Month: March 2022

a beautiful discovery

Driving home this afternoon in the misty grey, I listened to a song by an artist that someone shared with me a lifetime ago, and I was transported–not to that other time but to another realm. I was a living a surreal scene in a movie, floating through the trees down a narrow and winding road. Everything became clear during that drive. The world as we know it is spinning around as though flowing through a funnel, faster and faster, headed toward one inevitable destination. I’m not sure what that destination is, but my bones tell me it’s something wonderful. All the sorrows of my past and even my day dimmed in the light of this realization. I felt an overwhelming sense of hope and calm. Of peace. That no matter how badly things go between now and the end as we know it, everything will be okay.

A long time ago I found myself, figuratively in every way, swimming in formulas and ideas, buried happily in a vast ocean of mathematics and physics. Drowning in dopamine. Today, after many days of foggy thinking, I re-wrapped my brain around rotational motion and all its fine intricacies, and everything came flooding back. The power of who knows how many minds ran through my veins, as music written by a genius is played by another and fed into the ears of an artist’s hand. I wrote, I dissected, and with that orgasmic victory of accomplishment and validation, I solved. I understood and proved to myself that I am what I thought I might have been once. That I am a part of something greater. I am not the amalgam of my experiences nor even a product of them. I am a part of something greater than I. I am the music that flows through the artist’s hand. I am the result of inspiration and a part of its formation. I am the ocean I drown in. I am Archimedes, Newton, and Mozart. I am the music of Phillip Glass, the keys on which his music is played, and the heart of the player though which his music is felt.

And around with you I flow, as though through a funnel, spinning faster and faster into a singular moment, a singular existence. Yet, myself, I am. Because He made me. And everything that streams through my mind and fingers and even onto this screen is made for me for Him and by me by Him because all of it is a part of who I am as He made me to be. As He made you to be a part of my story as you read these words. As together we narrow in on a destination of His design, returning to a singularity and bursting through to the other side where a beautiful new world awaits. As I did today when I found myself. Again.

cleaning the house

When cleaning my house I begin with one task. Generally picking up all the trash. Then when my house is fully clean, I assure myself I’m going to keep it this way. How hard could it be? And inevitably, the house is a wreck by the end of the week. But really. How hard could it be to throw the trash out in the first place? To put something back? To sweep a room at the end of the day?

I have a big house with only two people living in it. We aren’t lazy, we are busy and tired. But honestly. How hard is it to get up and throw that napkin away?

These are the things I think about when cleaning. Then when I’m living in my newly cleaned house, I am so comfortable that just one napkin on the side table isn’t doing any harm. Leaving my shoes tossed on the floor next to the couch is an easy fix. Putting that dish in the sink? So simple to deal with. Later.

My house doesn’t get fully clean until I’m on vacation because I clean in chunks. I’ll get up and do a couple things, then go about my day doing whatever it is I want to do, which usually involves nothing at all, and then I clean a couple other things. I keep this up until the house is worthy of visitors and, frankly, of me. This process takes a long time, and it can’t happen when I’m not on vacation because the energy it takes to throw even that one new napkin away is too much to handle. But it’s not really. I just take advantage of my evenings to do nothing. And therein lies the problem.

If I do just one thing a night, I should be good.

This is where my past self would link the keeping of my house clean to something else, making a profound statement about life. But I don’t have it in me today. I’m just going to sit here and take advantage of my time to do nothing. I can write later. After all, what is writing but tiny words strung together? So easy.