Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Little Fluff”

There’s that priest, that Richard Rohr, who he says, ‘If you love, you will suffer.’ The scream of that bird, there’s no forgiveness in me for that. It makes my own hurts not redemptive, but infernal, suffering has no rise, no ascension to it. To not forgive is to stay with atrocity. And I do. Yes. Also, because, if the ‘farmed’ African leopard that, to provide a seamless fur coat for some gorgeous twittess got its skin torn off its body and does not resurrect, then neither shall I. Same for the fish hooked through its flesh and choked out of its life. Or the dogs in China flayed alive. If they don’t rise, why would I want to? It’s what Attila, the waiter said about the Muslim refugees being locked up, then criticized at Budapest railway station for throwing away the food given to them.

‘I would too,’ Attila said, ‘if the refugees around me didn’t

also get fed.’

June 2.

Darkness comes to the life lived false? My hurt doesn’t feel sacred. It just stinks. The offense is only going to heal in Heaven if I meet with that Cinke up there. Otherwise, my heart is shunting off into deep freeze. And yet, a sliver of a chink in me says, there’s a matter not yet known, it may be known to others, but not to me.

So whatever it is, make it clear!

Until I know it, I don’t even want God to exist. Not alongside an outrage like that. Silence, chaos, and nothing is preferable. My blade stays drawn. Its point is tipped. I’d like to plunge it, in an act of the heart, my last moral muscle – into Him!

*

June 3.

Went to the Pannonia Hotel’s cafe of sprawling oriental divans, couches, paintings, bars hung with chandeliered lights. 129