#1
Perhaps if I lived inside a cathedral, instead of a tiny apartment, I would have the serenity to sit with myself. But yesterday I found strawberries coated in snow white mold. Perhaps if I prayed every morning, I would start my day feeling lighter.
#2
Vanity, is the common translation of the Hebrew word hevel. “Merest breath” is Robert Alter’s modern one. To use Alter’s metaphor. Think of it as the opposite of the life God breathes into the earth creature in Genesis 2. God’s life breath: ruach is contrasted with hevel here. Everything is hevel, Qohelet says: ephemeral, transitory, empty, vanity.
#3
That goodbye took place outside a cafe, where I had just eaten my final tostada (salmón y Filadelfia) and sipped my final cortado (slowly). I had a sugar packet in my pocket. On it, it said: Te ha pasado alguna vez que estas buscando un lápiz y lo tienes en la mano? Pues algo similar ocurre con la felicidad.
Have you ever looked for a pencil, only to find it in your hand? It is the same with happiness.
That last stage of the trip, those last few days. I was happy and comfortable. I felt safe and loved, and I loved in return. In these last few days, after siesta we swam in a shady pool. We ate snails from clear cups. We picknicked. Guitars were played, and those who could sing, sang, as we lay sleepily in hot apartments. No air conditioning in Spain.
Sitting around in the heat with people I loved, drinking bottled tinto de verano, smoking on the balcony.
#4
Infinite Jest is about the same height as my NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) Bible so I usually keep them next to each other on my bookshelf. If you’re worried that I’m here to leave you to draw an obnoxiously clichéd metaphor between the most popular religious text of all time and David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, don’t worry — I’ll do it for you. I don’t read the Bible when I’m depressed; I read Infinite Jest.
#5
Because, from where my feet touch the ground, dandelions spring. Weeds to some, to most. I see nothing but green in front of me, and behind me the grass is spotted yellow. I call to her, above: Do you remember? The wind carries my voice, rustling the leaves as it goes. The dandelions we wished on in the parking lot, moving you out of your dorm at Reed the first time, when all was new, and the old was broken and nothing made sense. And I was there.
If she hears, she doesn’t turn,
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