Our Lady of the Rosary

say something often enough, and its first meaning will escape you; just as words on the page dissolve into ink after overlong gazes. but that’s right and proper: each faith, each culture has its variation on the mantra, from the click of the beads to the cane of the zen master. a mental percussion upon the surface of things which precedes each excavation into the elsewhere.

and so our lives are configured as repetition, variation, assays and assaults which aspire towards order. just as the pianist, in stages, transfigures score into expression, each felt-out phrase a new step towards completion, we repeat our successes and failures: stumble, hit plateaus, advance beyond our abilities, knowing only that our learning will, in its final cadence, become a new composition.