Vaslav Nijinksy

I like to speak in rhymes because I am a rhyme myself.

Vaslav Nijinksy, Russian ballet dancer

Thus spake Nick Cave

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

Last night Nick Cave grabbed my face with both his hands, stared deep into my eyes and said (well, shouted, more like) Girl! Don't you know that the story is always the same! It's the same old recycled shit that we all live and read and sing about. Forget the plot! Character development is where the real excitement is! That's what we've got to focus our attention on! Don't you see?"  We were in a bar, having some beers, and he'd only just finished reading the short story that I'd sent in for publication earlier in the day. I don't know where the Bad Seeds were. Nick had picked me up in an old blue pick-up truck and I was wearing the red dress I bought last weekend in New York, which might actually be the most perfect dress I've ever owned.  ZZ Top was playing in the background. It was a good night and I don't remember even minding too much that he called my story shit.  

Now, Nick Cave is great, maybe even brilliant, but I've never considered him prophetic.  But all day today I walked around with a sort of glow, the kind of glow that comes from being chosen to receive a small, secret seed of understanding that, with the right tending, might grow into something valuable and good. Nick Cave visited me (with the obliging help of my subconscious and 25 mg of benadryl) with this great message; some pretty deep shit that might be worth considering after we wipe the sleep from our eyes.

further mystery

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.
And how long is that going to take?'
I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.
That could be a long time.'
I will tell you a further mystery, he said.  It may take longer. 

Wendell Berry,  Jayber Crow

pause & reflect

Recently I read an article in a scholarly journal suggesting that nurses who take a few moments each shift to pause and reflect on the deeper meaning and significance of their work generally suffer less anxiety and burnout.

Ok. Whatever you say, guy. Here it goes:

Hmmm. Stopping to pause and reflect as I look around, it appears that I somehow work in the middle of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. How lovely that my life so closely imitates art!

Hieronymus Bosch The Last Judgment, detail

sweet old fashioned words

Travail, fidelity, and solace at last.

it was the 14th of April that was ruination day

monastic wows

1. A bottle of Chimay Blanche, a golden apple, a plate of sharp, Irish cheddar. 

2. from A letter from Jesus Christ to the Soul that Really Loves Him

"One thing I have to warn you of especially is your constant tendency to grow fainthearted under the weight of your faults and oversights and an inclination almost to despair when a sudden lack of confidence reduces your firm decisions to nothing. I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don’t move towards Me but desperately imagine that everything that you have ever done has been utterly lost and forgotten.

This near despair and self-pity are actually a form of pride. What you think was a state of absolute security from which you’ve fallen was really trusting too much in your own strength and ability. Profound depression and perplexity of mind often follow a loss of hope; what really ails you is that things simply haven’t happened as you expected and wanted. In fact, I don’t want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself, and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely on yourself you are bound to come to grief.

You still have a most important lesson to learn: Your own strength will no more help you to stand upright than dropping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair on me. You must hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite."

-- John of Landsberg, 16th century Carthusian Monk