i only "love" god out of fear...
i couldn't possibly fear him out of love...
sometimes i get these glimmers of hope
for the destruction of my ego:
i already know it's a nuisance and unreal:
the ego...
just as much as i known that
our consciousness is born out of memory
yet our memory is a faulty faculty since
we don't remember everything
and what we "choose" to remember
is a bit like...

the veneer of civilization, yet this constant
bubbling of Darwinistic principles...
we pretend to be civilised
yet when the ontological buildings blocks
of 1 + 1 = 2 come into play... hmm...

maybe because Reyla is not my child...
that i don't feel my testosterone levels being somehow
diminished...
for the past few days i've been calling up
Edie and checking on her...
poor girl hottie Aztec chickety is down with
the flu and flutes of sneezing and
baritone brass of coughing
but still: in sickness and in health till death
do us part...
i've become OCD "clever" all huffing and
disorientated with: i need to be there...
physical barriers... transcended...

   a seemingly infamous concoction
of a raw egg yolk generously beaten together with
a teaspoon of honey...
milk with a tablespoon of butter heated...
the warmed milk and butter
poured over the yolk and honey: cured...
thus drank...
     some people break into sweats... others don't...
but who, ill enough... is getting enough
calories to battle a virus?
whatever the "magic" of this concoction...
day two of me trying to make her return
to her former self... well...
maybe it's just lining her throat...

mirrors... mirrors on ceilings...
mirrors on floors... mirrors mirrors...
mmm           mirrors in woods mirrors in the sky
mirrors in water...
              a mirror for a mermaid
a mirror for a minotaur...
                a mirror for a mirror for an eye...
by that i'm implying:
how far can i make the private public
or rather: how best can i disguise the private
with the public...
i'll say no more...
so instead maybe i should "talk" about
my bromance with an ex-police officer went
off on such an assured footing...
why he quit the police force?

PTSD... he still visualises the scent of two rotting
corpses he found hanging in a room...
he visualises the scent
of rotting flesh that was dangling for circa 6 months...
now that i discovered the word
petrichor i can fuse search engines
and A.I. steroid and...

        hey presto: σύν- + -αἴσθησις = συνεσθησια...
as i've learned...
the diacritical marks in Greek are variations
of meaning: ask a Greek about Greek
and he'll tell you that there are at least
4 gradations of the language...
i didn't get a classical education:
    philology:            or rather: it's something ongoing...
and to think...
i do have a historical artifact from the 1960s...
England: how rotten pedagogy has become:
the first sign of a culture in decline
is always brought back to pedagogic demands /
standards...
back in the 1960s Latin was still actively taught!
shame...

  quis es: quo vadis?
who are you: where are you going?
   ha ha: clarity: A.I. is equivalent to search engines
on steroids: more like customised,
personalised search engines...

- me: how do you say: who are you? in Latin,
  Google, as a search engine is being terribly
  inconsistent.
- chatGPT: in Latin, "who are you?" can be translated
   as "quis es?"
- me: so not: quis es tu?
- chatGPT: both "quis es?" and "quis es tu?" are
  grammatically correct in Latin and convey the same
  meaning, "who are you?". the inclusion of "tu"
  (meaning "you") adds emphasis but is not necessary
  for clarity. both forms are commonly used in Latin
  literature and conversation.

well well... and it's not like Polish isn't
an imitation of Latin, grammatically speaking:
of note: you can obliterate the use of
pronouns in a conversation: completely...
just like in ancient Latin...
i never understood this Hebrew pride on continuity
citing that Latin is somehow dead:
no... Latin is still alive: it just mutated...
it's alive: grammatically in Poland
and... well... in script pretty much everywhere
else in the world... in computers...
in preserving Greek ideas...     still ticking:
tick tock tick tock...
                                   oh but i understand the Hebrew
pride... i've even succumbed to Kabbalism...
but obviously Judaism being an exclusive
club: i would never actually become a proselyte:
i was handed the ****** hand of
catholicism and that's that...

              i'm not going to be another Barry from
the Four Lions...
that film has aged so so well...
about as well as: As Good As It Gets...
some memorable lines by Barry:

Barry : *******, I'm a liability! I am the Invisible Jihadi!
They seek him here, they seek him there, but here's not there,
he's blowing up your **** sister!
Omar : Invisible? Right. Like the time you got
on the local news for baking a Twin Towers cake
and leaving it at the synagogue on 9/11?
Barry : That is part of the plan! Hide in plain sight, you mug!
   (credit to chris morris, sam bain and jesse armstrong)

such oddity... destroying the ego by talking
silently before going to sleep...
who in their right mind would think that
the ego resides in the brain?
i speak by an extension of me thinking
therefore the ego resides in the mouth...
the audibility of soul: is that what we call
the "audibility" of thought?
my brain is my eyes...
              no: my brain are not my eyes...
i was just wondering for a tick
               my brain are my eyes?  no...
my eyes are my brain...
                        i can do away with all that 20th century
Jungian Freudian schematisation of man
boiling the secular trinity of
ego (consciousness)
   superego (subconscious) and the id (unconscious)...
i'll just **** it... it's a nuisance to begin with:
how much of my ego i need to filter out
is staggering... i swear it's a hindrance on
consciousness... feeding that yap-yap-yap
not-I of Samuel Beckett...
                                     people can talk about
viruses and biology all they want...
but what of the cognitive viruses: bad ideas...
like the preservation of Marxism
                             and its marriage to radical Islam?

Arctic Skuas, fish wives beware,
       steal from birds, without a care
Blackbirds, fond of hedgerows hewn,
           known to whistle occasional tunes
Cuckoos. heralding spring sing loud,
            beware the cuckoo land cloud!
Doves, duck with a divers ease,
            traditionally symbolise beautiful peace
Eagles, immortal, courageous and bold,
            eagle-eyed, with a plumage of gold
Flycatchers, search flies in flight,
            swoop from perches, feeding mid-flight
Geese, possessing little wit,
            occasionally upon golden eggs do sit!
Herons, gangly and vexed,
             also known for having s-shaped necks
Insects, many a good feed,
             airborne fast food, eaten at speed
Jackdaws, inquisitive, kindred of Crow,
             steals through the skies, taking all aglow
Kingfishers, sapphire, red, and green,
             beautiful colours to be seen
Lapwings, loud shrills, and insincere,
             fly with egg-shell attached very near
Magpies, possessing magical mystique,
             sometimes portent of coming times bleak
Nightingales, mythologically Philomel,
             melodious midnight serenades, sang so well
Owls, emblems of Athens past,
              symbolic of wisdoms, of the stars
Partridges, particularly partial to pear trees,
              when braced, huntsmen to please
Quails, eggs delicacies held dear,
              causes Quails to tremble with fear
Robins, red-breasted, (with leaves they cover the dead), not Puckish, but good,
              loved like the folk hero Robin Hood
Starlings, amiable, keen for friendship,
              travel afar on migrational trips
Thrush also Throstle, fluent of tongues,
              mistle-toe food and christmassy songs
Uplands, Utopia for magical Merlins,
               loves high ground, gently unfurling
Vermian, for most birds, a succulent delight,
               eating worms, as part of their diet
Woodpeckers, like climbing trees,
               picking out insects, with utmost ease
X is for extinction, of various birds,
               preventative action, louder than words
Yellowhammers, cursed eggs destroyed,
               taken by men, collecting like boys
Zoos, offering sanctuary for endangered species,
               unfortunately caused by the human disease