Magma

Magma

I’ve made it to eighteen leagues underwater Climbing higher But drowning beneath mountains

Breathing is dead to me Lungs accept only air And you provide only gravel

There’s not a noose long enough to dip its knot this low So my spindle claws can grasp its fray Seize its mass, and palpate over its bristles

Gravel cares not who I am It assuages stomach and throat with streams of dawny pills To alter my sense of color

But even under miles of quartzite Coarse amethyst Fractured glitz of oppressive perception

The surface of this ocean’s glassy clear I haven’t seen the sky But I know it’s evening hue is made for me

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument; Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

Episode

Gazing coolly back Flattened eyes to flattened mirror Six steps, fifteen feet To the mattress Ninety degrees, reverse Thin quilted cover over Thin skin over Thin blood in a Thin heart beating One Two Three

H2O means water and O means oxygen And chemical bonds keep Numbers and figures In order and propriety While reactive compounds Scrimmage in cranial nooks Thinner than 37,000 feet

Cannons of yesterday are memory’s wares To reinforce serotonin’s last stand Amygdala Armada is taking heavy losses Five in seven out Thirteen minutes till 3 Means time to prepare the funeral pyre

Tailor Kleenex’s surrender flag in tow Aching eye sockets open shut raise it high And in one last rebellion Fill the stark white dusty face With lacrimal floods, Crumple up And let gravity arrest it into forgetful cellophane

Noticing I’m short on flint The pyre is postponed and Reverse, ninety degrees Deep breath in breath out Apathy allows the sitting silence To shutter the restless eyes And drag themselves to slumber’s lair

The sequel will be better.

The first thing I’ve ever made in GIMP: “The Sekhmet Dialectic” - needed to process some spiritual concepts artistically. 

My sociological theory professor brought up an interesting point that sociological functionalists and religious fundamentalists (specifically evangelicals) are strange bedfellows in the chamber of American political conservatism. Concepts and their connections are my lifeblood, so I’ve tried to diagram my reasoning for why that may be.

The primary differences between functionalism and fundamentalism are in their foundations of knowledge. The former is a theory that attempts to explainhow society works in a scientific way. The latter is a religious framework that attempts to explain the nature of society, and of the natural and spiritual worlds, from a literal reading of a religious text. So functionalists and fundamentalists, although they may overlap in practice, can in theory be treated as mutually exclusive.

Both functionalists (in the school of Durkheim) and fundamentalists view individuals as subsumed and controlled by a higher power. To the functionalist, that power is society; to the fundamentalist, it is an almighty God.

Both systems of thought also believe that the components of society fit together in a way that produces a certain desirable result. To the functionalist, this result is societal stability, although dysfunctions exist. To the fundamentalist, “all things work together for the good of those who love God,” but sin creates stumbling blocks and hiccups along the way.

Where the systems converge in the American political system is in their resistance to change. Functionalists lean conservative because quick political or societal upheavals undermine stability. Fundamentalists tend to be conservative because their belief in God’s “intended order” of the universe, which, in the comtemporary American context, means the world how it used to be before the sinful fall of America. Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, although not a functionalist analysis, provides ample explanation for why fundamentalists who subscribe to the spirit of Calvin generally view criticisms of capitalism and the beginnings of the workers’ movement to be the geneses of this sinful downfall.

(yes, I am this much of a nerd)