Fencing Bear at Prayer

How do you tell the difference between procrastination as such and the dithering that would seem to be necessary to any work of the imagination? The mess (or, at the very least, my perception thereof) has subsided; my son has arrived safely at camp where he will be for the next four weeks (gasp! my little boy isn't so little any more); the floor in my office on campus has been swept (mostly) and the rug cleaned (sort of); I have my new glasses so can see clearly again (even if this pair is supposed to be my spare; my proper frames are now being fitted with, yes, progressives) ; I am rested, well-fed, not too battered by Sunday's tournament ; I've read that book about Mary that I've been carrying around in my book bag for months. As the baboon said to the lions, " It is time ." But I'm scared. It's hard being both melancholic and the one who has to do the jump-starting. Much better to spend the morning reading this amazing webcomic about The L...

"I do not know how to write, nor can I, unless I see with the eyes of my soul and hear with the ears of my eternal spirit and feel in all the parts of my body the power of the Holy Spirit." --Mechthild of Magdeburg (ca. 1212-ca. 1282), Fliessende Licht der Gottheit , lib. 4, cap. 13, trans. Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), p. 156.

Four days home and I'm still suffering from jet lag. Oh, to have crossed the Atlantic by liner instead of jet plane. A gradual reintroduction to one's ordinary life, the transition from holiday (holy day) to feria made less abrupt. Instead, it is a struggle to stay awake, a struggle to sleep, appetite thrown higgeldy-piggeldy, the days too long, the nights too long, everything out of joint. Like being in an Hieronymus Bosch painting, appropriately enough. Watched In Bruges on the flight over from London; life and death, choices and judgment, mistakes that one has made that can never be corrected. Is it possible to live in a fairy tale? Certainly I spent the two weeks that I had in Belgium looking for something, not fairies, not Elves. Marys? Finding and not finding. The life that my brother is looking for; the life that I am looking for. Joycean musings at 5:05 AM, the day after the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. If these were real morning pages,...