Ten BUTS Thru Ten COMMS: CARAFE & ONE GOD

In the first pairing of the Ten Buts thru Ten Comm Project reading “A Carafe, That Is A Blind Glass.” through “Thou shalt have no other gods,” the Steiny Road Poet selects key words from TB subpoem #1 that resonate with the first commandment. Various points about CARAFE, as she will refer to this text, are drawn from her original discussion of this subpoem. Here is the entire subpoem:

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

In CARAFE, I believe the key words  and phrases in the context of Commandment One are: glass, spectacle, system of pointing, not ordinary, not unordered, not resembling, difference is spreading.

CARAFE is about beginning. I believe the unstated word Stein is going for is 'womb.' The Commandments begin the declaration that the followerer must have no other god. Noticeably CARAFE starts with the article 'a,' which denotes a single but unspecified person or thing. In Jewish scripture, one does not directly name God, one might say G-d or some other stand in.

CARAFE is about vessels--carafe and glass both hold liquids--God is the container of religious faith.

CARAFE offers ways of seeing and not seeing. There is the spectacle possibly referring to  a monocle or glasses worn on the human face to improve vision. There is the blind glass, which one cannot see through. Having one god is a way of seeing, a form of belief. One cannot see through G-d as in know what he knows but one can see with G-d's help.

CARAFE has the big term a system to pointing which could very well be the way Torah is read with the finger pointing implement called a yad. 

One of the meanings of pointing is “the insertion of marks to indicate the chanting of a psalm or the vowels in a Hebrew text.” To have this one god in your life, you must study his teachings and these teachings are set forth in the Torah as well as other holy texts like the Ten Commandments.

I believe Stein is setting forth a holy text of matrimony with Tender Buttons. She and Alice are uniting around one holy spirit of union. This union is not ordinary, not unordered though it does not resemble other marriages, those of man and woman. Nonetheless what they are doing in this difference, their difference is taking dominion and that sovereignty (control), that territory, that self-governance is increasing (spreading) their joy.