illimitably earth

I turned on the radio when Andrew left the house, just in time to hear a few sentences that really confused my brain: church language ("at Eastertide, and forever...") in a British accent. I don't know if I have ever heard such a thing before. He finished his sentence, the organ started up, and people started singing one of the Easter hymns: "Thine is the Glory."

I started singing too.

Lying on my stomach, half-mumbling into my pillow, headache forgotten, words all remembered (well, not of the verses! I'm not some weirdo!); I could practically smell my mom's perfume, the expensive one she wears on Sundays. I like that song. I really love Easter music. It's even better than Christmas because the songs are as good but you haven't been hearing them in department stores and TV ads for the last two months.

I feel about Christianity now the same way I do about hotdish, for which I apologize to any actual Christians I might know because it's not nice to treat your religion as a madeleine.

This year I have no new dress to wear*, no dinner with grandparents and aunts and uncles to look forward to. No celebratory candy, no sunrise service. No joy that Jesus Christ is risen today (as I also heard, and sang along with, on Radio 4 this morning).

I came out to the living room and turned on the radio here, which is Radio 3. It played me Eric Whitacre's setting of an E. E. Cummings poem I remember reading and loving in high school, copying it surreptitiously out of my tenth-grade English textbook (because of course we didn't actually read the poem in class, I just found it there).

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


* but I do have a new top, which I bought yesterday. I must be the sexiest thing in the world! Which is good, as it's actually too small for me...

There is historic disagreement concerning whether this apple was of metallic gold or Acapulco gold

On Friday at work someone asked me "What's that on your chest?"

"Sorry?"

"Your necklace."

"Oh! Uh..."

My necklace is a tarnished silver chain with one wonky link. I wear it all the time. There are two charms on it because I don't really want to be parted from either of them.

The first is a St. Christopher medal that kalieris sent me after I mentioned, on a whim, wanting one. It, as her comment says, belonged to her mother. The back already looked slightly bent and dented when I got it; better than new. I think I have added a little dent or two myself since then. I've not taken it off, except to replace the chain, since I got it. And at my wedding I wore the necklace that matched my earrings but put the St. Christopher medal around one of my ankles.

I first thought of it because I wanted to keep something of my brother nearby; this has his name on it. It's the best I can do, the best I've thought of so far. But even before I got it in the mail, tucked inside a Christmas card in the tiniest ziploc bag ever, I was already finding other good reasons to appreciate it.

There's the petites-madeleines aspect for me, especially for Catholic iconography, largely because of my grandmother.

Then there's Christopher being the patron saint of travellers. Considering I was only a few weeks away from getting married and thus moving to another country, I thought that couldn't hurt.

Also I found it interesting that he's possibly not a real person at all, and certainly not named Christopher (the only reason he caught my attention now) anyway. The name he had before accidentally ferrying Jesus across a river, Reprebus or Reprobus, simply means "wicked person", so saying that Reprobus became Christopher amounts to saying "A wicked person became a Christian."

Also in the comments to that entry linked above, Andrew told me Christopher was "excommunicated" when the Roman Catholic church weeded out some mythunderstandings and suchlike from their sainted canon ... and that he, along with all the other fictional saints, was adopted by the Discordians. Wikipedia tells me it's a common misconception that Christopher's no longer a saint, but I'm happy that he's been tainted by Discordians anyway.

Which brings me neatly to the other pendant on the chain. It's sort of teardrop shaped, like half a yin-yang, but instead of a dot in the middle it has a golden apple with a K on it. It's half of the Sacred Chao (pronounced like "cow"; a chao being a single unit of chaos). soltice and I bought the charms for each other for Christmas last year, as you can read about here. She describes her half thus:

In Discordia, the Pentagon refers to logic in general and specifically The Law of Fives. The Law asserts that all things happen in fives, and all things are divisible or multiples of five. The trick of this law is perception: If you look for a thing, you'll find it everywhere. Just as if you look for a particular car on the road you'll see if everywhere, if you look for a particular number you'll see it everywhere. In the context of the discussion, this was a personal joke on me. If I look for proof or disproof of something related to myself (gender, sexuality, general self-worth), I'll find it everywhere. Such proof is an illusion. It's a psychological trick the mind plays on itself. I'm only now beginning to realize this, and I often slip into my old ways. In my friendship and relationship with her she's been an encouraging voice for me to go and live life, rather than continue to tie myself down with responsibilities and proofs.

I got the apple because I have been chaosifying her. Also because it is the only half left after she's taken hers.

I thought about all of this very fast and answered, "It's ... religious."

"Oh," the person said. "Are you religious?"

Well, no. Actually.

I'm going to make sure it's tucked into my shirt before I leave the house again.