wednesday morning chronicle

March 25, 2009 candacemorris 3 Comments

miracle of miracles! today is momentous and jocund indeed, for today i was able to wake up at 8:30am and STAY awake. i have had such a wonderful morning, and it is only 11:15 (roughly about an hour after i usually wake up). okay so i am not as bubbly as my words make out - this is probably not at all possible for me (except on the dance floor), but it really does feel oh so good for my wee soul.

so what did i do with the extra 1.5 hours i put back into my day? well, i'm glad you asked.

i woke to the faintest drizzle and the brilliance of the sun trying to peek through seattle's umbrella of gray. it was too early for me to take my walk, so i sat with tea (chamomile) and breakfast (yogurt, granola, honey, and strawberries) on my decidedly comforting green couch and read for a bit. i wish i could skim over this part for your sake (i mean, you probably have things to do besides sit and absorb my chirp-chirping), but i simply cannot.

i read two amazing passages this morning. one in the form of a poem by Rilke (yep, still crushing) and another in Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain.

Rilke summed up my recent desire for morning walks. "I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky" (expert from "Lament"). A quote that will, no doubt, appear in future musings.

But Merton - oh Merton speaks to me today with tones of Moore's Care of the Soul. The suffering of a human and what the repression of said suffering can do to a soul...it is devastating.

"Indeed, the truth may be that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does the most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and trivial that one can say that is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture....it turns our nature inside out, eviscerates all our capacity for good, turning them against ourselves" (90).

This is such an accurate depiction of depression - this being both "subject and source" of pain...an internal demonetization that knifes you. you scream for it to stop, grabbing the hand of the killer - only to find it is your own hand...your own face...your own soul. because this suffering is the worst i have known, i instead often choose to uncover all the little pockets of suffering that i have repressed...to deal with them instead of the later.

A thought-provoking morning, indeed (the best kind).

I then embarked upon my morning walk. I heard more poems, this time Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 - which I also memorized in grade nine. I took off my cap to let the rain kiss my face. I made a fool of myself taking pictures while others stared. I simply was...in that moment...I was. This, like an early spring shower, is a gift both profound and simple; immeasurable and diminutive; vast and microscopic.

Upon my return from my walk, I found myself at last awake and ready to do as I intended...dishes, vacuum, write, etc. I will spend the rest of the day at my parent's house doing my taxes and designing my next little house project.

Wednesday can be so tricky for some, but for you, my dears - I wish for even one nanosecond in which you can hear your breath, listen to a sonata, smell an old page; for in these sacred spaces, your comfort is surely waiting.