cathedrals, catheters and catharsis

What a great word... cathedral.  But say it too many times and my mind moves on to other words like catheter ... and catharsis ... and ... other words I can't think of right now beginning with "cath". (Catherine.)

A reviewer of the PBS documentary, Cathedral (by David Macaulay) has this to say: "Next to the Doric temple the structure that most ineffably captures the concept of "purity" is the Gothic cathedral. With their soaring spires and flying buttresses these Gothic marvels incarnate the eternal human yearning for the infinite and the undefinable."

The eternal human yearning for the infinite and undefinable.

I understand that.

This is something to ponder and investigate.

acutely aware

My mind feels acutely aware of itself today and fragile delicate fragile and on the edge of its awareness, painfully sharp, not in terms of thinking sharp but physiologically - physically - sharp. Not acute and accurate but self-aware of itself as a material mental spiritual entity. Terribly, uncomfortably present. Frightened. Burdened. Pressed in and pressed out. Acutely alive.

I would like to be less alive.

And yet wasn't it Elinor Dashwood who faced a revelation - wanted one even - and here it is, the revelation. I feel like I am living someone else's life, not mine, and I can't keep up.  Can't get my arms around it, can't define it, can't want it.

Harriet Vane would never have done this to herself, picked a life in which she couldn't keep up.

Would she?

I need to slow the periphery down so that I can have slow, useless days where others are occupied but I am not. Where I can walk amongst their busy happiness and look at them like one might study Greek columns in a church or gargoyles even.

I want to contemplate more old buildings, more cathedrals.  I need pictures of stained glass rose windows.  A pointer to ethereal beauty within solid concreteness, nothing that is writhing out into the fully unchecked, yet nothing, over centuries, completely unchanged. I would like that kind of solidity to exist somehow physically within me, within my brain; and I would live fluid inside, floating.

Yep: I need a cathedral.