Metaxyturn Diaries

There’s no way around
it, Plotinus. Living to-
gether in time, we

are responsible
for each other. It’s absurd.
It’s Summer now, the

A.C.is on, a
fly rests on the lip of your
coffee cup — empty,

as if that mattered.
You sit there, disgusted. Just
don’t let your eye stray

below the fold. Child-
ren of immigrants tortured
at U.S. border.

The Audubon prints
in the den of my childhood
home spooked me. Something

was wrong. I knew birds
in the wild, their songs, their am-
biguous body

language. Watching them
was my introduction to
love, that it reveals

itself only when
the mind makes itself other
for the other’s sake.

The bricks are not hot
yet and I enjoy watching
sparrows hop between

them to get breakfast.
The hour fills with their thin cries.
They will be gone in

an hour, silent in
the cool rustle of the trees,
where evening starts.

Summer solstice. Is
it my imagination or
do shadows lengthen

the long day? I can
still read my large print novel
in my garden chair.

Something reminds me
it’s my father’s birthday. He
watered his thirsty

rock garden until
the vast horizon of the
Pacific went dark.

Why do I like it
when fog covers the bay and
the end of the street?

Why in the wee hours
do I pray to a god with
no name to speak of?

Why do I think of
death as a sign that God cares
for His creation?

Who knows? All I know
is the strangely comforting
voice that keeps asking.

There may be reasons
to call off the search for God.
Sleep is itself good,

as is happiness.
The sleepless Saint compared God
to happiness. No

comparison. Lose
no more sleep. The negative
is the true, blissful

difference. God just
is—-negatively. So get
some rest, be happy.

Unseasonable
cool rainy days make me doubt
the depth of the in-

ner self. Puddles am-
plify the light from the clouds,
brightening them. Aug-

gustine, searching for
God, concluded He was search-
ing for him, bless him.

I get that today.
Today the equivocal
bears singular gifts.