Flaker of Flints

What I wanted, most deeply, was to depict a case of religious hysteria or, if you will, a schizophrenic individual with heavily religious tendencies. Martin, the husband, struggles with his god in order to win Karin back to his world. But since he is the type of person who needs that which is tangible, his efforts are in vain.

So rests the sky against the earth. The dark, still lake in the lap of the forest. As a husband embraces his wife's body in faithful tenderness, so the bare ground and trees are embraced by the still, high light of the morning. I feel an ache of longing to share in this embrace, to be united and absorbed. A longing like carnal desire...Content? No, no, no—but refreshed, rested—while waiting.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

Successful hills are here to stay. Everything must be this way. Gentle streets where people play. Welcome to the Soft Parade. All our lives we sweat and save, Building for a shallow grave. Must be something else, we say, Somehow to defend this place. Everything must be this way. Everything must be this way.

...The knight of faith drains the deep sadness of life in infinite resignation, he knows the blessedness of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything, the most precious thing in the world, and yet the finite tastes just as good to him as to one who never knew anything higher, because his remaining in finitude would have no trace of a fearful, anxious routine, and yet he has this security that makes him delight in it as if finitude were the surest thing of all. And yet—and yet!—the whole earthly figure he presents is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He is continually making the movement of infinity, but he does it with such precision and assurance that he continually gets finitude out of it, and no one ever suspects anything else...

They still call themselves the intelligentsia. Writers! Scientists! They don't believe in anything. Their capacity for faith has atrophied through lack of use. My God, what kind of people are they? Their eyes are blank. They're thinking how not to sell themselves cheap, how to get paid for every breath they take. They know they were born to "be someone," to be an elite! They say, "You live but once." How can such people believe in anything at all?

I'm connected in a daze, Roam unconscious disengaged. In a simulated world I sustain. Swimming senseless through a void, Ease my appetite with noise. In a stimulated world Go insane. Shadow in a matrix, Searching for a light. Captive of the jungle, Hiding in the night. Break me free to live enchanted. Enchanted, Beyond control. Hide me, hide me. Hide me in your mystery. Break me free to live enchanted. Enchanted, Beyond control.

..."The Matrix" makes clear claims we can step outside the world of images (the internet, the television, the movie screen) into something Real, most notably when Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the blue pill, which will keep him in The Matrix, and the red pill, which will take him to Reality. Christians are taught we “see through a glass darkly,” or that our perceptions on this earth are distorted and limited. But there is Reality both on this earth and outside of it, and that’s because our narrative has an apocalyptic ending, the ultimate revelation of Christ. The Reality of Christ’s unveiling gives us hope and faith in our daily realities. It provides us with a distinction between true and false, fantasy and Real...

In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, the edges of his robe filling the temple. Winged creatures were stationed around him. Each had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew about. They shouted to each other, saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heavenly forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!” The doorframe shook at the sound of their shouting, and the house was filled with smoke. I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!” Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.” Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?” I said, “I’m here

The little soul roams among landscapes, Disappears, returns, draws near, moves away, Evasive and a stranger to itself, now sure, now uncertain of its own existence, whereas the body is and is and is and has nowhere to go.

Sunt lacrimae rerum. Translation: "There are tears of things."                  or, "There are tears for things."                  or, "There are tears for the way of things."

Simultaneously, as soundlessly, Spontaneously, suddenly As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind Gates of the body fly open To its world beyond, the gates of the mind, The horn gate and the ivory gate Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously Quell the nocturnal rummage Of its rebellious fronde, ill-favored, Ill-natured and second-rate, Disenfranchised, widowed and orphaned By an historical mistake: Recalled from the shades to be a seeing being, From absence to be on display, Without a name or history I wake Between my body and the day.