It's a little nerve-wracking sometimes, though, because no matter where you sit, the door is always just out of sight and I tend to pray out loud, in what can be a very animated whisper, and I know that I can get lost in those moments and that I look like I'm just the crazy person yelling at the corner of the ceiling in public. Then again, sometimes I don't care. In any event, I keep an ear out for when footsteps walk up to the door so I know when I need to leave. The timing tends to work out. And last week, there was someone coming in just as I was going out and he said, "You don't have to go." And I smiled and waved a hand and said, as I walked away, "Oh, I was done, I was just convincing myself that I wanted to move."
Sometimes, we don't realize how true the things we say are.
***
A fact about living and studying in old town Edinburgh is that a canon at the castle goes off at one o'clock every afternoon. I jumped and looked around in a panic the first time I heard it. On Saturday, when I walked up to the library, I heard it and thought, "Ah, must be lunchtime." Didn't miss a step.
But what stuck with me about this moment was how normal it was, existing with the same kind of comfortable happiness you find settling into your favorite booth at your favorite place to eat. Usual. Quotidian. At home.
***
The sun is getting ever closer to staying up until 5pm. I feel like I should congratulate it, bake it a cake for making it through a typical workday like the rest of us.
***
When I was a kid, I did not understand the Holy of Holies in the temple. It's a place that only the High Priest gets to go to once a year and it's where the spirit of God dwelt, right? So he'd get to talk to God one time a year? I never got that. I mean, the High Priest goes there once a year, sure, but what about the custodian for the Temple? They go in the Holy of Holies once a week to dust, at the very least. So I always thought that if you want to meet the person who's in the presence of God the most, you want to talk to the cleaning lady.
***
I broke a plate on Friday, maybe, and it was one of those slow motion moments where I watched it tumble from the dish drainer, spinning three times end over end before hitting the ground where I hoped beyond hope that it would survive the fall. Instead, I watched in fascination as the force of impact sent stoneware shards into the air like the tiny pockets of light that fireworks throw into the sky. And even though my heart sunk as the plate shattered in the shame and frustration of fucking up in such a juvenile way, it was oddly beautiful.
Then I vacuumed.
Sometimes I feel like the world is a play being staged for my benefit and the act that began with a glance in the middle of a conversation ended with a shoulder holding open a door, with the in-between best suited to a montage, all the boring stuff cut out. The temptation to lean into those moments is stronger than it has any right to be, to latch onto those resonances as if they were truth rather than the complicated and confused firings of a mind dragged through the dust of human relationships by a heart on a warpath for connection and affection.
Then I vacuumed.
***
***
***
I am incapable of having a conversation about tax code quietly.
***
I was listening to Hamilton on the way back from the train station, as always, and it got to that part in the battle of Yorktown where the tailor who's been spying on the British government comes center-stage and says, "Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction, when you knock me down, I get the f--- back up again!" and I realized that getting back up again looks different for everyone. For me, it meant going to a choir rehearsal and I like that about myself.
***
***
I woke up early on Saturday morning to see snow coming down like a rainstorm. The dusting was gone by the next day, but I was still struck by the way those flakes fell with such ferocious intention.
***
I'm not even sure exactly what I said or exactly the words that set me off, but I do distinctly remember taking in a deep breath and listening as a veritable thunderstorm of words poured out of me at a clip that would make Lorelai Gilmore proud. I do know the place that the words were spoken out of-- I firmly believe that in order to live in this world, you have to start from a place of equality, equality of personhood and experience and ideas. You have to allow everyone and everything a voice. And it touches a nerve when thoughts that could encroach on that equality surface or show themselves as fundamental to a worldview, and that nerve that is apparently directly connected to my mouth.
But in exploding like that I forgot that the only calling I have ever truly know for my life is that of a bridge. My goal is to connect. It's what I'm built for. And bridges, they have to have anchors on both sides and they cannot choose who crosses them, nor do they ever really get to cross themselves. I had forgotten my responsibility to one side because of the present usefulness of the ideas of the other. But to stay in either place for me is a siren's call and I need to be mindful of that in myself. My goal is connection, facilitation, and I can't do that by just shouting from one side back to the other.
***
So there's this beautiful section in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus does three connected things- he calms the storm, he exorcises the demons out of a man who's been living in a graveyard, and he heals a woman on the way to bringing a dead girl back to life. And I love it because the man who can do such wonderful things as ending a hurricane, restoring a man controlled by forces he has no chance of defeating, and healing illness and death also reaches out to this woman and calls her daughter. He takes two people who should be beyond repair and says, Love, get up. There is such care and compassion here, such healing.
The guy who was preaching on this on Sunday, his verbal tick is, "Can you see that?" It drove me up a wall the first time I listened to him because of course I see that. I'm not an idiot. I saw it the last ten times you said it. But here, existing in these stories, I feel the need to hear it again. Jesus healed this woman. Can you see that? Jesus fixed her body and brought her back into the community. Can you see that? He called her daughter, called her for his own. Can you see that? He saved her, in every sense of the word.
Do you see that?
Do you see?
I just looked to see if your days were getting longer today. It's dark and pouring down rain here. Hopefully we will see the Sun tomorrow and for you a WoW
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