Peace: the final

region of life

Yoseph Joseph Wandering Manchild

Oh my Johnnycashtributealbum.

The Best at Being Myself

 I am very really good at being myself 

I really am the best at it

This.

Why can't i kill myself?

I never wanna kill myself. 

I just want you to think I might.

Why did I think that?

Never want you to think I ever would

I want you to think I never would   ( kill my self )

I shan't 

I just Shant me self

(: later baby

Hope Sand Dolor

 This is the sequel prequel to Tide Pools. Hope is Dawn's mother, born January 3rd, 1939, a block from the sea in East New York.

On Hope's 44th bday, she looks through her daughter's desk, 14-year-old Dawn. On the first page of a black and white composition notebook begins a story about Dawn Sunday. She's touched by her daughter's imagination and empathy. 

She tries too hard not to cry.

Starfish, Uncommon rarity, Dawn holds her right hand open face up. Hope holds her left hand, as if mother, as if friends. On the beach, perfect weather, warm clouds beckon the girls to be released, as gasses in the sky, in 2 to 5 minutes. 

Infinite greys, bluster in the faces, safe alone together owning property generational comfort, affluenza deride debilitated, after a movie theater so many lost childhoods in one. 

Action, to relieve humanitarian effort, Hope calls for them... and weak coffee water cooler slowly begins another weekend, hearting rental arrangements 

Blowin implication set up to being convenient facts, engineered ecstasy, survives the societal obligation And She Finally breathes ....

Let Us Type Whatever I Can Think Of

 Oh wow cool. Get to do every word. I mean Capitalise.

I just saw Johnny Cash performing Man in Black for the first time. What a wonder to behold, to cherish, to crave, to clasp, to Call... upon,,,

I guess. I cannot type what I think. It is too much and too much that is not Language or even accessible to anyone else...

Or even to my own awareness, my reflection on my own thoughts. It may not ever be possible.

 I do not know.

I do not mean Most of it

How does a flying Cow sign his name sincerely?

A dirt bluegreen cloud shits the float on the carrot town's opalbrown river, shade is for the shallow idiots, let us all Be rainbows . . . . - Foregiveness

I know it, Certainly. But how certain? Is it you're new and indifferent, the gay sky of All the Creation and He and They giving All of Us to Ourselves, They are Practically everything, Pragmatic for the son.

It Must Be Done

One of them is always done. One of us, looking out the grey wooden window, glass in our eye, how childish we realise we have almost always been

Except the Light

For ever we deliver

At home, a growth besieges a liver or a Dier or A beautiful imminent Death

Around the corner, a brick a stone

A step a lonely life Will take.

Just remember Me

I like you

for what you do

and Think....

the End.

The Djinn Fought in Me, We Gave Up Together and We Found It All, with Us

I wish I had done some of everything differently. 

I wish I were a better Gertrude Stein poem.

I am not the nightingale, but

Why are you so good at talking so much?

A written 3 years of dialogue spoke to me.

Ever make plans? - bill wurtz

 

The last 2 are go online and learn your name. 

7 Bluish Feelings in My Body

10 twigs in the sky

9 sunrises 

8 tree leaves disintegrating on a grey asphalt

7 bluish feelings in my Body 

6 screams of a solo coyo-te

5 stumps wish they were older (or newer)

4 people, 1 is me.

My Chest Impaled by Small Soft Flowers

 I wanna feel better, but feeling does not make any thing better

Something I just typed to Woebot.

Best okra recipes 

I worked at the I R S

I did not work 

I jobbed. Lazy as I was no one will help. The future holds Us.

Flowers make us forever.

I walked the sidewalk by the larger Center building, orange ish brix, the fuchsia the magenta the softness The Feeling the smallness I was every where. All of Them

maybe a floundering crepe myrtle displays her brilliant blooms . . . .

(:

Songing 1

 Blue pencils under grey little necks of blooms with the sky open and awaiting ending, Empty as I was the Song.

Possible fortunate fates

Green faces on froggy morons

Dunston checks in at the Gate.

Forcible pronoun ties up the loon.

I bled Out for a free ffriday mornin''

so when she says what is the yellow of Your gravely spitoon... !

Pasta baked itself on late dark even Ing.

Ol Lava became what You bonke will have you wait till it's too late.

Probable cause make a too much mistake, saviour pineapple Confusioning.

I washed the angel. Pop drank till he popped. Soule  was a 'Dream' by factual Conclusion.

I named her Deme, short for Demeter.

Cary, carry herself home

The Christing crowds 

Fall what you will.

Fall down, fall down, fall once more. 

Little Song for My Late Saturday Morning

 I am not young enough to make a difference. 

- about to get in a bath

Y'all want some okra?

- text to aaron andee

Asymmetric Syllables

Unhinged Unburgers

Pathetic Waffle

Arbitrarily Disemboweled

Dis-associative Associative Bureaucratic Sanity Try-on Haul

Pamelak Klomfas

Unbelittle visitors on homelands  ,  charitably contributing.

 The sheen of the forest

You grow but you don't know if you really do.

You really are a slow dive into the green pool of someone else’s dreaming fact.

You watch the watery goo slip through cleanly, a perfect circle, the other side of you.

A Someone to sleep through....

- Life should be confusing           for people like you ~

Not Emotion

 Anger is not an emotion. 

Lasagna is not an emotion. 

J. D. Salinger is not an emotion. 

Burnt-toast smell is not an emotional. 

Laughter is not an emotional. 

Devotional apostasy is not an emotional. 

Emotion was not made for baking at Sun Dock Park.

Emotion was not her emotional Wild Hair Game.

My eyes are not an emotion.

Probably feeling better Than

's not an

Emotion.

R u okay's not.

I am so ready for Fall.

I am the readiest beetle in the juniper lands.

What is that? Why did I say that? I cannot understand. 

A little (too) fast, with what we Do 

Listening to a really good , probably-The Octopus Project song

They like encapsulate a futuristic or parallel universe sci fi. Or the fantastical of Earth, now.

It is pretty fun

Driving home at 2 a.m.

So often.

Maybe the song is Plomp Minibus

What's an Omnibus? 

College Beach Town

The year is nothing. It's 1998. The year is nothing. 

Is it fall winter or spring. 

We're at the beach. 

The college kids are out.

Out here.

Way out here.

We're far out.

Of our minds.

In our minds.

Chicken Hot Wing Sudge Fundae

Fall Day Before Time

 Aaaaeh , Scarecrow phone call pumpkin patch barbed wire fence (last century, rot rust) starbucks roadside litter . . .

Hm , I'm gonna be a Father. White toilets. Humour. Yellowed page. Grey Days. Road Trip , Do you know what I mean? 

Gaghh, gogh , Can we ever Die. Speaking of Fresj Image , 

I look at this like this : happy kitten , Not Yet Fall grasses , doit , playtime is now Clocks say so Black hands , Read correctly , the Korean Face , manufacturing facility , drive for forty five More Minutes. Do not blank Minds.

I tried. But  . . . . The mural in Toledo too much light blues and high shades of peach pink red golly gosh a 500 feet of concrete do you must See our beautiful river Sleep in your nice bed too soft smeared with love and toaster strudel benign doctors' and nurses' offices is it all fine in your dream? we Aaalll are awake in the night mare ride alongside French fry freeways nights become Dawn sametime darker than Armageddon Revelation 

Dearme, single out . . .

Keli McCord

Lavender Toothpick

 lavender cupcake

Show me the lavender hose.

Don't show the lavender rake.

Lavender beansprouts

lavender sex toy

This is a gross lavender carriage of lavender injustice.

Lavender tree fort

lavender young boy

We spoke too soon with lavender voices.

The world became full of lavender ice.

Demising Fortune

The body has come down to its own demising fortune.

I spoke to him at 3:15 p.m.

He got back to me at 3:50 p.m.

We met on the gravel street at the Elgin graveyard. 

Was it night or was it green? I just cannot remember. 

The Body has come down to its own demising fortune. 

After the change, after, we change. 

 I wake up

From sleep. 

My lives

Unseen documentaries 

Can you imagine? 

Should you imagine? 

Just light enough

It becomes 8:38.

I am awake

To stare out window at grass trees and dirt.

Some Sky!

We should make this today. 

When to feel,

What did I dream?

Something about numbers, 

Pretty girl,

Wake up early,

Stay awake....

Read your leftover hope book. 

Speak under the signs of no industry animals. 

iPeed 8 Feet

 I uses a measuring tape.

I had to squeeze my peen.

o', roe

 "She got a child inside her body! - sorry. Excuse Everyone. -

! SHE got a Child inside her Bahhdee. 

She's only 14 trips around the Sun, and she's about to die.

It's not a miscarriage; it's a miscarriage of Justice.

Woah, woe, wo, this child is dying...

[ woahs ]  No Child of No One's

Oooh, her name is Auburn just like her hair.

She was born in Tennessee and moved to Mississippi, 'cause her parents were so fucked up on death and life itself.

And she got a good ol' boyfriend boy, and he knows how and where to go to see how his life is gonna drive it insane.

So he does it cuz he can,

and she wants what is a man,

but no one finds that real life can decide - "

[incoming phone call]

The End

Voice to Text, Speech to Text, Because I Read the 1st 2 Pages of The Pale King

  Am I gonna be  OKAY? Why.

 It doesn't matter, man,

 just take it as it is.

 What is this great white world? Someone spoke to the following children all Brown and blonde; the wind knocks us all down.

 Sitting on a greeness, is it flat or ruffled? The mean man finds his eye, finds as I on the side of the finger sharp and lonely of course, he says it with aplomb but growing fingers and fears feel like there is nothing wrong; the pizza flies off the flat wooden Table. Why did we make this song so Fiery?

- Voice to text, speech to text, because I read the 1st 2 pages of The Pale King....

 

AOC and Aaron, 13-10-89

 Prelude (Pray Amble)           

                      O, I'm sorry, hello. I had a, um, over one, I had more than one cup of coffee. I forgot I had some in the refrigerator from yesterday. I think it had chocolate syrup in it and half and half. That might've been my 2nd cup of yesterday. I had some leftover; I had that; I made a fresh cup today. And um, I think I slept pretty well, but I might still be a little deprived, of sleep - excuse me. My GI tract, esophagus... So uh, yeah, now I just made another cup of coffee, a 2nd cup. I put all this Starbux cocoa mix in it. Um, yea. O, we're an hour into Sunday Morning, CBS show. They're talking about Trump and classified declassified and espionage and FBI. And just a lot of stupid things. - I thought Mom was talking to Kit for a minute, and I was saying how stupid Kit is, and I said I hate you to Kit in my mind, or I was kind of whispering it out loud. I went out to the hot tub and put some water on my head, on my hair. I guess the caffeine is just really like uh chemistry, in like My Mind... It's like a hamster on wheel. [l' Ennui] Or a guinea pig. O, guinea pigs are big. Ashley and I saw a herd of guinea pigs running and squeaking and chirping, at the like Cedar Creek Zoo, or I wonder what that zoo is called. I wanna go back there if it still exists. I member we saw a zebra from a distance, maybe 50 yards or so, maybe we got closer. I wish I could remember; I wish I could remember Ashley's face a little better. I wonder if we'll ever talk again. Maybe we'll be at our 20 years high school reunion, when we're 38 years old. That would be lovely. Uh, it's strange how Hank is using his doggy door so much. Um, that was his tail. Anyway it's been 3 minutes, but I wanted to write some stuff about Stranger Things' characters and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and then I decided I - and then I imagined writing, typing out my desires and thoughts and things, but, O, I just lit some incense; I should turn the fan on. But, um, the way I wanted to write it, it was intriguing to me, so I thought, "

Number Two (#1!)

i don't wanna write something like that, just based on my lust of these people, if you know what I mean... like erotica. Um but, I do wanna write in this way that I imagined which is something like I'm kind of

making a commentary of - of what I'm writing and how I'm writing within whatever creative fiction, creative writing that I'm, within the writing... within the Yeah.

Like a combination. Well, it's kinda just obvious... I just would state the obvious:

I think it would begin (the beginning of whatever I'm writing would begin:)

The Beginning

                            I am writing a fiction about my friend Aaron and the Congresswoman who was born on the same day, AOC. So you can see the words I'm using [::amusing] are... I'm just trying to, well, whatever I say about it now is kind of like what I would want to write about, but I don't - I don't wanna do, I wanna do less than half of it as like, as first person, present, a self-reference about the actual writing of it, which is a part of what actually: my idea for actually writing something creative.

                           So it's like a documentary that includes the documentarian, I think, something like that. I might try to type this out then. I think I like how, how this is going, but I can take out all the pauses and repetition, maybe. And just re- I can rewrite this, um, monologue thing... But what would the story of myfriend and AOC be?

                            Yeah, that's a good sentence for the piece I'm writing, [laughing] (witches) and so is this current one about the previous one being a good sentence. [or Séance] So, Aaron and AOC are walking down a sunny brown street inbetween a park and a 6-story apartment building, in the Bronx or Queenz or some where, and they are well-dressed and likable and good-looking and looking at each other. She's so liberal and progressive, She wants to turn this World into a Green good place, [paradise] for Everyone.

                            They didn't really think of me, but they're a little bit aware that I am writing this scene [sense] into existence, even though I'm really just talking about it right now. I guess this is what writing is like, um. And they smile and she smiles and he smiles even more. The sun is on their faces, but when they turn toward the Other face, half of the Face is in shadow of the Sun. O, the shadow of the Sun: that doesn't make sense. The shadow is the thing of the thing that casts the shadow. The Sun casts the Light, for 2 generic and 2 white mana.... Okay! I'm just gonna type now; it's almost ten minutes. I gotta listen to this though; this is so exciting, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation...

[ Myfriend Aaron is The Best. He does philosophy and Christianity. I don't know how to convince you, just think about the best ways to live this life, and what are time and space and our Minds? Thanks, Love, Greg. ]

[ https://youtu.be/PH2hueEBITo ]

http://oakygo.blogspot.com/2022/08/aoc-and-aaron-13-10-89.html

Timothy Liu Nothing but the Truth So Help Me God Nine lamps in the shape of teeming censers hung from a courthouse ceiling, forty wooden chairs facing a video screen. This is America. Jury duty and the token fanfare of breaking from our daily routines, men and women with baskets of tropical fruit on top of their heads. Justice for all and some time off. Dionne Warwick in a floor-length gown not singing. Trying to hook her fans instead on the Psychic Friends Network: Touch me not for I have not yet dialed that 1- 900 number. America, talk to me. The clock stops ticking, but someone still keeps holding a microphone to our lips.   From issue no. 132 (Fall 1994)

 Les Murray

Echidna

Crumpled in a coign I was galactic with my hatchling
till he prickled.
He entered the earth pouch then
and learned ant-ribbon,
the gloss we put like lightning on the brimming ones.
Life is fat is sleep. I feast life on and sleep it,
deep loveself in calm.
I awaken to spikes of food-sheathing, of mulling fertile egg,
of sun, of formic gravels,
of worms, dab hunting, of fanning under quill-ruff when
budged:
all are rinds, to sleep.
Tongue-scabbard, corner-footed, I am trundling doze
and wherever I put it
is exactly right. Sleep goes there.
 

From issue no. 117 (Winter 1990)

 The complexities of Mind, including art, music, sound, movement, language, the body...

I added that ellipsis because it seems weird that the body is part of the mind. The mind is like the soul. The soul could just be our Godliness, which doesn't need to always think, like the mind does, because They (souls, God) understand everything. 

I guess if we are not thinking we don't exist. We are minds. We experience this cosmos, our bodies, this fabric of reality, dimensions, forms, images, senses etc.

Walking in fronta the IRS at night, I sang a song to me, called Cuyahoga. I like it a lot. I made it up. It reminded me of Zappa. I mostly repeated the word, then sang, 'I wish I were a Person, Who Has Been, to Cuyahoga'

Why do/can we do these things?

We are these people.

Music is about music. That'd be a good album title.

The Sake of the Song by Townes Van Zandt I think.

. . . . Maybe I should just help people out of slavery and poverty right now

What why am I

In Blazing Aarrow Gift of Gab raps,

Think about your purpose 

That's impossible. 

Wonder what meaning means....

Three Backward Boobs

 family, and Christ is going on the edge of organ [fail] in seconds of rearranging and she is tongue Jesus hard pink and the other Ladies cut her off on her knees and then I poured Fresca or a Dog to the edge to get a little bit more time for a few seconds and then I poured my heart into a neighbor's and made a break a little more and I am attracted by a spell that I am trying the best for you may be a little bit better and better than you have exactly 💯 ❤️ 💙 💗 💕 ♥️ 💯 ❤️ 💙 💗 💕 ♥️ 

A Text to Aaron

 Caballero Night Area

I like that euthanasia business story. Real dystopia. A lot of the commenters seem confused. In high school I was meant/chose to write an essay on euthanasia. I wrote a surreal stream of consciousness, almost 2 pages, that I still have

I think of it often, I think of Neige of Alcest. Aaron shared me them 2 months ago.

The end of my essay is

 " 

look at the snow falling. This has everything to do with anything. 

Snow was the only thing that ever existed in the universe. Now it's gone, now, now it's dark.

"

Anyway it is . . . Intense. 

Here's some predictive, 

Fallingdevil Miyako ayaya and the big throbbing thrust alternately and the big men are going out for dinner and I still feel like I'm sayin on a bench like that for me I think I should do it myself and then you can also known that you will not be the weirdest for this morning I thought I was horny to you and you draw me to my heart shape as well soon and you draw me to be good 👍 

  Small mountains in tall forests 

Oh no don't tell your brother. 

the natural affliction 

Those don't turn over. 

Google You make me feel like dancing You Make Me Feel Like Dancing Song by Leo Sayer

YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE DANCIN

WANNA DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY 

Song

My God, 

I am so proud of my life

My thoughts 

Memories 

and imagination, 

I feel ridiculous 

I don't know Why

What 

To Do.

The En.

I am Missing 

the end....

Do you want to ride a book to the store, at night, 

and die like a lonely O!-at

meal creampie in a large dumpster, at night?

Digiorno's are good if you're 42, divorced with no kids. 

God's Hell

 Listening to Bear Hides and Buffalo doing data entry at the IRS in Austin, Texas,

God will not help us;

We are alone in Hell.

We are saved, god is in us:

Listen to Jubilee Street Live at Alexandra Palace 2020

 

Anyone's Fault

 is the title, maybe a book or story or personal essay essé

 You could be the Anyone in the story.

I said don't think and you did, for me.

A cat named Zoomer written by Tim

A cat named Zoom written by Tim Wynne

Dreams and things you don't need to read to think

 S R, we must alight in rithm bellends while the astronomical originorder d.... beams and shafts and directionless and sunlike qualities of forever when days are never numbered.

 

GOLD HOUSE BUILDERS

DELAWARE GHOST TOURS

MOTHER   BUSINESSMAN 

ineligible illegible 

a bona fide resident has a principal place of abode

De Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 🇵🇷 🇵🇷 🇵🇷 🇵🇷 🇵🇷 

Lossnetting and Carryforward

Something I'm Not

 https://youtu.be/f7wu6gX2-dQ

Sorry aboot the whining noice thru out... Clever Name 3:15 Sunshine Grows 7:53 Number Eleven 12;50 22 14;10 Afrikazoo 17:22 Do You Wanna...? 20;15 Got'ta Go 21;04 Picky, the Locksmith 23;06 Calm Me Down 23;52 Spiffy Spin08a Bifida 25;31 We Can't All Live in a Zoo 29;50 Appreciate My Apples 31;32 Scary Parts of the World 36;57 CCTV Weather 38;07 Bad Words Shin 38;15 Let's Read Aloud 43;19 Dig a Donut 45;46 Easier Decide 47;42 Demon in the Restaurant 49;45 Colonial Soup Ladle 51;03 Subtle Knife 53;31 Francesca 57;22 Why Don't You Love Me? 57;49 Chicken-Eyed Man 58;54 Didactic Elephant 59;58 Music Tonsil 1;00;50 Something Else 1;04;36 Camp Pies (Can't Lock Your Doors) 1;06;29 Iglootopia 1;07;21 Preacher in the Rain 1;09;36 Bluejay's Gun 1;10;42 Wonderful Ones 1;14;09 Freaking Forever 1;14;41 What's on My Mind 1;33;24 Saw 1;34;01 Thuds 1;35;15 37 1;58;45 38

 

World Part i

 Is   This   Today?

is today today?

It Is Like Today - World Party

iii

A Real Life meat space internet post

 

Gregory Douglas Wredberg

16 m  · 

Shared with Public

Near the beginning of *The Fourth Stage of Meaning* :

[[ CWL = Collected Works of Lonergan [ Bernard ] ]

... i don’t recall reading Vignette 10 nor any of the Interior Lighthouse essays after reading Bill’s

draft, though I may have. What I recall was revisiting Prehumous 4-8, emailing Mike Shute to ask

him what he was working on, and – thanks to Prehumous 8 – sharing some of CWL 8 The

Incarnate Word (2016) with Bill as possibly relevant to his work-in-progress. I was delighted to

talk to these two about what they were working on because they seemed to be focusing on

what got me seriously interested in Phil in the first place: the fifth chapter of Wealth of Self

(1975), “The Inside-Out of Radical Existentialism.” It was around my twenty-first birthday. I was

a senior philosophy major in Bill’s Theory of Knowing course in the fall of 2010.

By the time we got to that chapter, I had already come to think of “radical existentialism” as

Phil’s name for a habitual focus on the roots of one’s intentionality that would help one in the

revision, maintenance, and formation of one’s habits. The idea came to me in the context of his

clues about the axial period, which ends with an endnote referring the reader to Quaestio 21 of

De Deo Trino II (1964):

Here one may move to the positive aspects of the fruit of methodology: for

self-attentive methodology offers man the possibility of getting to grips with his meaning

at its focus. Existentialism and historical consciousness have succeeded in underlining

man’s creativity of his own essence. That emergent essence is centrally on the level of

mind, and the more man appreciates the nature of the emergence of meaning, the more

adequately will he contribute creatively to that emergence. That appreciation will enable

him to move from a state of spontaneous use of his intelligence in his doing to a level of

intelligent guidance of that use.2

2

Ibid., p. 8.

1

Ibid., p. 8.

1

Before figuring that much out, I recall vividly, with the music of Rage Against the Machine in the

background, reading the words “my interest is in the abolition of slavery of minds at its roots.”

3

It was important to me that Phil talked about me getting a grip on myself in the context of

history getting a grip on themselves. But it wasn’t until reading “The Inside-Out of Radical

Existentialism” that I realized what I was doing with Phil, in spite of his claim in the

introduction’s endnotes that he would be restricting our “considerations to historical reality in

its nonreligious dimensions,”

4 was deeply religious.

- by Robert-Gabriel Aaron Mundine

and Philip McShane

[:

1Gregory Douglas Wredberg

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comment : more context, 

In the summer of 2005, I went on a trip with my church youth group to host a “vacation Bible school” in a rural community near Santa Fe, New Mexico. My MP3 player was loaded with Demon Days (2005), Steal This Album (2002), Lateralus (2001), Ænima (1996) to name some of the memorable albums. Lyrics like “oh green world/ don’t desert me now / made of you and you of me / but where are we?” and “your sacred silence, losing all violence/ stars in their place, mirror your face / I need to find you, I need to seek my innervision” and “I embrace my desire to / swing on the spiral / of our divinity and / still be a human” and “I've been crawling on my belly / clearing out what could've been / I've been wallowing in my own confused / and insecure delusions / for a piece to cross me over / or a word to guide me in / I want to feel the changes coming down / I want to know what I've been hiding / in my shadow” were very powerful, moving images for me in my search for the meaning of life. Incidentally, I met an older teenager our first day in the village we were visiting who was interested in Shakespeare, the Mars Volta, and shamans. Romero and I got along very well, and I spent as much time as I could with him during our stay, even though my girlfriend was on the trip too. He guided me in exercises in paying attention to the sights and sounds and smells of natural things, in using my imagination, with the assistance of rhythmic drumming, to journey into the underworld, and in keeping track of these exercises in a journal. He talked to me about how he was raised Catholic, but found this way of exploring inner space, seeking the invisible essences of things, and meeting the Spirit within more helpful, and it was okay because this Spirit is the core of all the great religions. All of these intimations of meaning were held together for me by Alex Grey’s Dissectional album art for Lateralus, which had been a seriously puzzling image for me. When it was time for me to go back to Texas, he gave me his copy of the book he had learned all this from. I cannot recommend the book now, but it allowed me to continue what I had started in New Mexico. Without my friend’s enthusiasm, I couldn’t take the “vision quests” seriously very much longer, although I liked the drumming, but I continued to tune my senses, focus on 4 Ibid., p. xvi, en. 5. 3 Ibid., p. xiv. 2 the aliveness of things, and try to make contact with the Spirit within, and I made a point of doing my spiritual exercises outside in the field behind my house. The following year, I worked my way through Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979). Besides becoming better at drawing, finding greater delight in visual art, growing in my appreciation of modern art, and learning to notice more visual details in my environment, I learned to notice what I see rather than what I thought I saw. Initially this sensitized me to the messiness of my visual spread, which presented far more strange lines and irregular shapes than straight lines and geometrical shapes, especially when I went from inside my house to outside in the field. The year after that, my interest in Radiohead led me to read The Crying of Lot 49 (1965). The meaning of the novella promised to me “a real alternative to the absence of surprise to life that harrows the head of everybody you know.” The silence of the Holy Spirit before Pentecost is a theme of the book, and thanks to passages like the following, I began to wonder about not just my intent to contact the Spirit within, but the Spirit’s intent to contact me: