I've been sitting in my favorite chair, feet braced against the ottoman, looking at Twitter and Facebook and knitting blogs for the past hour and a half. I just drank the last swallow of hot chocolate from the coffee mug. It was cold and icky sweet, thick with the dark brown syrup in the bottom of the cup made of Swiss Miss that did not quite dissolve in the hot milk an hour ago.
It's 10:29 and I never, ever go to bed before 11. I'm stressed and tired and can't seem to let go. There are remnants of today's work, or the work I hoped to complete today, scattered around my chair. My knitting is on the other side of the room. I can't even hook up with the yarn and cable needle that would help ease me into the end of the day.
Lent starts tomorrow, the forty days of repenting and remembering that life is suffering and none of us gets out alive. People tell me they love Lent, they revel in Lent. Not me. I've never liked Lent. You could go back through all 12 years of this blog and every year, somewhere in February or March, you'll find me sniping at Lent in one post or another—the hymns, the Wednesday night church services, the ashes, the purple, the gloom.
It feels like the dark cloud between me and a better world. A season of dirty snow and winter jackets stiff with four months' steady use, jackets standing up by themselves and begging to be washed and put away in the back of the closet.
And yet.
Lent says what's wrong. Lent seeks forgiveness. Lent waits patiently on the Lord.
So here we go.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Wednesday, February 07, 2018
Still February
Finally got outside to shovel snow last night just after dark, and did a damn fine job of it. Woke up slowly this morning, gradually becoming aware of stiff and tired muscles. Made coffee and looked out the window expecting to see sidewalks and driveway scraped clean.
Nothing but white. A couple inches of white.
February.
Hard, plodding work brightened only by a couple of silly Valentines with their gaudy colors and fake cheer. (Okay, if you're a fan of Valentines--brightened by a few sweet cards, pink and heartfelt in an otherwise grey month.)
I have never been a fan of life's long grey stretches. They're like the sidewalk along the north side of my house that stretches from the driveway and the alley all the way to the street corner. There's a point when you're shoveling that sidewalk where you stop and lean on your shovel and despair of ever finishing.
But you gotta keep going.
Nothing but white. A couple inches of white.
February.
Hard, plodding work brightened only by a couple of silly Valentines with their gaudy colors and fake cheer. (Okay, if you're a fan of Valentines--brightened by a few sweet cards, pink and heartfelt in an otherwise grey month.)
I have never been a fan of life's long grey stretches. They're like the sidewalk along the north side of my house that stretches from the driveway and the alley all the way to the street corner. There's a point when you're shoveling that sidewalk where you stop and lean on your shovel and despair of ever finishing.
But you gotta keep going.
Tuesday, February 06, 2018
February
February.
We're still in the single digits and already it feels like a long month. Six days down, twenty-two to go, and these early days are shrouded in snow.
I used my fingers to count syllables in that last sentence, in the hope that "go" and "snow" were at the end of ten-syllable clauses--making an inadvertent rhyming couplet, ala William Shakespeare. Alas, not. I'm a few syllables short and the da-DAH, da-DAH rhythm of iambic pentameter is not there at all. "Shrouded in snow" waltzes instead of two-steps.
The high and the low of Shakespeare are on my mind this morning. I'm singing in a concert this weekend whose centerpiece is a setting of four Shakespeare sonnets for brass and choir, with an actor thrown in for good measure. All I've heard so far is the choral end, and there are a lot of notes on the page for brass. The first sonnet in the group is "No longer mourn for me," which I am finding incredibly sad. "Let your love even with my life decay," says the speaker of the sonnet--as if that were possible. As if you could protect those who love you from the grief of losing you.
You can't. Mortality's a bitch.
The low end of Shakespeare on my mind this morning is "The Comedy of Errors," an early play full of clowning, physical comedy and word play based on mistaken identity. I've got fifth and sixth graders working on scenes from this play, cut by necessity to the bare bones farcical elements of the plot. Most roles are triple-cast--a new actor in each of three sections of material. Given that all the fun stuff in the play is based on two sets of twins, unknown to each other but being mistaken for one another--well, do the math. In rehearsal yesterday pretty much no one was called by their correct character name -- at least not by the director (me). You truly do need a scorecard to tell the players.
What's fun is how enthusiastically the kids pitch into the work. Acting is fun! Acting frustrated and and angry and put-upon comes naturally. And we can enjoy all that frustration because it is a comedy of errors--we know that all will come right in the end. (In the end--when I've got a dozen kids onstage, plus another twenty in a watching crowd of citizens, each of whom, I hope, gets it.)
February. High tragedy, low comedy. Stay tuned.
We're still in the single digits and already it feels like a long month. Six days down, twenty-two to go, and these early days are shrouded in snow.
I used my fingers to count syllables in that last sentence, in the hope that "go" and "snow" were at the end of ten-syllable clauses--making an inadvertent rhyming couplet, ala William Shakespeare. Alas, not. I'm a few syllables short and the da-DAH, da-DAH rhythm of iambic pentameter is not there at all. "Shrouded in snow" waltzes instead of two-steps.
The high and the low of Shakespeare are on my mind this morning. I'm singing in a concert this weekend whose centerpiece is a setting of four Shakespeare sonnets for brass and choir, with an actor thrown in for good measure. All I've heard so far is the choral end, and there are a lot of notes on the page for brass. The first sonnet in the group is "No longer mourn for me," which I am finding incredibly sad. "Let your love even with my life decay," says the speaker of the sonnet--as if that were possible. As if you could protect those who love you from the grief of losing you.
You can't. Mortality's a bitch.
The low end of Shakespeare on my mind this morning is "The Comedy of Errors," an early play full of clowning, physical comedy and word play based on mistaken identity. I've got fifth and sixth graders working on scenes from this play, cut by necessity to the bare bones farcical elements of the plot. Most roles are triple-cast--a new actor in each of three sections of material. Given that all the fun stuff in the play is based on two sets of twins, unknown to each other but being mistaken for one another--well, do the math. In rehearsal yesterday pretty much no one was called by their correct character name -- at least not by the director (me). You truly do need a scorecard to tell the players.
What's fun is how enthusiastically the kids pitch into the work. Acting is fun! Acting frustrated and and angry and put-upon comes naturally. And we can enjoy all that frustration because it is a comedy of errors--we know that all will come right in the end. (In the end--when I've got a dozen kids onstage, plus another twenty in a watching crowd of citizens, each of whom, I hope, gets it.)
February. High tragedy, low comedy. Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
