Collateral Damage

Massage in a Bottle

“Whatever the subject of study in the classroom,
the shadow subject is ourselves, our limits, our
potentials. As long as that remains in the shadows,
it will block both individual and group from full
illumination. But if both hurt and self-doubt can
be brought into the light…the learning will flower.”
Parker Palmer in The Courage to Teach.
Blessed be the double bind that blinds:
Damaged & Damaging
if I do or don’t do.

Indo European dap: to apportion.
Latin: damnum –damage entailing
liability (for reparation), harm:
“damn”
“damage”
“condemn”
“indemnity”

See also wel ^2&3to turn, roll; tear, pull
“wound”
“waltz”
“welter,” “walk”
“wallet” & “wallop”
& vulnerable

L. volvere: to roll, vault,
“valve,”
“valley,”
“involve,”
“convolute”
“revolution”
& “evolution.”

Moving Violations

Outside: elevator workers.
A piliated woodpecker pecking
on a pine tree, merry go round
trucks & golf carts hauling student
workers, John Showalter negotiating
his classic green John Deere, our
orangefront-end loader threading
loads of gravel up from below
—work being done;

Finished Produce

And inside, down the hallway:
cartons of books waiting to be
dumped or distributed, carried
away, stored, moved, sent to
prisons or far away--old text
books, novels, how-to write,
shelf-help classics from college
days, philosophical works,
memoirs, histories &
herstories, collections
of poetry, anthologies,
samples, specimens
& works of liberal
art all done and
over with.

(Freeze-dried Mind on a Page.
Sleeping beauties & plug ugly
toads waiting Prince Charming’s,
resurrecting kiss; no need to be
good looking to have-at-it all.)

Collateral Damage

I am doing nothing & so:
damned, damnit: damaged &
damaging—insult to a universe
violating all things great and
small to be doing no
thing.

I COULD be doing some
thing but not everything-else and
so: rightly accuse-able, appropriately
condemnable: my attention efficient
crime & punish-mental studies naturally
selecting what ignores all else and ignores
the ignoring damnit—damaged &
damaging if I do DO & don’t
DO, too.

Damned, damnit.
Not that there’s any thing
wrong with that. I’m just describing
here, not judging. How could it be other
wise? It’s the denial & cover-up that does
the damage done not the doing-damage,
degrees of damage and kind not with
standing: covering it up & denying
smokes my bozone level, meta-
manufacturing my share of
globule warming.

GUILTY.

Of course I’m guilty: shamelessly.
No need to wonder why: my obligation
is beyond me over my head: I owe ought
shoulda woulda coulda not no way I can
pay so of course punitive damage & penal
punish-mental pain compensating whether
I move or sit makes no never mind: to
the damage done.

See:
this explains the function of the hole in the
soul, my insatiability & mono-monumental
lack, need, want, desire: sit, squat, stand,
kneel, stride, strive, run for my life & why
I eat a lot, starve myself, jog jog to Boston,
slash my arms, jiggle my knees, work out hard
and aim to please, do some drugs and drink a
little—massage in a bottle: a brief acquittal.

xxxooo, Presbyter.