Ash Wednesday

It is strange that not eating would be so comforting. With the distraction of food gone for a mere twenty-four hours, such clarity (or maybe just mild hallucinations). Suddenly, empathy is easy. Love is easy. Irritation is impossible. The pettiness of my preoccupations lately is astounding. I worry about my reputation at work; with people that may be gone in a matter of months. People I'll never see again and people I have nothing (besides my job) in common with. While at the same time I am virtually ignoring Tom, and when I'm not doing that I am belittling him, antogonizing him, blaming him for minor annoyances. And how could I forget how beautiful he is in all ways. How could I forget the attention he gifts me with and a love that creates greater capacity in me than should be possible.

We cannot prove what is real. Dreams provide as much evidence to our senses as "waking", and it is nearly impossible to remember either one while in the experience of the other. Although one of the two tends to be more consistent than the other of course. Still, there is nothing to tell us for sure that this is here and this is now. I begin to think there is actually no here and now. Time always feels wrong and things that appear solid constantly change. I remember sitting on the side of a stream carved mountain in the middle of the Black Hills; cold, waterworn rock beneath my body and hands. It was as if I could feel a story and a persona seeping through the apparent silence and steadfastness of the stone. What is to say that all things are not just as sentient as everything else but in different frames of time and with different modes of communication and development. And what is to say that life and death exist even. Perhaps we are simply cut off from the consciousness that is us and is everything already. The distractions of our body and our senses and our acceptance of the rules of gravity and sequence and cause and effect keep us from the wholeness that waits for us already. Glimpses come to us in our sleep or when we are lost in ecstasy or pain or are simply hungry. We know that we are held captive by some trick of our own consciousness but it is too comforting. We know the rules of this "reality"; Truth holds no promises. Fairy tales and monstors could very well live there. Time may flow backward and forward like an ocean; rhythm in its essence, but sequence impossible and forgotten. It is terrifying, and no one beyond the age of five can even conceive of it properly. There is little nostalgia when I remember being a child; it was impossibly difficult to be in a world of people who knew the rules and didn't understand such a little one that swore dinosaurs wandered her suburban neighborhood. But if Christ did not mean such "naivety" when he instructed us to become like children, I don't know what he could possibly mean. I have heard it explained that we are to be innocent and unquestioning, but I have yet to meet a child that meets that description and I certainly don't remember being one. No, I think He meant that we are to question everything, even the fundamental assumptions of our tidy little universe. Always ask why and always imagine. After all, there is no proof that anything other than our imaginations exist, so why restrict ourselves to the rules that the majority of grown humans has agreed to. Why not imagine that love is possible, life is forever, and playing pretend was more real than the banalities we convince ourselves to live for.