But the dreams and the ramblings, strike one more and more as vanity, having the air of a tongue too liberated getting things off his chest.  By the light of the daily Mass, better to see the positive, to see the guidance, to not dwell on things but to move forward, to grow.  What have I that is worth saying that isn't but a vanity...

The Good Lord got me up to today, and though I started in gloom I found my way, first to the living room in time for Sunday Mass on EWTN, and on to a slow reviving.  And later, calling mom, lo, she has found her hearing aids, both of them, in the silverware draw;  they'd been in disappearance for months, in amongst the forks (which puzzles me, having done her dishes and putting them away, about a month ago.)  She even went down to the drug store to get fresh batteries, and she got to Big M for chicken and a Sunday New York Times, and it is a cold day up there, rainy, and there were even snow flakes.

And my poor old saintly mother gets it, through this pleasant phone call, as I've been staying indoors and resting the entire weekend.  Stop torturing yourself, she says, when I tell her about an old vulnerability and watching The Owl and the Pussycat.  "You do it in style.  But stop it, that's what I did, and I found I had a lot more energy."  Amen to that.

Even Dostoevsky, retired the mad dreams of murdered horses (C & P) and converted them to the sweeter, far, dream of Alyosha there with his Elder, called to the Wedding at Cana.

Sunday, properly, is a day for worship and classical music, and after televised Mass (I know, I know...) my newly Catholic television offers a performance of Rossini, Petite Messe Solonnelle, beautifully presented by a Leipzig orchestra...  And for a time I remember being home with my father reading the Sunday Times and the old Fisher stereo playing classical music...  Rossini has a simplicity to it, almost basic, the hand of a primitive inspired, but quite a thing when assembled together.  Relaxingly moving...  and it takes my mind off of things, just as the homily from the kind EWTN Father....  which itself was about finding purpose in being part of the vine of Christ.  There is a logic to Rossini, and what a pleasure in the mind to say, like someone suddenly opening his eyes to the learning process and a good teaching, "oh, yes, I know... I know where he is going, going with these lovely lines interplaying with each other, vocalist, string section, drum, low tones punctuated...  the violins leading us along, telling us to come and follow, lest we get too much choir...

And after my illness, my body sending up red flags to my immune system against the perceived invader  of foreign proteins, I take the metaphor, resolving to overlook the physical reactions one cannot help, and quietly, to be at least a bit more saint-like.  As saintliness is our deepest reality, whether we choose to see this or not...

I suppose it helps the day or two before there was a little piece about a quiet nun in Krakow, Poland, Faustina Kowalska, a saint, who minded the door and the kitchen, as this was the skill set she had.  She only told the holy visions she was receiving to her priest, quietly going about her business...  Sometimes this feels like, in this modern world, the only skills one has, to greet people, to serve them food.  (Which is my own resumé....)  To make that work seen as included within the realm of higher purpose, simple as it may be, and work none the less, makes it a whole lot easier to face on a Sunday afternoon that has been your Monday morning as long as you can remember.

You're going to kill yourself being a writer anyway, trying to succeed on terms foreign to you.  Why not turn it to good use...

Bishop Sheen writes, from back in days where the Priest was your therapist, that depression and mental illness comes from lacking purpose (higher purpose).  And also guilt, unresolved, and there's enough of that to go around to, and sometimes it's how I start my days.  Well, I wish I'd read that earlier...  Initially, in the morning, rising, hard to see that there is a higher purpose in the higher purpose, something able to translate down to this make-a-buck do-what-you-gotta-do world, even with all its comforts that few around the world can even share or wonder at...

If you can see yourself well enough, as you go about your tasks, I guess that is a thing that gives you things worth mentioning.

And now my stomach is asking of me...  And on the tv screen the conductor, Ricardo Chially, is seen to be enjoying himself in taking part of the marvelous creation of Rossini's, written five or so years before he passed away, a kind of crowning of his faith (after all those operas.)

Easier it is to be happy and content, rather than sad and kicking yourself.


If you are a saint, perhaps it is that you are not good at anything else, really, in the professional sense, and maybe even in the personal.  Would you agonize over your own sins?  Probably more so until you realized the path you were on, the direction in which to turn.