Hace un mes... It makes a month, or more, since I was inspired to blog. I had words, wonderful words, words that almost warranted the redundancy of “quite excellent.”
It makes a month. I like that expression of time. Time really doesn’t pass, you know. Stuff happens, and it happens quickly. Days are full; my mind is full during the night.
It isn’t that I don’t wish to communicate, only that my time is made of things I do, people I know, emotions that accompany.
None of it is particularly exciting to the world in general, at least not right now. My classes are over. I now have more credit hours on my transcripts, a bit more experience for tasks ahead. School, my job for this year, is over, and with it the whirlwind of grades and testing, report cards and awards, picnics and promotions. For better or for worse, 20 more children have moved beyond my sphere of influence.
It is dry here. The land is dry. I water every night and still the lawns guzzle the water. Souls are dry. The church is tiny, enlivened only by periodic visitors, travelers on an adventure. And I, encouraged by newfound friendships, wonder what is to be my role. All of us sense the drought of Living Water.
Hace un mes. What was it I had to say? It doesn’t come back easily. Soon, I’ll have traveling adventures again, pictures, stories, but now I have only that which made my month and the profound doesn’t come easily.
In her novel Baby, Patricia MacLachlan includes a character, a librarian, who loves “wondrous words.” A “star pupil” gives a report stating that it would be “quite excellent to have clean air.” An unexpected character in the library, a janitor named Rebel, states bluntly, “There’s redundancy there,” later explaining, “It doesn’t get any better than excellent,” a statement to which the librarian must concede.
I will pass on redundancy, though I could recount the joys of God’s work in bringing me to Santa Rosa time and time again. MacLachlan later includes a wise grandmother’s statement that “you should know that there are some things for which there are no answers, no matter how beautiful the words may be.... Sometimes poetry - words - give us a small, lovely look at ourselves, And sometimes that is enough.”
I will wait, then, to try to express my thoughts until I have those words, those that give me a small, lovely look at myself. Those wondrous words.
