ADVENT 1995

12/03/1995:  in being caught in a triangle walking out of a dark room in the early morning, a foot gets wedged between an ironing board in the doorway, tilted against the closet; and in the evening, while thinking that the mind must be elevated to observe and understand metaphysical circumstances, not a mind mired in the ordinary, when suddenly a gas station flag comes to life, at first as a backward “C”, then two more flutters, the last with the cross inside the “C”;   

12/04/1995:  in the brilliant full moon, swallowed by a cloud in the form of an “E”, an epsilon, a shroud of the sins of the world;

12/05/1995:  in the two nearby billboards on I95 turnpike at one end of Route 8, one with labels of a clothing manufacturer and the other of plain blue;     

12/06/1995:   in the nearly full moon, shining through a sky of cloud imitating the words of Isaiah in the reading at Mass this day: “On this mountain, he has destroyed the veil which used to veil all peoples, the pall enveloping all the nations” (25:7);    

12/07/1995:  in the queen of chess that lies on a chess board pointing to the Holy Bible, beside a murder mystery by James Cain, “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, with a skull on the cover and a man in the electric chair;

12/08/1995:  in the three scraps of white paper in a line pointing to the tree, barren of leaves and the clear, blue morning sky in the space between two buildings of the Stamford Hospital and above the corridor connecting them;

12/09/1995:   in a sign in the snowy morning on the parking garage of the New Haven Veterans Coliseum:                

NE
CC

the top half in white and bottom half in blue, the “E” for earth and “Christ crucified”, but wondering what the “N” meant and realizing it meant “needy” after not having enough cash for a bagel for lunch, or, if sounded out: “Knee. See? See?”;              

12/10/1995:  in the rubber band on a white pad on a desk twisted as the infinity symbol, with   a zero on the nearby adding machine and “12/10 Sun 12:06” on the telephone; and, later, at Mass, hearing several people cough immediately after wondering whether there is a sign in sound, when a baby laughs; and, still later, 7 sevens are displayed on an electronic calculator, together with a 6, that earlier had a zero;      

12/11/1995:  in the 9 tables in an auditorium in the Holy Family Hospital in Massachusetts in the shape of a “U”, with 32 (4 + 4 x 4) chairs; beneath 32 overhead lights, with 9 (3 x 3) vents on either side and 9 windows, each with a wreath; and, later in the evening, after taking the wrong road by mistake, as if pulled down Route 93 to meet a gigantic white bird with wings extended, perhaps an ethereal eagle or maybe even an angel, hovering over the highway just outside of Providence, Rhode Island, a smoky apparition from a burning building by the side of the road, on the day when a dear friend was buried;

12/12/1995:  in the 3 triangles, two in the Lady of the Assumption Church, the Priest, the Eucharist Minister and the reader on the left, and the couple in one pew with a lady sitting in the pew directly the space between them, and later in the Waterbury Hospital, three stacks of torn paper thrown at a waste paper basket but landing on the floor;

12/13/1995:  in the Shippan Section of Stamford, a neon sign with the “Ship” and the  “Dry Cleaners” under it are lit while the “Pan” and the “Launderers” is unlit, and at Mass in the church across the street, the second candle of the Advent Wreath sends out 7 rays;  

12/14/1995:  in the Norwalk Hospital Cafeteria in the comment: “Take your eyes off the road to flick your ashes or to adjust the radio and boom; you hit the guy in front of you”; and, later, in the evening, in an ice storm, the cars with white lights on the left are stopped on the ascent of a hill, the cars with red lights on the descent are moving;  

12/15/1995:  on the 2 red stop lights of which one turns green, while the other is out; and, moments later, 3 flashing yellow, overhead, caution lights with another neon sign on the left with a red “A” lit, but the “mity” being unlit;   

12/16/1995:  in the blanket of snow on the trunk of a car that has slipped off and hung about a foot over the side and the rear, in defiance to both the sun and the earth’s gravity, in contrast with Elijah in the daily scriptural reading, whose words were like a flaming furnace and who 3 times brought down fire;

12/17/1995:  in the last 3 leaves of a bush, in a triangle, fluttering in the wind, struggling to be free;

12/18/1995:  in the car with 1 head light, followed immediately by another with 4;  

12/19/1995:  in the highway sign with snow covering the bottom of the “4” of the “40 mile per hour” limit sign, leaving the triangle the zero exposed;

12/20/1995:  in the large snow bank of newly plowed snow with a “C” carved into it as though by a giant finger; and, later, in the office, on an electronic light activated calculator, seven zeros and a 3 appear;

12/21/1995:  in the thought of a sign seen on 12/17/1995, “Be kshire”, the “r” or “Berkshire” being unlit:
Be
kind,
sympathetic,
humble,
intimate,  
righteous,
enduring;

12/22/1995:   in the two patches of cloud on the shortest day in the year in the distance in the early morning sky, through which a bird flies, amid a chorus of bird calls; and, in the two objects at a Texaco gas station, the smaller, black container with “ash” on it and beside it a taller, silver cylinder, with “vac”, the vacation between terms, the sum of the positions of the letters in the alphabet is 28 for the former and 26 for the latter, with the sum a second time is 1 (1 + 0 = 1) for the former and 8 for the latter; and in the billboard advertisement with 25% missing and shortly thereafter on the other side of the turnpike a pickup truck with 3 up right cylinders in the trunk and a front hood open at a 30 degree angle;

12/23/1995:   in the 3 telephone calls within minutes from an 88 year old mother-in-law, who couldn’t remember the first and then the second call;

12/24/1995:   in the 3 leaves that fall on the bed room floor from a small crack in the window, settling after fluttering about to form a perfect triangle after a pillow is tossed onto the floor; and in a belt over the arm of a chair as an omega beside another on the floor as an “A”, and between them, the corner of the rug, folded back in a perfect triangle;