Olga's Poetry & Thoughts

I have started reading a book called "Help, Thanks, Wow." It is basically a how-to guide for prayer, geared towards spirituals and skeptics alike. The book tries to answer the difficult question: How do we pray? The author, Anne Lamott, recalls her childhood, growing up in an atheist household where only rock bands were worshipped and the New York Times was a temple. Feeling alone, lost, and caught in existential despair, Lamott "snuck off" into the attic to pray to God for help. Prayers for help humble us. They make us feel that the world is out of our control. The cosmos does not act in accordance with our wishes, and our prayers are not answered in the way we would like them to be. Thomas Merton's prayer reads: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me" (Lamott 33). Just by reading the "Help" chapter, I realized why I have trouble with uncertainty. Because it is admitting defeat. It is admittin...

I had a dream that I was walking through a deserted subway train terminal. The hallways were winding and there were no direction signs anywhere, no maps, and no points of reference. It did not seem that late at night, but every underground store was closed. The place smelled like the eerie remains of all the souls who passed through the terminal that day: baby powder, cinnamon buns, vanilla scented cigarillos, sweaty underarms after working a long day at the construction site... the place smelled, most of all, like aching ligaments and the longing to drown oneself after spending a day sitting in an office. Drown in whiskey, or an odd romance, or insanity. Everyone who passed through the bus terminal that day had wanted to drown. I could also hear the echoes of stale voices, which were happy just a few hours before, but now seemed like ghosts. Children's laughter, recovering addicts spitting loudly into the garbage cans, the rusty wheels of old strollers squeaking through the windin...