Sunday 29 January 2006

Pic of the day: The strange attraction of empty cardboard boxes. (From the anime Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~.)

Emptiness

In the morning I washed clothes, then ran off for the bus when they were almost finished. In the city I checked the Internet, threw away a little garbage from my office and the fridge (it is becoming a habit...) and also ate a Big Mac. They cost NOK 30, or $4.50.

I even managed to play City of Heroes a few minutes on my high-end portable. It did not fill me with the great joy one might expect after more than a month's absence. So much for "absence makes the heart grow fonder". The newbie special power was unimpressive too. And then I took the bus home.

Taking the bus feels different now that I know so acutely that I won't take it in a few days. Wednesday or Thursday I'm supposed to take a different bus. (Luckily the prepaid bus card is just as valid on the new route.) I wonder if I'm going to enter the wrong bus from habit now and then in the beginning...

I have finished clearing out the bags and boxes in the innermost room, the ones that had stood untouched since I moved in nearly 20 years ago!! Needless to say, almost nothing was kept. I then proceeded to the wardrobe in the bedroom . Even though I had taken some clothes from there down to the small apartment, it was almost full. I checked and folded clothes for quite a while, throwing away anything that lacked a button or had a small hole. I guess I would have fixed a small hole if the piece was of outstanding quality or comfort otherwise ... I did so some hours ago. But I also threw away a pair of trousers that were whole but way too small. If I lose that much weight again, I'm in mortal danger. Seriously. It is hard to believe I can ever have been that skinny.

Emotionally I feel a strange emptiness. It may not be strange that I feel emptiness -- the rooms are almost empty after all -- but the feeling is unusual. The Presence that I identify with the Divine is very strongly felt, making entertainment seem shallow and pointless, a waste of time. I could play my handheld consoles, but I am not in the mood. The mood is serious, even somber, like the preparation before a burial. Light make there be no such event coming soon!

I feel my aloneness deeply, although I do not miss the chatter and entertainment of human company. I miss someone to be serious together with, on this serious night. But there is only me and the Presence, which does not speak and cannot be seen. Old hymns flow up inside me, and some classical piece. It is not the Presence that creates this in me, any more than it creates all things at every moment. But there are things that avoid me this night because the dissonance would be too great. That's fine with me. The temptations will be back soon enough, because a Version 2 soul seeks balance through swaying or moving like a wave.

***

A bit later I look at the painting an old man made for me in Bergen when I rented a room there for the winter I studied there. I no longer remember if it was the first or second winter. (It was the first ... there is written 1981 in the corner.) He was not famous outside the Church for his paintings, I think, but they were OK. This was one of the very last he made, if not the last. Fairly small. He wanted me to have it as a wedding gift, as he knew he would not live to come in my wedding. Not that I had any plans even then, although I did delude myself at the time to think that one day it might be my turn. And tonight I stand before that picture and I think: "A part of my soul split off sometime back then and traveled another path through time. But I have not met that part for a long time, and we are not even writing anymore."

I was innocent then, didn't know that God (or my subconscious) kept me from women not because of the minor disfigurement of my body, but because of the greater disfigurement of my soul. But that is a story for another day, if ever.