I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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Thursday, sad wet morning, reading the Gospels on my way to work. I’d been doing that all year: waiting for the bus on the front stoop’s top step, making my way to the same back seat, balancing the thermos between my feet, reading through the trip though it was short, so that each day I progressed just a few brief pages. Saint Mark through May, Saint John by August. Dawn, the sun going up over Spring Garden. Dusk, the sun going down. What did I learn? The bus I took one way took me home the other. My belief did not deepen. But Sundays I’d shake the dust from the dog’s rug out the open window overlooking the boulevard, then lie down beside him on the floor. I was trying to live as though someone else was watching.
Grady Chambers