She’s so high, high above me…

As I mentioned yesterday, I have finished reading Fire Within and legally acquired Life, St Teresa’s autobiography of a sorts. I just barely begun it today.

In seemingly unrelated news, I went to get a much needed haircut. While sitting there, I heard a song that I could not catch the lyrics of, but somehow felt I really wanted to find out. It turned out to be the somewhat misleadingly named “She’s so high” – it actually has nothing to do with drugs. It is obviously about some guy who is befriended by a woman who is superior to him in every measure humans in this world can think of. A song could hardly be less relevant to me, who would not now want to be joined to a human if I could, nor could if I wanted to. I’ve been playing the song like 20 times now. OK, make that 30.

But somehow I can’t believe
That anything should happen
I know where I belong
And nothing’s gonna happen

‘Cause she’s so high
High above me, she’s so lovely
She’s so high, like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc or Aphrodite
She’s so high, high above me…

It amuses me no end. I know it wasn’t meant that way. But why should the Devil have all the good music?

Anyway, I take the company of St Teresa over Cleopatra any day. St Teresa is really awesome! And in this book, she really tries to show herself as a human of flesh and blood, not some saint in the sky with diamonds. It is pretty clear however that the vague sins of her youth are such as most people would consider utterly harmless. That doesn’t say much, of course; most of us are unspeakably coarse.

And that’s what I mean when I say she’s so high, high above me. Like somewhere in the eight dimension or something, I imagine. Anyway, I feel I could not catch up to her in a million years. (This is quite likely true as well.) Why do I even bother? I am honestly not sure.  But it does bother me, like a long forgotten memory triggered by a faint smell, wordless, images too fleeting to catch but a sense of recognition.