Sharks! (not really)

I think I'm a shark. (not a card shark, though maybe that too)

I think we all need movement. There is a reason people locked in the prisons of their minds are jokingly (or not) referred to as vegetables. Mammals, animals in general, move, and require motion I believe to thrive. Not necessarily to survive, but if survival was our only motivating factor then we are sorry beasts, indeed. And I don't mean that we need to pack up our bags and hit the road every couple weeks or months, but that "motionlessness" does not suit us. Sitting in one place and staring at the computer screen; gluttony and sloth.

I may be speaking for myself a bit, but sometimes it's like I'm a shark. The moments I cease moving are those moments I feel least alive. And this isn't always so; immediately someone is going to suggest the verse: "cease striving and know that I am God" and forge an argument for "stopping". But stopping has never been a problem for me (and I know some people who do struggle with rest and sabbath). But even in our moments of stillness, we are hoping to move closer to God. 

This Lenten season, I chose a passive "waiting" approach of sacrifice. I gave up a few things, but not to create of stagnancy, like an 8-year-old boy who is punished with no computer games and claims he has nothing to do. The object of Lent isn't punishment by sacrifice and fasting. It's a preparation of self, a movement if you will, and I'm racing.

So I'm a shark, I think. Did my layers of teeth unmask me?

spindle-pricked thumb on a pencil stub

and dizzydizzy down this rabbit hole -

it's a mad hatter even 

with the twisting twilight sky, 

and I'm escaping 

into well-worn pages, scrawled lines -

and nights like these have the silence

of the sirens, sight of the cyclops,

discretion of the gods 

and Titanic complacence,

stuffed into a tiny mason jar and rattled