One of the reasons for writing things down, I think, is to develop an understanding of the subject as it relates to me. (The microwave just beeped. My warmed-up yesterday's coffee is just now hot, and good). For example, several days ago I was standing before the range top eating fresh pineapple, and the fresh pineapple was very good. Notice the echo from the beginning of Genesis there. Those who haven't read Genesis will miss the allusion, I suppose, yet the allusion is always present in my mind. Given the vulnerability of the brain, see last entry, I should say yet. When something is good, it is good because its being is grounded in God. If the pineapple is rotten, it won't taste good, yet its being is still grounded in God. Saving the clarification for later, the other day I had one of those epiphanies that I meant to write down soon, yet got delayed by more important things, family and friends, sleep, etc. My epiphany, however, started me thinking about myself and my five senses and the deplorable devestation to them that has taken place over the latter part of my life. Deplorable? Now where did that come from, I wonder?
Of course, I could not remember what my subject was until I lay down on the bed for a short nap, and the various parts of my body began running their usual diagnostic: neck, pain from the fused vertebrae, check; back, pain from all the walking and falling yesterday. And so on. I finally, however, remembered the pineapple and so as not to lose it again, I got up, heated up a cup of coffee, and here I am.
The problem is that we are created magnificently, for the most part, with the senses given us to experience our surroundings, as long as they aren't damaged from the start, of course. By the time we reach 76 or thereabout even if the senses were magnificent, they too have gotten old and damaged. My Taste is still pretty good, witness the pineapple. Before I went to bed last night, okay, this morning, I had some "Mooshine" beer cheese on triscuits and a honeycrisp apple along with a cold and tasty mug of Ocean Spray's cran grape. They were all very good. So, Taste is still pretty good, but the only problem of sorts is that I hardly ever feel like eating, thanks mostly to the failure of another sense, touch.
I drop silverware, food, napkins, in fact anything that can be picked up, held and used, I sooner or later drop. Olive Garden, napkin went down twice; Cracker Barrel, lost the fork once; Panera, my soup spoon for my delicious bowl of quite tasty broccoli-cheddar soup, bowl and not cup! I love their broccoli-cheddar soup with a baguette for mopping up the bowl. Taste, as I said, seems to be fine; touch is really gone.
I have peripheral neuropathy, as I may have mentioned before somewhere. I have had it for a very long time now, and on top of or more accurately within that I have developed rheumatoid arthritis. Now, let me say at this point that I recently came across the idea that suffering is "God's magnificent gift." Whoa! Yet for the most part I have come to believe that idea is true. It is perhaps a little like Michelangelo's work on a huge block of marble that eventually reveals or exposes a magnificent sculpture like David or the Virgen Mary holding Christ across her lap, the Pieta, of course. Yes, I believe that most of my life I have been a big block of stone, needing to have a great deal of the excess knocked off in order to reveal the intended, God's intended me inside it.
Call it Original Sin. Whatever the cause we know damn well we aren't what we ought to be. We need to be freed from the clutter and chipped away at, and if we are too preoccupied to do it ourselves, perhaps God takes the matter, pun intended, in hand, as he has done with me, I think. Ha! I might say that God got tired of waiting for me to figure it out. A major clue for me was Dante's Purgatorio. All of the souls suffering there are delighted by the suffering because they all desire God, and the means of reaching God is to have their habitual sinful natures cleansed. What person would want to appear before his or her beloved without cleaning up first? The last step in Mount Purgatory, the Ring of purifying Fire, is terrifying to the pilgrim, flesh and blood Dante, yet he has two guides who aid him through by focusing his desire on the goal. Yes, it will burn you; No, it will neither scar nor kill you. If your restless heart truly desires God, then step in. Dante steps in and he helps my understanding, especially the Purgatorio. The Comedy is my favorite work of literature and the most meaningful. His medieval Heaven is difficult, yet the images of Divine reality which grow in intensity as Dante progresses are wonderful, stupendous, magnificent. As the hymn reveals, "in light inaccessible hid from our eyes." What's a little napkin dropping, fork dropping, spoon falling compared with the goal? What's a little pain, or a lot of pain if it moves me along, and I think it does.
I don't mean to create a heroic picture of myself, for I get frustrated and upset. Last night I spent half an hour trying to get my new Fitbit bracelet snapped and I still don't have it right. I dropped the damn thing ten times before I got the mechanism that goes into the bracelet in. I woke up yesterday morning with my legs on fire because the pain pills hadn't kicked in. It felt as if I might be going in with Dante on that upper circle of fire. But the pain calmed down eventually. Thanks to modern medicine it usually does, sooner or later.
Still, touch is glorious, I know: the beloved's soft skin and smooth hair, the child's hand, the little dog's silky coat, the feel of cool water, the warmth of sunlight on my shoulders, the roughness of tree bark, the strength of my father's arms, the love in my mother's grasp. Years ago, many years ago there was a balcony outside our dining room doors. We put birdseed out there from time to time. One winter we not only had purple finches and evening grosbeaks out there in great numbers, but Mary thought we ought to put seed in our hands and hold them outside for the birds. We did. If you hold it they will come. We held our filled hands out the sliding glass doors just enough, and they came. The memory brings tears to my eyes as I remember birds settling down to grab the seed and fly off. Imagine the feeling of having wild birds sitting on your hand taking seed from you. Touch is glorious.
I have ben sitting too long. My butt is sore, the battery is low, and I am only through with taste and touch. If I don't get up and walk for a while, "brother ass" (pun intended) will pay dearly in ways I prefer not to think about. Interestingly, I remembered the touch of the birds only by writing about touch. The prose has gone places I had not imagined, as I believe I said early on.