The Sleep of Monsters Produces Reason
Or.. something like that
No audio today, but if you would like something to listen to while you read, play this recording of Zoran Dukic performing Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “El Sueño de la razon produce monstruos,” a piece for classical guitar inspired by the Goya etching above.
I am at the Christian cafe again, relaxed and drinking iced coffee. There are are a lot of young men in sandals here who look like they’ve been married for a while. Married to women, of course. If you were to assume they all go to church together, you would likely be right. I come here every so often when I can’t get the words to flow from home. When I need to remove myself from the responsibilities and chores which home demands.
I feel inspired sitting in the Christian cafe. I am reminded of the judgement I used to cast on religious people while roaring devilishly through my twenties, as well as the coming back around to religion I am currently experiencing in my slightly more domesticated early 30s. And even as I catch myself beginning to smirk with my 20s mind at the college girl in the corner with hairy arms and legs, wearing ugly black restaurant worker shoes with crimped, infantile ankle socks, reading Galatians and taking notes, I hold this girl in high esteem with my 30s mind, thinking how unbelievably beautiful it is that, in an ever more godless world, there is a young person still believing it is worth their time to sit down with The Good Book and wrestle with its words.
One of my first infamous audio voiceovers was inspired by this cafe and has a similar flavor to the above two paragraphs. You can read/listen to it here.
But for now, on to some poetry.
I say many things that I do not mean I say many things that I mean and later want to take back. I say very few things that you can stick by, and I expect you to be able to tell the difference. I am reasonable and capricious almost at once. I am rational yet deeply religious. No one should ever expect me to tell them anything except exactly what they want to hear. This, I consider, is my finest quality. Who am I, anyways, to tell people anything besides what they already want to know? I have many deep connections with people. My friends want to be around me. I am extremely easy to get along with. I read poetry, for chrissakes. I am hardly the monster I feel like. I write in a notebook with a fountain pen like an old biddy, for chrissakes. My sensibilities are old fashioned. Who among you can condemn me? To whom am I writing this appeal? What am I appealing? My life is full of countless blessings. — It is always time to move on Resolved or not, nothing waits for me. Certainly not life, in all its ugly circumstances. I try to recognize the error of my ways but cannot stop drawing charts of justification. Goya be damned, logic and reason are my enemy. Sometimes reason needs to rest. It allows no breath for my feminine intuition. Sometimes the monstruos must be seen in the light of day that they may offer me their revelation along with their deception. My crooked lines revealing my crooked mind. That the residual energy of sick dreams might sometimes be transmogrified into Light.