On Falling Asleep

03/26/2007 8:10 AM – 8:31 AM

What then do you fear? Falling asleep. Odd for someone that’s spent most of his life fighting insomnia. So let yourself go and see what happens. It’s cheating, you see, because you already did and nothing really happened. You didn’t fall asleep exactly and you didn’t stay awake exactly. But perhaps it’s a metaphor, because you are afraid of the big falling asleep. Though, by faith, we apprehend the data of an eventual awakening.

And by McDonald’s faith (bigger than accepted), all awake, and, someday, we will be able to apprehend McDonald’s faith and claim it as our own in deed as well as hope. But hope will do for now and one is up and the light is out and one can feel the movement of one’s arms in one’s skin. It is enough to walk; the destination will arrive when we get there. Far enough. The smell of the incense, the inclination towards food, the beginning of the day. The fiction is real. The word is made flesh. The vampires are driven away, believing or not. The Divine is inherent, understood or not. It is enough to love a wife. It is enough to be one’s own. It is enough to be where one is the moment that one is.

What do you know? Nothing. What have you learned? Nothing. What will you know? Everything. And then? Everything will be there to be learned again. Further up and further in. The odd collected phrases come back and we open our hands and let them fall to the page. Hello, sunshine. I am my parent’s sunshine when I am less than ten, less than nine, less than eight. All moments coalesce into what it is that we are when we are ourselves alone or together. You apprehend by faith the knowledge of others and say, “this is my neighbor.” This is my neighbor. I am my own and I will learn to lend myself. One learns. These. These are just evidence of fingers hitting keys. These are just squiggles representing sounds, representing ideas, representing attempts at knowing. Perhaps we apprehend. Perhaps we don’t. We open up our hands and let go. We close our fingers and hold fast. Doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of being. It’s the long walk down the sunny road to Fillmore for a pack of cigarettes. We are what we were. We’re what we will be. The cross is the cross, history or not. Others exist even if they don’t. God is love. I know love. I know God. That will do. Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. And the church. There’s more pairs of eyes to see than the two that I know intimately. We pick it up and set it down and pick it up again. There is therefore now, no condemnation, just being. Fall asleep if you need to.