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Saturday
Mar142009
Road to Pernem
March 14, 2009
You should have known what kind of day it was going to be when the tears sprang into your eyes at the sight of a man losing his shoe.
He was walking on the side of the road and his sandal slipped off. When he turned to retrieve it, the motion felt like falling. It felt like sighing, like shaking your head as you stare at the pebbly ground, like being just a person, after all, a person with feet that sometimes let a shoe fly, so carelessly.
Days like this are particularly vivid, when a rooster scurries across the road in front of your scooter, and he is not merely someone's future lunch, out for a jaunt, he is all of Creation in a small flightless bird.
The trees are your brothers, every leaf made by Him just as every cell of you is quivering with His breath. You are called out of your body by fields, by gardens and water drops flying, by haystacks so casually symmetrical and golden.
Flowers are almost your undoing, on this kind of day. You almost can't look. It's not decent to be that beautiful.
An old man with glasses sits on a wall in his undershirt and slacks, belt hitched to a comfortable place above his waist. He looks up as you pass, his wrist, roped with veins and tendons, resting on his knee. Jackfruit slowly ripening, palm groves as tall as a cathedral that calls you to come and worship, a woman threshing her rice, clouds of chaff flying out from her. She is the center.
The women at the well, drawing water.
You remember that there was a time when you wondered if anything would ever be as beautiful to you here as home was.
Not every day is exquisite, most days end up having too many pees on the floor, but today is unspeakable. In the cool of the early morning, you drive on and on, wondering if at some point your wheels will just leave the pavement completely and you will be in the sky.
He was walking on the side of the road and his sandal slipped off. When he turned to retrieve it, the motion felt like falling. It felt like sighing, like shaking your head as you stare at the pebbly ground, like being just a person, after all, a person with feet that sometimes let a shoe fly, so carelessly.
Days like this are particularly vivid, when a rooster scurries across the road in front of your scooter, and he is not merely someone's future lunch, out for a jaunt, he is all of Creation in a small flightless bird.
The trees are your brothers, every leaf made by Him just as every cell of you is quivering with His breath. You are called out of your body by fields, by gardens and water drops flying, by haystacks so casually symmetrical and golden.
Flowers are almost your undoing, on this kind of day. You almost can't look. It's not decent to be that beautiful.
An old man with glasses sits on a wall in his undershirt and slacks, belt hitched to a comfortable place above his waist. He looks up as you pass, his wrist, roped with veins and tendons, resting on his knee. Jackfruit slowly ripening, palm groves as tall as a cathedral that calls you to come and worship, a woman threshing her rice, clouds of chaff flying out from her. She is the center.
The women at the well, drawing water.
You remember that there was a time when you wondered if anything would ever be as beautiful to you here as home was.
Not every day is exquisite, most days end up having too many pees on the floor, but today is unspeakable. In the cool of the early morning, you drive on and on, wondering if at some point your wheels will just leave the pavement completely and you will be in the sky.
in Wonderful
Wonderful 
Reader Comments (14)
This beauty all sounds so exotic and not at all like Tennessee where I am with my house full of sweet noisy kids while the rain pours outside ... it isn't even close to what I see, but it causes me to want to look for the beauty around me. Thanks.
I read b/c I love your stories, but sometimes your writing blows me away. This was beautiful. :)
Sigh....
from the very prosaic to the most poetic, you are always lovely....
Wow. Beautiful. Thanks.
this took my breath away
So, so wonderful.
I love this..I simply love it.
this is probably the best writing I've read ANYWHERE in 4 or 5 months. And I've read some pulitzer prize winning stuff during that time. You are honestly, seriously, beautifully gifted.
Beautiful.
I see that you have taken off!
This is a stunning, exquisite piece of writing. Wow.
Yes.
This kind of thing hits me alot, especially when i get away by myself for a moment. It seems like all creation, the whole world is alive and speaking, and your soul can barely take it in. I started crying the other day actually, at homeshcool coop, when the kids were singing jesus loves me. (that is kind of a different example though)