Day 401

Again, from McCarthy's The Crossing:

He nodded. He knew her well enough, this old woman of Mexico, her sons long dead in that blood and violence which her prayers and her prostrations seemed powerless to appease. Her frail form was a constant in that land, her silent anguishings. Beyond the church walls the night harbored a millennial dread panoplied in feathers and the scales of royal fish and if it yet fed upon the children still who could say what worse wastes of war and torment and despair the old women's constancy might not have stayed, what direr histories yet against which could be counted at last nothing more than her small figure bent and mumbling, her crone's hands clutching her beads of fruitseed. Unmoving, austere, implacable. Before just such a God.

Day 394

From Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing:

In the end what the priest came to believe was that the truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems. Then one day in that casual gesture, that subtle movement of divestiture, they wreak all unknown upon some ancillary soul a havoc such that the soul is forever changed, forever wrenched about in the road it was intended upon and set instead upon a road heretofore unknown to it. This new man will hardly know the hour of his turning nor the source of it. He will himself have done nothing that such great good befall him. Yet he will have the very thing, you see. Unsought for and undeserved. He will have in his possession that elusive freedom which men seek with such unending desperation.

Day 392

when only was only,
you ask,
was never ever?

babes lined to pool
at the corner:
xelena’s pool
yemaya’s pool
the holy waters of
north saint mary,

mary standing
behind the shattered
marquee, a

shattered bliss,
a portion of eternity,
& the babes are jumpin’, &

your hand back
to your son
is a portion,

a blessing to

the babes you’ll never see:
the only never you’ll ever.

Day 389

11.11

by Rufus Wainwright

album: Want One (2003)

Woke up this morning at 11:11
Wasn't in Portland and I wasn't in heaven
Could have been either by the way I was feeling
But I was alive, I was alive
Woke up this morning at 11:11
John was half-naked and Lulu was crying
Over a baby that will never go crazy
But I was alive
And kicking through this cruel world
Holding a notion of you at 11:11
Tell me what else can I do
What else can I do?
Woke up this morning and something was burning
Realized that everything really does
Happen in Manhattan
Thoughts were of characters and afternoons lying
And you, you were alive
Oh the hours we are separate
11:11 is just precious time we've wasted
So patch up your bleeding hearts
And put away your posies
I'm gonna have a drink
Before we ring around the rosies with you