matter

The prayer beads are worried. The ritual spilling out of the restless spirits and into those busy hands. Smooth wood warmed by the work of fingers, by the grace of living flesh. Thoughts folded around the expelled breath and the scant syllables, spoken so often that their meaning is worn. The thinking even leaving everything up to the muscle memory, thoughts all but gone from the animal action. The world briefly opening, or disappearing from existence.

The world is full of strange magics, every light and trick explicable in next to every way save as experience. The feel is the brush work, the mind the canvas, soul the pigment, and matter the object that is always touched as subject. So much work, and the painting is never finished. So much to say, all the words leave to find another roost. As little as we know or see, we still manifest much weight upon these mistakes and visions. What more can misgivings grant? Craft vast wisdoms from our endless errors. Invent apprehensions to fill every gap and blank.

I am mostly empty. Full of holes, broken in many places, unable to ingest the experiences that make for faith. Unable to turn my ignorance into something past hesitance. I am blue and selfish, mottled by distrust and indulgence. I am caught by the ordinary spells of beauty and happenstance, attuned to the workings of beast and thief. The barn owl that circled silent, ten foot above the street at dawn, staring at me because I whistled shrill and loud, before it turned a wing to the steady wind and flew away through a four-way stop. The dragonfly that flitted so quickly in the door that I closed it in before I knew it was there, a glistening rapacious critter, all speed and armor and hunger. I am moved by the coyote and the crow, by the flocks and packs and swarms of the earth. I am moved by the towers of glass and steel, the crowds of ache and purpose. I do not know, and that is enough of a reason. I can not know, and that is all the matter.