My morning meditation was interrupted by the rat catcher coming in through the side gate (I saw his hand, first, reaching over the gate to lift the latch I’d unlocked earlier so early for rats) but also by three petals that fell with a whisper from one of the peonies that sit in a purple vase on the dining room table. They are peach and blush, faded now and blowsy. The gate clicked the petals dropped so hum so hum.
My son Henry graduated from college a couple of weeks ago. I traveled up to Spokane, Washington to see him and to celebrate. It was thrilling, actually.
The image of an ocean of space with me floating peacefully and dropping my fears and issues into it and letting them go even as I remain open to what is next. Something good, a break, a loosening so that I can be filled again with love and hope. So hum.
I’m reading a fantastic book of short stories by Elizabeth McCracken called The Souvenir Museum. I mean fantastic. Here’s a bit:
Inside Jack found a little lamp to switch on, clamped to the edge of a stepladder. The walls were vivid green, and he looked like a Toulouse-Lautrec lady, lit from underneath, glamorous, sure to die or go blind or mad.
The idea of an air mattress and an electric blanket had sounded like a disaster sandwich to Sadie, but she put on her underpants and took off her wet dress and used it to dry her wet knees, and then, cold to the bones, she slid in. She’d never slept under an electric blanket. It was warm, lulling, and she felt like a little abandoned animal whose mother has died but who yet might be saved by technology. Incubated. That’s how she felt. Maybe she would be electrocuted, and maybe the air mattress would spring a leak and they would sail around the room as it emptied out. For the moment she had never felt anything more exquisite, this warm, buoyant raft heading out to sleep.
Thinking a lot about the Palestinians and their suffering. Less about the Israelis and their suffering (I refuse to tiptoe). Thinking about the children, mostly. The Palestinian children. All of them. So many dead children and traumatized children. Traumatized children being treated for trauma and killed anyway. The word rubble. Thinking about old Mother Theresa and her alleged cult of suffering (you can read about it). Sainted by the heads of the cult of suffering and those who wear its symbol strung in gold in silver a rope (if you’re humble) around your neck, the same rope used to string up black people in Terrible America, whoever loses his life will find it and whatever and whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. So hum so hum so hum.
You're right from your side I'm right from mine We're both just one too many mornings An' a thousand miles behind
I am That.
Lovely writing- yours and McCracken's. Last night I read the article in the NYT's about Mother Theresa's...cult? and remembered reading Hitchen's "Missionary Position". And then I read through some of the many comments on the article. They were as divided as one might imagine. I am about to the point where I think that all religions are cults.
Love the idea of your flying through the high altitudes, letting your cares drop into that ocean of space. Beautiful.
Yep. I am That. Another offering from Lao Tzummerman:
https://youtu.be/4vzcF8v8qkk
No glory forever and ever, the sorrow of war without end. Amen.
Always honoring the lives of the children, the loosening into love and hope, the way the peonies speak without words. Thank you, Elisabeth.