Book of Mercy #1-5

[Simon]

Somehow, in some way, we have to be a reflection of the will that is behind the whole mess. When you describe the outer husk of that will which is yours, which is your own tiny will – in all things mostly to succeed, to dominate, to influence, to be the king – when that will under certain conditions destroys itself, we come into contact with another will which seems to be much more authentic, But to reach that authentic will, our little will has to undergo a lot of battering.

When David sees Bathsheba bathing on the roof, is he falling under the rule of his little will or is he conscious that he is 'embracing his fate' knowing that he 'will never untangle the circumstances that brought him to this moment.' Is he merging with the larger 'authentic will'. Is he conscious that someday, 2 Samuel 11 will be describing a fabulous cosmic mess?

Psalm 51.1 (from David)

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.

Blot out the transgressions of my little will...?

[Simon]

On another level (maybe on a first level) psalm I.4 may also be decribing the battle of the poet's creative process.

If, as it was mentioned before, he was in a low period and couldn't write, the psalm could be seen as an expression of artist block:

I said to my will, ‘Come, let us make ourselves ready to be touched by the angel of song,’ and suddently I was once again on the bed of defeat in the middle of the night, begging for mercy, searching among the words.

On a deeper level, the psalm may also be the expression of a dilema in the sensitive poet, that is that he perceives his own words or attemps at expression as only the refection of his little will. Whereas when the poet is struck by cosmic beauty (the nakedness of the angel of song) he is faced with the incredible force of God's expression. He feels humbled, in a way helpless. So the paslm may describe the dialectics of expression versus perception. Expression is the manifestation of the little will. Perception is the manisfestation of the authentic Will of the devine.

I searched among the words for words that would not bend the will away from you.

The poet aspires to trace silent words in respect for the unrivaled poetics of his God. God being the greatest poet.

This would make some sense if the 'you' in the psalm stands for God. Otherwise, who is 'you' here?

[Joe Way]

First off, I just want to say thank you to all who have contributed to this discussion-I have found this immensely enjoyable and a true learning experience.

I was going to wait to post some more thoughts for a couple of reasons-one of which is that my response is not fully formed and I have found myself doing an amount of research to learn more about Judaism and the Psalms in particular. But at this point in the discussion, I do think it might be helpful to introduce, one of the resources that I have stumbled upon in my blind, grasping furtive attempts to learn more.

As I mentioned earlier, my impression of the book of Psalms led me to believe that there was a cycle and a pattern that could be analysed, but I have not yet discovered anything that I have learned from this search. However, in my search I keep coming up with the name, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik and his work. I came across a couple of essays-both of which require paid subscriptions that I was able to access through my University account (I did this during lunch hour!) and since the discussion has turned to this direction, I thought that I should copy a couple of things from one of them. It is Joseph Speros article called "Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik and Belief in God." Here are a couple of key passages:

Man experiences many kinds of situations which shake his sense of security and commensurability with the given world. He finds himself in predicaments which suddenly make him aware of his dependent, transient nature and the inadequacy of the empirical mode of being. We might call this a sense of "creature consciousness" in which the individual begins to estimate the self, the personal "I," as something not perfectly or essentially real, indeed a mere nullity. In contrast to that, there is the sheer plenitude of being, that "awful majesty" and tremendum that he senses all around him as the "embracing, the enveloping, the encompassing," which he identifies as the transcendent.
The heart of the religious experience would then appear to be a series of discrete, antithetic, mutually interacting feeling-states, of which one successively becomes aware, but not necessarily in this order:
(1) The plenitude of overwhelming power and beauty in the world in all of its complexity, vastness, lawlike-uniformity, variety, novelty, and fecundity, of which I am an integral part.
(2) I (and other human beings) am superior to much of all this by virtue of my being a "subject," conscious and appreciative of what I perceive, and for being able to communicate with and relate to other human beings.
(3) I am endowed with conscious freedom and the ability to adopt my own leading principles, organize my life around them, and transform given reality into something different. This ability generates within me an awesome sense of responsibility and great anxiety. "Judaism declares that man stands at the crossroads and wonders about the path he shall take. Before him is an awesome alternative--the image of God or the beast of prey . . . and it is up to man to decide and choose."
(4) I am unique, alone, finite, and dependent. I know that I did not make myself or the world around me. I am subject to a frightening "time-consciousness."
"I know of an endless past which rolled on without me and of an endless future which will rush on long after I am dead . . . I began to exist at a certain point, and my existence will end at another arbitrary point. . . . How accidental and insignificant am I!"
(5) I feel alienated and estranged and cut off from nature and society. I no longer experience a satisfying sense of "belonging" to the various collectives of which I am considered a member: family, nation, party, work force, and so on. I feel I am in "exile."
"I am a stranger on earth; hide not Thy commandments from me
(6) I have a thirst for something, but I know not what! "God reveals Himself to Man in his very striving and yearning. Why does man not know tranquility? Why does he seek that which he cannot find in the world? It is God who is drawing Man to Himself. Man is tired and exhausted. He is not satisfied with his life or his achievements. He is perplexed and gropes along the byways of his existence. That which he wants most he does not achieve. Yet failure in his search does not prevent [End Page 6] him from continuing to seek. This "thing" does not give him rest. It pushes him and pulls him with great force. What is the nature of this desire? This is nothing but a thirst for God, for communion with Him. . . ."
The ontological awareness becomes identical with the transcendental awareness.
(7) I am not my "own" but feel under some authority. I feel like one who "owes" something, as one who ought to be something which I am not now.
"Know before Whom you will have to give an account and a reckoning."
8- A consciousness of interacting and establishing a relationship with a higher power that is experienced as objective and outside the self and endowed with volition, overwhelming power, majesty, holiness, and goodness. I sense this "wholly other," in, through, and under things and events in my life, in the history of Israel, and in the texts and observances of the Torah.

The second essays is called:

SOLOVEITCHIK'S RESPONSE TO MARTIN BUBER'S RELIGIOUS EXISTENTIALISM

And, unfortunately, I have not been able to copy anything from it. I will try and paraphrase some items from it later.

It's late and I have an early day tomorrow and will try to get back to make some comments soon. I hope this is helpful and not leading in the wrong direction, but it helped me understand "the predicament" from the Jewish perspective much better.

Joe

[DBCohen]

Yes, a lot of good material is accumulating here, and it became difficult to respond to everything. Here are just a few points, and something extra.

Simon,
I also believe that this psalm (I.4) speaks of two problems, which may be two aspects of the same problem: the person as he stands before God, and the poet as he tries to express himself. You say it very beautifully, and it deserves to be repeated:

On a deeper level, the psalm may also be the expression of a dilemma in the sensitive poet, that is that he perceives his own words or attempts at expression as only the refection of his little will. Whereas when the poet is struck by cosmic beauty (the nakedness of the angel of song) he is faced with the incredible force of God's expression. He feels humbled, in a way helpless. So the psalm may describe the dialectics of expression versus perception. Expression is the manifestation of the little will. Perception is the manifestation of the authentic Will of the divine.

And indeed, “you” here can only be God, even if it is not written “You”.

I guess that as long as we focus on the question of the will, we need also to bring “If It Be Your Will” into the discussion (I’m sure you all know it by heart, but let’s give it a shot). This song is as close to prayer as any of the psalms in Book of Mercy, or any other of LC’s songs (and it’s on the album issued the same year as the book). It is interesting to note that although the common phrase in Jewish (perhaps also Christian?) prayer is “may it be your will”, LC’s phrase is “if it be your will”, which includes a stronger doubt that his request will be answered. Here too is the juxtaposition of the “little will” against the eternal one. But when he says:

If it be your will
that I speak no more,
and my voice be still
as it was before;
I will speak no more,
I shall abide until
I am spoken for,
if it be your will.

Does he really mean it? Is silence really an option for him? Can his “little will” be crushed completely? He must have felt so at times of depression and doubt, but the true poet in him always had the upper hand eventually.

If it be your will
that a voice be true,
from this broken hill
I will sing to you.
From this broken hill
all your praises they shall ring
if it be your will
to let me sing.

The broken hill, the broken Hallelujah, the broken world that needs to be mended; the crack for the light to come in. We will see a lot of that in Book of Mercy. A famous Hassidic rabbi said “there is nothing whole as a broken heart”.

If it be your will,
if there is a choice,
let the rivers fill,
let the hills rejoice.
Let your mercy spill
on all these burning hearts in hell,
if it be your will
to make us well.

“If there is a choice” – as we’ve said earlier, he comes “awfully close” to determinism, but he still hopes, at least, that the choice exists.
Several biblical allusions here: the rivers, possibly Isaiah 35:6; the rejoicing hills, Isaiah 55:12, Amos 9:13, Psalms 65:13, 114:4.

And draw us near
and bind us tight,
all your children here
in their rags of light;
in our rags of light,
all dressed to kill;
and end this night,
if it be your will.

The tight binding is of Isaac (Genesis 22:9).
“rags of light” – one of his most beautiful images ever.
“dressed to kill” – or be killed, like Isaac.
“the night” – brings to mind The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz), in which the soul travels through the night towards its union with God.

[tomsakic]

The most interesting objection re: If It Be Your Will always was that the voice speaks about its silence by SINGING, so actually speaking.

(Btw, Cohen was asked once "Which is the song you would like you wrote?", he answered "I wrote it. It is called If It Be Your Will".)

I was already earlier in this thread (when "will" was introduced) was thinking to mention Stephen Scobie's article, one of most important I think ever written about Cohen's work. Scobie sees Book of Mercy/If It Be Your Will as final achievement in Cohen's self-erasing, self-deconstruction.

The Counterfeiter Begs Forgiveness: Leonard Cohen and Leonard Cohen, from The Proceedings of the Leonard Cohen Conference, Red Deer College, October 22-24, 1993.

In contrast to the multiple voices and tones of Death of a Lady's Man, Book of Mercy is obsessively singular in voice, and entirely consistent in tone. But it is, precisely, a book of prayer: it may present a unified authorial position, but that is, by definition, a position from which any sense of self-centredness has been emptied out. In prayer, the speaker steps aside from himself; he defers himself, endlessly, to the Other. The Other here is the divinity, the godhead, the teacher, the addressee. But the paradox persists: God may be an image of the source (creation, Genesis), but in prayer God is silent; He is the one spoken to, not the originator of speech. Each partner in this transaction, the man praying and the God prayed to, defers to the other, and neither of them is originary. Again, at the source there is only a supplement.

Take as an example of this stance section 17 of Book of Mercy:

Did we come for nothing? We thought we were summoned, the aging head-waiters, the minor singers, the second-rate priests. But we couldn't escape into these self-descriptions, nor lose ourselves in the atlas of coming and going. Our prayer is like gossip, our work like burning grass. The teacher is pushed over, the bird-watcher makes a noise, and the madman dares himself to be born into the question of who he is. Let the light catch the thread from which the man is hanging. Heal him inside the wind, wrap the wind around his broken ribs, you who know where Egypt was, and for whom he rehearses these sorrows, Our Lady of the Torah, who does not write history, but whose kind lips are the law of all activity. How strangely you prepare his soul. The heretic lies down beside the connoisseur of form, the creature of desire sits on a silver ring, the counterfeiter begs forgiveness from the better counterfeiter, the Angel of Darkness explains the difference between a palace and a cave — O bridge of silk, O single strand of spittle glistening, a hair of possibility, and nothing works, nothing works but You.

All possible identities are posited only to be discarded: "minor singers," "second-rate priests" (the name Cohen, remember, means "priest"). Identity is something that only the madman dares. Identity is false, is faked: and when the counterfeiter begs forgiveness, it is not from the originator of any genuine currency, but rather from "the better counterfeiter," the more skilled artificer of deception. What is left is the address to "a hair of possibility" (recalling the definition of a saint, in Beautiful Losers, as "someone who has achieved a remote human possibility" [95]). And if "nothing works," then perhaps that phrase can be taken positively: it is only nothing, only vacancy, which does work. Or: "nothing works but You" — and that "You" is pure address, an emptying of the pronoun, nothing but the attitude and verbal gesture of prayer. Prayer itself is not a stable, achieved position, but rather something ephemeral, transitory: "Our prayer is like gossip, our work like burning grass."

Then Scobie turns to If It Be Your Will:

Unsurprisingly, since it is also dated 1984, this is of all Cohen's songs the one that comes closest to the mode of prayer evident in Book of Mercy. The address is absolutely pure in its simplicity and intensity; the poet's personality is emptied out, and the singer's will becomes transparent to that other, higher will. "Leonard Cohen" — the media personality, the singer as lover, the post-modern satirist of The Future — has all but disappeared.

All but. For even in the purity of this song, there are a couple of twists: and they relate to the question of voice. "If it be your will / That I speak no more / And my voice be still . . . ." The most obvious paradox is that this prayer is itself articulated in a voice that is not still, not silenced; we are still hearing the voice that submits itself to the possibility of not being heard. "If it be your will / That a voice be true . . . ." Voice is the traditional guarantee of truth; we say of young artists that they have found their own voice, that the voice rings true. Voice is also (and here I would invoke the whole Derridean argument from Of Grammatology) the philosophical sign of presence, the guarantee of a singular, unproblematical authority: authority of the author, presence of the performer, coherence of the self. "Leonard Cohen," as the adverts for his concerts say, "Live. On stage. In person."

Yet the song does not simply assert the truth of the voice; in at least three ways, it deconstructs that notion (and thus, in Derridean terms, it reinscribes voice as writing). Firstly, the truth of the voice, like the very possibility of there being a voice, is presented as dependent on the will of the Other. The truth of what Cohen sings is not grounded in the claims of his own personality; he does not speak but is "spoken for." Only in the will of the Other can the voice become the voice of the self.

Secondly, the voice itself is divided — for the whole song is sung, on the album, as a duet with Jennifer Warnes. Lenny sings Jenny. Cohen's records have always been full of self-referential jokes about his own voice, of which the best-known is in "Tower of Song": "I was born like this, I had no choice / I was born with the gift of a golden voice." "Only in Canada," he said at the Juno awards, "only in Canada could I have won the award for Best Male Vocalist." In the most recent records, one of the registers of post-modern irony is the deepening of the voice, down to the outrageous bass growl which opens "The Future." But "If It Be Your Will" performs the same problematising of the voice more subtly, simply by allowing the grace-notes of Jennifer Warnes' descant to double and echo the song's declaration of the singularity of the voice. "I am spoken for" — and sung for, too.

Thirdly, there is the very fact that what we hear is a recording. In very obvious ways, recording takes voice into the conditions of writing: absence, iterability, death. A recording (even in the paradoxical case of a recording of a "live" concert) always takes place in the absence of the singer — as I have just played for you Leonard Cohen's voice, here in this hall where we all are focussing on his present absence. That absence allows for iterability: the recording can be played again and again, can be cited, can be electronically sampled, can be forged, can be grafted, can be ignored, can be memorized, can be sung along to, can be disseminated into every context of our listening experience.

[tomsakic]

A famous Hassidic rabbi said “there is nothing whole as a broken heart”.

This is also very interesting as "broken heart" is, I'd say, one of more important terms in Cohen's poetry.

"I would say I write my songs for people who find themselves in the kinds of predicaments that I found myself in. I think that’s a wide number of people. You could roughly call these people the broken-hearted." (1988)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, p 53

[Joe Way]

Psalm I.4

After searching among the words, and never finding ease, I went to you, I asked you to gladden my heart. My prayer divided against itself, I was ashamed to have been deceived again, and bitterly, in the midst of loud defeat, I went out myself to gladden the heart. It was here that I found my will, a fragile thing, starving among ferns and women and snakes, I said to my will, ‘Come, let us make ourselves ready to be touched by the angel of song,’ and suddenly I was once again on the bed of defeat in the middle of the night, begging for mercy, searching among the words. With the two shields of bitterness and hope, I rose up carefully, and I went out of the house to rescue the angel of song from the place where she had chained herself to her nakedness. I covered her nakedness with my will, and we stood in the kingdom that shines toward you, where Adam is mysteriously free, and I searched among the words for words that would not bend the will away from you.

I repeat this here and want to highlight the imagery of Eden, the snakes and ferns and the creature, Adam, allowed to roam. The snake-the lowest beast-telling Eve that the she could discover something higher through an appetite and the "tree of knowledge" with its leaves. And, in Leonard's account, there is the "Angel of Song" that higher being chained to nakedness, chained to the bestiality which the tiny will can cover both physically and spiritually.

In Solveitchik's work, there is a clear discussion of two dialectics. First, the dialectic between the two polarities of love of God and fear of God. Would Adam and Eve obey because they were afraid or because they were enthralled? Additionally, there is the dialectic that exists between the polarities of mercy and justice. Do Adam and Eve deserve banishment or some different second chance?

He, then, argues that the third element, the will, is ordained to become one. Creator and Creature, poet and work, singer and song, breather and breath-joined together in "the words" until it is too confusing to distinguish the separate entities.

These are all difficult (and in some ways very uninteresting) philosophical concepts. What makes them interesting to us is the concrete story that emerges.

Ok, in Hallelujah, we have the "flag on the marble arch" which to me was Suzanne putting the little domestic touch on this home that Leonard had long ago established. Let's look at this and ask, does Suzanne represent an "Eve" figure? Did her flag represent a bite of the apple that turned all to shit? What interrupted love with a victory march? It is obvious that Leonard had reached the depths here, that banishment from the garden like Adam was taking place.

And, in another rather off the wall notion, I have a recording of the 1985 concert in Munster. There was Leonard with Anjani as the only female member of the group, the woman who would eventually become his beloved sitting close beside him. At the end of the concert, he says, "Yes, I'm all alone at the Boganpick Hotel (sp?)!" These are all eventualities that bogle this mind. Which will was operating? Did this Angel of Song's nakedness ultimately bend the will back to that one will that offered that alternative path to redemption?

Joe

[Joe Way]

Just a quick suggestion. I feel a little guilty not acknowledging all of the previous posts-and they are wonderful and insightful. Let's free ourselves from the fear that we need to acknowledge something and let our tiny wills be satisfied with the knowledge that, perhaps, we are posting something that someday, someone will value.

In my own way now, though, I wish to give a group hug to all the previous posters. And encourage those who are withholding their observations to let their inhibitions loose and say what they think. There is no right answer-but we can move both toward and away from "truth." It is like evaluating a presidency-we really don't know for a period of time to conclude what to think.

Joe

[mat james]

I don't mean to offend
but I will

you guys are indulging in
"much to do about nothing"
which is fun
and to a degree, enlight'ning

but it misses the bulls eye
that Leonard is aiming at
you watch his footsteps
not his target


he wants to
yoke with the infinite
he has yoked with his infinite
and he sings of this
and his longings
for infinite
on tap!

little orgasm, big orgasm
king, King
god, God
they are only words
symbols
fingers pointing...

"If a finger points at the moon
it is foolish to confuse the finger with the moon."

All those systems
those symbols
those words
are "fingers"
and fingers can satisfy!

but they are not the moon...

Leonards' quest is for the moon
not those Kentucky fried fingers.

...tell us of your moon...
I too, hunger for the moon

[DBCohen]

Mat,

Speaking for myself, and not for any “we guys”, I’m not offended. I expect it that whenever someone is doing something, there will be like-minded people who will join in, while others will say: “this is not what you should be doing, but something else”. Frankly, I don’t see why we can’t have it both ways in this very free discussion that we’re holding.

I admit that I’m not searching for a target here. What interests me is the language. I’m fascinated by this guy’s voice in speaking, singing, writing, and I wish to understand it better through discussion with others who share this fascination. I want to examine what he says, how he acquired his unique voice, and perhaps also what motivates him. Yes, I’m very much interested in the fingers, the fingerprints, his “hand”. I don’t expect him to lead me to some new spiritual realization, although he certainly helps me get along. He is not my guru, nor anybody else’s, as he himself made very clear. He even said something to the effect – I don’t have the exact quote – that he knows nothing about the absolute. He is always in the process of searching, and he shares this process with us. I’m also very much interested in the process, in the way, the search itself, not the target. I guess that makes you and me two quite different types of people, but it doesn’t mean we can’t talk. I think your poetical sensibilities have a great value; if you find my kind of input of little or no value to you, I am sorry for that, but there is nothing I can do about it. I hope you are not asking me to shut up, because I really enjoy these exchanges with other people on a subject dear to me. And I hope you will not shut up either, but join whenever you feel like it. And I’m sorry that I can’t tell you of my moon, at least not outright and in so many words (here, again, we are different). Perhaps it will reveal itself little by little as we go along, and perhaps not. Maybe it didn’t reveal itself to me either yet. As I’ve said earlier: I’m interested in the quest, even if I never reach the target.

Yours as always,

D. B. Cohen

[DBCohen]

Joe,

I also feel guilty sometimes when I can’t respond to everything, and not from a lack of will, but there’s simply not enough time.

I am not much familiar with the work of Soloveitchik (who indeed was the most prominent Jewish religious philosopher in America during the second half of the twentieth century), but what you quoted from him is quite interesting. I guess that for a believer the question may arise “do I fear God more, or do I love him more?”, and this question may be painful. But I can’t get into elaborate theological deliberations at this point. I did enjoy, though, the connections you make between the philosophy and the poems. However, I’m not sure I grasp you meaning in the following sentence:

Did this Angel of Song's nakedness ultimately bend the will back to that one will that offered that alternative path to redemption?

Would you care to elaborate?

By the way, the hotel he mentioned could have been the Mövenpick, a well-known hotel chain in Europe; there is one in Muenster.

[mat james]

DB,

And I’m sorry that I can’t tell you of my moon, at least not outright and in so many words (here, again, we are different). Perhaps it will reveal itself

There is no doubt that we are different and we come to the work of Leonard from opposite poles.
We have much common ground too.
I have no gurus either. In fact I find them, generally, repulsive.
(Others may find them attractive and that is their game; their karma.)

That you indulge in language is to me an understandable and worthwhile activity and of course, as a poet, it is my pleasure also. It is also my pleasure to indulge in the poetry of others, especially when they court the moon.

I grow impatient at times, without regret, like a greedy lover. Discussions, like this thread, are like foreplay to me; wonderful foreplay.
And I will strive to remember the words of that old song that Jimmy Duranti sings so well:

"I'll be lookin' at the Moon,
but I'll be see'in you."



DB, thanks for the response.
Never mind me. I get carried away with my own view.

Merry Christmas to you all. I am off on a motorbike ride for a week around Tasmania, that tiny island at the bottom of Australia about the size of Washington State and I will be busy indulging in the wonders of wilderness and two wheeled, lazy cruizing.
And I'll be looking for the moon

[Diane]

Diane,

You who are 'good at the love stuff', as your son would say, I was hoping you'd comment on:

Quote:
– »It is in love that we are made; / In love we disappear.« Love is our essence?
Yes, but it is not personal love.
– What is it then?
It is impersonal. It is not ours. We are the expression of love. Our birth is an expression of impersonal love. And our death is a return to that impersonal love.
– Why do you say it is impersonal? It unites people.
Because it is not romantic. Nor possessive. It is a general love, in the sense that it is extended to all. It is absolute.
– Then why are we walking around so mistaken in our belief that love is romantic?
Because we are made to think this, to think that it is real, that it is ours, that we have it, that we direct it and that we control it.


How does that fit in a woman's perception of Leonard Cohen's work?

Simon, I don't have any insights into anything Leonard has written, just my own personal reaction which I don't usually attempt to describe, even for myself. I don't sit and contemplate the Book of Mercy much; I just listen to 'a few songs'. Leonard's work is way more than I could say about it in an "intellectual" thread like this. But since you ask so nicely, here is a brief attempt at a reply to your question.

The basis of his work is his own relentless and detailed emotional honesty about his longings, failings and sorrows, and that is why it is so rich. We don't live fully unless we allow ourselves to be aware of the contents of our hearts, no matter how painful. The inner search is the only vehicle that takes us towards authenticity; our true nature, and what some call God. His work is about the attempt to reach the ineffable starting from where we are, from the romantic love we pursue, "even though it all went wrong", and from trying to figure out what Boogie Street is for. His work is honest. Deeply honest. It's that simple, for me.

I admire his life's journey, and the means by which he has found his peace. He has been released from his depression via his relationship with Roshi, and that illustrates how the first part of the journey is a human one, of love and deep acceptance. He has relentlessly pursued his own peace of mind. Leonard is as transparent a 'teacher of the heart' as one could wish for.

I was listening to Blue Alert recently. I like these words, from Thanks for the dance:

And there's nothing to do
But to wonder if you
Are as hopeless as me
And as decent

The more people I get to know well, the more I realise that everyone is both as hopeless as me, and as decent. There is a lot of comfort in that. And love.

Mat, have a wonderful trip . We look forward to seeing you back here when you return. Merry Christmas.

Diane

[DBCohen]

This is from our man ("The Window")

Come forth from the cloud of unknowing
and kiss the cheek of the moon;
the code of solitude broken,
why tarry confused and alone?
And leave no word of discomfort,
and leave no observer to mourn,
but climb on your tears and be silent
like the rose on its ladder of thorn.

Have a good trip, Mat, and a bright moon.

I'll also be going away for four days, but on work, not fun.

DBC

[tomsakic]

Hey Mat, you lucky guy, enjoy your vacation! I have three articles to deliver until January 15th, so there's no any vacation for me:-(

Travelling itself does matter, not the destination (I think that's the quote, by Ernst Bloch)

Or as LC would say:
They'll never reach the moon,
at least not the one that we're after.