update from sparkleup

writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/discernment.html

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@
 <p>He had five minutes until the library closed, which, he figured, was enough time for him to return the book and start the walk back to his apartment without needing to endure any encounters with security sweeping the stacks for lingering students. Sure enough, the only other person he encountered on his way out was the page who numbly accepted his book at the returns desk. A wordless exchange; no small talk, not even a thank you.</p>
 <p><em>Perfect.</em></p>
 <p>The Minnesota night hung heavy around him. The air seemed as loath to relinquish the heat of day as the year was to give in to autumn, but now it was nearly eleven, and the long hours of evening had managed to pull some of the warmth away. Mosquitoes drifted lazily beneath the trees, leading Dee to keep his ears canted back, lest they take interest.</p>
-<p>Saint John&rsquo;s Seminary was a lopsided circle nestled at the north edge of a narrow isthmus between two lakes, a marble set over a gap it couldn&rsquo;t hope to pass through. It would be easy enough for Dee to essentially walk straight north to his apartments along the road that bisected the campus, but he preferred to put off walking along a road as long as possible.</p>
+<p>Saint John&rsquo;s University was a lopsided circle nestled at the north edge of a narrow isthmus between two lakes, a marble set over a gap it couldn&rsquo;t hope to pass through. It would be easy enough for Dee to essentially walk straight north to his apartments along the road that bisected the campus, but he preferred to put off walking along a road as long as possible.</p>
 <p>Instead, he headed east from the library, walking bowered sidewalks for as long as he could. Past the utilities building, past the bookstore, until he hit the quad. Only then did he turn north, walking through close-cut grass instead of along the sidewalks.</p>
 <p>Here, at last, he could look up and see the stars.</p>
 <p>His steps were slow, contemplative. It wasn&rsquo;t a meander; his walk still had purpose. Instead, it was a putting-off of the inevitable. The inevitable time when he would rejoin walking along the road. The inevitable moment of stepping into his dimly-lit apartment. A delaying of engaging with the real, physical world as long as possible.</p>
@@ -65,7 +65,8 @@
 <p>Instead, he let his bag slip from his shoulder to the grass, and then he settled down to join it, tail flopped limply behind him. He drew his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms over them, resting his chin atop his forearms.</p>
 <p>His head was too full. Too full of words and feelings that language failed to express. Lines from the epistles he&rsquo;d been studying somehow wound up tangled with an awkwardly-shaped despair, a despair founded in the fact that, although he continued to excel in his studies, remained at the top of his classes, he still felt as though he was failing.</p>
 <p><em>If you still dwell within my heart,</em> he asked. <em>Where are these feelings coming from? What is this disillusionment pointing to?</em></p>
-<p>God spoke to him, then. As ever, His voice was not in words, but woven into the world around him. A breeze came up from Stump lake, bearing with it the sent of water, of rotting vegetation, and overlaid atop it, a sweetness he could not place. It was floral, yes, but also fruity, so sweet as to make his mouth water.</p>
+<p>God spoke to him, then.</p>
+<p>As ever, His voice was not in words, but woven into the world around him. A breeze came up from Stump lake, bearing with it the sent of water, of rotting vegetation, and overlaid atop it, a sweetness he could not place. It was floral, yes, but also fruity, so sweet as to make his mouth water.</p>
 <p>He bristled his whiskers, and breathed in deeply, his eyes scanning trees lit by the occasional yellow sulfur lamp, stark battlements against the night sky. God spoke to him in the way his eyes perceived the night to fade from a blue-tinged gray at the tree-line up to the star-stained black above him. He spoke in the feeling of the short blades of grass poking up through the bristly fur of his tail, and He spoke in the citrus tang of a confession forming in Dee&rsquo;s mouth.</p>
 <p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be here.&rdquo;</p>
 <hr />
@@ -88,8 +89,6 @@
 <p><em>I do not want to be here.</em></p>
 <p>Outside Dee walked slowly to one of the concrete blocks that served as benches and sat, resting his face in his paws. If he could not see the stars, if he had only concrete and paving stones before him, then if he wanted to pray, he had to block out his sight. It was all too much. He would find himself tracing the paving stones or the catenary arc of the contemporary entrance to St. Francis Abbey if he left them open.</p>
 <p><em>Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let yours ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications&hellip;</em></p>
-<!-- Continue, expand with him praying as he thinks -->
-
 <p>He was not ready yet. Not ready for his penitential <em>pater noster</em>. Not ready to go see his advisor. He didn&rsquo;t feel ready for anything.</p>
 <p>Most of all, he realized he was not ready to admit to himself that not wanting to be here implied the possible solution of leaving, of <em>not</em> being here. He wasn&rsquo;t ready.</p>
 <p><em>&hellip;If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered&hellip;</em></p>
@@ -98,9 +97,9 @@
 <p><em>&hellip;I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch the morning, more than those who watch the morning.</em></p>
 <p>And so he waited.</p>
 <p>Dee wished it were night. He wished he could once more sit in the quad and look up at the stars, or down at the grass and try to differentiate the shades of green, there in the dark where color eluded him, to find in that liminal state some sensation of the Lord.</p>
-<p>At least he could get get up from where he was and away from this edifice of concrete and glass. It was, he was promised, beautiful in its own way. But around behind the Abbey, toward the lake, a small path wound through the woods, and there, between the trees and beside the water, stood the statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the only other coyote saint he&rsquo;d ever come across, and the saint most venerated by his father.</p>
+<p>At least he could get get up from where he was and away from this edifice of concrete and glass. It was, he was promised, beautiful in its own way. But around behind the Abbey, toward the lake, a small path wound through the woods, and there, between the trees and beside the water, stood the statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the only other coyote saint he&rsquo;d ever come across, and the saint most venerated by his father back home.</p>
 <p><em>&hellip;O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem&hellip;</em></p>
-<p>Dee was not the farmer his father was, had few enough ties to her patronage of ecology and environmentalism, but in her he saw at least a face like his own. In her, he saw something of a people he could belong to, though she was from far to the east of his home in Idaho.</p>
+<p>Dee was not the farmer his family was, had few enough ties to her patronage of ecology and environmentalism, but in her he saw at least a face like his own. In her, he saw something of a people he could belong to, though she was from far to the east of his home in Idaho.</p>
 <p>Home.</p>
 <p>Home was back in Sawtooth, for Saint John&rsquo;s would never truly be his home, and that in itself was telling.</p>
 <p><em>&hellip;It is He who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.</em></p>
@@ -181,7 +180,7 @@
 <p>It would be a long trip home.</p>
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-                <p>Page generated on 2021-04-20</p>
+                <p>Page generated on 2021-04-21</p>
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