We measure our lives in teaspoons and our semesters in breaths. At the end of my life I'll let out one long, hopefully non-verbalized (uuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnghhhh) breath; at the end of the semester I'll remember TO breath. Maybe I should work on my last breath. Perhaps I can make it a strawberry ("bpthbpthbpthbpthbpthbpth"), and hang my teaspoon on my nose. For some reason that reminds me of the dying hero-monk character in the Russian film "Octpob" (Oh-strove, approximately - not "Okt-pawb"), who, as he lays himself down in his coffin ready to give up the ghost, is pestered by his well-meaning and repentant brother monk. When asked what the monk should do with his life - his final thoughts, as it were - he breaths, exasperated, something to the effect of "Just try not to sin too much."
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." (T.S.E.)
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
What is spirituality?
It is sighing every time I speak, or write. It is the sigh that comes directly following an instance where I have spoken, or written.
It is keeping my house clean, my dishes washed, my email in-box cleaned out.
It is hanging on to the Gospel with my mind and my heart underneath my body that does otherwise. A mouth that says other things, eyes that divert, senses that meander exponentially every direction. It is knowing the delineation of peace and repentance, that tension between what is and what isn't, ideal and actual, potential and spent energy.
It is a profound personal reality, a reclusivity in the face of the throng, it is the mirror through which my body is seen in its context, a puppet, a dancing fool.
It is the wide chasm between myself and those with whom I interact daily. It is what binds me to them and elucidates the vast distances between us.
It is a millstone, broken glass in my boots, barbed wire around my ribs, eyes blinded by lye, a spider of contrition on my brow. It is the race from nothingness to somethingness, it is the inversion of language, the lessening of the thing in order for it to be made more.
It is what is hidden and what reason must obey but can't reconcile. It is what one uses to privately sever any desire to justify oneself in the sunlight to the world.
It is being vague and concise, it is acknowledging certain binaries as existing for certain reasons, and understanding the primal urge to smash them, but seeks to move through nothingness into the aforementioned primal somethingness.
It is what begins to understand the profundity and sophistication of the Christ on the Cross, the center of the cosmos, of time, or reality.
Language is a rolling colored-water wave machine on a desk in an administrator's office, it lolls back and forth over The Fulcrum, balancing and redistributing the equation again and again, waiting for the eschaton.
It is keeping my house clean, my dishes washed, my email in-box cleaned out.
It is hanging on to the Gospel with my mind and my heart underneath my body that does otherwise. A mouth that says other things, eyes that divert, senses that meander exponentially every direction. It is knowing the delineation of peace and repentance, that tension between what is and what isn't, ideal and actual, potential and spent energy.
It is a profound personal reality, a reclusivity in the face of the throng, it is the mirror through which my body is seen in its context, a puppet, a dancing fool.
It is the wide chasm between myself and those with whom I interact daily. It is what binds me to them and elucidates the vast distances between us.
It is a millstone, broken glass in my boots, barbed wire around my ribs, eyes blinded by lye, a spider of contrition on my brow. It is the race from nothingness to somethingness, it is the inversion of language, the lessening of the thing in order for it to be made more.
It is what is hidden and what reason must obey but can't reconcile. It is what one uses to privately sever any desire to justify oneself in the sunlight to the world.
It is being vague and concise, it is acknowledging certain binaries as existing for certain reasons, and understanding the primal urge to smash them, but seeks to move through nothingness into the aforementioned primal somethingness.
It is what begins to understand the profundity and sophistication of the Christ on the Cross, the center of the cosmos, of time, or reality.
Language is a rolling colored-water wave machine on a desk in an administrator's office, it lolls back and forth over The Fulcrum, balancing and redistributing the equation again and again, waiting for the eschaton.
monday
I awoke this morning with a dull headache and low-level nausea - nothing I can't normally handle. But after rounding up the kids, seeing them and their mother out the door, drinking 1/2 a cup of coffee, eating two heels of toast with strawberry jelly, and thinking it over for a bit, I think I'm going to stay home. Also included in this decision-making process was my very real reticence to go to school in the first place, primarily due to my general malaise, which very well might be a type of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Across the street there are fellows putting new gutters on a house. It's a small house, with no overhang. It looks as though the fascia board beneath the old gutters is going to need replaced. Our neighbor is going to be all set for the winter soon. She's already had new shingles put on and a rickety old tree that was too close to her house cut down. Soon it will be time to hunker down, turn on some lights, and listen to the wind whistle around the house.
Across the street there are fellows putting new gutters on a house. It's a small house, with no overhang. It looks as though the fascia board beneath the old gutters is going to need replaced. Our neighbor is going to be all set for the winter soon. She's already had new shingles put on and a rickety old tree that was too close to her house cut down. Soon it will be time to hunker down, turn on some lights, and listen to the wind whistle around the house.
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