Cathedrals of the Mind

"A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead”
-Caitlin Moran

Where is your cathedral of the mind?
Is it in a library?
In a friend's kitchen?
In a community centre?
Or an actual church?

What makes it so?

For me there are a only a few places in this world (so far) where I feel part of something larger. Places where I feel more whole, where I can be utterly alone and never feel lonely.

One is filled with books, another has a refreshing cross-breeze, with only a flipchart in between the two open windows. Another has a big coffee urn and a closet full of baby clothes ready to be given away.

As actual churches get repurposed and sold, I know I am not alone in my quest for a quiet corner of the world where I am told by the furniture and the windows and the trees and the people that I belong.

Let's keep those cathedrals of the mind open. Let's stick a tiny wedge between those doors so that a crack of light can tell passers by to come on in.

Comments

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

The tiny little lie

"What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love." Lady Gaga "There's a robot. Do you see Mama his big eyes? He's a tall Robot and he is right over there." Do you see him? Have you seen him before? I was pleased to realize that I could. When I was about 6 or 7, I occasionally used to lie on my back at the foot of my bed and stare up a patch of stucco on the ceiling. Repeatedly and for what seemed like ages at a time, I would stare up at a cluster of tiny peaks of stucco that I could see with my 6 year old eyes was a little village inhabited by little creatures (half human, half smurf) marching around it. It was animated enough by the tiny shadows cast by those t...

Growing Versions

Search This Blog