blog (January, 2005)
air, align, and fluids; I'm fine
Got my oil changed --
and a tire too; this one dragging car down passenger-side for lack of air, compared other three.
Smothered, dropped, and popped.
It caught the edge of a troublesome wok-hole on Cleveland's beloved Euclid Ave last night, whilst=while-wheel helping carry me home from work. This morning the other three and a spare did the carrying, and formerly-mentioned lay deflated, depressed, dehinged in deTrunk.
I'd swerved first, cursed second, bottomed third, and had to yank steering left to go straight to the next light. Right; turn. Pulled into the Clinic drive, and vehicle services man in blue attire who helped stack jack in back told me I was eighth flat he'd fixed today, plus his partner's four. Euclid is deadly between the weather and the Corridor project.
Large price to pay for reason to joyride bicycle today.
verily, pt. 2
Two weekends past I met again my new nun-friend, V, after mass at her monastery. Before I helped move her things into the hermitage behind the main building, where she was to spend the next two weeks for her yearly retreat, she and I shared conversation over scones and coffee.
We sat at the end of a long table that spanned what used to be two rooms divided by a wall and curtain. Until the mid-60's, the Carmelites had been cloistered, and only allowed minimal contact with family on the "outside world." I learned more of their history and contemplative lifestyle, and was absorbed by stories of her own struggles throughout 50 years in the order.
Our first meeting, learning I was from Rochester, NY, she asked if I knew of a Father William Shannon, a friend whom she'd met on retreat, and who had studied under Thomas Merton. Monsignor Shannon happens to lead a nunnery parish where I've attended mass, and with which my grandfather has done much work as funeral director. For Christmas, Grandpa gave me Shannon's Seeking the Face of God (signed by the author) to read and pass along to V, (as I'd told him of our meeting and her question,) so I'm in the midst of studying it.
Exciting for me to find vitality and depth in Catholicism... That spirituality, contemplation and mysticism exist -- and the awareness that signposts toward meaning, taken literally, skew and obscure meaning -- on a path that has long been drab kneel-pew-stand-say-repeat-rote-eat-sing-leave for me.
hasta pronto
It's January 19th, 2005.
What does It's mean? . . I need an oil change.
The front half of car's roof this morning: dented down far enough to hold a great mass of ice and snow. That's what I get for dismissing (have a nice night!) the fat woman in the low-town alley lot -- who asked for money and asked what I needed -- and then parking there.
It's 10:55pm. A spam that slipped through my filter this morning was from one Cleveland Winter. As if I need more of either.
I drove at twice the posted limit to get to a yoga class this evening. Drips of absurdity, but still was the right choice of tonight's various'es: I don't belong at the blog meetup if I can't write here regularly. I wasn't prepared for poker or strung up enough for a wild jazz noise project.
Stillness was the right one. The Right On. Right on Cleveland stillness.
Left on Cleveland Spanish.
I miss Cleveland cycleism.
dumb n' ate
The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse. Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars.
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (translated from Czech by Michael Henry Heim)
now is once is nothing
And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can only make one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.
...
Einmal ist keinmal.What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of Europe. The history of the Czechs and of Europe is a pair of sketches from the pen of mankind's fateful inexperience. History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (translated from Czech by Michael Henry Heim)