During last week I was in the company of several songs that played over and over and over again. It was a week where I didn’t need reason and didn’t want reasons. I found that I was often lost in half-thoughts, or mas bien, sighs and groans — they were from the heart and the heart doesn’t really think, curiously in regards to love and loss. The words of the songs met me half way and brought some sort of completion…and solace. I think by the 100th, or 500th, time that the songs began their echo, I realized that this was amounting to a wallowing and was probably bordering on the unhealthy.

Yesterday afternoon was a sunny, lazy one. After climbing a couple trees to hang a swing for some friends, I found an axe and wandered down into the woods to a tree that was recently felled. I set to work splitting the sections of the trunk into fireplace-sized pieces and stacking them to dry. I was at it for at least a solid 30 minutes, if not longer, and managed to work up a sweat. It was good to use muscles and physics. Quite therapeutic. Afterwards, with the axe leaning up against “my” stack of firewood and me collapsed in the warm grass, I thought of a quote from one of my favorite books, Till We Have Faces.

“…work and weakness are comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three — far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts (C.S. Lewis).”

As I lay there, another trickle of sweat ran down the side of my face, and I smiled. It was a good start to another week.

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