#philothea

Franz von Sales

französischer Name: François de Sales Bischof von Genf, Ordensgründer, Kirchenlehrer

Name bedeutet: der Franke (latein.)

Gedenktag katholisch: 24. Januar * 21. August 1567 auf dem Schloss in Thorens in Savoyen in Frankreich † 28. Dezember 1622 in Lyon in Frankreich

Was ist wahre Frömmigkeit? "Die wahre und lebendige Frömmigkeit setzt die Gottesliebe voraus; ja sie ist nichts anderes als wahre Gottesliebe. Freilich nicht irgendeine Liebe zu Gott; denn die Gottesliebe heißt Gnade, insofern sie unserer Seele Schönheit verleiht und uns der göttlichen Majestät wohlgefällig macht; sie heißt Liebe, insofern sie uns Kraft zu gutem Handeln gibt; wenn sie aber jene Stufe der Vollkommenheit erreicht, dass wir das Gute nicht nur tun, sondern es sorgfältig, häufig und rasch tun, dann heißt sie Frömmigkeit."

Franz von Sales: Philothea - Anleitung zum frommen Leben.

“And do we ever really change?”

sitting one by one beside the other.

“And do we ever change?”

Will the flower wilt

And will the sparrow mutter?

Must the green grass sway yellow -

Broken under foot like shattered glass?

This illuminated day is already

Naught but broken windows

And winter’s over brimming rim

Of red-wine-slumber:

We seek the wing of May

In the dreaming of November.

Will love still hunt fresh in the woodland

Blossoming? Or let the moon’s

Silvering fog turn rumpled feathers

Windward?  

Sitting one by one beside the other,

pursed lips new-breathing summer,

and tasting winter’s kiss:

“And must we really change?”

I had a blog for almost three years, before I deleted it and lost almost three years worth of poetry, short stories, and reflections. It was cathartic at first, like burning a journal and spreading the ashes, like praying for life to come up out of dead things, like hoping that I could start over and maybe this time would be better than the last time. And then I tried to write again, but I couldn't find a single god damn thing worth saying. I dug and dug and found nothing but cliches and emotions too stupid to merit expression. I found myself lost in my own head with nothing to turn back to for orientation. Three years of working everything out, three years of asking and answering the curveball questions that life has a tendency to throw straight at my head. Three years of putting the pieces back together; lost in an instant. 

This is a first attempt at getting out some of what has been floating around in my head this semester. My thoughts have been fragmentary, but they are slowly constellating together. 

This isn't a poem, but it's not necessarily prose either. It's an expression. Does it have meaning? Perhaps, but I think it's more useful to see it as something meaningful - something arising from the sick tension grown from my roots to my limbs. All I want is to pick up and go, but I am rooted here, to this dirt for better and for worse. And I am still desperately trying to discover ways to make this little darkness and this little light that we call life into some cohesive image both transcendent and beautiful.

---

Untitled: a work in progress

Manipulated by your pen, my varicose veins drip ink. Bruised and beaten to fit the scansion of your rigid lign, I lay between the words and punctuation, cramming this broken body of meaning into the spaces where you can’t reach it. Eluding your allusions - buried in the pit of the ground of endless metaphor. The Author digs with heavy hand.

Ennui: a deep, unforgiving feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction necessitating escape.

Senses bundle together. I taste the shaking cicada as his legs quake sonatas over the expanse of balmy southern air. Heat sounds a lot like metamorphosis: terrified cicada-bodies crack open. Wings, dripping wet, expand, catch the breeze, and ascend (body and soul) towards the highest heights of blooming magnolia trees. Humming along to summer’s chorus, I wonder whether magnolia is a scent that can be purchased on the internet.

Mr. Junebug flew home early, but did not anticipate the freeze. A deep longing for home, even simply for the sight of home, twisted and pounded within his buggy-breast. He flew all night till morning came and when I woke, at least 500 junebug corpses lay blanketed in sheets of snow.

Ennui: Evening and Dawn lay together in the dim room with the shaking shutter, forbidding Morning’s rays.

Dawn to Evening: “Are you awake?”

Evening mumbles into his pillow and pulls his blanket tighter, “You know, my love, that I am always sleeping.”

Dawn again: “Our moments now are almost gone. Soon I must leave to paint the rosy shades of dawn and wake the restless world from all its heavy sleeping.”

Evening turns his weary head, “Then go, and wake the world, my love. But leave me in my bed.”

Dawn Persists: “But if I go, I may not return. Come with me and be the nighting to my trialsome days. Rise up and go your way, but meet me here when midnight cries, and we will lay awake and dream of coming day.”

“I will not go with you,” Evening replied, “Nor can I be your dawning’s night. You may paint your morning canvases and direct all the songbirds in their flight. In my bed I’ll spend my days and fill sad day dreamers’ heads with images of twisted, haunting things. I will call the philosopher into quiet rooms and tempt him with riddles till his brain’s askew. In my bed, I will lay and doubt the solid shapes beyond the shaking window shutter. And I will cloud the minds of youth with dreams of grandeur.”

“But if you do not go with me,” a quivering voice replied, “I will not return. In your dreams, I cannot be -- I will not be a shadow’s shadow’s shade inside your musing brain. No longer yours, I will give my weaving to the day; my work, in darkness drenched, lay unfinished at the loom. I to my work and leave you to yours.”

Dawn parting from Evening: pulled the sheet gently from his head and kissed his tousled hair. Through the window, she flew away to become dawning to the day.

Evening lay upon the bed, and went to work within his head. A corpse stretched out upon a bed, shed an involuntary tear.

I sputter and spit to get my words out.

I am not eloquent, but merely say what must be said.

As many decisions as indecisions

and, as evening looms,

I still have nothing to say.

Swallow pills to awaken slumber --

Wait to see the twisted, twisting trees

transform into a myriad of hollow things.,

I listen as an infant cries, uncomforted, until he slumbers.   

Baby Charlotte creeps and crawls within her mother’s womb. Child of wrath born of children, she leaps and laughs, safe within the darkened room. Baby cicada, dreams of the scent of some phantasmal tree and tastes the bitter sweet nectar of stolen magnolia seed.

“Resolve, then, Philothea, to accept with a ready heart all the inspirations it shall please God to send to you. When they come, receive them as ambassadors sent by the King of Heaven, who desires to enter into a marriage contract with you. Attend calmly to his proposals, think of the love with which you are inspired, and cherish the holy inspiration. Consent to the holy inspiration with an entire, a loving and a permanent consent.”