I don't know what it is about the grocery store. I don't know whether it's coincidental that I'm always on the verge of a nervous breakdown when I go there, or if there's something about the place that makes me feel it necessary to sob my way through the frozen foods section, leaving sad-faced imprints on the frosty doors of my grocer's freezer. Whatever the case, I don't see my fellow shoppers opening rolls of Charmin to blow their noses in the paper goods section. Cleanup on aisle seven.
I think too much. One can tell from my writings lately, all jakey and caterwompus. Without clear direction, reason, rhyme, or conclusions. (I never intended them to rhyme, but secretly hoped they would. Maybe when they're translated at a later date.)
I'm thinking about my nervous breakdowns in the grocery store. Thinking about the way you tell me you loved me first, before the first. As if that's any consolation. (My life has always, sometimes unwittingly, been about the pursuit of grace.) And thinking about the muddy waters in which I was baptized, and suspecting that those waters are what made my discernment murky, at best. I'm thinking about the signs around me and how possibly one day after I'm gone (or at least after I've been secured in a facility), people will discuss. As Paul Simon said: "all along the way there were incidents and accidents, there were hints and allegations."
Three strange signs, or, (further) evidence of utter madness:
Just over a week ago, I was sitting in a very dark corner of a very loud bar, alone, thinking quietly to myself, when a beautiful young woman made eye contact with me from across the room and walked straight toward me. She leaned in close and said in a shouting whisper directly into my right ear, "Do you believe me now?" "Believe what?", I asked, puzzled. "Do you believe me now, that I am Jesus?" I simply nodded - slowly, blankly - and she slipped away, back into the swaying throng. Now every day since that day I have thought about her and wished I could go back to that moment and relive it. I want to wander back into that bar as if it were a temple, I a pilgrim and she an oracle. But I haven't and I won't.
Then last week, I was sitting on a park bench in the Mission District with a good friend who is an urban missionary there. In casual conversation I said that I thought what was missing in my life was shekina, the presence of god. And then this morning, my grandmother called and said out of the blue that she believed god was drawing me into shekina. She used the same, obscure word and then said: "Look up, look up, look up". As if, even over the phone, she could see my chin tucked neatly toward my chest. And told me "God says: 'I will send thee into the enemies camp, to take back what the enemy has taken from thee. I will bid thee and you will know through thyself and not another.'" I swear, she's like an Appalachian Yoda, all cryptic and comforting. Also, she's very short. (Although, unlike Yoda, instead of a light saber, she carries a pearl handled pistol in her brazier.)
Finally, a few days ago, while I was in a state of fever and delirium, suffering what I was sure was H1N1 or the next worse thing, (it was not) my dead grandfather visited me in a dream. Our conversation was pleasant enough, but he called me by the wrong name, Peter.
I am tempted to seek interpretation of these things. But it's a temptation quickly fading. Some things defy interpretation. And I'm tempted to make some broad sweeping statement about my life. About what "my problem is" - to boil it all down to meaninglessness right here in 12-point-Arial-font. But I think I'll stave off that temptation as well. Occasionally a "hmmm" is just as good as an "a-ha!", and now and then a "wow" will suffice. And sometimes, silence and standing still are the best things of all.
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