Sunday, November 30, 2003

Falling Upwards

"Don't hold your breath" from Beth made me laugh aloud. Absolutely. Still, today, I decided that the tipping point had come, and this was it. I have still to sit down and set out the "monastic rules" of this my new life.

G.K. Chesterton wrote a marvellous essay "In Defense of Rash Vows." In some ways a vow that is not rash is not worth making. And some challenges are better to take up, even if you know you'll be beaten (as I do. Holding my breath anyway.)

The second post below, my hysteria rising. The desperation coagulating. And several destructive impulses: to convince my readers that I'm not really a nice person, to warn off my correspondent (as if *that* were necessary), and to trash my blog as a piece of personal territory. But also in the same emotional wave was the useful destruction, the wrathful deity. Vajrapani. "Revulsion is the root of meditation."

Good enough.

Multnomah Falls was thundering down so hard today that we couldn't see the splash pool. Only the whirl of the blown spume. Soaked us from a hundred yards. On the way we had seen one of the little waterfalls blown completely out of its trough, curling back upwards. May it be a sign: I'm asking no less. A waterfall petitioning to be allowed to fall upwards.

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