Sistine Chapel 1979

Posted on April 26, 2003 in Book of Days College Culture Travels - Past

Note: This is eleventh in a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Once, with another woman….

(What’s Judy trying to do to me? Get me in trouble?)

I stood within the heart of God;

It seemed a place that I had known;

(I was blood sister to the clod,

Blood brother to the stone.)

I found my love and labor there,

My house, my raiment, meat and wine,

My ancient rage, my old despair, —

Yea, all things that were mine.


— William Vaughn Moody

Once, with another woman, before I met and married Lynn, I walked the cul-de-sac of prophets encircling the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Each prophet sold visions from his own stall, watching the passage of tourists as they glanced over their scrolls as if they were the morning newspapers. Who will buy this wonderful religion? I thought I heard them saying to each other.

I thought naked Jesus raised his hand in blessing over the union of me and my new found friend. As the years passed and postcards went between us, she found another lover and I drifted, searching like a hermit for a cool cave in the wilderness of love.

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Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: “I can never say quite as much as I know.” (after Robert Olen Butler)