is sleep a passing-by

a letting-go

a death

or does one rise

to the fresh-ness of the moment

for new beginnings 

or

a letting-go

resurrected at the Now of refreshment?

who knows how to refresh the dead

of yesterday's dreams

or wishers straying about

for the beginning of something new?

i stumble along

searching for the eye of my beholding

that longing

waiting to pop fresh

fresh from the quagmire of our poverty

the tension of the now

the tightening that shades our breath

sliding to the Home of our rest.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -...crowds are caught up in the rush to conformity.  Lured by money and success, they become raw material for dictatorships, and for the democracies which are partly or already dictatorships.  It sometimes happens that men decide to excel in order to institute reforms.  They usually end up destroyed, content to mediate between various tendencies, to adjust appearances, to bring laws into line with customs. Others set out to be revolutionaries.  But to employ violence against these evils is to bear them in oneself.  As soon as a cause triumphs, it's time to oppose it in the very name of the values that created it. 

  -My preference is for rebels, those whose sanity leads them to relativize the ideals and automatic reflexes that society produces in them.

  -The rebel is prejudiced in favor of a society that welcomes foreigners, the handicapped, wanderers, and all the parasites, which also permit it to breathe.  As soon as it closes its doors to keep itself clean, to exclude others, to line up everyone in ranks, it's goodbye to innocence and humor.  The rebel is on the side of the poor - those who aren't simply hoping to replace the rich - but don't expect the rebels to get aroused by electoral passions or be interested in the  ideology of parties, even though they realize ideology is necessary.  Rebels spontaneously see repetition in what is announced as different and they avoid false problems.  They are troublemakers because they want neither to command nor to obey, and hence they are hard to catch.  If only everyone would do the same!  There are always enough people who will follow, and enough others, drawn by ambition, who will jump on the stage, scramble for power, and conceal their disappointment in love.  They are our servants, assigned to the inhuman.  We owe them respect.

  -We are too prone to blame everything on circumstances.  They are in good part alibis.  Modern society oppresses individuals so much only because they are spiritually empty and secretly applaud this oppression which, for better or worse, allows then to live from day to day.