Open

I mentioned, earlier this month, that each week I try to open myself up to things I've been closed to before. This weekend (last night, especially) I made the decision to step out onto an ice floe. I didn't intend to, but I blame the domino effect.

On Friday night, after the reading, an opportunity was presented to me. Sometimes when one opportunity is granted, it gives you the courage to take another one. Anyway, I'm going to stay vague, for the time being, because I do believe that talking about anything prematurely can undermine it. In the past, this is something I've avoided, or have only half-heartedly attempted. In the recent past, I'd stopped considering it an option at all. But last night, I felt seized with the understanding that it was time--that I absolutely have to be aggressively open...

This morning, being on such a high from all my other risk-taking ventures, I decided to go to church. Last Sunday, on my way to the market, I ran into an old friend. She popped out of her car wearing a Key Lime trench coat--looking for all the world like the personification of good news. During the course of our brief but happy catching-up conversation, she gave me an address card for her church. As one who has been churchless for months, whether or not to go is always on my mind.

I did not know I was going to attend. I did not wake up with the intention of going. At 10:00 am, I was watching "Breakfast at Tiffany's," and finishing up my morning coffee. Then I understood that I would venture downtown for the service. There was no question about it. So I did.

I'm trying to listen to my instincts--really hearken to them--right now, especially. My youngest sister told me, a few days before this reading (a reading I was ambivalent about at best) that I would be helped, somehow, by it. That something would happen... I chose to believe her. It sounded right to me.

My push, during the last semester, was to embrace fragmentation--that elusive, abstract spirit of language--and to relinquish the letter of language. The object lesson comes home to roost in a million ways, flapping its wings vigorously.