Packet Fever

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMy3AbpkYvw]

I lock the doors–turn out the lights–set the dog on the FedEx man–the mail spills out of the box unopened–still and relentlessly the packets arrive–I dream of escape (motorcycles, the road)–I kick the dog–I kick Jonah–I watch endless episodes of House–I think I’m ill–I go to Best Buy and look at large screen TVs–I eat ice cream–I start drinking at 10 a.m.–

A monk once said to Abba Philemon:
I am very conscious of how my mind
constantly wanders all over the place,
drifting after things that are no good for it.
What can I do, father, to be delivered?
Abba Philemon hesitated and then replied:
This is a remnant of the obsessions your external life inflicts on you.
It still troubles you because you have not yet
reached the heights of perfect longing for God.
The longing for the experience of God
has not yet fallen on you like fire.

—Abba Philemon. The Discourse. from Philokalia (adapted from the John Anthony McGuckin translation)