Skip to main content

St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, LA


I loved the face of this angel. In person he looked straight into my heart. But I did not feel like he was a Catholic, more of a Greek god.


I loved his arm. Broken, repaired with marble? It looked like a wound.


The Confessional. It looks like a guillotine.

When I was younger I was enamored of Catholicism, like the sensualist Modernists were. The dark, perfumed sanctuary decorated with decadent art. The suffering, the drama.

However, my feelings are different now. I almost didn't say this, but this is my journal. I can say what I want to. I don't like Catholicism, and I never will have an immature sensualist fascination with it again. Guilt hung on my heart like lead as I looked at the stations of the cross high above me, images of Jesus suffering cartoon-like at the hands of villains. Then, dismay. I muttered some disparaging things but didn't say a hundredth of how I felt.

My heart is free. God made it so. I felt those pitiful faces and bowed forms in painting and sculpture attempting to bind it in misery. I hate guilt and self-imposed mortification. I hate some things I used to love. I see them differently now.                

Popular posts from this blog

New place

This is the second lunch I've passed in this downtown Barnes and Noble. I like this place. If I worked here I would undoubtedly come here for lunch. It is going to be hard forfeiting the hour and fifteen lunches, but normal life is less stressful than this. I am not cut out for city living. I still had driving troubles today. These one way streets are so difficult. I don't understand parking, and I like finding locations that I "cain't miss" from the road. Everything is so densely packed. Everyone else seems to have walked somewhere, but I celebrate lunchtime as the time to get as far away from the work as possble with as much comfort as possible, and Subway, I'm sorry, is not comfortable. Last night I slept from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. when I had to call in. I have slept so much lately, but I feel in such a muddle. My head is pounding. If I were home I don't think I could put myself together enough to do any of my things. I really long to do things, too. Writing...

Gervaise

1789 Gervaise was the first one to enter Delphinia's bedchamber. Golden light spread through a crack in the white curtains, throwing a lacey pattern onto the silk-shrouded bed. Delphinia lay in the finest guest bedchamber in the castle. It had been converted from the room of the dowager Markgrafin upon her death. Though Gervaise's entrance was not quiet, there was no stirring in the midst of the great bed. Gently Gervaise laid down the tray of chocolate and great cinnamon rolls and approached the bed, pushing aside the curtain to view the prone figure there. Delphinia lay in a contorted state, her limbs drawn up against her protectively, looking like a frightened child, though she was in the depths of sleep. Her hair, dark-colored, the finer strands gilded and curling around her face and brow, was mangled, freed from its pins without a combing. She wore a loose white shift, no nightgown. Gervaise was not offended by disorder or carelessness, but Delphinia's disarray gave he...