The Hallelujah that counts

I had the genius idea of coming to Bella Terra to write. I could see myself after a preliminary dose of poetry sidled down in the corner of the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble--remember when I used to hate Starbucks I think to myself , not unkindly--apologetic in my own judgment of humanity, how to be human?  Relinquish unto the aspects deigned most unacceptable. I think how liberals or new agers are some of the most judging righteous people I know and I check myself.  My own isolated sanctity's.  An amen that I at least recognize some of my own small vengeance's.  That I am not active in at least some of my worst prejudices any more.

The morning I spent in the coffee shop near my house.  Writing poems til it moved in me that it was time to leave, that my novel was ready to speak and in that...precisely why I had to come here.  On the way I followed the singing to a used book store.  Do you have Emerson's Self-Reliance I asked cheery and foolish for all he knew.  No he shook his head slowly but I didn't even listen and asked instead where the poetry was.  Beside the poetry was "Literature", it is a British voice that pronounces that in my head, silly as I am on a sunny Sunday...I scoured the Li-trit-chore section one by one as if with metal tonged comb.  Nothing.  He was right.  I surrendered and let my bag fall to the floor and cozied in to study the poetry books when the first one jumped off, surrounded by the hallelujah light, Emerson's Collected Poems and Works.  What a find.  I handed over my ten dollars.

Here at the Starbucks at Bella Terra the line was so long and people so many you couldn't even see the front door. Mos Def on the stereo maybe, hard to say.  I spotted a dirty crammed table with straw wrappers and some kind of sticky mess visible from as far as I was away.  I headed towards it, a little man with a beak-nose and a beard of Jewish grey slid in and pretended to ignore me.  I hated him so much in that moment before I remembered to laugh and loosen up.   Just wait and be I reminded myself and within the ten minutes it took for my drink a table in the middle of the room opened up.  I promised myself that if someone hopeless and wandering passes by I'll share my unused part of the table top and push a chair their way.

Why is it I can flow so easily in so many sections of my life?  Why why why can I so easily open in to and happily contribute to the ongoing daily dialogue of the larger day?  And yet still want to force the littlest details, til I feel absolutely nuts?

Ask why, cuz you're gonna I told Erin on the phone this week.  But only ask that of yourself for one sec, don't waste too much of your time.  Don't focus on the why when it's the Hallelujah that counts.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.  Halllle freakin lujah, I say.