Somehow, I’ve found it and lost it simultaneously. What is it? Maybe I’m sure, but perhaps I’m not. I think I won’t tell you. You’re gorgeous. I hope you know that. I hope you sit on your roof in a swimsuit and shades, soaking up the summer sun into your skin and miraculously not burning or tanning, just basking in the warmth and the light. Maybe you’ve got a bag of apricots up there and you take one out and bite into it and make seductive sucking sounds with your beautiful lips, slowly consuming the delectable flesh of the sunny fruit. Is it just me or is summer the most sensual season? It’s hot, it’s delicious, so much of it is spent on the beach in tiny amounts of clothing… it just seems like the perfect setting for physical love. I adore being buried in the sand at the beach. The weight and the contrast of the coolly wet under-layers with the dry floating grains above makes me feel enveloped in the embrace of the shore in it’s fully sexual symbolism. I remember the first time my English teacher told me that the ocean was a female symbol in literature- between the sea and Saturn’s chopped of balls, Venus was born. How horrible is it that the goddess of love was the result of a castration? Poor Saturn was turned into a steer by his own son because there could be only one bull in with the heifers. What a sexist society. Really, couldn’t they have settled for just some of the women? I can settle for just SOME men. I don’t need that many, really. It’s funny, I always feel so protective of male bits. I hate it when someone gets hit in the groin, I really do. It makes me feel like carrying them to a safe place and sitting with him until he feels better, and then staying with him forever to ensure that his balls will be safe from attack. Oddly enough, I think that’s still my weird maternal instinct coming through. I just hate to see people in pain like that. I can’t see people in any kind of pain without having sympathy. I can see the hurt on their faces, and it makes my forehead crease and my guts churn and my chest ache in a way that suggests that their pain is double what I can feel and that I need to take it away somehow, that I need to help these people. There are so many people in so much pain in the world. They mourn and weep in this vale of tears. Sorrow often causes me to think of my Catholicism, like right now. Sometimes I wish my friends understood my relationship with God, but it’s not their fault that they don’t. I suppose it’s like anything that is uncommon among my social circle- love of football, cars, calculus. At least with those, however, I know someone else that likes them, and I don’t feel uncomfortable that my friends don’t like them because it’s not personal. My relationship with God is so personal, and not only that, any conversation with my friends about him involves some reference to the fact that they don’t even believe he’s there. And I know that they have justification for thinking that, that I cannot blame them or judge them for it, but I also feel like it’s so disrespectful, like talking about someone who’s right in front of you as if they aren’t there. And I know he doesn’t mind, that it doesn’t bug him. But it bugs me. It makes me feel so bad for him that people talk about him like that. Hell, it makes me feel terrible when people say things like “If God existed, he wouldn’t let things like Hurricane Katrina happen.” All those people who are angry with God, who actively hate him- it just makes me sad. And can you imagine how he must feel when he sees signs at funerals that say “God hates fags”? Taking the Lord’s name in vain isn’t about swearing, it’s about using God’s name to give credence to things he would never approve. Being God would be like being eternally misquoted in the news and never getting to write letters of correction to the editors. And yet somehow, he’s serene enough to deal with it. This is why I’m a Catholic. I cannot begin to understand how God is so great, but I know that he is because somehow, he deals with it. He deals with all the pain and suffering of the world and he manages to not break down and destroy the whole damn thing just because it’s too much for him. Because it’s never too much for him. Somehow he deals with the denial and the hatred and all of the other things that come his way, and somehow he finds time to help little old ladies and cheating middle-aged men, dying children and whiny teenage girls. He finds the time, and he cares about everyone and somehow, it’s never too much for him. He just keeps going, doing his piece with the grace and peace of his being. I suppose with that, I wish you good day.
