Mona sez we should write about the world beyond our senses. Okay. I wrote this in my head, lying in bed with a cold. It's pretty much straight reportage, though I did have kind of a NyQuil buzz going at the time.
I am sick in bed with a cold today. My world has shrunk to the four walls around me, the bed, the blanket.
In the paper a woman who wishes to be Vice President says the election is in God's hands. On the radio, an arrogant English accent is telling an interviewer that God is a delusion to comfort the simple-minded.
I turn the radio off. The paper has long since been tossed.
What can be gained by trivializing the world around us, shrinking it to small, bite-sized portions? In whose interest is it that I wear blinders, that I keep the true nature of things at bay?
In a few hours I will get out of bed, pick up my daughters, walk home in a NyQuil haze. They will kick at the bright leaves that fell last night in response to the first frost of the year. It is cold; we will stay inside. As evening falls Venus and Jupiter will appear in the twilight, well before the other stars. Then Vega. Then Deneb and Altair.
Mysteries huddle at our feet, curled like sleeping cats.
We will eat. We will read the girls a story, sing them a song. I will slip into bed next to my wife. We will sleep. The wide world will turn.
Tomorrow it will all begin again.
8 comments:
I liked this a lot. A worldly, hazy, quiet-but-forceful sigh.
The "haze" comes through in the clarity, somehow. Like how a drunk can only focus clearly on a single thing, what's right in front of him, and that's how your sentences are brought to bear on a subject.
Nietzsche. Eric didn't mention it first which makes me happy because now I get to mention it. It kind of applies I guess. Well maybe not too much, and that's likely why Eric didn't mention it. Oh well. But I do like it. Day in day out, we do the same thing. The most ironic part of it all is you realized that best when you actually did something different. Normally you do all the things you listed above, but the one day you break up the monotony, and lie in bed sick, you see best what every day really is.
Venus and Jupiter are getting closer, and I love the summer triangle. It's almost gone... you know, you can see both the summer triangle and the winter circle all in the same night during this month. I love that.
There's a very good laugh over at my page today; I really think you'll enjoy it.
Hope you feel better.
Scarlett & Viaggiatore
"Mysteries huddle at our feet, curled like sleeping cats." I love that!
WE are but a trail of little mysteries day in and day out but then we are all a part of THE HUGE MYSTERY.
Me, I'm glad I'm bright enough to see the mysteries around me, but not bright enough to figure them out. Very well written, sir, as always. *S*
This makes me long for a NyQuil haze....
Thanks, Eric. I liked how this turned out as well. Should probably cut that preachy 4th paragraph, but can't quite bring myself to do it.
All I know about Nietzsche, Vic, are the greatest hits ("I have looed into the abyss and the abyss has looked into me!"). But you're right, it sort of about finding magic in the everyday.
I didn't know that, Scarlett. I like the Robert Frost image of how Orion looks like he's hoisting himself over a fence this time of year.
The reason the cats are sleeping in the poem, Moi, is because there were cats sleeping next to my leg while I was writing the poem.
Thanks Irr. Still riding the high from your ballon trip?
Coleridge had his opium, Mona, and I have my NyQuil.
You know it! Even after cracking Betty into a jillion pieces I'm still jonesing for the open skies.
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