"I feel sublimely suspended in soothing sanctuary. I must be home."

On a foggy Spring morning, our home takes on the silent solitude of an abandoned medieval chapel. The so-called cathedral ceilings in the front room arch toward the heavens empty of all but severely muted light. I can hear nothing but a background buzzing in my ears. The world lays still and silent. My mind seems to take this isolation as a good enough excuse to wander around. All seems possible then, though nothing seems all that likely. I flit from chair to table then try upstairs on for size. I feel as isolated and secure as I could ever hope to feel, and satisfied with pretty much everything.

The Muse hardly ever experiences our home in this state. Her schedule steals her away before this usual slump of the day, and it never, ever appears when more than one of us inhabit the house. She revels in those rare days when I'm absent and she's home alone, by herself without any accompanying loneliness. She becomes the sole master of her fate then in ways that she could never approach when we leased more temporary digs. There, the solitude seemed somehow omitted from the terms of the rental agreement, as if the owners had packed that up and taken it with them on their preceding exile. We could arm's-length experience isolation there, but never satisfactory sanctuary solitude.

I have some time on my hands and can muster no good reason to hold anything else with them. The time lies lightly within my grasp, becoming nearly timeless through the duration. Some necessary meal, long delayed without really recognizing any delay, will soon enough intrude. A phone will ring or the fog will lift and the special space will dissipate as mysteriously as it appeared. I will be left behind, curiously refreshed, perhaps building to strangely exhausted by the reverie. Where does the resulting inspiration originate? From a sublime hollowness far above my pay grade to definitively determine. An out of body, out of time, probably out of my freaking mind moment of indeterminate duration might be the source, but I possess no senses to properly ascertain.

I accept the gift with the same humility the fog dragged in, for fog never proclaims either his arrival or his leaving. Fog simply is, a velvet muffler fuzzing up the morning, a fickle friend if really a friend at all. The great mystery seems to move in then, an almost palpable yet powerful presence. I have no defense against it. Indeed, I feel no need to defend against it. It is and therefore I am, no wondering why, how, or who. It's a fundamental truth, I suspect, folding down and enveloping me. My responsibilities stretch no further than the following moment and no further behind me than about a second ago. I feel sublimely suspended in soothing sanctuary. I must be home.

©2019 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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