Teresa at the Mall
Marcie got all annoyed at me cause I finished grading before she did and then gloated about it in her comments, but today I think she could like me again, cause I'm ill.
I was fine yesterday until the evening, and then I got ill quickly and suddenly, and became, I think but I'm not sure, a bit dramatic. The knitting needles were too heavy for my hand, so I didn't get any knitting done, which was really a pain since I'm working on the "Fusion" pullover and I enjoy it very much. Sam and the child went to get the tree, and we decorated it -- I was wan and darling, like the lady of the camellias, and then I went to bed.
The thermometer SAID I didn't have a fever, but my position is that I DID have a fever nonetheless, though maybe only a small one.
You know how you get when you have a fever? All distant? I was like that -- oh, right, and I had cold chills and aches, too! Yes. Definitely a fever.
I'm hoping that in my last extremity, as I leave this vale of tears, I get to have that sort of distance, as I think it will be useful for letting things go. I was sitting at the dinner table last night, quietly but dramatically having my little fever, and my eye happened to light on the china cabinet. And I could remember that the china therein had some deep significance for me, but I couldn't remember why -- and I felt that, should I need to leave it behind, I could willingly let it go, for the good of others, and that I myself had enjoyed the china a long time -- really a very long time, I'm, like, SO aged -- and that somebody else could have those nice plates with the stars on the border which are so excellent for winter solstice desserts....
I'm feeling better today, actually, and so I'm keeping the damn plates.
Yesterday, before I got so dramatically wan, I had to go to the mall, which, like so many Americans, I despise, and yet visit occasionally anyway. It's so easy to diss the mall, isn't it? And very hard to think up reasons it should exist. Well, except for that thing about providing Sam a place to go for his daily walks.
Luckily, before I went I remembered that last year, at this time, I'd been teaching Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle in the Medieval Women Writers course (she's not medieval, no, I know that, but it works very well to read her at the end of that course anyway), and something she says in there about Stuff had struck me --
She relates visiting some duchess or other, and sitting in a room waiting for the said duchess, and looking at all the Stuff in the room, and thinking to herself, "What is all this for?" much as I do when I go to the mall, except that Teresa uses nicer language than I do, and then saying to herself, "There must be a way in which this exists to the glory of God."
I'm enchanted by that. It's a willful move out of techiness and complaining, and into cheerfulness and compassion. Very like Teresa. Willful change of perspective.
So I tried it last year -- I had to go to the mall, I do have to make some small trip every Christmas season, and instead of going around the mall feeling all bitter and mean, I went around thinking "glory o' God" every time I saw something that annoyed me no end -- all that Stuff; all those People Buying Stuff.
Worked marvelously -- it amused me. Banks of flavored coffee? Glory o' god. Sequined tank tops? Definitely, Glory o' God. Giant display of elaborate singing snowglobes? Glory o' God. Masses of humans buying useless pieces of Stuff to put in stockings? Glory o' God.
Did it again this year -- worked just as well. I laughed the whole way through the process.
Then I came home and got ill.
Glory o' God.
I was fine yesterday until the evening, and then I got ill quickly and suddenly, and became, I think but I'm not sure, a bit dramatic. The knitting needles were too heavy for my hand, so I didn't get any knitting done, which was really a pain since I'm working on the "Fusion" pullover and I enjoy it very much. Sam and the child went to get the tree, and we decorated it -- I was wan and darling, like the lady of the camellias, and then I went to bed.
The thermometer SAID I didn't have a fever, but my position is that I DID have a fever nonetheless, though maybe only a small one.
You know how you get when you have a fever? All distant? I was like that -- oh, right, and I had cold chills and aches, too! Yes. Definitely a fever.
I'm hoping that in my last extremity, as I leave this vale of tears, I get to have that sort of distance, as I think it will be useful for letting things go. I was sitting at the dinner table last night, quietly but dramatically having my little fever, and my eye happened to light on the china cabinet. And I could remember that the china therein had some deep significance for me, but I couldn't remember why -- and I felt that, should I need to leave it behind, I could willingly let it go, for the good of others, and that I myself had enjoyed the china a long time -- really a very long time, I'm, like, SO aged -- and that somebody else could have those nice plates with the stars on the border which are so excellent for winter solstice desserts....
I'm feeling better today, actually, and so I'm keeping the damn plates.
Yesterday, before I got so dramatically wan, I had to go to the mall, which, like so many Americans, I despise, and yet visit occasionally anyway. It's so easy to diss the mall, isn't it? And very hard to think up reasons it should exist. Well, except for that thing about providing Sam a place to go for his daily walks.
Luckily, before I went I remembered that last year, at this time, I'd been teaching Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle in the Medieval Women Writers course (she's not medieval, no, I know that, but it works very well to read her at the end of that course anyway), and something she says in there about Stuff had struck me --
She relates visiting some duchess or other, and sitting in a room waiting for the said duchess, and looking at all the Stuff in the room, and thinking to herself, "What is all this for?" much as I do when I go to the mall, except that Teresa uses nicer language than I do, and then saying to herself, "There must be a way in which this exists to the glory of God."
I'm enchanted by that. It's a willful move out of techiness and complaining, and into cheerfulness and compassion. Very like Teresa. Willful change of perspective.
So I tried it last year -- I had to go to the mall, I do have to make some small trip every Christmas season, and instead of going around the mall feeling all bitter and mean, I went around thinking "glory o' God" every time I saw something that annoyed me no end -- all that Stuff; all those People Buying Stuff.
Worked marvelously -- it amused me. Banks of flavored coffee? Glory o' god. Sequined tank tops? Definitely, Glory o' God. Giant display of elaborate singing snowglobes? Glory o' God. Masses of humans buying useless pieces of Stuff to put in stockings? Glory o' God.
Did it again this year -- worked just as well. I laughed the whole way through the process.
Then I came home and got ill.
Glory o' God.
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