Just like a ‘Democratic Party majority’…

…there has been compromise…lots and lots of compromise. (BTW if you’re reading this outside of the USA, sorry, but I will make many allusions to life here, and it is fully understood that this is a singular life experienced pretty much nowhere else on Planet Earth.)

I’m still not sure how this will go, but I do know that this site is now structured with an acquiescence to the reality of WordPress, blog software, and the Internet in general. I still feel thwarted and ‘funneled’ by technology. (Geez, can’t wait for the AI cars! ‘I’m sorry, Ken, I can’t turn right here.’ Me: ‘You idiotic piece of bad programming! This intersection now HAS a right turn! Turn the fucking car!’)

Thwarted by technology again

I’ve been in absentia almost as soon as I started this site (khpilcher.com) because I immediately ran into problems making the site match my vision for it: sections on poetry/prose, general essays, religion and philosophy, and a chattier blog that meanders on about beer, writing, friends, music, photography, and anything else that might once have gone on Facebook (may it crash in flames or at least be broken apart as the monopoly that it is).

This is not possible with WordPress.com and a survey of other sites seems to indicate that it can’t be done with WordPress.org either. I’m having to rethink what I will do. My prime purpose for this site is to publish my writing and secondarily, to share my thoughts on objective truth versus subjective desires. A jumbled mess of all the above categories would indeed live up the name of the site: it would be a roomful of voices vying for attention with no focus. This seems undesirable. I’ve got one work-around in mind, but it would be cumbersome and additionally would raise the question, “Why are you paying for a domain and premium services?”

Until that solution is enacted, I’ll drop one or two things in here, but not much. Until then…

They Built This Marriage

(on the 50th anniversary of my parents)

They built this marriage as one
They sensed a need, they searched,
They found each other. Said,
“We’ll build on solid rock,
Full in the teeth of storms
That Life will hurl at us.
Where winds of public pressure
Howl–demanding that we bend–
We shall stand unbending.”

They placed love-stone on love-stone
With care-full hearts. They built
For strength by leaning in,
Encircling their love with walls
That have no end. They topped
This edifice of love with
One Central Light.
Transparently they prismed out
This Light: two directions,
One purpose, guiding,
Enlightening by being.

They tend this monument
That it may never crumble.
We can’t conceive its non-
Existence; surely it
Has always been there. We
Thank them, though we know
They did not build for us:
Their love’s completeness
Stands before us.

(My parents celebrated their 50th on 26 July, 2002. Ten years later they celebrated the 60th. My father passed away the next year, but well after 61st. I’m not totally satisfied with it, but I don’t think it becomes better after almost 20 years…unless it’s rewritten entirely. I’m having a bit of frustration trying to get WordPress to do what I want. I want the poem to be in the center of the page, but to be left-justified for instance. And one of the lines is supposed to be broken across two physical lines, a la Shakespeare, but WP takes out the spaces I put in to make it so.)