As far as it goes, so
far, life is indecipherable. Common as air, or the dust from which we
came and stand upon. Knowable only in the sense we define it for
ourselves as either good or ill. Suffering is inevitable but from it
we grow. Awakening from agony making gold of common lead.
Of myths, portents and
omens I’ve had many. Ever vigilant towards the chaos of my parents
behaviors, I became a journalist. At first merely recording the
surface events of collective and personal history. A helpless witness
to the time we inhabit. It was not until now that I began to
understand that the journal I keep of my transmutation from victim to
what?
The rest period behind
me was annotated with a quiet sense of these closing days, then hours
within the shelter I once considered home; the only ‘home’ that
was mine, first and last. But my true home is myself, obviously
moving forward toward a synthesis apparent, rendered clear by every
sense within me, save the fears that I wring out hourly. Well past
the apogee of my lifetime swiftly descending towards the abyss I am
learning to fly.
While fabricating the
above paragraph I remembered a swimming hole over which I train once
passed, the tracks and bridge long gone. The buttress remained from
which I, once-in-a-while, would leap, naked into a pool filled with
youth of a range and gender astonishing to me now. Laughing they
taunted me into it, now glad they did.
“All learning has
an emotional base.” - Plato
“Familiarity breeds
contempt”
. . . save in this
instance, it is my familiarity with my life as it had been and now
expected going forward. To stay would be to die. To go forward will
be to die to my stasis . . . There was, for a time, a sense between
us, Pam and I, that I might stop writing. Disproved during my two
weeks with her in Vermont by the continuity of my manic cyclic sleep.
Up shortly after midnight and writing for a time, collecting quotes
as well; cross pollination of a sort coupled with affirmation of
dream content. I sense change in what I write and how; more deeply
personal, sincere and less didactic.
07:03
Exhausted I return to
bed humming with concerns over what is next: items and artifacts,
go—no go. Alarmed that I may have missed an important Annie Dillard
book. Unable to sleep. I lay semi conscious and then arise to flog
the keyboard again. Realizing the effort, writing, has become a life
ring in the chaos of my life. This time is traumatic and unexpected.
But then I realize had it not happened, sooner or later, I would be
found dead before my computer.
During the night an
ambulance raced into and up the complex; a frequent occurrence. My
neighbors seem, by gossip, to celebrate that I am going, not to the
hospital, undertaker, or assisted living; but to a new life. My age
seems to have crept up on me announced in many small and large ways.
Significant, difficult, but not impossible, yet.
130625 MDT 06:28
I am oddly aware that
when Pam says she loves me it’s the real-deal. In so many times
past the love others gave seemed conditional and I would distrust
their statements. Not the source but the listener, since I had no
clue what it is like to love one’s self; until this morning. The
trauma of this move, one amongst too many, has wrung out my fears.
Latent from childhood and now I will go forward fearless, clean,
newly reborn, defined and confident.
130624 MDT 01:03 life
© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All
Rights Reserved
