A Dirty Job

For the last several years I’ve had this recurring cyst on the side of my face. I’ve seen doctors for it, but they don’t do anything beside recommend warm compresses. In the past I’ve squeezed the heck out of it, and it disappears for awhile. So, this little cyst decided to rear its ugly head again. Once it gets to be about the size of an olive it becomes quite painful. This time it hurt so much I couldn’t squeeze it down to a smaller size myself, so Lenuţa offered to do the dirty work. One night in Lepsa I lay on a bed while she squeezed the offended mass. It hurt, but a bunch of junk came out and so it appeared that once again the cyst would disappear. As we were getting ready for bed, Lenuţa came and found me to show me something in her room. When she had been squeezing this cyst, it had exploded and the force of it had literally flown across the room and landed on an opposite wall. It was really disgusting, but we both laughed and Lenuţa insisted we take pictures of the wall. (The cyst is getting smaller, almost gone, but I’m also taking antibiotics in case it was infected.)

rosehips and berries

Jenny Jost first introduced me to the loveliness of rosehips and berries, so when I saw these I took a few pictures for her.

A Long Walk

One afternoon we took a long walk into a national park and it was very beautiful. Some of the rocks had the most interesting stripes and striations. There were also these walls of different layers of rocks. Robin took a picture of me by the river.

Rusty Wire

It’s an interesting to find beauty where new violets and barbed wire mix, where orange moss and scrappy old cement posts are tired together with rusted wire, where old fences are held together with red-orange spikes and new flowers spring out from old bed frames.

Spring Flowers

Since its spring all kind of flowers were blooming. My favorites are the little purple violets.

Odds and Ends

Here are some odds and ends…mainly odd.

poetry for liz

One morning during solitude time we were given this thought to contemplate: He makes everything beautiful in His time (from Ecclesiastes). This is what I wrote:
He makes everything beautiful in His time,
But time has mostly been my enemy
And I the victim of its freak thievish ways.
Still vacant,
Still longing.
Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick.

And if by beauty you mean
This debilitating illness
Stretching over the days of my life,
Then I’ve got more beauty than most.
In fact, mine is a criminal beauty
Because it strains against rubble layers of
Eroded ground and piled leaves,
And reaches, breaking through
For sunlit blue and sparkling green-
Life in a time where it does not belong,
Hope when all hope is lost.

And if by time you mean
A thousand years as just one day,
Then this time is not my own.
It is His slow meandering
Through centuries and millennia
And my vapored life.
And I am mixed up in a
Strange crime of scandalous beauty
And unmeasured time-
Risking it all
Because even if beauty is terrible,
And even if time cannot be contained,
It is still my hope-
If by hope you mean
Life in a time where it does not belong,
Hope when all hope is lost.