I still secret messages sent from on high in the numbers that I read. I also have had strange experiences with the fortune cookie application on Facebook. It has been right a bunch of times. Very strange. Indeed. These events cannot completely turn my skeptical eye, but they do make me take a second glance. For I am not totally in the column where I discount every single attempt at augury — having seen the future several times in my experience. But the numbers are sort of a dodgy business. They in and of themselves are not enough for me to believe something will happen, but they do point at times to things imagined or hoped for. I wonder if they truly mean anything at all, the chance encounters with these symbols I use for scrying. I know that I am a fool, but every fool has his day. Maybe there is a secret there, after all, which I am not reading right. Or maybe it is just the message to look harder at what all is around me. Not to ignore any clue that comes my way. For there are sometimes signs one is at peril to ignore.
Late repentance is seldom true, but true repentance is never too late.
– Ralph Venning
If you would be good, first believe that you are bad.
– Epictetus
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
– Oliver Goldsmith
He that waits for repentance waits for that which cannot be had as long as it is waited for. It is absurd for a man to wait for that which he himself has to do.
– William Nevins
He who is sorry for having sinned is almost innocent.
– Seneca
Repentance hath a purifying power, and every tear is of a cleansing virtue; but these penitential clouds must be still kept dropping: one shower will not suffice; for repentance is not one single action, but a course.
– Bishop Robert South
Self-condemnation is God's absolution; and pleading guilty, acquittal at his bar.
– Cyrus Augustus Bartol
There may come in your life the opportunity to take a chance on a hopeless hope, that something in you for no rational sensibility believes in the coming of a miracle. God help you. For all your soul may come to be in tune with a song you cannot hear, but are positive must be true, and heaven sent. What would you stake in such a thing? Would you put all your chips in the pot, and let it ride? Fools like me might just so do, ignoring any sense of practical reasoning... to find that, even though heaven itself were insuring the miracle was so definitely to come to pass, that the same wiser hands had made you keep some of your wages safely in other banks. For such is the wisdom of a heaven like that. And where your treasure is, there your heart will be, too.
pain is a reminder you are alive
better to suffer than to forget
time is not an enemy
but it certainly is no friend
as i walk the outer paths
hoarfrost on my hair
dreaming intermittently, calmly
feeling every last wisp of wind
as if it were the remains of a tear
and i find myself nowhere
but i am still me
where the starlight does not reach
breathing in the darkness
exhaling philosophies
This man is my twin (NYT link). Or at least, just a very close relation. But I mean, he thought he was the Antichrist, he wanted to save the world, atheist to Christian, a computer programmer. Wow. Hits on all those things. Of course, he’s public, and I’m still in the shadows, but we have an incredible number of things in common. I dunno, I kinda liked it better when I thought I was the only one like that, but I should take such things as a blessing. I still have an experience or two he can’t top, but maybe he has a couple things on me, too. At least, knowing about the Antichrist thing, that gives me a great sense of relief — we can’t both be the one and only Son of Satan. I find it very interesting when fate hands me something like this: something I cannot quite slot into the classifications I have built. It’s telling me I am too small, and will always be too small to fit the way of the world into my head. Best to grow, when we can, to hold onto these fleeting moments. The soul must constantly grow, else it shrinks, for we all are made of change.
The experience of dreams is the closest that “normals” get to madness. I have said it before: my insanity was like dreaming while was awake, and something like having nowhere to wake up to from that state. Years of constant dreaming. Like a recurring dream, you get used to the landscape. You meet people and they remember you the next time you see them. The seasons change, even, though it may not be the usual spring, summer, fall, winter — it would be more like seasons of mood, that colors everything in gloom or brightness. And like dreams, the absurd is sometimes sensible, and logic sometimes makes no sense at all. It is strange to think that both dreams and madness come from somewhere in you, for they both seem a little more than you have the capacity to imagine, though somewhat less than a world. They’re both interesting places to visit, though if I ever had the choice to — and this applies to dreams, too — I wouldn’t want to live there (again : ).
there is a charge imbued upon the hour
i ride upon the wire of moonlight like a dream knight
as roses bow to the kilojoules that pass
there is imaginary, and there is a soul’s ignition
for we are where the ethers touch down
and i, breathing in the rhythm of galaxy’s turning
i am resolved in the dawn as awakening
