The Staggering Story of Humanity: an interdisciplinary exploration and chronicling of the human condition. Glimpses, whispers and shouts yearning to find meaning.
“Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals.” ~ Revelation 5:1
Nights unfold Like the scrolls of Revelation Dragons and Leviathan breathing inconvenience Gehenna burning bright As the pale horse gallops across America Lead me not into temptation Bring the whore to heel Empire to ashes As the Barstool Prophet orders another round Truth to Power, “he sighs…” and sips his martini What changed from Egypt to Babylon to America? From bathtub gin to methamphetamines Sing me another song Abishag A melody for humanity Lyrics of carnal hermeneutics “going all the way down” Keeping my body warm in the night We know Goliath died long ago Yet, his shadow looms over us all So, bring me to Jerusalem We will find new wine to drink And five smooth stones in a wadi
Set foot into a season of rest Embody a room once empty Filled now with creation Photographs and poetry Humanity in space and time Slowly walk Pause Look Think Reflect Slowly walk again With all the searchers for meaning Moving like light through the trees Intentional tangible experience Breathe in the encounter Let it linger in your imagination after you leave The sabbath in art
i went for walk yesterday and saw a deserted street while a child walked along a beach in the sun bars and churches with lights out jesus in the grave contaminated by death will he ever wake up?
i went for a walk the other day and saw the juxtaposition of commerce and life one sacrificed while the other saved blue eyes and black bodies dying in the poison rain will love dance in the field of lilies will we ever know what to do?
i will go for a walk tomorrow and see what i saw yesterday and the other day playgrounds closed to children’s laughter the white noise of humanity quieted for a season to love another like ourselves and be our sister’s keeper embraces distanced by plague but not forgotten will there be meaning in decency?
I put together this digital story centered around a portion of an interview Charles Bukowski did years ago. He talks about the value of rest, to simply sleep when you need to and not feel guilty or that you “should” be doing something. This digital story is a reflection on how I am feeling during this pandemic and the uncertainty and liminal spaces we find ourselves living in while pondering the ramifications of these times. I wrote a poem for the digital story with the word “apocalypse” in it. I do not mean the word as it is often used or understood in the pop culture of evangelicalism but rather with the sense of an “unveiling.” What is being unveiled before our eyes? What injustices and systemic evils? Times of difficulty throughout history have been an apocalypse of one kind or another for the simple reason of what those times and experiences unveiled. Take a look around and reflect on this unveiling.
humming the soundtrack for the apocalypse eyes begin to see and ears to hear a world full of stories (crying to be heard) (begging to be seen) laments of the voiceless forgotten ones with backs bent to build a forsaken “American Dream”
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
i went for walk yesterday and saw a deserted street while a child walked along a beach in the sun bars and churches with lights out jesus in the grave contaminated by death will he ever wake up?
i went for a walk the other day and saw the juxtaposition of commerce and life one sacrificed while the other saved blue eyes and black bodies dying in the poison rain will love dance in the field of lilies will we ever know what to do?
i will go for a walk tomorrow and see what i saw yesterday and the other day playgrounds closed to children’s laughter the white noise of humanity quieted for a season to love another like ourselves and be our sister’s keeper embraces distanced by plague but not forgotten will there be meaning in decency?
Try to Praise the Mutilated World By Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
~ Adam Zagajewski (Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.) September 17, 2001, The New Yorker
Minneapolis and St. Paul Airport Herbert Humphrey Terminal 2 on April 9 and 11, 2020 on what was to be two busy pre-Easter travel days now marked by emptiness.
Try to Praise the Mutilated World By Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
~ Adam Zagajewski (Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.) September 17, 2001, The New Yorker
The cost of this pandemic is not in the percentages – either of the survivors or the dead. But, in the actual human lives lost – the family member, the friend, the colleague, the neighbor, the lover, the child. A human life gone because of ignorance and lack of vision.
Canal Park, Duluth, MN
“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken, There’s a pain goes on and on. Empty chairs at empty tables, Now my friends are dead and gone…” ~ Les Misérables, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
Wait Without Hope
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.
“April is upon us, pitiless and young and harsh.” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
“April is the cruellest month… I will show you fear in a handful of dust… After the torchlight red on sweaty faces After the frosty silence in the gardens After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying Prison and palace and reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience…” ~ T.S. Eliot, excerpts from The Wasteland
I went to Duluth yesterday to photograph “Stay at Home – Day 8” – last Saturday I photographed emptiness in black and white. This week the sun was out and so were people. I chose to mostly process the photos in color with a few exceptions. It seemed right for the day and my mood. There were more people around and outside than I had expected, and I am not sure what to think about that. People have to get out and feel the sunshine and the wind and move and yet there was an eeriness to humanity moving freely amongst a deadly virus. A few people had face masks on, and some had gloves at Target. Unfortunately, the mask I saw were worn improperly with noses exposed or very loosely fitting. The gloves worn into a store and then back into a vehicle do nothing to protect you. I witnessed two individuals in a car with masks and gloves on and thought of that image of a metaphor for this time of ignorance, lack of preparation and vision. We keep moving without knowing where we are going thinking we are safe. As Jürgen Moltmann writes, “It is in the foreign country that we first come to cherish home. It is only when we have been driven out of paradise that we know what paradise is. Every perception requires detachment and ‘alienation’. That is why all self-knowledge is always a little too late, or a little too soon. In the pressure of events we are blind to what these events are.”
Another aspect to this pandemic is the defining of “essential” workers. I believe some like medical personal, law enforcement, fire and EMS, scientists are essential but the claim that the many of the other industries are essential is more of a comment on the desire to keep capitalism alive and well. Most white-collar workers can work from the relative safety of their homes while that is not the case with the blue-collar work force or low-income workers. It is almost as if a calculation is being made to the percentage of people that can be sacrificed for others to have the life, they expect living in America? As the president said, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.” As I have written already, I believe there will be a reckoning to come after this when people realize the cost of this pandemic is not in the percentages – either of the survivors or the dead. But, in the actual human lives lost – the family member, the friend, the colleague, the neighbor, the lover, the child. A human life gone because of ignorance and lack of vision.
Here are some images from yesterday in Duluth, MN:
The cost of this pandemic is not in the percentages – either of the survivors or the dead. But, in the actual human lives lost – the family member, the friend, the colleague, the neighbor, the lover, the child. A human life gone because of ignorance and lack of vision.
“This is going to be imprinted on the personality of our nation for a very long time.” ~ Dr. Anthony Fauci
the streets are empty the sidewalks abandoned as the white horse rides through God’s country while on the outskirts of life forgotten bodies long to be touched like lepers eyes waiting for the sun to rise lips praying for crumbs from your table
Two Harbors, MN
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The Face of Humanity 