Bubble language

We’re bubbles rising to the surface, to the “big pop,” as bubbles say.

Old emotion

To borrow from the lexicon of Thomas Merton, old emotion sleeps in our paper flesh like dynamite. Inevitably, when the circumstances are precisely right, it blows up. And someone says, “That wasn’t me.”

Beneath the chaos

To borrow from a Trappist monk, the wisdom of Lao Tzu—conceived as his mother traced the arc of a falling star, carried in her womb for 62 years, delivered while she leaned against a plum tree—sleeps in China’s paper flesh like dynamite. “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” In a related development, it’s been 50 years since the Beatles released their paean of praise, Let It Be.

At home in the ashes

Can a man change his character? Yes, provided he sees himself as he is and can feel in his paper flesh the sting of a cauterizing remorse.

The way home

The way home is hard, narrow and treacherous; there are switchbacks, loose rock and steep inclines. “Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself.”