Matins

A Few Effulgences

In Iowa, this morning, it’s rightly cold.

The moon is shining brilliantly, causing the naked trees to pop against a dark-blue backdrop, accentuated by the floor-lights of illuminated snow.

From my vantage, all is calm and quiet, and questions arise concerning purpose, value, meaning, and duty.

A strong desire aches, a desire to be seen and known, but also a desire to have cause and call and a need to belong and to participate.

Some memories arise, opportunities squandered, triggering recognition (bringing back into the focus of cognition), meditation, contemplation.

From the porch on a Winter morning, the act of writing seems meager, insufficient.

But it is neither meager, nor insufficient.

It’s also not the ultimate answer, nor is it panacea.

It’s work, just as the mouse I heard this morning is working — it is my task and chore, my way of being, my method for scratching until I find my scarce morsel of nourishment.

The interior life is one I’ve chosen and cultivated, and it is in Middle Age that I’ve come to begin to see its challenges and limitations.

A text is crafted, and in so doing I am lit with a vocal intuition.

My mind, which had been housing audibly silent propositional thoughts, is now challenged to put said matter into syntax.

How quickly they all suddenly disappear!

Unlike conversation, when I get to dance with a partner, writing asks that a claim be made and supported.

Unless it’s rather a series of brushstrokes on a canvas.

Perhaps an image will emerge, and perhaps it’s an exercise in pattern, texture, and color.

Sometimes life is like this. There is no call or purpose but to savor the embellishments one makes in greeting it with the ineffable telos of mind.

Sometimes simply being is the entire enterprise — an act which really isn’t entirely simple.

With the help of therapy and medication, I have the opportunity to cherish and savor this enterprise — a daily celebration of gratitude and acceptance — awaiting whatever opportunity to participate which comes to me.

Lately I’ve been reconnecting with family and friends, and this has helped me considerably in coming to know and understand my place and how I got here.

The understanding which comes from remembering relationships and kindling their significance gives me a sense of place and persona, a strength which is invaluable during times of solitude.

Writing is like this. Even if I was doing this in a notebook for my eyes alone, I would be together with myself during that activity.

When I am sometimes confronted with fears of isolation, I remember that there are millennia loaded with solitary writers, all engaging with the past via books and participating in the future via the creation of new texts.

In a grander sense, my mind is one light amidst all of these others, some of them as bold and beautiful as the moon this morning.

May that light bring you illumination as you start your day.

Alightedly, 

Aaron