(volume 40 maybe...we'll see)

no more dung to shovel
no more pork to chop
finale of trouble
final petal drop

headbanging on this wall
sustains me no more
losing battles makes me
want to win my war

transitions of every kind possess both pleasure and pain. my so-lovely-it's-scary supermodel child just read me an incredible piece that she wrote about what the last week of the world's existence would be like. wish you could hear it. the last sentence gripped me the most, presumably taking place at the final finality: "and the buzzing glow enveloped them all". wow, i cannot adequately describe the excitement, horror, amazement, terror, and undeniable awe that her words evoked in my heart. giving birth, that's really what it always means, giving birth again and again, in the simple and the profound, in the complex and the cut-and-dried, transitions are always filled with those labor pains and little earthquakes that precede "the buzzing glow". the above excerpt refers to a poem about my own desire for a painful kind of transition, the big one that transitions you away from The Really Big One. you may never read the rest of the work, which outlines more obviously and disturbingly the transition i have in mind (think tom cruise at the end of 'vanilla sky'). but daily, even hourly, i choose to rein myself in for the longer haul, avoiding the big one, so that i can eventually feel "the buzzing glow" of The Really Big One envelope me. that is the hope, the promise, that fuels this struggle to keep struggling.

from the best book: "no discipline is pleasant at the time but painful...later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."