Bearing Bravely Up My Chin

One of my Lenten “thoughts”, I won't say spiritual discipline because I don't know that it has that much to do with Jesus, it's just something I sort of “thought” I should do, was to read more poetry. Made it as vague as possible so that even if I read only one poem in forty days I would be able to count it a success. Intend to go quietly and methodically through the Wine Dark Sea's daily doses of art and poetry. And then also, a friend handed us his own poetry that he has so cleverly written, Whale of Desire, and so it is only a matter of opening the book and reading the poems. But for all that, trying to read books and poetry I haven't already read and develope a deeper, richer base of language, my Lenten Thought kicked me in the derrière all night as I lay awake trying to get the lines of “Horatius at the Bridge” out of my head. It clips along in the most perfect way to drive sleep away towards exasperation and finally me into desperation. I lay there, gazing at the sky, the rhythm of wretched Horatius, standing out alone, looking for people to stand on either side, tum tum tum, for the ashes of his fathers, tum tum tum, and the temples of his gods, tum tum tum, driving me even to prayer. Oh God, I finally begged, please let me sleep, tum tum tum.

I think the trouble began yesterday when Alouicious foolishly asked me why we need to study history anyway (why do children have to fall into every cliche and mediocrity) and he got an earful about the work of God in history, and the patterns that play out in history, and the great stories and tragedies of history, and then he got to write a paragraph about Horatius–the first one not the second one. And then Gladys danced around saying the poem, of the second Horatius, not the first one. That, I think, was my downfall. Maybe it is God's judgment on me for my sins. All I know is that I lay awake from 11:30 to 3:00 tum tum tum. And now it's very late and I have to put two thoughts together so I will leave this and cook some Lenten sausage, a la Zwingli (h/t ace), or some other reformer. History is so important, and poetry. Have a great day tum tum tum.