Patronizing

Transformative

If you stand right fronting and
face to face to a fact, you will
see the sun glimmer on both
its surfaces, as if it were a
scimitar, and feel its
sweet edge dividing
you through the
heart and marrow,
and so you will happily
conclude your mortal career.
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle
in our throats and feel cold in the extremities;
if we are alive, let us go about our business.
Thoreau.. Walden

Can you decode this?
A bit of Transcendentalism .
Figure THIS out, and I dare say
you GET IT!

Eureka.: the transcendentistry.

It’s patronizing for me to say such a thing
"Oh, you GET IT!" Forgive me, an old guy:
literally a patron (“father”) so I’m going to
patronize by nature, yes?

In early days at WWC, faculty met every
week and started each meeting with prayer.
I got asked to open soon after I arrived,
damnit, and didn’t particularly want to
PRAY pray, know what I mean?

(The origin of that word, by the way is
L. precari: to be precarious: risky business
OOOMYGAWD: motive for prayer in those
days: save me! save us!)

And so I read this passage (above) from Walden.

Do you think anybody GOT IT? The joke?
(Good joke? Bad joke? Good prayer? Bad?)

You have to work at & with that passage,
I think, to untangle its words and images.
Put it in play. Fool around with it. Let it
fool around with you. It’s rich, I think.
But I’m a patron. Patronizing.

Patriarch? Ok Ok—that’s taking it
too far. I’ve known patriarchs and
I’m no patriarch.