It seems more that as I spend time alone, the importance of ritualisation increases. I find meaning and beauty in the ritual or walking to work and finding an espresso that keeps me company on the subway ride to WTC. I find meaning in walking into a bookshop to hear the beauty of the human spirit caught up in the pages of books, my history, hopes and disturbances lining the shelves. That ritual of running your hands over the spins of the books and wondering who and how and why, that is ethereal and grounding all at once.

And the thing that rocks my boat is finding a first page of a book that reaches out and tugs you in, compels you to want more in life, to want to express more, be more. Here is the first paragraph that took me in this morning.

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life.”

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

Categories: Books, New York, Religion
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My search is over people, today, Sunday August 20, I re-discovered religion. I am officially born-again. Baptised in the elixir of nutty, rich, intoxicating Espresso. I seriously communed with a higher reality today, for but a moment I touched the ephemeral reality of the sacred. All served up in the Temple of Dean & Deluca (560 Broadway @ Prince). And such hedonism only cost me $3.00, delivered by a lovely young lady in her crisp white robes.

There are many, many things I am destined to burn for in the institutional realm of religion, but I will hold to the defence of the Wisdom Teacher, who said ‘eat, drink, be merry, for God has already accepted your work’(Eccl 9-17 or there-abouts, my memory eludes me). Amen, here ends the lesson. Live long and prosper.

Categories: Coffee, Religion
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