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friday night about 9:30 and i'm
just back from mass... a mass of the resurrection... a funeral
mass... for george o'keefe... another good man gone to eternity...
worked in lima peru, santiago chile, sicuani peru, chicago st.
clara's, joliet olmc, chicago cook county jail... passed his
"retirement" traveling the country interviewing carmelites,
carrying on the province's oral history begun by myles colgan.
it was always good to see george... and now i'll miss him.
the mass was in darien... a good
drive south from here... had to leave early to make it for 7:00...
took an hour and a half through rush hour traffic. in two spots
we stopped dead for about ten minutes each while everyone took
turns staring at the roadside catastrophes. took about fifty
minutes to get home... i love driving an open road at night,
chasing red tails, not sleepy but listening to tony bennet and
etta james and a little bit of public radio. singing along a
bit. alone in the dark... with others...
i'd just driven this road yesterday
on the way back up from mom's. had a real nice christmas... quiet...
warm... well-fed... and given an undeservedly wonderful gift
by a group of people who apparently had figured out that i needed
it long before i knew that i wanted it... this is, of course,
part of the definition of an ideal family, yet - to leap from
the ideal to the real - they forced me to sign an agreement that
limits my use of this gift, a digital camera. they do not want
me to put any images of their beautiful selves online... unless
they approve them first. and i have agreed. i will only publish
images of myself
or my cat
or whatever other modes of beauty
manage to get fixed in the lens... like yesterday morning when
after i'd eaten cereal and lounged around a bit mom asked if
i'd looked outside yet. so i pushed aside the blinds and saw
this
and this
you see all the trees are coated
in white... frozen fog... blue morning... blue lake...
and i'm beginning to realize
that this fine gift is going to impede my verbal processes...
i no longer have to describe anything... i can just point...
here's hoping your recent days
have been as good as mine
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