Fencing Bear at Prayer

Today has not been an easy day for me.  I've had a headache since yesterday (possibly eyestrain from my still-healing eyes , possibly after-effects of the flu that I had last weekend); the article that I so hopefully sent out for review (the first in three years) came back with the usual confusing mix of comments ("great scholarship, but unpublishable in its present form"); I've missed practice for a full two weeks now thanks to the flu and, last night, the headache; and I don't have any excuses anymore for not feeling loved. Yup, it (life, you name it, everything) sucks.  If I had had time to work on this post earlier today (or, rather, had allowed myself to skip working on my translation or going to campus to meet with students), it would have been called "Suicide Note" and opened with something about how if you saw me after reading it, it just meant I hadn't done it yet.  Don't worry, I'm already in therapy.  But.  But, you know, I'm...

"Already [her son] was taken, already he was bound, already he was spat upon and struck, and it was said over him: 'He deserves death,' and it was shouted to the prefect: 'Crucify, crucify him.' These things were not hidden from the pious mother, who doubtless had come to Jerusalem at this time, whether for the festival of unleavened bread, or rather to see with pious eyes the agony of her Son, which had been specially revealed to her. And thereupon she heard from many: 'Don’t you know, woman, what has happened to your son?' "'I knew, she says, 'so be silent, and do not add to the pain of my wounds.' Thus however she was saying to herself: ‘"I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense" [Song of Songs 4:6]. I will go and I will see his agony, and maternally I will die with him ( commoriar ei ), because that prophecy which truth-telling Simeon said to me—"His sword will pierce through your own soul...