Light Pollution

There aren’t enough stars in the city; they don’t get down this far. We get the little light-crumbs leftover from the grand feast of the cosmos, the galaxies and the planets, and I am malnourished from lack of starlight.

I’m bloated with time, though. It builds up around me, stagnant and sluggish, and oh how I hate to wait. But then sometimes there’s not enough of it; how cruel that time does not stop for the ill and the mourning.

Winter has been too long now; too long I have been cooped up indoors and too long out of the sun. My body and my mind grow dull, soft and flabby and tired. Is it me, or just that I have been stuck in here for so long? I hope it’s the latter; I hope I will change with the weather. I’m trying to start before then; I’m trying to be worthy of spring by the time it arrives. I thought the new year would bring the resolve I needed. I was wrong. This is the new year and nothing has changed. It’s a strange limbo we’re in, between New Year’s and spring. Just cold; just all shut up and sometimes it’s gray outside but sometimes the sun shines too bright, bright white on the snow.

I think I will be a saner person when spring gets here. I need sunshine that is soft and warm on my skin, not the stark, hard-edged light that is a sunny day in winter. A sunny day that is cold is just an empty promise of the atmosphere.
I think I will have more energy, too, when the chill is out of my bones. I pray it leaves quickly.

Sometimes I pray silently, with words and sentences quiet and invisible to anyone but God. But then sometimes I pray viscerally. Sometimes I pray with a wordless, guttural cry and just trust that God knows what I meant even when I don’t.
Sometimes I don’t pray at all, and I hope He knows what I mean by that, too.

I mean that sometimes I feel too much to pray. Can feelings be prayers, if I remember God while I feel them? Do I need words? What is the language of the divine?

I mean that sometimes I am all out of words; they have all been said and I worry that they will lose their value with repetition.

I mean that sometimes it’s been a while and even though I miss it it’s hard to get back into the swing.

I mean that sometimes I am lazy; I mean that sometimes I am distracted.

But I also always mean that I am sorry.

Maybe if there was more starlight; maybe if there were more open spaces. Maybe if the weather was warmer; maybe if there were no florescent lights. Maybe if I stopped making excuses for myself; maybe if I stopped justifying.

Maybe I need an adventure to snap me out of lethargy, body and soul.

I need clarity that lasts; I need discipline. I need things that are beyond what I can find in myself, but it seems that I need to generate these things in order to find something anywhere else.

What do I need? I need a double shot of grace and another of motivation. I need a boost. I need more of the divine than the dusty rays that have been filtering in through my mental haze; more than the bit that now pierces through the light pollution of so many arbitrary beacons in my mind.

I need more than the crumbs of a cosmic feast.


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