Woke late. The light through the curtains was the particular grey of a February morning, not unpleasant — the kind that gives permission to stay inside. Made coffee, didn’t measure the grounds, it came out too strong. Drank it anyway.
Sat with Augustine for an hour. He is frustrating to read because he is so right about so much and so confident about being right and I keep wanting to argue with the confidence even when I cannot argue with the substance. This is probably a me problem.
My sister called in the afternoon. She is moving — out of the city, into something smaller. She said she is tired of performing proximity to things. I knew what she meant. We talked for longer than I expected, neither of us wanting to hang up, the conversation circling certain things without landing on them.
There is a particular quality to phone calls with people you know very well — the words are almost beside the point. What matters is the presence of the voice. The fact that someone is there.
In the evening I tried to write. Managed half a page on attention and prayer (a topic I keep returning to, which probably means it is trying to become an essay). Put it away. Read instead — Toni Morrison, Beloved, which I should have read twenty years ago and did not.
Morrison’s prose is doing something I cannot quite name. It arrives at emotion sideways. The most devastating moments are delivered in flat declarative sentences, which makes them more devastating, not less.
Question I keep not answering: am I doing enough?
Enough of what? That’s the problem. I can’t specify the enough. It floats unattached. Some vague obligation I can’t identify toward people and work and God.
I suspect this question is not the question. The real question is probably something about trust. Whether I believe the work I am doing is the work I am supposed to be doing, or whether I am constantly measuring myself against a standard I invented.
I don’t have an answer. The day was good. The coffee was too strong. I’m going to sleep.