Last night and the night before I have gone out in the back garden to admire the larger-than-usual great cold moon, our last full moon of the year. Like the year just past, the moon in Gemini is mercurial, elusive and unstable. The puppies and I sat staring up at it while the olive trees shivered like molten silver.
This morning, after some spanspek (honeydew melon) for breakfast, I went along with Charlotte to an Advent service at the small Anglican church at the end of Union Street. The thatching of the old stone church was burned down in a fire two years ago but it has now been restored with exposed beams and the sweet smell of clean thatch. I looked out through the wooden frame windows at mauve jacaranda trees under a thunderous sky and listened to readings from Isaiah and the Gospel of John.
My heart is dead as stone right now. I’m grateful to be sober. I’m grateful for the love and support of friends. But there is some obdurate knot of anger and anguish right there in the middle of my chest that blocks me from feeling anything very much.
The hymn singing was abysmal but that is always the case with white people from an English-speaking background. The coloured and black people just hummed because they don’t know the words, so it sounded as if the church was full of worshipful bees. Everyone hugged and kissed noisily at the exchange of greetings. I smiled and hugged and chatted to the minister, a psychologist with a gentle manner, after the service. He preached on the absence of hope while I sat like an unreceptive stone filled with cold dread.
I breathed in and out very deeply all the way home. I’d say it was praying with a struggling body, just taking in breath after breath, but it seemed more like just keeping my head above water.
Posted by louisey 