It’s just a placeholder. Somewhere a header and beneath a footer and between and betwixt some random stumbling. He has been pottering around of late, tangled in the usual threads of fancy, maybe pedantic, maybe procrastinating, certainly diffused and confused and settling into old ways with poor manners.
The winter this year has come upon us with a hard snap, sounding like the crack of ice and the crunch of snow underfoot. Hard not to shiver, but there is some comfort in the warm shelter. From the inside looking out, cosiness abounds. In ways it is a time to retreat, from the scorched summer flesh, from the flies and high sun and melting roads and outdoors. Not that much melts around here bar the price of property or the knowing smiles of bankers and developers. A great balloon of certainty released into the vast sky and blown until kingdom came and now lost and limping, deflated, calling time and claiming blamelessness.
Now getting ahead of oneself. Get over it. Or more precisely, get over oneself. All of those pretty plans and only one plot to fill, a day dallied down the drain, an evening balanced on cushions giving little repose, a night scratching calmly and chaining together clumsy phrases. No plan, no piercing punctures in the canopy of dreams, no global satisfaction and sharing in the meaning of things. Rattling away at the keys, fingers moving like the ground beneath her feet, as she leaves, departs, and is gone. It could have been a good story, had I but the confidence to take the reigns and not just follow the accidents that fill in the spaces. God bless the will and its intentions. Wings shorn, tasting supermarket chicken, stranded in the isles of endless choice, reaching too close to close the gap between the cheap and the essential, and bounded by the end of decision making. Bounded by the emptiness of pure choice, a dice rolling in a gust of wind, and toppling from some direction to where it now lies. That is where we are- here!
Style unknowning. Self awareness can be an acute and ugly light. Searching for self truth can create its own deceptions. Meaning is only ever a muddle, and the onion’s peeled layers of doubt are ever repeating fractals, warped and wrapping themselves around some entangled core. Light, bending, time, ending, the flutter of an electron’s heartbeat, the muttering of that wino with his frozen beard and listing leftwards along the icy pavement. Unsteady feet, unsteady mind, ah sure I can at least share some of that, I too am blown by a sonofabitch wind and scuttle from warmth to warmth. But worlds apart, anon.
Opening a stuck lid by forcing it between the frame and the door. Gather together what thoughts we have left and harness some leverage. The law of the leavers, do they flee with impatient step or fight back tears as they wade through airport and foreign tongues, bags and belongings trundling over the many options. But no worries, no sweat, no pain no gain. The salt on their skin will not have time to crust and will be washed off by some distant water.
It is a complex thing, to be simple. It is a brave thing to be brief. Life is a carousel at night in a huge empty field, a short flurry of loud light and colour spinning in an ocean of darkness. And nations are but tags and forms and familiarity, countries are from here to some map’s edge, and where I make my bed does not define me. People are people are people, and my drift to the general, though persistent, is in constant need of endless revision.
I do not know how to finish, just like I did not know how I began. Persist, persist, transcend as best you can and remember that your mind is a part that can touch the whole. In the morning the markets will open and shares in your belief in my faith in our fate in this world will rise and fall, rise and fall- a cycle of invisible buyers and sellers, a library of jargon and distinction, a chaotic investigation and creation of speculation, and still further removed from the cave, the light, the shadows, and the treading of my cold feet.