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The Ides of Memoir
As I grow older, I live more and more in the past. And so I have decided to try and return to setting down my memoir, though in a different fashion than in the past. Previously, I started and stopped a memoir focusing mainly on my mother and my relationship with her (see here, here, here, and here). For reasons I won’t delve into here, I have decided that this focus was not conducive to regular effort, and so I have decided to start again. I feel the need to record my memories of certain things, places, people, and events that have remained clanging around in my mind, and I…
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Pages
It may be a cliche, but even cliches can be true. Each of my days is like a new page in the book I’m simultaneously reading and writing. I get to the bottom of one, my stub dull and whittled down, almost too short for my fingers to grip it, and then I blink my eyes, and in the quick space of that blink, a Hand has reached down and covered that page with a fresh one, and in the groove between the previous page and the new one sits a new, sharpened pencil. With the aroma of good coffee hanging in the air of the house where I think…
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Sanctae Scripturae
In the arid palm of August, this region is not as hot as Texas but it is hot enough to drive me inside for most of the day. I bookend the hours on days like this with a walk and a long sitting/meditating/praying/reading session before the sun gets too high in the sky and then again after it drops behind the western ridge. The stretch in between is taken up with whatever piddling and puttering can be accomplished inside, in the cool dark cathedral of home. This morning, I sat out in the piney shade of the front yard, breviary on my knees, and with the stiff breeze it was…