Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Fragrance

Driving down the road to Mass at 5:30 this morning, I was thinking about how the road is a different place in the light than it is in the dark. In the daytime, a good part of the road runs through fields and it feels wide and open; in the early morning darkness, it's an intimate little circle of light in the middle of a mystery. As I was engaged in all these lofty thoughts, there began to seep into my awareness the lovely, ineffable fragrance of a dead skunk. Actually, it might have still been alive. It was too dark to see if there was a corpse. There's nothing like that funky, musty signature perfume to bring you down to earth.

A bit later I was thinking about how this odiferous experience reminds me of what you might call the adolescence of my spiritual journey. I was about 30, I think, and I was wonderful. I was so holy. I was holier than you, I'm sure. And after I had been roaming around the earth seeking to do what damage I might, one day I noticed a kind of  funny smell. I would have liked to have ignored it, but, you know, that skunky aroma tends to stick around for a while. 

After that, I spent some years in what I think of as my Robbie Burns period, you know, O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us. I actually prayed that one time. It was an answered prayer and it was truly dreadful, but salutory. It would probably make a good examination of conscience now and then. 

Over the years, I thought that as I grew older the skunkish visitations would grow fewer and further apart. Well, that was a sad misconception. It seems that they have multiplied exponentially, but I think I might just have a more finely-tuned skunk sensitivity. More than likely, this is good. Sometimes I actually am able to avoid them. I hear something scraping, scrabbling, and scrooging around the metaphysical corners of my mind and I back quietly away before the worst happens.


AMDG



8 comments:

  1. very funny to have God talking to you through dead skunks

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  2. I don't suppose he lets anything go to waste.

    I've really been wanting to write something funny, but nothing would show up.

    AMDG

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  3. well, I thought it was very funny Grumpy

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  4. So did I.

    As it happens I smelled a skunk a few nights ago while driving. "funky, musty"--yes--it's really a hard smell to describe. I always think at first that it's not really so very bad, but then I try to imagine it much stronger, and not being able to get away from it.

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  5. I just hope I never get it on my person. The guy that used to own my house said that one spring he was walking toward the chicken house and a mother skunk and three babies strolled out of the building, turned around all together and sprayed him.

    AMDG

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  6. The family that sprays together....

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  7. Bad image.

    Boy, I passed a fresh one on the way to work today. I was afraid I'd smell that way all day.

    AMDG

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