this has not been edited at all, and its really fucking close to my heart...but i figure its a gift to whoever has been staying around for three years


i like my body when it is with your body.
It is so quite a new thing.
ee cummings

I came back from kentucky, and I thought that I no longer believed in g-d, i saw awe and i saw it with out the need for jesus, mary and thesaints. i figured it was in the back of my head, in the dusty, chaosridden attic, beside Joespeh Smiths Dowsing Rod, and Basho's BeggingBowl. I came from kentucky, from the everlasting buccolic green calm,from the shade elks, and the reading everything i could (10 books in10 days--some theology, some beckett (is beckett theology-- i cannever tell.)i walked, and saw beaver ponds, fields of yellow green flowers, theslick green magonlias, the cry and caw of birds, at night--when ishould have been at vespers, i walked down into the hollow where theyused to grow corn, and my back turned to the monastary, i saw 10 000fire flies (thats a magnetic fields song, couldnt have been that many,but it seemed like it.)i wanted jesus to love me, i wanted to be washed in the blood of thelamb, i wanted christ to come down from the stations of the cross,like he came down from the cross, and i walked behind that large,plain abbey, and i heard the bees and the feilds, and came into arevery...a holy madness, lets say. i thot it was the death of g-d orat least the end of my need for g-d, except for work, for the last twodays there, i didnt eat or drink or do anything but pray and read andwork--fruit cake in boxes, cheese in boxes--i talked about the thingsi talked about to the people working with me, i was still the sameanthony, and i had everyone older then me telling me that i didnt knowanything, that i would grow up and find the truthi came back early, and i came back with an odd, freeing joy, like iimagine what the first fish felt when he showed up on land, thatgasping thru gills and lungs and everything else, the magic that comeswhen one realizes how the body reacts, how one knows about lungs.after not eating or eating no meat, no spices, tea, rasin bran, soup,thick black bread, fruit juice--i went to keegans, i ate deep friedmeat, potatoes, cheese..i took my pleasure again, and realized i didnot want to leave it.everyone assumed now that i was atheist, that i recived nothing againfrom the host, from the christ child, from his mother, from hisservants--this of course was nonsense--kentucky was holy to me, it wasparadigm shifting, and i realized that i went from the thick straightroad, to the brambles--i pass the gigantic pendulous christ on theside of saint agnes every day, i see the two rosaries on my wall,still hung on a nail, one black and silver, one white, glow in thedark plastic, at nights when i try to go to sleep that one hums greenmy subconciousi havent really listened to christians yet, some johnny cash--but ialways listen to johnny cash, and some hymns about dying that came outof the blood shot label a couple of years ago, and some of louvinssatan is real, cause my friend gareth in london wanted to talk aboutit, and sometimes when i get kind of manic in the midst of anafternoons sun i sing "jesus loves me/this i know/for the bible tellsme so", but thats really nothing more then childhood emerging thru theboredomi havent really read about g-d yet--not in the way i used to (nobible, no gnostics, no paul and no thomas, not even the canticles),some of kristeva on holbein's mournful painting of the lord laid forburial, some research for a book i might right on american venucalurchristianity--but thats really about social culture, trying to findwhat this old wise jew means to these shiny neon americans; and then igot this book of brazillian art out of the library, a history and acatalog for a 10 yr old guggienheim show, i wanted to know more aboutsouth america, its the last gap in my knowledge, i saw a hundred ofthe old saints and madonnas and christs, all in poly chromed wood,there copreality hinting at something i will miss but nothingmore--there was the odd curiousity, mater derloasa's periced byswords, madonnas riding a crown of infant heads, a man the shade ofmidnight holding his mansion of many, his foot on a man baby pink,like george and the dragon--but these were the usual rewards that camefrom the labryinth--i signed up for the mother church, because itdidnt provide the red string, and i needed something to get lost in.then something from a guy who every brazillian knows, a sculptorcalled o aleihandinjo or the little cripple, it was a giant dove, theholy spirit in her complex majesty, in her abstract, genderless joy,coming down from heavens, and telling us that god was well pleased. ihad two thoughts--forever in my ldsness, in my buddhism, in mycatholicism, in whatever morass i am in now, i think of my soul as thelittle cripple, as one who has had his hip broken so often that itdoes not grow anymore, as someone who is so wounded and broken that hecannot grow larger, as that fig tree that wilted under gods wrath, asone who's back is broken because the weight of the worlds suffering,because i put my shoulder to the wheel but never scattered sunshine.the top of this holy spirits wing, the holy spirit that o aleihandinjocarved, are two thick tendons, that look like a spine, or a hamstring,or something else tough and permanant, this is not the small, slightbird of giotto, this is not the radiant light, this is a tangible,permanat object. i dont want to be crippled, this gentleman wasphysically crippled, small, tiny, body broken at birth, in pain-- youcan do the connections to the crucifxion (everything is connected tothe crucifxion in catholicism, everything is about that misery laddenman on the misery ladden cross, everyone is a masochist here, theguilt ridden mother making sure all her children are in line.)i wanted to go to the monastary not to remember christs suffering, butto forget my own body--i wanted to ignore the fallen arches, the badknees, the thick hips, the ugly penis, the fat belly, the hairy back,the wrecked shoulders, the vision that cannot be corrected by anyglasses. i wanted to be collective, i wanted everyone there to me andfor me to be everyone. i no longer wanted anthony the little cripple,i wanted to fulfill the prophecy in galations, neither jew norgentile, etc--the exact violation of all of the naming and idenenitypolitics i hold so dear.then i got there, and my eyes saw the wonder and awe of the world--andi thot of the koan, about the abbot who tears down the abbey in orderto see the sunset, and i remember reading the diaries of merton in themonastary, and how in his late life he moved further away, how he diedin thailand (some buddhists say that when one has reached satori, andthere is nothing left, death comes), how before that death, the illhealth and the celibate affair with the pretty nurse who took care ofhim (constantly sick, in and out of the hospital, what would happen ifhe and the nurse fell in love (they did fall in love); if they gotmarried; if he gave up). this firssion of eroticism in those passagesreminded me of how sexual i found the services, and other things inthe church as well.i used to met with fthr stephen hero and he would give me absoultion,this was when i thot i could be a priest, and i would lean my head andhe would lean his head, and i saw his last button undone and his whiteshirt showing, and thru that confession, my cock pressed against mypants, or when i saw fther luke meeting one on one, every happy, wheni was in the monastary and i wondered if he ever masterbated, or thepretty boy who was in retreat, from boulder (like neal cassady, likejack kerouac, like allen ginsberg, like all those silly boys 40 yearsago who played this game--of dirty words, of frank emotions, of freewriting, of sex and god all mixed up--nothing is new, all isvanity--ecclasices(sp) taught me everything, dont you know).i dont know, maybe thats why i was ill suited to both catholicism andxianity, because all of the sensous, emotional, raptourus, overfilling, was all about being there ,and not working in parantheses.i'm too ironic--thinking of one of the songs at the end of the servicebefore lunch, and how they conflated the never extingushed burningbush that yhwh appeared to moses, and marys everblossoming virginity,and i thot mary's burning bush, and how improper and how poetic itwas--what do i do with that ?or finding a copy of holy anorexia, and how i read 100s of pages ofwomen who took sacrifice instead of power, and sometimes they hadboth, and how starving oneself was considered a sign of holiness--howall sorts of grotesqureies were considered a sign of holiness, likecatherine of sienna lancing a cancerous tumour, and drinking the pus,and thinking of all the symbolism that was there, of taking thecancers of the world, of making yourself sick instead of this otherwoman, of connecting to the body of the suffering so much that onewould want to be there, of everything being pure when one was withgod, so that even cancerous pus was mothers milk, all of this came tome before the concluding thought, this was sick--that was not onlyperverse but sick--to use the argot of our age, dysfunctionalbehaviour.i dont know what all this means, im rambling now, i guess, an its notabout the pretty boys and controlling my libido, or my sense of irony,or not knowing what to do with Catherines starvation and denigrationor the breaking of the body or the holy spirit coming down as a dove,or anything else like that--its that i dont know where god and i are,i dont know what god and i think of each other. its not that i thinkthat fod is dead, that god never exisited, or anything like that--myfreind dave, the good and holy catholic talks fondly of voltairesqoute about if god didnt exist we'd have to invent him--so maybe rightnow, i am trying to figure out how to invent him, find where thelanguage lies.i'm glad i saw the beacer pond, the elms, the fire flies, themagnolias, the eames chair battered in the barn, the cell, the statuesof mary, i am glad i saw everything (one of the statues was sleek andwhite, a dove and a madonna and some abstraction of virture all inone, i left my pink cord rosary hanging from her praying hands--shereminded me of the henry moore sculpture of the holy spirit that washidden in the very bakc, dark, dusty corner when i went to st pauls inlondon--how this masterpeice of the femmine face of god was last inthe phallic towers, and the graves of war heros and statesmen)i was told when i left the mormons, i was told that the holy spiritwould never come to me again, that the gift of the holy ghost would nolonger be mine, and i figured out how much of a lie that was. im toldthat awe is gods pervue, and that there cannot be any of it, w/o thetrinity, i hope that isnt the case