while awaiting the Apocalypse

Transcribed from my notebook:
******

10/12/06

Tonight

~8:30

We spoke of the apocalyptic genre in Religion today.

I’m ready for the world to end tonight.
I’m rolling to a stop, fortunately, Fall Break is the day after tomorrow.
I feel weary, but rested.
I am the right temperature
I have been conscious all day, waking before my alarm
I have done what I wanted, when I wanted to do it
and I haven’t wanted much
Fortunately, the things I want are good,
Thus I found Real Analysis Homework in Foster I to be incredibly peaceful.
Everything is peaceful.
I do not want things that I don’t have.
My memories are on the fonder side.
DD’s dream sequence has been playing through my head
And is a wholly appropriate soundtrack.
I’ve been with friends, but not for too long
I’ve been alone and calm
I came home to delicious vegetable rice soup
With ‘cornbread’ and German Chocolate cake
Which I ate (not too much) by myself in a kitchen not too light, not too dark, empty, but comfortable while beautiful folk-sounding music played. I can only remember a chorus with the word ‘Dover.’ I wish I could tell someone how beautiful. Quietly, calmly beautiful.
Beautiful like the Shiva candle which I am babysitting on my desk. The wax is folding into a pillow on top with age and warmth.

If the world ended right now,
I would stay right here.
I feel comfortable like worn cloth

The candle has surpassed its 24 hours
And is ready for the breath that lets it rest.
It is waiting contentedly and patiently,
Perhaps not knowing when its time will come,
But ready to fold itself in its own warm wax pillow.
It awaits rest calmly and peacefully.
Its end shall come tonight
But mine continues.
While I write, a speaker in the Chapel, whose lecture I wished to attend, is speaking on humanitarian concerns, including Darfur.

Elsewhere, there is darkness in desperate need of candles even if for a little light to huddle near fearfully. Elsewhere, there are those with no friends and a loneliness that gnaws us to despair. Elsewhere, children wish to go to school, wish to play music, wish to eat even a handful of cold rice.

And so my evening, for which I am grateful,
My evening of everything detailed perfectly like a painting, my beautiful evening for which I wish, I wish there was someone nearby who is not busy, who is not sad, who is not exhausted or alone, who would understand how beautifully still, still like the hum of stars in a deep blue winter sky,
How deeply still this evening has made me feel.
Thankyou, God.
Tonight is a thick oil painting of blues and purples, reds, yellows, orange
Daubed heavily
With weight
But this is not everyone’s painting.

Where will I go to find someone not exhausted? Not lonely, not despairing, not hungry who will sink with me tonight into the black velvet of a winter sky?

My evening is not over.
The world cannot end tonight
Because if I will for one moment look beyond this frame,
I see fear, I see despair, hatred, destitution,
My own brothers and sisters,
My own flesh & blood going without
Without friends, without family, without food or hope or health or love

And my world cannot end.
I am grateful for this painting, but I cannot stay here until it can be for everyone.
I will leave this frame and return to them, and together, we will work for a new world. This is not easy work. It will consume us.

The Shiva candle is lit for Yom Kippur in memorial of the dead. I shall extinguish it now, may this evening go with it.

Tonight’s the night the world begins again.