“Leopards break into the temple and guzzle the chalices empty; this happens
repeatedly; eventually one can predict that it will happen again, and it becomes
part of the ceremony.” -Franz Kafka
There’s a TikTok or short video or something I saw the other day and can’t find again (why does my screen refresh when I don’t want it to refresh and not refresh when I want it to refresh?) in which some guy is crabbing with gritty authority about a pothole he hits every day on his way to work, wondering how he might avoid it for a few trips, then forgetting about it the rest of the day, until the next encounter. After repeated encounters with the pothole, it becomes part of the daily journey, and then it becomes something that causes mindfulness. He refers to the pothole as an unexpected “spiritual hotspot”.
I’ve been thinking about spiritual hotspots a lot lately, after walking the boundary stones of the District of Columbia. Here in Chicago, there have been some irreverent spiritual hotspots around which the citizens rally and celebrate—the alligator that dwelled for a time in Humboldt Park lagoon named, affectionately, “Chance the Snapper” (he’s living grouchily in Florida now, I hear), the Chicago Rat Hole this past January, a hole shaped like a rat in a sidewalk in Roscoe Village that had existed for years, but when discovered by social media, shrines were set up until a local, tired of the crowds and, apparently, rat-hole weddings, filled it in with plaster. And lately, a clear plastic purse full of Lucky Charms cereal that shows up in odd places, then disappears—then appears somewhere else entirely! Nothing is forever. Spiritual hotspots are gifts of grace that exist for a moment in both place and time, like an eclipse, or a nip slip.
Lately in Loyola Park some graffiti artiste has taken to drawing pictures of vermin on the sides of smelly dumpsters, and the first time I saw the rat, I giggled. The second time I passed it, I took a picture and then discovered the cockroach. Then I started looking for other arty vermin. A pilgrimage to personal spiritual hotspots.
Sometimes a night artist writes something and it as if that stranger knows my soul, or at least my fears, my fears pretty much being the chalk outline around my soul.
Meanwhile, somebody lost their reading glasses and they are hanging on a dead branch in case the owners pass by daily, the way I do, and I hope there will be a reunion of peepers, and as I approach that branch, I realize: spiritual hotspot.
P.D. James said that certain perfect days in autumn occur more frequently in memory than in life. It seems to me, walking through the landscape of lake and shore is like walking through memory, both short and long. Memory of the past summer, and memory of autumns past. This coming Sunday morning, at the autumnal equinox, the dog and I will pass, at sunrise, gaggles of earth-lovin’ kids huddled together wrapped in crappy blankets, all scraggly and reefer-reeking after an all-night drum circle, “o-wow!”-ing that orb that even-splits the year, this fleeting moment. Spiritual hotspot.
I’d love to hear about your spiritual hotspots. Also, if anybody out there knows that short video about the pothole with the grouchy guy saying “spiritual hotspot”, please let me know. The video itself, it would seem, is a spiritual hotspot, come and gone.
1. The secret place under the cedar tree where Yuritzi stores her best sticks.
2. A shop in Reims that advertises truffles, that I always thought was a candy shop, until last year when I took a good look and saw that it is a shop that SELLS TRUFFLES. Whole ones, big and small. I really hope it's still there. It is definitely in the power vortex of hot spots.
3. The bar in Reims where a small group of knitters gathers to knit and have cocktails.
Alas no one in my vicinities has ever hung a transparent purse full of Lucky Charms for me to find.