Night Sense


Dear Eugene,

If I can choose, if it's up to me, to find a way--the best way--to make sense of myself, would I choose to sing a song, to pen a poem, to fashion a garment, or, like now, to compose a sentence?

And if I am to do just that--to make sense of myself in the best way I know how--would I do it like it's the last given chance and be happy with the sense I am making, however fragmentary and inconclusive it might be?

No, it is not about being solemn or serious or intentional, though all these have everything going for them.  Quite the contrary: the song might well be silly, I can hear that, and the verses broken, I can see, or as in how this very sentence finds no satisfaction in keep on running on.

We live life to do things that are meant to be done and it's in such doing that we can speak of ourselves as having lived a meaningful life.  This way we can't complain or be blamed for haven't lived a good day, as we busy ourselves with complaining about elements that are to blame for working against our doings.  Rain.  Flat tire.  Bad pizza.

It hardly matters what we are actually doing, as long as we are doing something.  Keep looking for good deals and new products is good homemaking, our friends suggested and we confirmed.  What is home?  How can we actually make one?  Why do it?  And to what end?  Our home is too full to house any question mark.

Things make sense when we try not to make sense of things.  We are so intentional in staying ignorant and thoughtless that we can almost convince ourselves something new and good is really going to be given birth by the next sunrise because of our sowing this very night.  Not many of us are jumping off bed in the morning like a child on Christmas day.

Goodnight, Eugene.  I pray to never wake up to a day that I can't afford to talk silly.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. KateJanuary 8, 2019 at 9:07 AM

    Dear Eugene,

    “Our home is too full to house any question mark… We are so intentional in staying ignorant and thoughtless that we can almost convince ourselves something new and good is really going to be given birth by the next sunrise because of our sowing this very night.”

    In my workplace some of the happiest workers seem to thrive in the cafeteria. Sleeves rolled and aprons unfolded. Salad and conversations tossed in the air. Heat, baskets of onions, hunger. A working playground with food and people. Flavor-full, no questions about it.

    Where food is served, the need to consume for fulfillment is dense in high calories. We make sense of ourselves in bites and indigestion. We are what we eat, our friends and experts suggested and we confirmed.

    By now I have eaten for more than half of my life. Half of my meals were likely swallowed without much sense or thought. The sugar I have craved for all my life is heaping up to mounds of fat around me. And I struggle daily to find sweetness in my journey towards menopause. Nightly hot flashes, armchair whiner, bitter weeds sown. I could barely get up to the next sunrise, let alone jump off anything.

    I must look silly now with my bulges, cellulites and crooked joints. When no one is looking, I pluck out another silver strand of my hair. I don’t want to call it white. Silver is classier than white. Or maybe pearly is better. Nothing makes sense in my aging mind or body. But perhaps in being stripped to the core with less distraction, I may find my true sense and meaning.

    So thank you Pastor Pete for putting up with my nuisance. I pray to never sleep to a night that I can’t afford to talk silly the next morning.

    Yours, Kate

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