Over

Often what ought to be the day of rejoicing becomes the day of... what next? I know what's next. So many things are next. I am open to so much, but now, after I have come through all the things involved in going back so to school, and after I've come through this whole year blessed, I can only lay in bed and sleep.

In a few weeks, new challenges will be beging. But that is not today, and all the old things are gone. At last, this uphill and often joyous struggle is over.

Wednesday Night

Frema,
thank you for your card and your love. Mom loved the card. No, just joking. Sooooo joking. I have to call you, but as happens, I've lost your number. I swear I'm not slighting you!

The end of the semester has something to do with this: this exhaustion bordering on madness. I feel a little mad. In both senses of the word. Today, only a few hours ago, I was at the height of study, enraptured, triumphant. Now, I am tired, chomping at the bit for tomorrow night when my first semester ends. I have come through so much, thank God, but I'm feeling insane more than anything else. I've gained so much but I have lost a lot too.

One my ex-best friends.... Yes, one of them, there are too many to count now, is getting married. I heard this third hand. Who would marry the bitch? i wondered. But the world is full of bitches and they're all slipping rings on each others fingers. This morning I awoke from a dream about another son-of-a-bitch who had been my friend, who had loved me and I had loved and the dream was so vivid. Well, he has found a bitch to love him as well.

Now that all the real issues are put aside. Now that everyday isn't a struggle and I don't have to be afraid of the very real issues I have been afraid of, my heart is free to turn to knitpicking worries, to questions of why when all these dreadful people can find someone to spend their whole lives with-- exclusively-- I cannot even find someone I'd want to spend the day with. The people I loved most are gone from me, and, what's more, I know I don't really want them to return. All this day faces and memories have haunted me, what I gave up and what I lost to move to a place that is better than where I was before.

So many are gone, but none have come to replace them.

Grace Dances

"I will adorn and I will be adorned."
"Amen."
"I will be united and I will unite."
"Amen."
"I have no house and i have houses."
"Amen."
"I have no temple and I have temples."
"Amen."
"I am a lamp to you who see me."
"Amen."
"I am a mirror to you who perceive me."
"Amen."
"I am a door to you who knock on me."
"Amen."
"I am a way to you, you passerby."
"Amen."

Fourth Night, Fourth Light

It is the fourth night of Hannukah. It is also Shabos. By five-thirty, when the sun is going down, the little altar is full of going light. What does it mean? As the semester ends and I look back on everything I've come through, and all that I know I will face in the year to come? So many thoughts in my head. So many feelings. The surprise at seeing Adam Rector again. Surprise! Surprise! From my driver's ed class, all grown up and sporty, and it turns out he is the son of one my classmates. The surprise that after years of being broke I have money and a bank account and at least for a little while won't have to worry about poverty. So many changes, so many things we have spiraled through. We, yes, I was never alone. Today at Mass I look around. This is what I always wanted. God has given me what I always wanted. Could it really have been a year ago I wasn't part of Saint James's, that I was turning my back on a part of my life that I didn't want, that didn't want me.

As the candles burn this is all on my mind. This, and so much more.

What do these nights mean as the wax melts down?

Light increasing, my God, light increasing.

Dreams and Writing

I need to keep a book of my dreamings. Now the first snows have fallen, the light is lessened. Advent approaches with all the festivals of light. Final Harvest and the Days of the Dead have ended. Soon the time of new birth will come. We are in the dark time, the quiet time, the belly of the year.

I dream and meditate on people who do not come to mind every day. At least not to the front of my mind. When often I say there is no one worth thinking of back in high school that isn't true. The fact is I could never go to a high school reunion because all the people I would want to see would never come. But of late I have it in mind to write a book that I could dedicate to those people. A Delores Smythe, a Matthew Crabtree or Andy Dyko. Stephen Donnelly. I write their names here so that I know for sure there is some place where they are recorded in the Internet world. I would dedicate something to them because they made those years good for me when everyone else was senseless.