Love at a Reasonable Price

How to operate effectively?
How to tear down the illusions long enough for the whole conscious space to awaredly experience Reality?
While yet still maintaining enough contact to the illusions (many of which are necessary assumptions for operating in human form)?
So that the conscious space as-a-whole is awaredly overwhelmed by Pure Love; but when it (the conscious space as-a-whole) returns to day-to-day feeling/thinking/acting, it does not forget insight(s) gained from its moment outside of illusions?
One’s illusions need to be made wiser — to understand better in what senses they are and aren’t accurate.
How to open up a whole conscious space to that aspect of itself that is already living in and through and for Pure Love? That is in some sense one with Pure Love?

Humans cannot force wisdom onto themselves or others: wisdom only occurs from the inside-out: when the Light (aka: Pure Love; aka: God/Godlight; aka: the True Good; aka: Buddhanature) relates adequately well to ideas and feelings: to the degree this takes place, wisdom is gained.
Wise ideas, rules, and influences can help steer conscious spaces towards adequate relationships to the Light, but they cannot take the place of these relationships.
Likewise with any possible spiritual surgery: the best it could do is help orientate ideas and feelings away from illusions, bringing them into inevitable conscious contact with that which is not an illusion.
And what is the worst that a spiritual surgery could do??

A spiritual surgery does not teach anything. It merely unclenches the flailing confused wounded prides and shames; and thus lets a soul unfold itself within itself and thus see itself and the Light that it in the deepest sense is.

Surgery best practices:
Unclasp all defenses?
Versus explode the Light outward from within?
Or can the latter only be done by the conscious space that’s being operated on?
Why choose one? Shouldn’t various procedures be used in various combinations, depending on the exigencies of a given situation?

We spiritual patients (for as regards the spirit we are all sick, and terribly cracked about the head) have to unfold out from within as we also pull the Light in (in alternating movements or at once?? or sometimes the one way and sometimes the other? “breathe” the Light in and out??). We push outward and pull inward from the center-line of our conscious-space with this aim: make less and less space between the Light shining within our conscious feeling/thinking/acting and the Light shining outside our conscious feeling/thinking/acting. Enlightenment is exploding through the illusion, the shell of “self”; enlightenment is awaredly flowing directly into the One Light.

More wisdom is more consciously experiencing how all is One Light. [does that mean it would’ve been better (above) to say that our aim is less and less space between our awareness of the Light shining within … ” ??]
But what can spiritual surgeons achieve? They can only for a moment unclasp all defenses — right?

Open up; unfold from the inside out — as if a human conscious space were an infinite space folded in upon itself over and over and over again.
Goal: unfold a conscious space into the infiniti of its truest nature, so that that conscious space can experience itself as both nothing (nothing-specific) & everything (one with the interrelated whole [all particulars running together as one], through which Godlight [prior to all particulars] infinitely explodes, and which at the deepest level is Godlight).
In this way the conscious space as a whole can (never completely, but perhaps to an adequate degree) consciously know/understand what it always at some level knows/is: all is One and love is the only realistic reaction to Reality. [We say “always at some level knows/is” because Godlight is the most essential aspect of all conscious space and shines within and through everything always. The goal is to get one’s whole conscious space’s focus onto the Light shining through everything — which is the most fundamental aspect of all consciousness, but which is largely overlooked.]

??Reality = Godlight = God = the Light = Pure Love = Buddhanature = Atman = What Is??

Is the Light God?
Or some holy intermediary?
Or a nonspiritual energy that, together with awareness, can nonetheless create a conscious space able to open into an experience of What-Is (“What-Is” = the interrelated-flowing shot-through by and ultimately one with Godlight)?
How does the Lifelight relate to Godlight?
Same thing? Or is it that Godlight can flow into Lifelight, and thus increase Lifelight’s spiritual insight??
IE: Wisdom is Life-/God-Light aware of Its true nature? Or Wisdom is God-Light swamping Life-Light?

Wisdom includes a superabundance of compassion: to grasp interdependence and Pure Love together: the oneness of apparent particulars and what’s prior to all particulars.
How to unfold the conscious space all through the body?
Regular thought is kind of an illusion, but it’s also a tool for interacting with this shared dreaming space (life)

Hmmm …

How to not make things worse?
In physical interventions, a great many precautions must be taken to avoid unnecessarily risking great harm to the body.
In mental and emotion interventions, this is even more true.
But here we speak of a physical/emotional/mental intervention intended to effect a spiritual change!
Who dares hold this scalpel?
Better a penniless, trash-strewn, nobody mendicant than some brave Faustus, risking soul and other sacred keepsafes.
But it is also not good to hide one’s light under a bowl.
What is one’s light?

Hmmmm …

How many sins against mankind are would-be healers guilty of?
And now I feel so old, so weak, so soft
And now I’m a soft-boiled egg in a silver egg-podium
And now an elegant lady in her emerald dressing gown taps my shell
with the backside of a silver spoon within whose handle’s curling metal-worked design her initials are seamlessly interwoven.

Bartleby Willard
From his upcoming novella about superheroes.
copyright AM Watson

A child on whirring elbows makes her way
through wrapping rubble, hotwheels, boxes, blocks.
A child on dancing toes at manic play.
The grownups keep their chairs, content in talk.

A walk with Uncle, Aunt, and cousin all
High boulders heaped along the slipping sea.
Between bouncing boy and where ocean lalls,
with scamp’ring collie-beagle snagged on leash.

A silent shepherd mouths what Mary speaks
while parents grin and pews and programs creak.

AW/BW
Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

In the wide field far from the crooked slab cave but not far the winding flat bankless stream.
In the wide field of tall thwacking tuffted grasses much moved by artless hoppers, barreling bumblers, fluttering butterflies.

C: To rise early with the summer sun!
A joy at life.
A: Here, reach me the steel canteen —
round and on each flat side
fuzzed with unknown tartan.
C: Drink deeply in the morning light.
Each gulp enfolds the sun
and by stages chugs it in.
A: [he drinks] Ah, water!
C: We should make breakfast.
A: We should catch trout
and fry them in a pan.
C: We have oatmeal.
A: And some fruit …
B: [approaching from a domed tent, still sleepy in her eyes and with hair matted by the ground] Good morning!
C: Hello!
A: My heart.
C: We thought we’d make some oatmeal.
A: With fruit.
B: Lunch will be fresh caught fish that didn’t know what skewered ’em.
C: No, we have to move. The land beneath our feet must shift from blazing grasslands to dark forest earth to rocky sandy piney slope — and all this before nightfall!
B: Lunch will be an exhausted granola bar after already breakfasting on oats.
A: In the cave in the mountainside we’ll find —
What will we find?
C: Oh, how adventuresome the world’s become,
now that order’s lost her hold
and chaos grows reckless bold !!
A: I wouldn’t have chosen it.
B: At least you can digest oats.
A: We’ll cook the oatmeal thirty minutes.
C: Haven’t the time!

AMW/BW

In the red plush movie house
before the lights dim and the previews begin
On red scoop fold-up seat with red velvet padding for seat and back
A young man and a young woman sit side by side

B: This theater’s new to me. It’s fun. Antique!
A: Your perfume floats through dusty fabric’s stale
calm, ancient air.
B: Forgoing popcorn. Healthy. Healthy choice.
A: I’d gladly treat you. Popcorn. Soda. Ring.
B: A wedding ring?
A: Have any ring. Take any ceremony.
B: Artificial butter? With palm oil base?
A: Don’t mock my hands; don’t scorn my nerves. I’ll melt.
[And here he slides his right hand off her left forearm, and wipes it on his bluejean thigh]
B: You misinterpret me. I feel only fire
when you in body brush my side.
A: A like locust-swarming buzz has surrounded
this film since its release.
B: Do you think it’ll be my cup of tea?
A: No, nor am I sure it’s the movie for me.
B: Did we float in upon the gen’ral thrall?
A: I don’t think that was the every all
of our decision-making.
B: No, we like the actress.
A: We agree on her excellence.
B: She who so completely fills and animates each character, each design, each consideration.
A: And the director held us mesmerized in our separate lives two years ago when we only knew one another as an unanswered longing, a call waiting for a response, a yodel seeking its echo.
B: Right. Why was that? What common point does she within us prick?
A: The vague shapes rising up, becoming creatures, giant beetles wiggling their feelers, clacking their needle feet, organizing their shelled backs into row after trembling row.
B: A hoard of lonely domed monsters crashing down into the pleasant sleepy valley where dwelt the happiest and most benign of weavers, singers, and magic workers.
A: Why? The pointless, thrashing, panicked violators got no joy from that attack; and the valley lost much joy.
B: No sense. Senseless.
A: If only we could put on the Seatbelt of Necessity and so defend ourselves and our world from these cruel outpourings of soulless fate.
B: Buckle me up.

AMW/BW

We reacted to this album twice.
The first time was straight free-write.
The second time we tried for a little more clarity, a little closer to a normal review (though we didn’t always get there).
The song titles are in bold.
“Reaction Second” is placed in front of “Reaction First”; except when I liked “Reaction First” better. Often I can’t tell what I liked better; I’ll have to put this to one side and read it again letter, then I can decide which goes in front when. Yeah, so for now (Dec 2019), I’ll just leave “Reaction Second” first.

Readers are encouraged to read as they will.
At least one “Reaction First” confuses its own author now a bit later.

On the whole, well,
it’s hard to let go
of a stand you thought was wise and good
that felt like family and home and purpose
it’s hard to let go of a world
that you’d inhabited
that you thought you shared
and now you find out
you were not always as much accompanied there as you’d once thought.
It is strange to see how fragile life and its components are.
It is disorientating to drift older without all the answers
as we humanthings do
But it’s also wonderful to know the nuances a little clearer and brighter; to become a little more like how things are, a little more like the waves rustling the sandy shore, the wind tickling the grass- and tree-tops, banging against and around the solid trunks, into dark damp forgotten nooks.

Your Name

Reaction Second
This song is sad somber
the falcon turns in the widening gyre
Why is there “no beauty” “in this frame?”
Why do the chords pace around the thumping drums?
Why does a whistle float up and down,
carrying me into the quiet moss
high above whitewater steep shale/root/coolcrumbly-dirt creek?

Reaction First
Floating in on the buh buh and wah wah wah wah
No signs of Beauty; nobody calls your name.
How lonely we wind around
How lonely we down the drain round and round little kids in the bath
There is no Beauty; not in this frame; no one’s around to speak that name.

Where has the Beauty gone to?
Was It ever there?
What did I hang my heart upon all those years?
And now the drums trundle in and thump a lump along
I can feel Casey in the distance; like I knew him long blond hair and acorn face ball cap because we’re cool
Now the time is rumbling along the train tracks with electronic drums that remind me of someone I used to sometimes know

I Miss A Lot

Reaction Second
A delicate railroad-strumming
Strings ting in at odd angles
Why must he “perform, like this is a stage, with our fist raged”?
He notes a “change in your face”; but he “could be wrong”
As the drum and guitar rise: “I miss a lot of what you say … ”
We are in this circling space with him
Alice falling down the rabbit hole
with the bedroom furniture floating on all sides
Infinite fall forever float
ground removed beneath our feet
synths rise to greet us
but they are ghosts and we fall through
“I miss a change in your face”
When does the ball begin to bounce away?
Do we fail to see it because we don’t want to or because we just don’t?

Reaction First
I miss a lot of what you say
See-saw accordion
Dance with me in Old France, dance with me in the cafe to an accordion and in the haze of so much cigarette smoke
maybe I should perform; like this is a stage; with our fists raised; like we’re going to embrace; a change in your face — but I could be wrong
Who’s this little kid with blond hair
that you push over the cracked gray pebbly cement, the little ramps everywhere; around the block; with the great tree park on one side.
What’s going on here?
Through the life cycle; now deep into it
With some ethereal horns opening the pearly gates;
we rising up past the clouds
some adult missing another adult;
I miss a change in your face;
or missing the point of some exchange or of some development, now developed, now yesterday.

Afternote
What is the significance of this imagery:
a performer stands above the crowd with both fists raised
as if to embrace someone
But who embraces with fists?
That’s a hug that’s begun to seal itself off
A performance hug?
A change in the face and then the open palms shut?
The trajectory of a hug can’t be so swiftly altered, but the impact can change: open hands can curl up in defense, in a wilting defense.

Legs that were Given

Reaction Second
Here he sings out the side of his mouth
Here he’s tired
“Hey, my bones hurt, my bones hurt!”
The drums and synth come in at distorted bursts
and then melt into a simple two-step
Then the bursting bones hurting
We feel tired with him
with these mistakes
that aren’t even really mistakes,
but just things that sometimes happen
and then settle to the bottom
like silt on the cold ocean floor

Reaction First
Trying a masterpiece
Trying a highest peak
Singing out of the side of his mouth
Hey my bones hurt my bones hurt
electronic marching orders
the reverb
somebody needs help
the tinsel reverb
you call somebody out (else?)
change up two-step country walz:
our own ancient melody; but you should see our spirit, resting high above; take me out take me out one last time
The papers burn and the black smoke spirals and slides up, slowly melting into the slate-gray sky
Big steps on either side

Afternote
To share an ancient melody, a timeless understanding.
To rise as a single spirit and settle over time’s arrow.
To allow a poem a final reading

No Coming Back from That

Reaction Second
“Look here. I’ve been down here before. I know what burns at the core.”
“You didn’t know what was here. Prepare for the medieval. Prepare for the passing people.”
Will we get out alive, as he suggests we “just might”?
Who are these people who “like it when we smile”?
What are the “precious things” he lost when he “woke up still believ(ing) in goodness”?
The music is sinister, persistent, it keeps pacing around like a tiger caging its prey with soft paws, claws retracted but very much ready.
I can feel the tick tock and
now I think those organ notes are from a bar in Jabba’s Hut.
And now, “if I had all the power” “the influence”,
“I wouldn’t do a damn thing … for them”
What are we to make of this as the music floats from side to side
upward?

Do we become ashes in the fire?
Do we float into the crisp winter sky?
He can’t remember the scarred metal drums
where leaves were burned.
I remember the contained insane heat and sooty musty air
losing its way in the cold/dry-clear or cool/damp-overclouded November sky.
But he won’t.
Still this song does that; and up we go, for a moment intense but immediately fading and soon nothing at all
A release

Reaction First
you didn’t know it was a trap; you didn’t know about the tree sap
prepare yourself for medieval; pray for the passing people who might just get out alive
they like it if you smile
Triumphant organ pipes
The circling of the electric hammers and pianos
and the monster is approaching with rhythmic heavy feet
Closing in and closing in
it doesn’t take that much to sink
back and forth; sailors on a ship; I’m in the white a black striped shirt and French black saucer cap; I’m the sailor on deck, dancing a jig
and if I had the power; if I had the influence
what, mighty mortal? what then? what?
i wouldn’t do a damn thing; i wouldn’t do a damn thing for them

oh, but now there’s a them?
oh but now there’s the scorpion squad clacking their claws
getting closer
stingers arching excitedly fore

Afternote
The song paints danger, encircling monsters
a cruel and jagged time and place
where forgiveness is a luxury no one fathoms
The song paints life in chaos

Hold on Tight

Reaction Second
This one steps lightly from side to side
“Try to remember how kind they were as we get a little further down the track”
“Hold on tight my satellite — you and I should stick together”
Who to speak these words to?
Who to care whether you or James Murphy have lost your edges?
Who to return the favor when “My soul has reached out to greet you”?
Now we get older
Now we see original alliances were too narrow
Now we see what cannot be undone.
“Try to remember how kind they were
as we get a little further down the track.”
All these loves
“All that heartache”
“All those earthquakes”
“All that broken stuff behind us”
Everything works out to those who love the Lord, who are the called according to his purpose.
Everything works to bind us all together in and through the Lord, to keep everyone in our hearts, to journey together, leaving none behind.
Everything works to demand and deliver kindness

Reaction First
forced to drink ginger ale
i am afraid we are losing
everything i used to know
polka in electric and waltz in the colored lighting
i’m dancing with my baby
in the last days of the world
maybe i do believe in souls, after all; the other day i was just fooling
maybe i do believe in strange rivers, guiding me right back to you
and my soul
has reached out to greet you
but this soul, so forward; almost pushy, pushing itself past the organs, past the bone and skin, past the white cotton undershirt and the plaid cotton overshirt; past the shake and quake of the last effort before we
go down
down to where the cavern meets the sea
long i’ve known
the spot where sand and surf and dark cave rocks meet
all that broken stuff behind us???

Rerun Wrecked

Reaction Second
He sings higher and softer in this one.
The cellos are moody and disjointed, lost in some impossibility
The electronic twitch beats are paranoid
We’re lost with him in a brave new world
Clicked the wrong thing on the internet!
Our lives wrapped up in an infinite interwoven web of data-points
surrounding us, owning us, ready to collapse and swirl us down the drain with their empty beeps.
“such a pretty screen”
“can’t look away”
“push the instant replay
to watch the remaining days
again
again
again”
Where has the moment gone?
Now that we own it in HD
and find out it was actually outside of us all along

Reaction First
I was wrecked by TV
not what i used to be
snap snap
kaleidiscope sounds
now outside the line
poor lost speaker pale and with round eyes
bodyless head floats in a computer screen
such a pretty screen; can’t look away
the machinery click and clack of the info age enveloping us all in an umbrella of entertaining fragmented noise
downloaded an illegal Bubbah Fet
I’m lost here
i’m lost here in pixels and code bytes
i’m slowly dying
slowly melting into the info
such a pretty screen; can’t look away; push the remaining replay to watch the remaining days again

Interim while the electronica bounces around

No New Best Friends

Reaction Second
Pipes ethereal
Drums like the heavy feet of recklessly-pursuing caterpillar-monsters
He speaks of knotted fingers
He speaks of being brought low by flipped hair
“I won’t be doing that again;
I won’t be your best friend.”
Song stops, turns to a gentle swing slow tire swing above the brown rippling creek
Then comes back the angry but silly and ineffective caterpillar-monster
This monster cannot defeat us
This song becomes a gentle muse
This song forgets its origins
it lets the balloons go
it is followed up by

the next song
where the balloon floats up, meanders up and away

Reaction First
while you were nursing your catastrophic injury, I will get first place in the step contest
I’m gonna leave early so you can get some rest
I won’t be your best friend
the voice is distant; the piano ethereal; the drums persistent
you are a pro; you’ve done this thing forever; you flip your hair and it brings me down
what is it in the toss of curtain of hair?
a river, a waterfall of hair?
floating up, waving up, hanging for a moment in the air, in infinity, in the possibilities
but everyone knows where it is headed
right back down, back down, flowing down to the dark deep pool where divers lose themselves beneath the thundering crash of water drop upon water drop

Baked Bones
[where the balloon floats up, meanders up and away]

Reaction Second
That the balloon floats up, meanders up and away
and that’s OK
that it drifts beyond our gazes

He wasn’t there though,
when AC, a faux-fur hand warmer proudly tied about her tiny middle,
lost that balloon in the cold parking lot
outside the mall with 50 foot metallic curving ceilings, with stale air of recycled BO and cigarette smoke
how she wailed!
how she carried on!
balloon long gone now
he wasn’t there though
not for that

Reaction First
what a joy you’ve been to me
Now I’m back there drinking in a French cafe
A young man plays accordion and swings from side to side as he ballads his heart out
how long this time goes
how long this life eats the cannon
I’m gonna leave you alone I swear it; I’m gonna leave you alone this time
nothing lasts forever
and these mix-ups of the heart are
song over

Afternote
A song to drift away on
To admit you had been happy with someone now making you sad
To travel through the arc and let life be itself

Trips

Reaction Second
An orchestra of strings floats up to meet you
as you sink down into the cold snow
wide open spaces created by long-spaced beats and a voice that wafts up and drops down in wide measures
“he’s a relic of gold”
“but he will arrive on time;
you can grab him at the gate;
it will be a brand new air;
it will be a brand new stage”
Delicately placed guitar and electropiano
Who is this relic of gold
and why does the “goooold” wind upward?
Why do we get so tired, so sleepy, so lost
like little children in our choir robes,
resting on each other’s bony shoulders
as the Christmas Eve service goes on?

Reaction First
I take long trips on the funking music of another’s forgotten seashell
you dougmarsh and then we grow tunneling with delicate vocals
and distant approaches
out of the sunlight bringing the river along
bringing the gods forward
he knows of what he might; if only he would be so bold; he is a relic of gold
what is this soft shaking and timid light?
I feel we’re falling down the rabbit hole
I fear we’re spinning on our heads and
he will arrive on time
it will be a grand new state
I’m a man on jet plane
I’m a man with a program
I’m a man with ammunition
I’m a man with a vision
a vision shattering like glass; like a sad singer’s fragmented
boldness
now the
anvil falls upon Wile E Coyote
The very anvil he’d planned so carefully
to drop upon the Roadrunner, who does not run, but merely spins his legs as a blur a wheel-like blur
we’re gone now, fading away with the guitar

Grace

Reaction Second
In this plaintive tune, D. Kent Watson maintains that there are things people should not say and feel, and that there is no sense of loyalty; furthermore, he’s a fool in need of some grace now, though he cannot rightly say if it is for “me” or “you”
Why can’t he see truth?
Why did he have to look through “you”?
And now when the deck of cards has fallen
onto the ground and lost its cohesion
What now?
The music ethereal, spaced out, distant like the loss, like the separation, like the confusion of a newfound nothing where you’d once reached for a stable place.
“You changed the story; you changed the place; I’m such a fool now”
While “there are things you should not say … feel … do” floats up through the cracks
Why did he follow this person not himself?
And why do I follow only this treadmill myself?
And now art is a long corridor where we say, “you get nothing from me” to the air, to the wind, the oak leaves shaking in the fall breeze, to no one anymore; since the bigger issue is that we’re all of us now and forever rolled up into one and cannot escape each other even if, wounded, we’d sometimes like to

Reaction First
Will you listen to me now?
will you read the things I suggest?
there are things people should not say; … feel; there is no sense of loyalty
i am a fool
i need some grace now
not sure if its for you or me
i could not see truth
i have to look through you always
had you as a sounding board
had you as a reference point
had you as a standard
had you as a lighthouse
had you as an insight
all of it was labor; all of it was some favor, anyhow
how softly folds the space
how sweetly lulls the
you changed the story; you changed the place; i’m such a fool
i stayed in place; i followed you; i walked with you
there are things you should not say …
how long has it been?
and in the end
there a things …
you get nothing from me
I’m going back now
to the place where I’d drew my strength
I’d thought I could make sense with
you and it would be a good idea
because you had the answers
and most of all the answer for me
because i thought you had the pieces
i couldn’t find on my own
but now i guess
i need to
take another
approach
seeing
as
well
any
way

AMW/BW

The scene is an old bridge, an ancient old bridge of ancient old pastel red, gray, and white waving stones. The scene is a multi-arch bridge over a flat-rippling river wide as a football field. The scene is now so far from me, now so lost to what I’ve somehow become. The scene is for others, for two yet young flames, for two yet possible virtues.

A: Hey!
B: Hey!
A: You smell nice!
B: You can’t smell another person in her windbreaker on this cool crisp wind-rustling bridgetop!
A: But I remember from before.
B: Thank you.
A: So
B:
A: We were going to take a winding walk through the path winding along the river.
B: Yeah!
A: So
B:
A: So I guess, well, let’s get to it!

[She smiles and slides her windbreakered arm into his heavy white cable sailor sweater. They walk along, fresh and free, caught up in the shared glow of their combined glowing. The sky is a little cloudy but still the sun predominates in this winter afternoon. I know that the last scene happened in summer in NYC, at least in my mind. And this one is happening in winter in Heidelberg, at least in my mind. But don’t think that, at least in my mind, these scenes are so far apart temporally or spatially as summer in New York and winter in Heidelberg are.]

B: These trees are forever. These trees are mountain ranges wrapped-around tubes running to the sky, branching infinitely, sprouting double-cello light green leaves all along the way.
A: These trees are a story rising up and beyond this soft and leaning and timidly worn winter-damp and yellow-tinged grass.
B: A moment outside of time is all the lovers seek; it is why they sought love.
A: Problems close and far; houses of cards shaking in the drafty kitchen upon that old checkered table top.
B: What color?
A: A faded yellow and white. Hard vinyl plastic. Some kind of 1950s idea of modernity, with a rigid ridged steel band around the tabletop side.
B: Why do humans age? Why do they have life cycles like fruitflies?
A: Why do they get to stretch out their life cycles, bending into and exulting in each little wrinkle? Why are humans given so much time?
B: What should we do now
A: Now?
B: You know
A: Now that we’ve found each other?
B: You know.
A:
B: What should we do?
A: I don’t know.
B:
A: I’m scared. Like I’ve found a treasure and now I could lose a treasure.
B: Me too.
A: Maybe we’re
B:
A: I mean
B: You mean, maybe we’re too hasty here
A: Well
B: Could be
A: At least we’re scared.
B: Right
A: So we’re not approaching this flippantly
B: Not at all

AW/BW
copyright: AMW

Please give me the Magic that Works
Please carry me into
and enfold me within
the Magic that Helps

Please grant me the Magic that Works
Please bless me and keep me
in the Light of your prison
Please hold me and know me
in the Light of your wisdom

Please guide us through the strings
that wayward loosed
unturns the pirate’s reel
and wellrun returns
us to the commonweal

Please help me
Please help us
How can we do what is best for everyone?

Please help us live for the Magic that Works
Please help us let go
of the tantrums the stick
the gumdrops that squeak
the glumdums that steal

A Magic that Works
A discipline that’s freedom
a Work that moves beyond itself,
carrying us beyond our narrow selves,
communing us with the wider view,
with the greater smile,
with the truer love

AW/BW
copyright: AMW

The ontological argument is like:
Clear and distinct ideas cannot be doubted and must be trueI have a clear and distinct idea of a triangle. I also have a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely perfect being. The existence of any particular triangle is not included within my conception of a triangle: “A triangle is a planar object made of three straight lines joined at vertices adding to 180deg” does not tell me anything about whether or not there’s a triangle in the real world.
But for an absolutely perfect being to not exist would contradict my definition of an absolutely perfect being, so the existence of a particular absolutely perfect being is contained within my conception of an absolutely perfect being. 
Therefore, since clear and distinct ideas cannot be doubted and must be true, it cannot be doubted and must be true that there is an absolutely perfect being, that is to say: a God.

Of course, for hundreds of years now people are like:
Come on!
Who knows the relationship of your human reasoning to Reality?
Human reasoning can’t stand outside of itself and assess itself against some Absolute Standard of Truth.
Human reasoning can’t say whether or not there even is a Reality, let alone how that Reality relates to human assumptions, perceptions, and logics!
You cannot define God into existence! That’s crazy!

And if people counter with:
But how could I have the idea of perfection in me when I’m not perfect?

The obvious answer is:
You have the sense towards “better” and the sense towards “more” and you can concatenate and iterate them and get “better, better, better ….” , which creates (in a calculus-like sense of ever-approaching though never-reaching) “perfection”.

But what about this idea:
Let me search for a clear and distinct idea of a True Good, aka a Light, aka a God, aka an Absolutely Infinite Substance, aka a True Perfection, etc.
Let me search inside to see if I can discover a clear and distinct idea of Perfect Goodness
Such an idea could not be understood literally. It could not be contained within words. For how could any words really contain that which words like “God” and “perfect being” are attempting to point towards?
What kind of an idea am I then looking for?

We cannot use concepts to prove or disprove the existence of God.But concepts can help both with an inner search for God and with communicating an insight about God (if found) to one’s larger thought.
To the degree concepts adequately point towards God and Godliness and are adequately understood by the contemplater, they can help in both the discovery of an adequate sense of God and Godliness and the philosophical and practical translation/implementation of that adequate sense of God and Godliness.
Good ideas well considered can help one become wiser.

Do we have within the sense of an Absolute Infinite Substance?
Of a Light that creates, sustains, shines through and love-lifts everything and everyone 100%?
Of an aware, honest, clear, kind, joyfully sharing Way?

Can we prove God to ourselves experientially by contemplating an ontological proof of God?
Like:
I find perfection within me, though I am not perfect.
Therefore, God exists.

Or like:
I have a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely infinite substance, which is a self-caused and self-sustained entity whose existence flows perfectly from its perfect essence.
But the essence of an absolutely infinite substance, unlike the essence of a triangle, contains existence within it: for an absolutely infinite substance to not exist contradicts the essence of an absolutely infinite substance (which includes all perfections, none of which are very effective without existence) and thus also the essence of the idea of an absolutely infinite substance contains existence in it. 
So the absolutely infinite substance necessarily exists.
There can’t be more than one absolutely infinite substance because the ais is complete and infinite, leaving no space of any kind (mental, material, spiritual) within which anything that was not dependent upon and flowing off of the ais could exist. But another ais would be self-caused and self-sustained. Therefore (as we said already), there can only be one ais.
Everything in existence must either be the ais or that which the ais causes and sustains.
All the universes must therefore flow off of and be sustained by the ais.

Pretty metaphysical poetry; but what if meditating on it starts to build an experience within us that transcends the ideas that sketch it?
How would that work? And what use could we make of such an experiential proof of God?

Author: Bartleby
Editor: Amble
Copyright: Andy

Scene takes place at a party where people are young and cool. Like a college party or maybe a little older like 20-something bohemia. Cool music and cool conversations and cool clothes. Everybody cool just like you pictured it being when you saw cool movies as a kid. Except cooler than that, because that was the coolness happening above your childhood head, but of course the current coolness so completely outclasses that prior coolness, that it’s embarrassing for all the old people who were young and thought they were cool in that comparative clueless and morally questionable lameness.

A: Hey.
B: Hey.
A: I really dig your T-shirt.
B: Oh, thanks! I made it myself. It’s a woodblock print. Those are my specialty.
A: Yeah?
B: I have a lot of concepts. They come to me in dreams and while I’m walking to work.
A: Cool.
B: I like your hair like that.
A: Thank you.
B: I’m not just saying that.
A: I wouldn’t have guessed you were.
B: I try to only say things that I mean.
A: That’s a good approach. But sometimes it’s best to give people a break from cruel truths.
B: Oh, totally! I didn’t mean it like that! I’m not one of those, “I always speak my mind!” types!
A: I know. That whole scene goes too far. As if anyone even knew their mind!
B: Or as if every random opinion in your mind needs to strut out into the public sphere!
A: Is it, um.
B: What?
A: This is going to sound, um.
B: What?
A: It’s just that, um.
B: Tell me!
A: I am so happy sitting next to you and feeling your presence shine through into my conscious space.
B: Oh! That’s so sweet!
A: You just seem like a really nice person; I mean, no.
B: I don’t seem like a nice person?
A: No, of course; it’s just that there’s lots of people who seem nice and who are in fact nice, but that don’t make me feel like this because
B: Because?
A: Because, gosh, you know
B: What?
A: Some people you just kind of feel yourself connecting with, and so you want
B: What?
A: Oh, to, just, nothing but, well, kind of
B: Now, look, you’ve taken a strange approach with me, starting with this kind of talk so early into our acquaintance. You’re just going to have to bite the bullet and tell me what you’re thinking.
A: I’m thinking I’d like to find a way to spend more time with you and get to know you better and
B: And?
A: uh
B: Don’t answer that one. The rest is sufficient and the answer is Yes!
A: Oh, that’s nice. Can I mention that you smell nice?
B: Not tonight. Bring that up next time.
A: OK

BW/AW
copyright: AMW

My origins?
Oh man! That takes me back!
I descend from a long line of beautiful souls who drifted across the plains of the Americas, settling in nooks from Patagonia to the Yukon.
I am of a diverse and proud people who look and sound like fall leaves turning red yellow brown gray. All season long (and seasons last millennia anymore) we flutter and spin and waft down to the ground. In varying colors and with the correlating degrees of elasticity and openness, a life floats around itself down to an earth by turns sturdy and dry, hard and cold, moist and gushy, or covered in waters that come and go.

AW/BW
copyright: AMW