Like a Prayer. Almost.

I wasn't going to write. I was going to drink Mint tea.

Dante and Derrida: Face to Face by Francis J. Ambrosio

I saw this tonight, sitting there saying, "yes, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking I am not real"

And I said "My God. Someone dedicated whole days to you, weeks, months! And here you are, lying there. Word for word."

I want to spend all my time with you, Dante and Derrida. I want to know, again, what you have to say. And so did your author, and so, now, do I.

I found this book at Barnes and Noble in the city, waiting for friends to show up at Union Square so we could head to St. Marks and have dinner, converse, catch up.

When I sat down to read, I couldn't put it down. Why is it, why, why, such excitement for other's words. I grab hold and my whole body feels like leaping! It cannot go anywhere, it cannot find a place, so it stirs.

I sat down and thoughts race. It's as though my brain finds a lover that was lost down a path, lost as the mist descended. And now, what I longed for, is in my hands. IN MY HANDS. The words in ribbons, silk. If I could, I'd brush my lips against them. And the voice in the words, some voice. A long lost voice. Someone is speaking.

So many of these books. How can I get my fill?

So I sat and read. And read.

I wasn't going to write tonight.

But sometimes I find that, during the day, I have moments of complete astonishment and I wish I could share it with someone. I try to share it. But people usually look at me like I'm off in a garden of hedgerows, mumbling to myself about Time, Relativity, God or Numbers.

....no point going round in circles, so long as the other has not won back that advance I shall not be able to avow anything and if avowal cannot consist of declaring, making known, informing, telling the truth, which one can always do, indeed, without confessing anything, without making truth, the other must not learn anything that he was not already in a position to know for avowal as such to begin, and this is why I am addressing myself here to God, the only one I take as witness, without yet knowing what these sublime words mean, and this grammar, and to, and witness, and God, and take....(Circumfession, 11)

And the book, Dante and Derrida: Face to Face by Francis J. Ambrosio, begins with this sentence:

How does it happen that, as persons, we are given to writing?

The tapestry unfolds from there.

And around me people wander, looking at books, drinking Starbucks, hugging their children, holding a loved ones hand.

And this is true. This happened. I was there. Reading. Looking. Loving.

So, I must leave, and purchase the book, now nestled in my purse as I walk out into Union Square.

The streets are damp. It was softly raining.

St. Marks is fabulous. It's so alive. It picks me up with two hands and parachutes me into a rush. Just to see, the lights, the tattoo shops, the people, the lovers.

A moment and then another. But I only noticed after each passed.

Someone was wearing black leggings and purple boots.

There were two poodles, walking somewhere.

And I was thinking, how can I love so much at once?

All the while, the weight of my new book inside my purse, my friends' happy chatter, and my mind circling it in joy, like children in merry-go-rounds, like dizzying the brain-waves.

It was like, I could almost touch the strings between us all. Almost. And I smiled at almost. The roundness of Al-Most. Kissing the blessing of never knowing.

Almost.

Like a prayer.