From a Poet

May 13th, 2013

The sickness and disease with which our constitutions must struggle have, I believe, given rise to those phantoms and evil spirits that we have conjured to exist and have empire over our actions.  A slow analysis of the mind will show us that with the oncoming of a cold our mood will shift and our opinions change, so that we may freely believe ourselves possessed, whether it be of a physical or mental state.  For our definitions and portrayals of these spirits work in conjunction with our modern-day microbes, and that there are good and bad microbes our medicinal science will fully attest. Thus that spirits exist I could most certainly believe, for the name has become something other than what we know it by today: our term lends more to our scientific mind than our Christian or folkloric mythology would have us think.  But I have heard it said as well that everything animate and inanimate has a soul, knowing that our perception is merely the false eye with which we see…

May 6th, 2013

After a long day or a long week of struggling with ourselves, we come to the conclusion that beauty is in thought, and from this our highest expression.  No special memory or treasured moment, but it is the perception of movement in the unseen realm of impossibility; nor is it called beauty, but only felt, for it is a part of our own initiation.
Douglas Thornton

April 18th, 2013

There are many situations and ideas, even of the simplest sort, to which we cannot give a name, and find ourselves at the end of our reason before the understanding of it has brought us any favor.  It is amusing to note how often they come upon us, and in our efforts to find something as simple as the word spoon, when it has slipped our mind, we digress into soups and stews before we find ourselves being fed through a straw.  For if the person next to us can perceive and name the object in front of him, he is having a good day, and may even be able to give a reason as to why he shaves. But misunderstanding people is for most of us a common nature.  We speak the full extent of our minds upon their situation and their motives before they have said something that truly reveals their character.  It is an educated guess, some of us say, but if we are biased in that way, we have not been taught otherwise.  I perceive objects as they are placed before me and use the informa…

April 12th, 2013 Part 3

The shifting of powers, that is, the way in which daily life changes when it comes into contact with other influences such as culture and politics, but most of all pressure of friends and of society, is the greatest force with which we must struggle if we are ever to understand clarity and where it comes from.  And since it is not by desire that we come to it, nor reflection upon our actions and their effects upon others, but by release, meaning the kind of importance found in any particular situation or problem, then it is of the utmost necessity to measure kindness in action and fear in thought, so that we may not fall too easily into our own slumbers and walk too harshly upon the substance that bears us.  Our preoccupations do not change, only their focus, and doubt never wholly diminishes until it finds in discretion a sturdy friend. For the cause of our havoc is finding ourselves too eager to understand why we suffer in the first place.
Douglas Thornton