Always Almost

12/19

I have been told, by confidants and ones who know me in a way that is impossible for me to know myself, that I am at times a melancholy man, prone to fits of despair, rage and indeterminate longing without objects to land on. It is not such a terrible thing, to live and feel, but, like sexual desire, it oftentimes feels not like a thing that belongs to the one experiencing them, but as if they are being subjected to the whims of sensations and urges which do not care for the vehicle through which they enter the world. In other words, as if I, myself, am second to the primeval flickering of wanting and phenomena that finds its particular origin in me, and is not contained, reasoned with, or held tightly. For one who suspects there is a God, and ever stronger as of late, it is with a mercurial glance I look to the clouds as an act of faith for the hiddenness of the sun behind the impenetrable grayness, and at times look away: and this is when the sun’s warmth is felt—I turn back to the clouds in hopes of seeing its brokenness, which lets light weep through, only to find it gathered strongly together again by some strange wind. A truth felt but not apprehended—this is how my life has felt, this is how God feels, this is how I move towards the future again, summoned out of a dwelling-in-despair that broke through what can only be called grace.