E-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y

There's a play by Tennessee Williams entitled Summer and Smoke that is on my mind as I look out my window and see neither summer nor smoke.

In the story, there's a fountain in the middle of town and a beautiful angel rests in the middle of the fountain.
Little Alma, (which, you find out, is Spanish for soul) knows the angel's name.
It's carved on the bottom of the fountain, but you can't see it with your eyes because it's under the water.
you have to feel it with your fingertips.
E-T-E-K- No, not K, R-......

Eternity.
The angel's name is Eternity.

The name gives Little Alma the cold shivers.

______________________________________


Do you ever find yourself shamelessly spying on your neighbors?

I do.

There's a family across the street that is no longer a family.
For some curious reason, the wife moved out a few months ago and now lives in a house a few streets away, but in the same neighborhood.
She had one of those stickers on the back of her SUV with cartoon stick people images, one for each member of the family.
The dad has been unceremoniously scratched off of the car.
He still lives across the street with three of the kids.
They just left the house- him and the young ones. I believe she has the oldest living with her.
I wonder where he's taking them. She comes by every now and then, and they seem to remain somewhat courteous to each other, but she still undeniably lives in a different house and he is still undeniably angry and alone with the remaining children.
Their house is huge and green.
It's not an unattractive color of green, but sometimes I wonder if maybe all it came down to was that they disagreed about the color of their house.
Maybe she hated the Japanese Maple by their front door.
Maybe he cheated. Maybe she cheated.



E-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y.


"We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath-house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner?"- Fyodor Dostoyevsky


I guess we don't really know anything about eternity.
But it's comforting to know that somewhere, in the middle of some small town, there's a fountain with an Eternity angel as the centerpiece, who's name cannot be read, but can only be felt by human touch.

Direct collision, unabashed, blaring honesty.
Your eyes can trick you, but when your fingers collide with the cold, hard stone, you have been discovered.
You have been unhorsed, knocked off your high-stepping strutter of illusion, and you are no longer able to conceal yourself.

It's enough to give you the cold shivers, isn't it?

E-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y