Just One More Time Around

All the day is twirling as the time is whirling and it turns on its spinning top head. Revolving around the endless bickering, the whimpering wishes of so many strained voices. Annoyed voices pleading to be heard. Wishing to be read. Complementing the whiner is always a blamer. They play on the repetitive game of shame. You may see them one day being sold on the store shelves in plastic toy boxes. You may hear the commercials booming and frantically screeching about a duel of two destinies, the fight of two fates. You may watch as they bicker and brawl in an obscure blur of finite absolutes. You may gawk at the colors swirling in a blended twirl of unknown dimensions. But, do you wonder why? Reversing the scales of sanity, these debacles hollowly flash, reflected in the solemn stupor plastered upon your eyes. The dropping skin hanging off the face has the residue of ignorance and drool. Perhaps you eat as you watch. You indulge the desire without tasting the sludge slurp and slide down the throat, without feeling the gritty grime grinding between the mechanical chomping teeth. Grease and drool mingles on your chin as a sickening apparition cruelly plastered to the face. Unknown twinges blare through the body, but are unknown to the mind. Numbing the senses, numbing the emotions, is the altered sense of…

Stupid commercials interrupting the shows. Interrupting the… oh mommy can I have that? No dear you can’t… well you know we do need a new… no we can’t afford that… the quality talk enlightened around the essence of television. Why are those commercials so long?

Why not leave when the commercials appear? Why can’t you move? The show ends as a gasp of air is inhaled, as the continuous revolving barrel roll of the gun is twirled around a clock’s hand endlessly ticking. In one chamber lies the bullet, in one chamber is a blank. Pull the trigger, pull it continuously, watch the time, watch the chamber. Hoping for bullet or blank? Never question what can’t be…well it can be found tomorrow. But, the show is on tomorrow. You wade through the asphalt, the skin melts, the pain glares reality. Escape the grinding machine where you are the cog; endlessly working. Escape the bullet-filled chamber of time. Please, please one more blank, one more tick of the watch, just one more time around. So I may escape to be found, so I may live to die, so I may be numb to stay numb and never feel pain. Just one more time around.

(Andrew Sippie)

The Aedificium

I walked towards the library the other month, to reinforce my scant set of sources for senior seminar. It was the second time. Last time I had come alone, got lost, almost got hit by someone, and finally stole a resident’s parallel spot as soon as he left. This time, it was snowing.
I tried to tell a friend how I feel about libraries. Most people wouldn’t understand, I think, about the size, the number, the absolute availability of information. I think people these days are similarly impressed with the Internet. But I don’t get the same thrill of research when I google something. In fact, I get this cheesy feeling that I’ve been cheating. In a library, books are solid, hardcover, permanent. They’re certainly more “real” to my hands than an Internet source.
I was thinking about this as the UWM library loomed over me. Each floor stood stacked upon another like a lazy pile of videotapes, corner extending over corner, rows of windows revealing ceiling-high stacks filled with books. At the top floor, through those windows, on my right hand side, lay my PS.3505.U334 books. I recalled The Name of The Rose, a murder mystery set in a Franciscan Abbey in 1327 AD. Their library was held in the upper floor of the Aedificium, which is a large building for study, with the kitchen in the lower floor.

The second floor had held the Scriptorium. I looked from where I crossed the street to the second floor of Golda Meir, and saw at tables people writing and reading, just like careful monks, with cold fingers illuminating their beautiful transcriptions. All day long, between their offices, Franciscans filled their texts with gold ink, depicting fantastic kingdoms, terrible monsters, humans with animal heads and claws, musical instruments played by beasts. I remembered the debate of the monks about tragedy and seriousness versus comedy and frivolity that had taken place in the Scriptorium. One monk, the old blind one named Jorge, had associated laughter with the devil, condemning it with comedy.

I pushed open the doors of the west wing. A rather tired-looking man sat at the first desk, there, like a little king. His job was to glance at me, give silent approval of my entrance, and turn away. I found the stairs on the left, and hauled my materials up the steps to floor 3. In the Aedificium, Abbey newcomers William of Baskerville and his young accomplice Adso of Melk had to sneak into the library. It was restricted from all monks. Even the Abbot avoided the Library. Only the librarians knew the codes; only the librarians passed that knowledge to their successors. Theirs was a profession of secrecy.

Of course, the book was a murder mystery, and since it was by Umberto Eco, in a 1327 monastery boasting the largest library in Italy, how could the mystery of seven deaths not be centered on the library, at least according to William? William and Adso had to sneak into the Aedificium late at night, through a passage deep below a graveyard of buried monks, from the chapel to the kitchen. The doors from the Scriptorium and the library were left unlocked on the principle that no one knew of the secret passage (except the librarian, the Abbot, and now Adso and William).

The library in the Aedificium was a labyrinth.
I picked up several books from PS.3505: (re)Valuing Cummings, Critical Essays, etc. I decided to take a leaf out of Dr. Krenz’s (and Wayne Booth’s) book, and look into the bibliographic pages for more books. Of course the library is a labyrinth, for here in these pages are 135 more sources about my subject, which I never knew existed. The library was interconnected, woven, cross-referenced. And I was pulling a string out a pocket that would never end.
The end of that string for William and Adso had been near, through poisonous, hallucinogenic smoke, a maze of rooms with blind walls, no windows, carnival mirrors, narrow slits to transform wind into ghastly howling. The Finis Africae was the final room they sought. It contained a book that would solve every mystery, and reveal a whole world of delight to a researching population. I suppose I was seeking my own Finis Africae. To me it was the book that would do what I was doing in research. It was the book that could even abort my precious research by leaving me with the short end of the stick: has my paper “already been done?”
Of course, for Adso and William, their book was not so docile. At its fault, disaster occurs, men go mad, they die, a world collapses, and it’s all thanks to a passionately kept secret: the library’s true contents. I wonder what UWM had kept beneath these stacks, between the walls, over the ceilings—probably dry wall, bricks, mortar, or wood, or electronics. There is no room for secrets anymore. It’s all on the Internet.

I had been reading and doing note cards for 2 hours, now. My hands wanted a bit of warmth. I leaned from my desk and looked beyond the cards and the books to the soft city lights, and tried to picture Italian mountains, other monks. Vespers was about to ring, and soon we would reawaken at 2:00 for the first office of the day. The snow still blew beyond the third-story window, and below, a city gleamed with mystery. The sidewalks lay quietly, silenced by a descending layer of snow.

(Caleb Sattler)

Touching The Cave of Despair

Edmund Spencer’s “The Faerie Queene” holds in the ninth canto of Book I a rare gem about “The Cave of Despair.” Written in the late 1580’s, it contains adventure, intrigue, fantastic characters, and a deeply intellectual and theological theme dealing with the problem of evil, the condition of man, and man’s limited conception of God’s relationship with him, all of which, of course, deal with the very meaning of life. St. George, the Red Cross Knight, is protector of Una (True Religion) and has recently been freed by Arthur from the dungeon of Duessa (falsehood). Still weak, he encounters a knight fleeing the terror of Despair. St. George rushes to meet this foe to see justice done for the deaths he has caused. As a Christian, the confrontation that occurs in the cave had a great impact upon my memory. Some of my more difficult recollections are my encounters with the damning finger of the law which seems to drill into my heart and pronounce death eternal. Justice, were we to demand it, would never be satisfied, hence the eternal nature of hell; the never-ending torment to pay for Sin and rebellion.

And yet when we see the Red Cross Knight being driven to despair, we know that there is hope, though we may not be able to express it in words. When St. George grasps the hilt of the dagger offered by Despair, we gasp in shock as he prepares to end his life and his years, abandoning his purpose. Despair preys on the guilty conscience while appealing to the pride of human reason, for human reason, above all else, desires to be independent and sufficient, correct beyond dispute. The finite reason of man declares that forgiveness is impossible and that man is without God. Thus man rejects logic and disregards the infallible premise of the Loving Grace of God, for man’s reason, without the aid of Faith, is sinful and base and cannot grasp or comprehend the Infinite; man is incapable of comprehending the incomprehensible work accomplished by the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore it is only with the aid of Faith as worked in us through God’s word and the work of the Holy Spirit that we can hope to defeat such despair. Indeed it has been defeated by Jesus Christ on the cross. So St. George who is to defend Una also is in need of Una’s aid if he is to survive.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/queene1.html#Cant.%20IX

(Joseph Gutschmidt)

Governing Dynamics

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."- Edmund Burke
Good, but incomplete. To finish it, I suggest “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing [or do so much that they corrupt any honest original intention and bring other ignorant individuals with them].”
Propaganda is by far my most beloved weapon of mass destruction. It is the power to take the as-of-yet morally disinclined masses and manipulate them to your side by providing insufficient cause with more-than-plenty emotion to awaken a false sense of civic duty and a personalized sense of cause ownership.
Emotion has no place in logic. Arguments of any stature should be decided in cold blood (as opposed to hot blood). To suggest supporting an argument with emotion muddles the details and invokes the wrath of ‘fog of war’ and ‘rosy retrospection’ of the past.
Two such examples are marriage and abortion. Objective defense would rely in biblical standings primarily, and then concern itself with the philosophical, ethical, biomedical (etc.) defense of both sides. Propaganda on one side would commission bombing abortion clinics, ransacking weddings, and more commonly pull at heartstrings with touching stories emphasizing the emotional aspect over the objectivity of life and death. Alternatively, the other side would encourage protests supporting human rights to freedom of personage and way of life and slight the psychological and sociological outcome of such liberty. Emotions lie (note both definitions) on multiple sides of numerous issues. It is a crime against rational thought to use them in place of deductive reasoning.





If you’re reading this, you risk taking offence and a bruised ego. That’s all the disclaimer I will give. It’s been a long time since I seriously wrote much in the lines of propaganda or satire and while this saddens me greatly, perhaps it is best. Few people merit the abuses of such a potent verbal attack, and even fewer can withstand the aftermath.

(Thomas Reher)

Paper Clip Strike: A Foray in Irrealism

I was walking to class around two thirty in the afternoon, by my estimate, when my paperclips arbitrarily stopped working. The pile of papers I was carrying laughed all the way to the ground. The paperclips danced around me as I knelt on the ground, gathering the papers. They reveled in my discomfort, smirking at me disdainfully. I was humbled for a moment. Then I realized I was bigger than they were.
Roaring to my feet like Godzilla, I began stomping on them, scattering them in all directions. Their glee quickly turned to terror as I destroyed them left and right. I kicked at them and they flew all over. More paperclips than I ever knew I had took flight like so many schizophrenic seagulls. I relished my power over them.
But then…
A swarm, an ocean of paperclips overwhelmed me. Like locusts they came, like multiplying amoeba. The sun flashed off of the shiny paperclips like a thousand silver swords before battle. They paperclipped my shoelaces to the ground, immobilizing me. They paperclipped my fingers together, disarming me. They paperclipped my eyes shut, blinding me! Though I flailed my arms about like a squid out of water, it was to no avail. The paperclips were as merciless as a Catholic school nun in a room full of delinquents. Covering me like some mutant slime, they paralyzed me and brought me down to the ground. I gasped for air, I heaved for air, I choked for air, but I inhaled only paperclips.

(Erin Esson)

Hocket, Just Drink Some Water

The word hocket derives from the French for “hiccup”. In the thirteenth and fourteenth century, composers used hocket to give a disjunctive flavor to the music. Music containing hocket “passes” the melody from one voice to another. For example, the top line (since at this time they did not designate soprano, alto, etc.) would carry the melody for a few lines, then pause. During their pause, the middle line would play or sing a few notes where the melody left off. The top line would finish off the phrase. The hocket, used seldom in the sacred works of the 13th century, became well used in the fourteenth century within secular conductus, as well as motets. Hocket is a characteristic usually seen in fast pieces, especially instrumental works, even though instrumental pieces were less common than vocal pieces. The principal school is Notre Dame during “ars antiqua”, the period in the thirteenth century where the motet was developed.

(Nicholas Jones)

These fragments I have shored against my ruin

“A book has neither object or subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook this working of matters, and the exteriority of their relations.” –Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Entertain this conceit with me for a moment: most of your run-of-the-mill novels exist in a solid state – your airport bookstore fare, your beach/pool-side reading – you know. Some will exist in liquid form, generally with a more experimental bent: Ulysses, maybe, Pale Fire. That sort of thing. Well.

David Markson’s Readers Block: novel-as-gas. It is free-form and rhizomatic, not so much following lines as generating them – lines of flight, lines of desire, lines of insight, lines of articulation.

Roughly: a character (referred to only ever as “Reader”) sits in his room and considers writing a novel. But to reduce the thing down to this is like referring to a Rembrandt as simply “that painting.” Sure it gets the general idea across, but there’s an awful lot more going on that’s being left out entirely.

So in the case of Reader’s Block, what, exactly, is the “awful lot more”? It is a treasure: nearly 200 pages of Reader’s thoughts, as his mind wanders, contemplating his novel (starring a character named “Protagonist”). And what thoughts! Quotes, references allusions. Lists of names. Lists of things (the location of every Nazi concentration camp). Literary trivia (“Keats may have been born above a livery stable”). Titles. Items in any number of languages. Every few pages he will note that such-and-such a historical figure was an anti-Semite (is Reader a Jew? It is never specified). And, of course, interspersed are vague ruminations on Reader’s past, and the development of his novel (Protagonist lives either by a cemetery or on the beach). What finally emerges from all of this is an intricate portrait of a man who has spent his entire life (doing possibly nothing but, and perhaps obsessively) reading and remembering.

The net result of this is a constant undermining of what we think of as “a novel.” Concerned more with flow and connectivity than with plot and characters, we discover that, in the end, we’re left with a highly developed and compelling character anyway. The traditional signifiers of the novel are removed from their signifieds, hierarchies are subverted, emphasis is placed on simultaneity and multiplicity. And it works. There is of course the danger that the nuance will turn into gimmick, and that the gimmick will get old. The thing could have been a complete disaster. Instead it’s utterly mesmerizing.

But is it a novel? What is a novel? And, once we decide on the answer to that (if at all), can this one so be called? And if not, what is it?

Who can say. A meditation on the relationship between form and emptiness, perhaps (can dialectics break bricks? Proclaim the mantra which says: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha). If you’d like.

(Richard Payton)

I Never Can Think of Anything Original

This morning as I was sleep-shivering under my floral blankets, I was awakened by the playing of the piano. Normally this is a pleasant thing to slide one's eyelids up to. Today however it was horrid. Whoever was playing kept forcefully plunking at the same notes over and over and over and over and over and over and over again... It was driving me mad! As I was fighting the animalistic urge to tear down the stairs and pull a Mike Tyson on the amateur pianist's fingers, my brother slammed open the door of my shoebox room and demanded the removal of my body from it's horizontal position. Trying to contain the internal growing chaos, I inquired about the pathetic pianist. He looked at me like I had a third eye, smirked, and stated the piano tuner was hard at work in the music room. Hmmm. Good thing I didn't bite the pianists' fingers off. He needs them as a means of survival...
(Kristin Weber)

RE: David’s Poetry ?

Ah, David. We meet again. Again, you have posed a question. Again, I think I have an answer for you.

What is Poetry? What is anything really? that is another day of discussion: life, the universe, and everything: we will have coffee and tea and cross our legs and talk into the night. But, for you David, I will try this, and maybe, just maybe, it will come together to answer your question.

Poetry is what people say is poetry. Limitless really. Someone could crap on a sheet of paper, and if someone says that’s poetry, well, then it has to be. Most ‘poetry’ is only crap on paper, well crap on something…really anything, I don’t want to limit the imagination to just paper.

So, David. Do what you would like. Some say life is poetry, a dance without limitations, and others say that rules are poetry, a binding contract between paper and the poet.

But, David, I tell you this, poetry is poetry, and if you say that it is, and you get one other vote, than it really is poetry. Just let cummingspoundkerouacwilliams guide you.
However, I am sad to say, I may not vote for crap on paper. You will have to look for another hand to be raised on that one.

(Justin S. Weber)

Look Up

This is a tiny glimpse of the beauty that lurks around our campus. People often joke about lack of beauty on our campus. However, if they would only glance outside they would see why Concordia is truly beautiful. The trees, the lake, and the big beautiful blue sky are the reason I love Concordia. I hope that this photograph encourages others to take a short peaceful walk or jog around campus or down Lakeshore to experience nature at its finest. Nothing is more beautiful than God's creation.

(Kristen Maholovich)

Hante D. (inspired by Dante's Purgatorio)

Seven P’s carved into the forehead- seven chakras
Pin Prick – at the back of the physical mind
Paranoia – as awareness hits, awareness of ALL
Perception – changing changelessly
Procreation – the will to make a thing pure, as never seen
Peace – a settling warm, a blanket on the mind.
Perfection – when the whole is in harmony
Pleasure – a miracle invideosa

(Hannah Sea)

Note from the Editor

This issue was open to all subjects and thus features an unprecedented variety in content. Over this past year, I have been blessed to see this publication grow from a humble single sided sheet to a professional-quality four-page spread. I thank you, readers and contributors both, for allowing me to be a part of this. I eagerly anticipate what the coming year will bring.

I used to look back on an evening or weekend and find myself frustrated at how little I had accomplished, even if I kept myself in the library for the whole time. I was distracted by my sentiments, bored by my reading, tired of sitting at a desk… Yet, what would humanity be if it ran at 100% efficiency? If we ceased to struggle, would art be of any worth to us? Would our emotions, dominated by our drive for productivity eventually fade into nothing? Would we cease to love? Perhaps the irritating inefficiencies that hinder our true potential are necessary, even beautiful; perhaps the time we waste is part of what allows us to cry, to laugh, to write, to compose; perhaps, the imperfection we loath is the very quality that makes, and keeps, us human.

ON id Entity.

The top of my mind/head is the top of the sky.
I dent I ty
I dent. I tye.
Study Me.
Who are we David? We are Pro et eus. M. H. C.an you See?
We are Puzzles, we are interlocking rungs, steps across Heraclites’ River. Or is it the River Lethe, the forgetful? Or her sister, Eunoe, in Heaven, of good memory? The point is, where identity is concerned: rivers make it or ruin it. Stand in a good one, a blue one, a Crashing Clear Cold one. Who am I? I am the taciturn water that you breathe, and yet I am still your Brother.
I aM. H.annah SEA. (Hannah SEA)