In quintessential triviality for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

Kyrie eleison....

I remembered that long, flowing call today as the most non sequitur interjection amid screaming children, chattering bimbos, and elevator music. Stuck amid piles of strewn purses, trash, belts, bras, and more purses, and trying uselessly to pick them up only to be flung down again, and babies are not just crying but grating against your eardrum in a scream similar to that of a victim of a large knife, I basically wanted to shove a firebomb up the ass of anyone who asked me anything. A lot of the time at work I'm angrier than a bat out of hell...my innards raging at the utter mundaneness of picking things up off the floor while rednecks throw them down again and wonder where the cash registers are (try the front of the store, Buckwheat.) And then a girl came by and starting pushing my rail full of bras careening down the aisle and I literally wanted to tell her to bite the curb, bitch, and then stomp on her head, shattering her leering white teeth, those of a cheshire cat on her little black face. And mostly I was angry at myself, for not having written when I promised myself I would and why the fuck was I here hanging bras with little pink lacings on fucking cute hangers? And then between the buzz of automated voices and crowdchatter and questions it came like a silken ghost, Kyrie eleison...

I hadn't had much inspiration lately, and I thought I was never going to force myself to letters again. I realized, with the memory of this sweet entreaty of monk voices, that I never have written anything about my experience at the monastery in this journal.


It's interesting because the monastery retreat came with so many synchronicities. It was there, surrounded by the cherished phrases of the monk's chants, I started Ulysses, which started itself with the monkish Buck Mulligan and his latin interjections, the repetitions of Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy
Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world
without end, Amen, like my wheeling rhymes, they turn and return. And then, that call again which raised, too, in the mind of Bloom, sweet incantation: Kyrie eleison...Lord have mercy.

When you hear chants repeated, songs resung day in, day out, your heart absorbs them. Something about them never leaves you. Even if it's only for a couple of days that they are continually sung, they enter you. It's because of this that even at my farthest points from God, where my mind has totally forgotten and is at aphelion, that I can still be connected by the string of lyric floating from my subconcious. I have remembered it randomly walking down the street, getting on the bus. Milling about as repetitive as the chants themselves but it is a reminder that the repetition, like this one, must not all be meaningless. It is just another wheel, turning and turning.

And I realize I never wrote about the monastery because it was too overwhelming, too much at once. It was indescribable. Another synchronicity is that I wrote a poem about a wheel while I was there. Another synchronicity is that Michael had shown me a glimpse of God with his story and only days after, I was asked if I wanted to join some club members on a retreat to the Trappist monastery of Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

I never showed you pictures, or words. But the throw back of Kyrie Eleison, the call they sang today, yesterday, the day before, and will sing forever, for everyone, reminds me that I need to. I can't forget that. Not like every other day that seems so dreadfully the same as the others. But the monks were the happiest people I have ever seen, and their days are among the most repetitive on Earth. And that is another thing worth remembering. It is not the circles in which we walk, it is the center which we circle.

My center has always been love, and with Michael's help I realized that it was not the right love I was looking for. No person can ever fulfill me. And that's why what's playing now is Bob Dylan. It ain't me, babe. It ain't me you're looking for, babe.

So over the next few days I'll be giving you what I wrote in my journal during my stay. I doubt I'll be able to scratch the surface, but it is a wellspring of inspiration, and lately I thought I had lost my will.

It's funny how I'm reminded by God.

Now I'm going to go to bed. And as the monks would say each night after they sang their song to the candlelit Mary, "Give us a restful night and a peaceful death."