why must I always be off-kilter?
I must be at constant unrest, out of balance, anxiously scanning the horizon, considering the options at any moment. I must be challenged by constant pushing into obstacles, by taking on tasks unbidden, and the unraveling of knots and tangled apparatus. Fighting exhaustion, engaging confusion, riding out pain and despair.
Why is this? We walk by falling forward, and dance against an intransigent gravity. Why bother? The often cited aspect of shark locomotion – if they stop moving, they die. Of course I won’t die, but perhaps part of me will falter, fade, turn inward.
Like those traumatized into numbness, who cut themselves to feel again, I must at all times be leaning into the spinning stone that grinds my tissue and contemplate the terror of being alive and thus be confirmed alive.
I laugh at the petty attacks by everyday foes, by inanity and insanity. I can see clearly at all times how things are and how they must be, and how they are not these things. My five faulty senses are engorged by the world of everything, and I sort and categorize and process at top speed, slipping and sliding over the surface of berms layered with times and places and people and things. I defiantly motion for more. Bring it on. Give me all you’ve got. Make my muscles sore and my mind bewildered and I will surface the ocean of these endless miseries and scream at the void even as I gasp for breath. They can’t kill me. Until, of course, they do.
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