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the bigness of a small field
must be kin to the bigness of god. containment is some but not
all of the mystery. something about a small field loves what
it holds - queen anne's lace and dried up spring flowers, egrets
and sparrows and tiny brown frogs and worms that suffer to cross
the road. something pays attention. a precise attention to every
thing here. even to this ridiculous person jogging and sweating
in funny clothes, thinking of being held in this field by some
mind or heart.
of course, i read this in a book,
this business about attention. in aidan chambers' Postcards from
No Man's Land. but now i can't find the spot and will need to
read the whole book again. some day. two characters are talking
about love and one says that love is just - or not just
- paying attention. it makes a kind of sense. if you feel yourself
loved, you know you are attended and attended to. if you love,
you attend and attend to the one you love. (what else is linda
loman's demand that "attention must be paid"?) and
so we extend that thought to every thing. it's a nice thought
and sweet. easy to laugh at. easy to pull out some big cynical
guns and blow it to bits. faithless guns.
i've had today to myself. every
one is gone. not so tomorrow. but today. jay just came in and
asked how the day was. i said, quiet. i said, this is about the
first thing i've said all day. i might have muttered a little
to the cat, but that doesn't really count. and i'm remembering
how the first days of school always come with a sore throat from
so much sudden use of a voice that's lain fallow all summer,
from days like today when, despite the lack of vocalization,
my head has been full of words. prayer words. email words. book
reading words. television words. nearly all the words of other
people. these are my words here.
yesterday i was set to plow into
Ender's Game, really cover some territory. but then a package
arrived. the best kind. a complete surprise. containing a book
that most of the world hasn't had a chance to see yet. and, like
a launchy at play in the null gravity of the battle room, my
attention bounced over there. out of my control. now i'm almost
done with it. (thanks, kiddo. it's a fine book. more formalities
are in the mail.)
over the past 24 hours or so,
i've had a small exchange with a kid who's puzzled by the strange
eighth chapter of Grendel. she got me thinking about that poem
gardner lifted from thomas kinsella. this is good for my teacher
brain, since the apes will be doing Grendel in the coming season.
a hot run this evening - and
i waited until 7:45 to do it. i didn't set any records, but i
survived. i am grateful for air conditioning tonight. i am sorry
that it is warming up the world. it really is. i heard it on
the radio - npr - so it must be true. i'm sorry that all of my
comforts are at somebody else's expense. it's a rotten world
that way. i stepped on a white grasshopper on my second lap tonight.
at first i thought it was a stick, but just as my foot went down
i knew it was a grasshopper. i apologized on each of the following
laps, but the grasshopper was now just a stick. another unlucky
bug.
things to do in the morning.
wake up. pray. walk. eat. call hinckley water about a billing
problem. make some more phone calls. see if i can get my driver's
license renewed. read. eat.
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