I can’t say how it happened exactly. It was one of those incredibly rare days when I could not get out of bed. Friends, even when I’m sick, as I was all last week, I usually rise early. I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t get out of bed because I was down. One of them happened a couple of months ago.
Gravity felt exceptionally heavy. I couldn’t stop crying. Starving but too hungry to sit up.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
I tried all my favorite podcasts. Neither the deep nor the shallow moved me. Listened to prayers from the Divine Office—nothing. Friends texted. My fingers wouldn’t work to text back.
Then I stumbled upon a 45-minute interview with Christopher Ricks, who with Jim McCue, edited “T.S. Eliot: The Poems” (vol. 1 and 2). The more quotes from Eliot’s poetry I heard, the lighter I felt. I did not want to be moved, yet they moved me.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
By the time the interview was wrapping up, I was up. Washing lettuce for lunch. Gravity lessened its hold.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
I wouldn’t even say I always like T.S. Eliot. But his words are there, everywhere, like gravity is there, moving the unmovable.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
Where’s that peach?
(For more on T.S. Eliot, I recommend Glynn Young’s article about encountering Ricks and McCue discussing Eliot and their two-volume set at the British Library.)
