inTerjeCted

Ash Wednesday.

A mark upon the brow, drawn with ash.

"Remember Thou, O soul, that thy body is dust
and unto dust it shall return."
Feel this moment, here and now - notice; Souls are produced and reprocessed, in the world.Every other moment extinct. At birth receiving features alien to his own, Man daily looks in the mirror and sees nothing but the world. Sight approaching not himself but his surroundings.
Man goes soul-searching all his life-long time, and upon the last gasp for a breath he never had - he suffers in proxy for the death of a dream impressed upon him at his arrival into flesh. So grieves Man the loss of his borrowed part; of spittle, breath and clay - an edifice, a fabrication, wrought tightly around his form, lest he looks and finds himself, naked and unembellished.
Man is anasthetized - when he surfaced to consciousness, it was only to be instructed to count backwards from ten. Such oblivion rarely contrasted in the light of day, we have grown to love the shadows dancing over our walls, the safety of darkness bringing sophoric memories to life.
Lord, I am gratitude, because when you planted me, you planted me in good earth. The soil pressing against my protective shell, and the kernel within - against which all soul and spirit lives and moves, in contradistinction, in contrast, in dissolving it without dissolving themselves.
To the prophet Isaiah a soft whisper attracted by his disrepair and mourning over invisible vanities, met his inner ear "Be still and know that I am God" - such stillness is like cold ashes , remains of the last great pyre, bereft of all but essentials decomposed and unformed; a simplicity left at the ascent of all moisture, quintessential calm. With the deluge the world forgoed by water, life suffocating life.. with this great fire, each particular expires in a rapture unspoken of, again the world ends only to loose itself completely to the battlements and enclosures of a New Jerusalem.
In such garments, supernaturally black, may a soul awaken to itself and see the world`s departure before its sight, like a dark cloud dispersed and annihilated by the piercing rays of a new sun. As interior meets exterior - a twin of one essence embracing and kissing, its lack of light receives light completely and the dark sash becomes a luminous robe. The soul seats itself in the garden with its companion, and draws with it its very first breath.