hangover, with prayer

usually I make every attempt to make myself presentable: I dress appropriately (or try to). I know it takes a while, usually, with most people, for me to ease into genuine sharing, so I try to plot my time with others accordingly. I can laugh at myself to deflect concern or kindness while appearing cheerful and light.

I get to feel a little confident in my shining shell. I can do this, I think. I can be really appropriate and collected and presentable and serene. I relax my guard a little. I have reserves I can spend on greedier takers.

And then there will be an event of some kind and I will drink a little too much, and then I find, as I always find, that I have not really changed anything. Not anything really. My pretty lacquered shell cracks and all the inappropriate, the unpresentable, the scattered, uncollected, worried, and bothered comes pouring out, splashing all over the place. I stain my clothes with it, and my hands and mouth are sticky with it. It gets on other people's shoes and sprays on their shoulders. It is very disappointing.

Directly afterward, I think, there must be some other way to do this. But I don't know of such a way, and so I sit in the middle of my floor with brushes and glue and paint and lacquer and begin to mend the shell again. I can see, though I know I will forget, that there is nothing left but the cracks, that the pieces are a fiction and only the cracks and the lacquer are real. It's only ever been glue and tape and glitter and sequins. Shining shell indeed.

Why can I not do something dramatic instead? I should leave my life, change everything. I must change my life. Perhaps I can sell everything I have and give it to the poor. Perhaps I can make my home resemble a monastic cell and, through the rigors of asceticism, become something different. Perhaps I can sever all ties to all I love and, by sacrificing my affection for them thus, love them far better than I do when I am present.

I will do nothing so dramatic or creative. I will make more tea. I will put away the clean laundry. I will feed myself wholesome food. I will try to remember what humility is and is not.