This and things like it

08/08/2005
5:41 AM

Five minute: Wrapped up in brown paper, tied with a red ribbon and taken for a ride in a shiny blue car. We step off the platform and emerge from the depot ten miles down the line from where we started. We’ll get off here and walk the planks to the road. Down and walk. Up the dirt road to the hills and off to the little bit more. If you did, they asked me. And the answer is not what I expected. I’m still not sure if it’s true, but it’s more true than the old answer. The muscles tighten as we carry our bags up the hill. This mode of escape is an old one, but the idea is seen new this time. To instead of from. This is significant. Though the from remains a heavy dealer in gravitons, we always know what we wanted, though the water is muddy today, we’re going on up the hill. I am my own. And that is where we start and end. Perhaps there is another way. Perhaps we have left something that still works. Perhaps we have not foiled ourselves again. - 5:47 AM

Five minute: The cat, the mouse, the too long response time. We put on our running shoes and do what they tell us to do. It’s how they keep themselves in a state of constant fear, constructing a philosophy that demands constant shouting to drown out the ever-present specter of doubt. But this is at it is and only has a minor voice inside, the rest is this: that I trap myself and try to figure the way out. That I continue to defy their commands and admonitions. I am my own. I am myself. I’m three cents down and five cents up, ten thousand more to go and not a dollar to spare. The questions become ones of next. What is it that we want when this bit is over? What’s the next to begin? Not the wild and unsupported dreams, but the better small hope, the attainable peace. There walk the tall man, there the short, both stride the way with one foot always in the grave. We’re just this. It’s the spooky things that make us laugh, that make the weight less so. Pick it up and go, walk the dust to the woods that overlook the lake. Find the tomorrow worth living in. Make toys of heavy things. We get it only once. The worst possible outcome is that, no matter what, we’ll be damned. The best possible outcome is that, no matter what, we’ll find our way to heaven. This side of the fog, we merely cease to be. - 5:57 AM

Ten minute: Stand up and see what it is that you’ll do with the last few seconds. We live from tick to tick. They catch us tick to tick. We escape tick to tick. We figure out why from tick to tick. In the end, we’re trying to escape the zombies. In the end, we have met the zombies and he is us. The dead inside, walking down the street to the grocery store and we do not want to be him. The dead inside, screaming loudly, walking down the street to church and we do not want to be him. The living. We the living. To be them. To find the bloom of it in the base of the spine, the pit of the stomach, the bottom of the balls. To live so full that the universe explodes around you in a war whoop of rushing blood to hands and feet ready to play. Open wide and laugh the weight back to the place of the dead. He arose and ascended to heaven where he sits at the right hand of God the Father from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I love those switches of tenses. We walk here on the dry ground, up the hill to the possible peace. Will it work? They say that’s what the strong ones ask. So I require it of myself when I feel I can. Dream. Dream on and on, but someday, you’ve got to do something. What is the something worth doing? If you had your cottage by the water in the woods, what you do? And he’s right when he says I’d want to Do something. I could only sit for so long before I’d need to Do. And I suppose that this is what I’d do. This and things like it. So I’m not as far off as I thought. But to know is one thing, to feel it in your bones is something else. So we pick up our bags, step off the planks and start again to walk the dusty road up. There’s got to be a pony in there. Somewhere. - 6:12 AM