quit your tents

Here G.is pondering the fate of her soul, and I am still narcissistically hung up on my new identity as N. This is probably because I’ve been hung up on identity for many weeks now, and playing identity fantasy scenarios like: What would happen if you walked out of your life completely, changed your name, clothes, hair, and all your preferences about everything--would you be the same person, or would your true self hunker down someplace inside you like a dormant virus just waiting to attack?
Prayer is a much more sane thing to be contemplating, G. And thighs, of course. I can be walking down the street all worried about global warming and suddenly think, Oh my God, I’ve got to lose weight. It seems do-able, within reach--not as daunting as figuring out how to live a carbon-neutral life.
We were talking about dreams. Here’s one for you, G. I was in a house designed by one of my favorite professors, D., somewhere near the edge of the mountains. All the students were touring the rooms, and staying over night. After dark I realized that the forest nearby was on fire. I rushed down to the barn by the river to try to let the horses out, but they were so wild, I couldn’t get close.
Anyway, prayer. Recently I re-read one of my favorite essays by Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk":

"The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail. You may ask God for his presence, or for wisdom, and receive each at his hands. Or you may ask God, in the words of the Shopkeeper’s little gag sign, to not go away mad, but just go away. Once, in Israel, an extended family of nomads did that. They heard God’s speech and found it too loud. The wilderness generation was at Sinai; it witnessed there the thick darkness where God was…It scared them witless. Then they asked Moses to beg God, please, never to speak to them directly again.”

N.