Charles Émile Jacque: Summer (1885)

Committing Sins and Seeking Penance
A spare year ago, I first experienced what my internist would later label Bursitis, a mysterious and painful inflammation in something I'd been blissfully ignorant I even had. It seemed like a made-up disorder, even though it kept me from finishing a painting project. I felt I needed that project as repayment of a debt I'd incurred when first refinishing that surface. I had penance to pay, but the Bursitis prevented my repayment. I hired a painter and nursed my shoulder, feeling decrepit. A year later, I'm still learning how to integrate my now definitely more tender shoulder into my existence. I'm learning that if I don't challenge The Bastard Bursitis, it tends to win. When I buck up and engage with it anyway, whatever discomfort I initially feel quickly disappears. The harder I work it, the more it seems to reward me by forgetting to punish me for my indiscretion. This story perfectly fits my predilection. I want to believe that personal gumption overcomes physical affliction, even though I know that notion to be essentially fiction and dangerous. I live an elaborate fiction, growing ever richer with each fresh experience. One day, the sum of my continuing indiscretions will probably catch up to me. Until then, I'll continue committing sins and seeking penance.

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Weekly Writing Summary

This Grace Story recounts the sorry history of a change The Muse tried to initiate two years ago. Sometimes, forward progress moves terribly slowly until something starts *BustinLoose. This story proved to be the most popular this period!

Louis Auguste Lepère: Breaking Waves, September Tide (1901)
" … just gravity or something similar having her way with us again."
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Today's Grace Story, HeatExhaustion, finds me exhausted, dehydrated, and desiccating from unrelenting months of heat. My soul has turned into jerky.

Arthur Rothstein: Corn withered by the heat and chewed by grasshoppers. Terry, Montana (1936)
" … Grace even within this seeming wasteland."
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This Grace Story announces the start of another Mustering effort, the first real work our upcoming porch remodeling project will induce. We're identifying and focusing forces, hoping to produce some magic again. Nothing seems impossible now, so we're deliberately limiting our potential, hoping this might help make this project successful.

Master with the Mousetrap: The Two Armies at the Battle of Ravenna, 1512  (c. 1512, printed 1530)
" … we're rapidly closing that overlong-open window."
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This Grace Story finds me facilitating the FirstMeeting of our nascent little project team, which intends to remodel the Villa's front porch. I learn plenty by paying closer attention.

Max Beckmann: Meeting of the Forest Owners (1945)
"Now I understand how I will get to trust him."
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This Grace Story details an underlying cost of improvement, the goring of an ox of once great importance that won't make it to the new world, and the human response to such events: Denialing.

After a design by Jan van Orley Woven at the workshop of Daniel IV Leyniers: Procession of the Fat Ox from a Teniers Series (c. 1725)
Denial remains the first stage of acceptance.
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This Grace Story, QuickStart, finds me witnessing the demise of a false face toward the world and the start of a more authentic replacement.

Unknown English Artist: Linen, plain weave; embroidered with wool and silk in tent stitches: Harvesting(1701/25)
"What began as endless frustration …"
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This Writing Week ran this writer through a grinder. Once the interminable ends, life assumes a wholly different sense. What I previously presumed would naturally stall began to fall into place without apparent regard for my readiness. Sometimes fate surrenders, and other times, it chases me into my future. Dreams can come true in delightfully unsettling ways. This Writing Week began with a definite BustinLoose, reinforcing the notion that things tend to stay the same until some small change appears, rendering everything afterward different. Ready or not, my future arrived. I submitted my obligatory complaint about the endless summer weather in HeatExhaustion. The balance of the week began chronicling the beginnings of our front porch remodeling project with Mustering a team, convening a FirstMeeting, engaging in some of that ever-popular first stage of Acceptance: Denialing, and ending the week experiencing a thoroughly surprising QuickStart. My head is reeling with two years of pent-up change unloosing in a single Writing Week. There's plenty more to come! Thank you for following along!


©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz