There's nothing glamorous or holy beyond everything; which is both: this holy paper. The holy drunk slouched over the bar. The holy Caribbean sunset. Even the magical can become mundane; fame's a bore. This holy moment. Everything in the here. The now. Can you see the holy bird? The enlightened moon? The silvery fish, the helpless chick? Everything is already here.
I understood perfectly well he wasn't telling me these things because he wanted me to know. He was simply clearing the information from his mind.
You can find holiness in a can of tuna fish if you feel holy enough when you begin searching within the tin. There's holiness in each breath. Ginsberg was onto something.
But there's nothing inherently holy—glamorous, exotic, perfect, attractive—in anything at all. Every man's an angel, if you make him one.
Her strongest, most vital, truest, and most expressive years spent allowing her holiness to burn down into embers and wait, perfectly still. Unable to use her words, she hid her thoughts in books, photographs, and drawings; fanning ideas out into tree branches and lonely views. She could feel those embers, warm in her belly; knew they burned still, waiting.
They say you do no service to the world by diminishing yourself. Character is always destiny.
The experience was holy: a glimpse into a crystal ball where some version of the future might be seen ever-so-fleetingly and she could decide in a flash whether that holy, lonely version would be the woman her children and family and friends would know; the woman she would hide behind.
But she didn't want to hide.
“The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf.
The photographs, the desperate notes
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”
She wouldn't hide. She would face down the bad dreams, the gossip, the knowledge of what was going on under the same skies, the same rainfall, so close by yet so out of bounds.
There is nothing wrong. Anything that blocks you is not meant to be bowed to. It is there to push you and make you stronger.
Her writing was empathic but detached. It described her withdrawn interest. So she pays closer attention to the world around her. Holy moments. Holy chickens. Holy dogs. Holy toothbrush bristles on her teeth. Holy bathwater. Holy sky. Holy flowers, crops, and seeds. Her skin. Her eyes. Her breath.