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Two more self-quotations

The other day, my taxi driver had a soft porn calendar and a potted plant on his dashboard.

I'm not sure what to make of that, not having ridden taxis much anywhere else. It seems to beg a Letterman-esque joke, but I'm largely incapable of humor. (Although I've been known to make drunk people laugh at my hermit jokes.)

Korean's eyes are immensely black, dark 'til one can't tell what is pupil and what iris. Perhaps they lack irises altogether - which is why they regard each other in the eye so rarely. Their souls must be so vivid, open, bare.

I wrote this soon after arriving, and it has more to do with lack of eye-contact than color. Before some fool denounces me for racism, let me note that I spent many years of my life in the Sahel, where people's skin is darker than any Asian eyes. Not only that, but to be fair I must amend myself. Eyes here vary much more widely that I was led to expect - from soft brown to chocolate black to jet. Many Occidentals interpret lack of eye-contact as a lack of honesty or frankness, but I think my point is that we could make a more metaphorical claim. Souls spill though the eyes, and if, in fact, one's soul is so exposed one should grant others the favor of diverting it. A bare soul is, after all, a heavy burden. We carry very few in our lives. So what one people obscures with gaudy color another hides by gently looking away.

Chotki

I just got a prayer rope, wrist-sized. I've been using it less than a week now. Strange to say, I like this subconcious, almost back-drop kind ofprayer. It's present in the most mundane tasks of the day, relieving the guilt of time "wasted" in doing what's needed: walking to the bus, waiting for tests to be finished, sitting in a taxi.... Simple prayer has such subtle and secret power - one of presence, that same presence as a secret. In a way, 'tis like sex - everyone does it, yet the knowledge that one has done it, and that only one other knows...well, it envigorates one's whole being.

'Wrote this a few months ago. I still used my prayer rope some, but it has gotten a little grungy from all the time spent in my pocket and bag. I used to wear it in church a lot, since it was something to do in the odd moment of boredum; now, though, it gets in the way when I serve in the sanctuary so I wear it less often. I should get one without the tassel, it would help.

The point of this little excersize is twofold. One is as a clearing house for random content I've scribbled down here and there that I'm mining for content. The other is as a warning to any unfortunate souls who stumbled across this page. I'm full of sentiments like the above - saccarine and sacreligious simultaneously - which I then have a tendency to resurrect to become the objects of my sacrasm and heavy handed alliteration. It's all part of my wretched little character trait of self-analysis, of eventually seeing the silliness in just about anything. 'Twouldn't be so bad if it functioned come time for confession.

I'll stop this meta-rant now before it hurts my head, too.

#6

Outside my door I keep an angel chained.
I never feed him, never let him loose,
And no one has accused me of abuse,
Althought I wouldn't care if they complained.
I like the way he looks as if he strained
To put his two carved wooden wings to use
And still stood still, impassive and abstruse,
Aware of all he could do and disdained.

And that is our relationship. He stands,
For now, where I have put him. His restraint
Is no more and no less than what it seems.
And angel doesn't have to be a saint.
They fall like us, then try to make amends,
As when he comes and pleads with me in dreams.

Unholy Sonnets by Mark Jarman