Van Morrison is in my head singing…."gotta make it through January, gotta make it through February," and I pine for summer and the stirring of a warm western breeze.
I was happy to see Brian this morning. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He said he spent a bit of time in jail…something to do with refusing to stay out of the subway and off the LRT. He likes riding the LRT. But he is back panhandling at Starbucks and things seem right again. (But how could they be for Brian?) He was glad of today’s slight moderation in temperature, and added that he was happy he lived here in Canada, away from the "crazy weather." I agreed. Then he said, "But February is coming and that’s always the coldest."
I recall a very cold mid-winter day years ago, so cold that my truck refused to completely warm up. A mile out of the city stood a woman, her hand weakly raised in a hitch-hikers signal. I slowed and stopped beside her. She seemed warm enough in a giant overcoat and scarf and Kodiak boots. She opened the door, laboriously it seemed, and she didn’t bother to look at me. She had high prominent cheek bones, a round face and deep watery eyes. She shut the door behind her we started off toward the city.
She said, "I had a dream about you." I caught my breath. "I know you, your name is Bruno," she added. I smelled the sour odour of disinfectant. I noticed she had no gloves on and in one hand she gripped a wad of tissue which she would hold up to her nose and mouth every few moments. She had soaked the tissue with Lysol. I remember hearing that Lysol when inhaled can make you feel warm. She never felt her hands freezing.
I stopped across from a Chinese café. This is where she was determined to get out. I wondered if I should just drive her to an intox centre, the Spady perhaps. Instead I gave her money for a meal and then gave her orders to throw away the Lysol and make sure to get something to eat. She offered a sexual favour for the money. I said no and tried to hurry her out of the truck. I felt shame, shame for me, shame for her. I said a quick prayer for her and drove off. She could have been any age between 20 and 50. I felt nauseous and helpless. I didn’t ask her her name, something I almost always do. It was the cold, I reasoned.
I see it was a good walk with the muse….thanks for being our reminder that spirituality that isn’t grounded in flesh and blood and weather and hunger and stiffness and loneliness is no spirituality at all.
hi steve
happy new year
i must apologize for not visiting lately
i have been a on a reduced computer diet for the past couple of months
i must not have been as additced as i thought because had only minor withdrawal symptoms
you might like to know that i was given ‘things hidden since the foundation of the world’ (rene g.) and am using bathroom breaks to read thru it.
it is a wondeful book
i will need to re-read and study if i hope to understand the details but on the whole it seems like a ground breaking, world shattering (and world re-creating) idea.
how are the ideas of girard being recieved in the academic world?
i hope he will be seen as having changed our understanding as radically as Darwin did in the 19th and 20th century.
bye for now and keep van morrison on the ol’eight track
he is wonderfully comforting anytime of the year.
Connie, Thank you! Your words always resonate.
Len, glad to hear from you. I’m with you exactly. “Things Hidden…” is quite simply a monumental, Christian altering, life altering work. (Girard was touted, hailed, and referenced by the world of academia until his re-entrance of the Catholic church.)