Pushing the exhaustion margin again, riding the crest into a weary tomorrow (today). Have lately been feeling like I need to write something but the waters are murky and I am having trouble connecting the dots. I'll just see how this goes.
The night before I flew to San Diego, I did not sleep. I was too excited by the discovery of Inferno, a book by my favorite sci-fi/fantasy artist. Not since early adolescence had I experienced as inflamed an imagination - fleeing into alien worlds. When I was tween, I would read Aliens vs. Predator novels and become viscerally involved. That place was real to me. I had the ability to transplant myself into it. Then, there I was, for hours, until my alarm woke up, the sun was on the floor and I was still treading in solemn caravans across the ashen expanses of Hell.
It makes me wonder about lots of things. Like why my mind can be wholly elsewhere, why I'm not involved with excitement, at what point between dropping to my knees, six years old, and tearfully praying that a vivid dream of love (I remember her name, for some reason I don't want to tell you what it is - she kissed me in absolute understanding; among the most beautiful moments of my life) be real to reading the Chronicles of Narnia a few months ago and being deeply moved I stopped believing in awesome powers. At what point I lost track of my holy narrative, which I maybe believe everyone has. At what point the fiery bazaars of Dis became so very interesting.
I try to retrieve things from myself and it results in confusion. I try to retrieve things from others and it results in rejection. I have not tried to retrieve things from God since I was a child, since retrieval started connecting dots with chemical vacations, dumbass haircuts, dumbass books with clouds on the covers, dumbass cults with their dumbass leaders, dumbass esotericism, symbols, heiroglyphs, ciphers, costumes, all the trappings of dumbass, tryhard, dimestore enlightenment. But this idea of God is bigger than the New Age section of Barnes and Noble, bigger than C. S. Lewis, bigger than churches, beyond good, beyond evil, part and parcel of both, stirring its fingers, shifting its weight massively between the atoms.
Trying to escape back into my own story, because I have definitely lost the page.
2 comments:
People think I'm joking when I say I'm a super hero. But I swear believing in crazy things is the only way to not go crazy.
Enjoy the California sun and yes, watch out for rouge waves.
This is the girl who's been asking you questions about Evergreen... I had to post to this one. I really relate to what you're saying - everything from the sci-fi/fantasy art to the dream to CS Lewis to the dumbass cults and heiroglyphs and books and everything else.
This may not help, but for what it's worth, I've come to believe that God, despite the overwhelming collective sense that it is distant - that humans must work all sorts of tricks and contortions to reach it - manifests itself in utter humility and simplicity, in the quietest moments, among the simplest of people. You'll never find it if you're straining too far - God can only be seen here and now, wherever you are, whomever you're with. One need look no further than a weed poking out of the pavement to glimpse an awesome power. And ultimately, I think that if you can't see God there, in the lowest of things, in the meanest of circumstances, you can't genuinely see it anywhere. Indeed, there are complexities in the universe that we will never understand, and I think God encompasses these - but I've started to wonder if these complexities are obstructions to knowledge of the divine, like scratches on a windowpane, or simply a beautiful part of the whole, like waves on an ocean - details, integrated, harmonious, unified - never to be truly comprehended, but still possible to witness and stand in awe before.
Couple of random things that have truly humbled me:
http://www.peacepilgrim.org/htmfiles/freebook.htm
http://www.globalonenessproject.org/living-library
-christine
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