Tuesday

Yesterday morning, while studying in the library at Saint Mary's College, this is what I wrote in my journal.

I always loved a Roman Catholic Lent, especially toward the end: the days of the Triduum. Everyone fasted, everyone prayed, everyone was penitent and then everyone was joyous. But all of these things were superficial and tenuous: try as a Catholic might, the Church did not possess within its structure the ability to hold onto this vitality past Easter Monday.

Between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday-- these were the days when the Catholic Church was just almost Catholic, and people began to feel like brothers and sisters.

And then it was gone.

I am at the end of this novel, and writing a novel has a different feel to it when you know someone will take it, someone will read it. The act of writing is one of supreme liberation, but once you know that someone is reading what you're writing there is a new responsibility which is not heavy, not a chain, but another sort of liberation.

Being read is like a flower being unfolded.

Or like being opened up and tasted.