Like a Dog

Like snow in summer or rain in harvest,
       so honour is not fitting for a fool.
Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying,
       an undeserved curse goes nowhere.
A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,
       and a rod for the back of fools.
Do not answer fools according to their folly,
       or you will be a fool yourself.
Answer fools according to their folly,
       or they will be wise in their own eyes.
It is like cutting off one’s foot and drinking down violence,
       to send a message by a fool.
The legs of a disabled person hang limp;
       so does a proverb in the mouth of a fool.
It is like binding a stone in a sling
       to give honour to a fool.
Like a thornbush brandished by the hand of a drunkard
       is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.
Like an archer who wounds everybody
       is one who hires a passing fool or drunkard.
Like a dog that returns to its vomit
       is a fool who reverts to his folly.
Do you see persons wise in their own eyes?
       There is more hope for fools than for them.

--Proverbs 26:1-12, NRSV

The best lack all conviction...

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

 —William Butler Yeats, from "The Second Coming," lines 7–8 (1920)

The death of Oskar

'Oskar died,' Ilse told him, sipping fresh lime water on his mother's takht. 'Like a comedian. He went to talk to the army and tell them not to be pawns. The fool really thought the troops would fling down their guns and walk away. We watched from a window and I prayed they wouldn't just trample all over him. The regiment had learned to march in step by then, you wouldn't recognize them. As he reached the streetcorner across from the parade ground he tripped over his own shoelace and fell into the street. A staff car hit him and he died. He could never keep his laces tied, that ninny'...here there were diamonds freezing to her lashes...'He was the type that gives anarchists a bad name.'

Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Dilemma

"Dilemma"

David Budbill

I want to be

famous

so I can be

humble

about being

famous.

What good is my

humility

when I am

stuck

in this

obscurity?

the heart adjusts / to its new weight

The heart stops briefly when someone dies,
a quick pain as you hear the news, & someone passes
from your outside life to inside. Slowly the heart adjusts
to its new weight, & slowly everything continues, sanely.

—Ted Berrigan, "Things to Do in Providence" (1970) (Selected Poems)

The CIA Goes Local

My staff used to joke about how I would claim, when going off on a rare vacation, that I wasn't going to give work a moment's thought, and then, before my car had left the Agency compound, I'd call in on my cell phone to see how things were going. Here in Idaho, it was no different. I was anxious to learn what the reaction was to the release of my statement. Unfortunately, though, none of our sophisticated cell phones seemed to work in the mountains of Idaho. My communications team was still in Sun Valley, so we decided to stop at a rustic roadside store in search of a pay phone--a place called Smiley Creek Lodge, in Sawtooth City. Not exactly a major metropolis. It turned out the place had only one working pay phone, and four people waiting in line to use it.
One of my security team asked if I wanted him to tell those waiting that it was a national emergency so we could jump ahead of the queue. "That's all I need," I thought, "some guy flashing a badge to get me head-of-the-line privileges." I opted to wait for the folks ahead of us to complete their calls, although I did allow one of my security detail to take my place in line while I got a milkshake and fries. (I highly recommend both the next time you are in Sawtooth City). When my turn for the phone came, I learned that the Agency press staff was swamped with incoming calls, but it was too soon to gauge how the story was playing.
When we finally got to the lake, Stephanie and I got in a two-person kayak and paddled around, taking in the majestic beauty of the nearby mountains. It was peaceful, quiet, and quite romantic--just Stephanie, me, and the other canoes with my security detail.

"At the Center of the Storm" by George Tenet

'the eternal pharmacy ... created for the eternal patient'

'Medicine a dream! I doubt whether the pharmacopolists and master-apothecaries could resist stoning you if they were here. You deny, then, the influence of philtres on the blood and unguents on the flesh! You deny the eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals we call the world, expressly created for the eternal patient we call man!'

—Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame of Paris (1831) (trans. John Sturrock 1978)

Justification by Co-crucifixion

The basic claim of this book has been that Pauls soteriology is best described as theosis, or transformation into the image of the kenotic, cruciform God revealed in the faithful and loving cross of Christ, and that Spirit-enabled theosis is the substance of both justification and holiness. Justification is participatory and transformative, accomplished by co-crucifixion with Christ and embodied as holiness. Theosis is effected by the mutual inhabitation of those who are justified and the triune God who justifies them. Relating the thesis of this book to the more generally known and accepted notion of cruciformity in Paul, we have said that cruciformity is really theoformity, or theosis. For the sake of clarity and precision, we may wish to use the phrase cruciform theosis as shorthand for Paul's distinctive version of theosis.

—Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology (2009)

What Every Armored Car Needs

Because of the increasingly dangerous environment in Baghdad, to protect our personnel we purchased armored sedans wherever we could find them on the open market. One day an ISG team en route to a suspect site found themselves riding in an armored BMW that we had just had flown into Iraq. Originally intended for some European industrialist, the BMW came equipped with a DVD player in the backseat. One of the team members accidentally hit the DVD's Play button, not knowing that there was a copy of the movie Saving Private Ryan already in the machine, and the volume was on high. Seconds later the sound of gunfire and explosions came blasting through the car's speakers. It was the opening scene of the movie. For a few seconds, the vehicle's driver and security team thought the gunfire was live. While that might have been a humorous incident, most of the travel around Iraq was no joking matter. The threats were real and considerable.

two picture frames, both empty

PETER

It doesn't sound like a very nice place ... where you live.

JERRY

Well, no; it isn't an apartment in the East Seventies. But, then again, I don't have one wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets. What I do have, I have toilet articles, a few clothes, a hot plate that I'm not supposed to have, a can opener, one that works with a key, you know; a knife, two forks, and two spoons, one small, one large; three plates, a cup, a saucer, a drinking glass, two picture frames, both empty, eight or nine books, a pack of pornographic playing cards, regular deck, an old Western Union typewriter that prints nothing but capital letters and a small strongbox without a lock which has in it ... what? Rocks! Some rocks ... sea-rounded rocks I picked up on the beach when I was a kid. Under which ... weighed down ... are some letters ... please letters .... please why don't you do this, and please when will you do that letters. And when letters, too. When will you write? When will you come? When? These letters are from more recent years.

PETER

(Stares glumly at his shoes, then)  About those two empty picture frames ... ?

JERRY

I don't see why they need any explanation at all. Isn't it clear? I don't have pictures of anyone to put in them.

—Edward Albee, The Zoo Story (1958)

A person has to have a way of dealing with SOMETHING.

JERRY

It's just ... it's just that ... (JERRY is abnormally tense, now) ... it's just that if you can't deal with people, you have to make a start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS! (Much faster now and like a conspirator)  Don't you see? A person has to have a way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people ... if not with people ... SOMETHING. With a bed, with a cockroach, with a mirror ... no, that's too hard, that's one of the last steps. With a cockroach, with a ... with a ... with a carpet, a roll of toilet paper ... no, not that, either ... that's a mirror, too; always check bleeding. You see how hard it is to find things? With a street corner, and too many lights, all colors reflecting on the oily-wet streets ... with a wisp of smoke, a wisp ... of smoke ... with ... with pornographic playing cards, with a strongbox ... WITHOUT A LOCK ... with love, with vomiting, with crying, with fury because the pretty little ladies aren't pretty little ladies, with making money with your body which is an act of love and I could prove it, with howling because you're alive; with God. How about that? WITH GOD WHO IS A COLORED QUEEN WHO WEARS A KIMONO AND PLUCKS HIS EYEBROWS, WHO IS A WOMAN WHO CRIES WITH DETERMINATION BEHIND HER CLOSED DOOR ... with God who, I'm told, turned his back on the whole thing some time ago ...

—Edward Albee, The Zoo Story (1958)