"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."
- Buddha
Another short one tonight--the extent to which I find myself exhausted by this week's short, collegial trial has exhausted me is a sign of my age, the universe talking to me. I don't remember in peacetime ever feeling so much like the thumb on an old glove.
At the farm tonight for a few hours. I was supposed to be at the Kiwanis banquet in PCB, but felt a lymph node swelling this afternoon and figured I'd like kill one of my nice old fellow Kiwanians if I showed up feeling even slightly ill. Is it enough to postpone flying back to NY tomorrow? Are you kidding? I've already damn near killed myself more than once to get back to P after a grueling week; a little scratchy throat isn't going to keep me on the ground. Typhoid Donkey.
Still wrestling with a little of the lachrymose today. I sent Peg a poem (I send her lots of poems, wishing I'd the gift to write her one in my own voice) that left me positively choked up as I was paying the bill for a temporary crown at my dentist's office.
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Yeats. Thank you Julia Wettlaufer, my AP English teacher, for leading me to fall in love with the English and Irish poets of the turn of the last century. Their words as a substitute for the ones I feel and can't articulate. I reminded P I'm the "one man [who] loved the pilgrim soul in you." Maybe. I don't know other folks' hearts. I do know I feel loved back that way, which is a blessing.
And "a blessing" is sort of where I'm going. The last week or so I've been up at 4 a.m. or so, getting ready for a day of trial or, today, for depositions in a file I barely know. Seventeen hours ago I awoke and ran my checklist, but was foiled by my glasses hiding somewhere in the condo. What the hell? It's a tiny condo. How have I lost my glasses?
Today after work I stopped back to pick up a couple things before heading to the farm. Of course I searched for my specs. Yet the outcome was the same--they'd utterly disappeared. In frustration I looked skyward and uttered a prayer I would have mocked any other time:
"Please God, I understand you're pretty good about helping folks find their car keys. I really need to find my glasses. I don't have a spare [editor's note: I lost those two weeks ago]. If you're so inclined, I'd appreciate whatever help you might offer."
Maybe three minutes later I wandered into the bedroom on my search, with no clue how they vanished.
And then it occurred to me. When P's not here I read and have stuff on the bed where she would be--laptop, iPad, etc.- I might've tucked my glasses in there when I made the bed?
That's exactly what happened. I tore the bed apart and my glasses spilled out of the covers. A prayer answered.
It would be arrogant to poo poo all that. Right now I'm reading Dominion, a history of the rise of Christianity as a revolutionary and civilizing influence in human history. The insight in today's package was that the Hebrew god was a personal deity, an entity that dealt directly with his chosen tribe as children, in covenant with his children, without the need for a kingly intermediary. Amazing stuff at the time.
Which is to say that maybe, just maybe, God was extending a divine finger down under the counterpane to catch my attention in response to my direct and recent (and sincere--I think that matters) request for help.
Snicker all you want, but I'm struggling to find a more plausible explanation. Of course, P and I live in a house with ghosts. I'm willing to acknowledge that there's something amazing just beyond our perceptual horizon.
Home to P tomorrow. Hoping for more benevolent skies than the last time.
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