Author: stevekuusisto

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Sent from the CNN App for iPhone

Yes, while Rick Santorum says the separation of church and state makes him want to throw up, I will say that organized religion can be rather more nauseating than Jeffersonian democracy. This article from CNN is a stark reminder that the Catholic church is still complicit in the coverup of child sexual abuse.

So last night my guide dog knocked a glass of wine with her Labrador tail. The glass was on the coffee table and belonged to my father in law Bill, who, seeing tail and wine stem collide, managed to catch the glass before it fell over. But this morning Nira was discovered to be wearing wine spots. She looked like a faun, a dappled deer. I liked the look. Though I washed her, relying on standards of public propriety, I thought of customizing Miss Nira. Until of course she gave me that look that says: “Aren’t I beautiful, just as I am?”

 –In the rapt evening that will never be night

  you listen without end to Theocritus’ nightingale. 

–Jorge Luis Borges

The bird of the dead is never clear, buzzing like early telephone wires.  It sings for all the villages on earth. One clear throated call would solve the mystery of incarnation and metempsychosis–meantime you listen to all the garbled songs, that punishment saved for poets. & the sad bird offers only explanations of yourself. Ideas without music. Frail wisdom. I think it is your right hand I love: drumming quietly, as if you were counting syllables at an oration. All the dark blue, top heavy notes…

Now is it a tree or a god there, showing through

the rusted gate?

–Jorge Luis Borges

I spent the day walking the long way around the island–a problem of logic, there is never a long way with islands, unless the metaphysics of the thing enters your head. I chose the path with the cinnamon ferns and the birch that looks like a far away angel. I chose the path where the day was blanched in white light. I walked bent in the way of the old knife grinder who came to our house when I was a boy. I now know, though I can’t tell you how, that this tinker was one of the followers of Pythagoras. I suspect he was a veteran of the first world war. I walked bent over in the blank lowlands of the island, my feet sinking in wet sand. How I love walking blindly in the woods. I love to be blind like paths and trees. 

When you love a dog you love without reference. He sees that now. He sees so many terrains at once, blind though he may be. Walking in a cozy downtown neighborhood of Ithaca, New York, he feels the country just over the next hill; the sky; the threadbare houses. He feels the lights left on beside the midnight windows. Everything is about love. The streets and the daze of minutes.

And his dog looks up at him. She wants to know if he knows where he's going. But she's also in love. She loves her strange man. Loves the intricate tune their feet make together. She hears what they sound like as they move. They make the sound of the first horse. Corky dog can remember. All dogs remember.

Right here in Syracuse. Right here. Lives torn apart.

From the Department of Great Minds Thinking Alike.

via lancemannion.typepad.com

Thank you Lance Mannion thank you!