all things to all people, a fellow labourer among the unwashed Gentiles, a word from Philippians.

Don't think, not for a minute, little shavers, that I asked for that, that I begged to you for more EBT or what-have-you, SNAP! benefits and the like, but that I conducted myself with dignity, not condescending to beg or make my need known.  Nonetheless, a fragrant offering, a benefit in the form of a tithe.

Philippians 4:11 can be seen through the lens of Paul "being all things to all people" as if, being among the Stoics, he became for that time period, a Stoic, for the furtherance of the Gospel, forging an understanding between himself and his audience, so he might preach to them the Gospel that he carried around with him, learned so well, and from firsthand experience.

"...I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, there with to be content.  I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound."

We can get into the weeds, ignoring the overall message, thinking that Paul actually did not just take on a plastic frontispiece of stoicism, but actually seemed to learn from the Stoics before he preached to them on Mars Hill.  That he internalized his own natural spirit, and was thus not so effected by imprisonment and other forms of persecutions, and that even he could starve and not become downcast by his own sad state.

Just like a good stoic?

Neigh.  Bolstered by the power of the Gospel, instead of some man-made doctrine.

Verse 13:

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

We could cherry-pick verses for our own devotional purposes, even use 4:11 and 4:12 to try and strip-mine some sort of Stoic tradition in Early Christianity, but the thread is nebulous and apt to break under even the lightest scrutiny.  What we find instead is what I mentioned earlier, that Paul was bolstered by the Gospel, heartened by the very thought of Christ.

If one wanted to pick-out a pet scripture, then why not either of these:

"Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice."

"The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

It was an antiquated volume of Matthew Henry that set my to the right regarding a hermeneutic or an exposition of these particular words.  Something to the effect that "though you sent me a gift, I was doing quite well, generally happy whether in need or want or abundance, being contented by the immensity of the Gospel message to which I have devoted the remainder of my life."

The point being, one can dissect the passage into its various parts and pick out any number of corrupted meanings, but the overall message remains the same, regardless of Stoic leanings or what have you, as one kind even ascribed 4:4 as some kind of Dionysian "ode to consumptive joy" if one had the inclination.

But in verse 7, Paul notes the defying of the human understanding, that the Gospel is not only a mystery as he so often wrote, that we have our own difficulty, thanks to our roots to instinct, or forbearance to the soil of the earth, that sacrifice is so often un-natural. 

the evening redness from business 74.

When you start talking about sin-consciousness, you broach a pretty large topic, and at any time, only a spit of it shows, while so much remains elusive.  And when we speak of old sins, the conversation turns inevitably to the discount superstore, where they have been at times apt to put such sins on full display.  During those times, I feel like a part of me is dying, but I walk along, giving no sign, not "tipping-off" usually.  There was a matter from some two decades ago that kept resurfacing, in more than one store, and in more than one state, used, as one's private matters are, as "grist for the mill".

In the Rockingham North Carolina store, I stood near the offensive evidence during lunch breaks, for the purpose of keeping the fact fresh on my mind that they were using it, and definitely not to remind myself of the original event.  But the matter runs much deeper in my view than some publicly-exposed private information, sensitive past the point of ruining someone's life.

But this is the world we live in.  Ruined life.

Put it past you for a minute, CD.  Listen to some music.  Read a book.  Drink some soda.

As they said of 9/11, does the discount superstore live-up to the slogan, "never forget".  Under the Baptist doctrine we are told that all sin is equally bad, but its denominational as to which are real sins and which are simply matters of convenience.  Sloth, hatred, whatever.  The person carries his or her own past like a massive tumor, while the store bustles.

Something old.

Something new.

Something borrowed.

Something blue.

In my perview, it was a matter of sin-consciousness, with the store acting as its own kind of Guantanamo Bay lock-up, set on repeat, and I the prisoner in a cage lined with journal pages from my own life.

One sin was the old blog, like it was said that I had really told too much about myself.  However, truth be told, I didn't talk much about myself, past writing from my own point-of-view, which everyone does, anyway.  My coworkers seemed to hate the thing, anyway, pointing out that no one read it, but they knew what was written there just the same, with one even suggesting it was a fun game to try and convince me, via a lot of rude comments, to delete the thing for good.(he still works there, same job, actually, these ten years later)

Sin-consciousness, again.  But the ruse worked eventually, as within six months the blog was gone.

And all the talk of privacy concerns is "kayfabe" to burn screen time and boost ad-buys, meanwhile, when we talk of zombies we're not speaking in terms of some code word for people in a committed relationship, or terrorists, but a kind of person sent out to act as a mirror, to have a kind of performance for a few minutes in front of the victim.  And when I talk about it, I'm more often than not the victim.

The undeniable novelty of the situation is to respond in such a way that contributes no new material, just as the so-called zombie tries to do, with the actual win evidenced by a decided look of confusion on the face of the other person.

"not mistakes, but accidents": ruminations

Justice, you run-over whore, how you smell of fruits; no, neigh, a migraine coming on, an episode of the Shine, as the old used to have it.  Once more, I would have her under my wheels, clawing across my "raised white letters".

If you would have it, then have it.  If it is Obama's beer diplomacy you after, then you are speaking from a place of already being bitterly disappointed, wondering aloud, how much of that fruit she smells of happens to be oranges, and how much this or that or some other.

"Is it possible that you, who know the beginning of all things, should not know their end?  But such are the ways of these distractions, such is their power, that though they can move a man's position, they cannot pluck him from himself or wrench him from his roots.  But this question would I have you answer: do you remember that you are a man?"

As a metaphor for creation taking itself into its own hands, "ole Charlie stole the handle".  Of these delicate mentionings or of others that pervade along the thoroughfare, I would say that we observe First Principles, the Chief Good, even if that much had been forgotten, we have to perform like a summoning spell to recall the ghost from the bottoms, to bring it up to where it was accustomed so often before.

"If you've read your Marcus Aurelius then you know well the First Principles."  And she has a friend look it up for her, on the wickipediar, that in the beginning, you paw over that which is familiar, the way a teenage boy would, scattering secret hairs all over as if one had dissected a squirrel in the privacy of his rooms.  And we well know that dry-firing was so said to damage the firing pin, that "playing with it is no good", and one is to either "have it off" or point it in anger.

Such is the way of the old song, "making love out of nothing at all".  I could blog endlessly from less, and you would think, convinced by my enthusiasm, that I had shown you another, different world.

Justice, you bitch-dog, drag your teets the other way!

I was told I had curated mistakes, but I thought, neigh, not mistakes, but accidents, for are not we all in the modern mind, some cosmic accident?  A joke told by the mindless wind?  We would endeavor to have it the governing principles of the universe without having at the thought of creation, that there was some stellar colic that overtook the works, once upon a time, with no particular cause other than boredom.

Microcosm/macrocosm:  I have upbraided the dais to speculate in general on the nature of the system of logic and the universe, proper, without even understanding, beyond a shade of a jot, my own person.  But truly, if I understood myself, I would be apt to feel a sense of piece at the works and no longer harbor any doubt as to the validity of its own churning, but instead busy myself by simply appreciating my own meager role in the workings of the universe.

As to my own workings in the universe, myself, making busy, at my own design.

Beyond the Infinite.

There were some others, like at the Renaissance Fair or something, standing there at the concessions trembling with confusion as to what to blog about.  Even filing a post about not knowing what to blog about.  Seeing pictures, as of "werewolves of London" in the old Starlog 'zine, an early screaming of hook-up culture, but a tinge of the seismic shift of "love poetry" which are really "pick-up lines" disguised as art.

We so confuse.  Y u do dis, pls?

Blog yourself.  Blog the world.

Read on and be edified, then, if you would be edified, with the monocle stuck to the sticking place.

As a generic truth, a widely-agreeable truism, that which is contrary to nature falls away, unappreciated.  Just today, I suggest that if one sees one of those toy monkey figures with the funny jester cap and the symbols in his hands, we expect music forthwith.  Kind of a clinking noise.  If we can dance to the music, great, and if we can sing along, even better, but for it to fall flat is for the whole thing to be lost, and being lost is not even having one moment.  Sometimes a life doesn't even go on but for a few moments, but that is enough for dignity and meaning; hell, we could write books about even those, despite thinking from one end that the work was uneventful, we could find meaning if we are worth our salt.

As per CNN, they dramatically say that travelers in some parts of the world tread across historic soils without even being aware of it, something of a submerged "continent" lost long ago in the undertow of history.  This they figure out, that millions of years ago, plate tectonics forced a significantly-sized piece of North Africa to slip its silly self right under the soils of Europe.

Just another example of the popular narrative f*cking Africa, I guess.

Now, I know, I, We, You will deal with some people that are unsavory types, like my family's magnetic appeal to drug addicts, and those people will say bad things to you.  But you hit them with the Drake, which is to say, the slow-talking, that they can follow along with.  If you came at them first with Shady having the bedspread stuck in his "disrespectful ass", perhaps you've given a wrong impression right off.  They go on what they know, and that is all.  If there stomach is pushing them along, then that's what is whispering the words into their eager ears, what the empty-headed person says to you eventually.

Here I've condescended to give advice, and its like Seneca says.  Do I think I'm so well-developed, well-adjusted, contented as to offer advice to some people?  Quite not, but rather I share an experience with a common malady, me to you, as from inside the same hospital ward, me in one bed, head turned, speaking to you, who are in the other bed, right beside.

And here I am, the dude on the mountaintop, some broken mirror-glass rendering of the Ubermensch(the bad picture), considering suing everyone in the world this morning, the people around me saying "you can't prove that".  But I hadn't even told them the evidence to support my claims.  In the analog of memory, daily claptrap, with the end result, two cardboard dioramas pointed at one another, each side performing actions for the benefit of the other, with neither really watching the other, instead more worried about their own little fascinations within their own box, and in the odd moment, if they did look over to the other box, they wouldn't even understand what they saw anyway without some sort of annotation.

Paraffin coffin nails which are just enough to stop an average breeze from upsetting the lid.

What was the gist of the talk with Scarfaldt, had when the lights were brightening, starting to hum with power, heating, and the Mantis did his penance once more?  Those words were rolled and blurped about, like looking at a pencil through a glass of water, the sense of it not making it through, but the average person could look at it and recognize what it was, but clearly, a thousand years in the future, language archetypes lost anyways, it comes out some kind of expressionist gibberish that does not say anything, instead just painting a picture of the mood at the time, like Jackson Pollock sneezing nosebleed onto a sticky note.