August 22, 2006

• days go by; weeks, then months...years.  i have no idea how to
  punctuate my pauses anymore.  my life has become a mad experiment
  in choosing crisis management over risk avoidance.  or maybe the
  problem is that i've got several, incompatible ideas.

  though time is less and less clear a conception, the confusion doesn't
  seem to stop me from getting even a little older.  i try to pay
  attention most of the time, try to learn from that observation now and
  then.  change of hypotheses, or change, even, of basic assumptions
  when warranted.  always bring a clean change of basic assumptions
  with you; cause you just never know when you might need one. 
  self-consciousness continues to stifle, and the self-examination
  employed to stanch the regression sometimes pushes me further back,
  with just as much force.

  i sought a doctor for a prescription to help me quit smoking. 
  after the consultation, she ordered a blood test.  i had to
  fast:  fourteen hours without food, seventy-two without
  alcohol.  it was a week before i managed to get into the correct
  condition and then, finally to the lab.  my blood-sugar looked
  fine, which surprised me.  i was planning to blame some of my more
  nameless ills on adult-onset diabetes.  so much for that easy
  scapegoat; gone the way of chronic fatigue syndrome and so many other
  hypochondriac daydreams.  my cholesterol was less a
  surprise.  all the years of fastfood living are, as they say,
  catching up with me.  i'm not dying as quickly as i'd surmised;
  which gives unexpectedly little relief.  after fearing that it had
  all fallen to shit, now i find that i have most of my health still to
  lose.

  and it seems that the more i think i know, the less sure i am of just
  about everything.  does that feel right to you?  me neither,
  though they do say the beginning of wisdom is knowing that you know
  nothing.  i'm pretty convinced i know nothing, but i don't yet
  know it. 

  when did my life become mine?  is it even that?  i used to
  hope that finding the right woman would take the feeling away, make
  everything "right."  that somehow, in the work of fitting myself
  to someone (anyone) else, i would find my shape bettered, maybe even on
  the way to completion.  now, i just want to find a viable
  motivation to keep on keepin on; some rugged, durable vehicle to carry
  me forward.  this is not a suicidal thought, but there are days
  when it seems i'm living for next to nothing; just pushing molecules
  around in this absurd, thermodynamic dance.  wake, eat, strive,
  suffer, sleep.  and on those sorts of days, i think about husbands
  and wives and their inevitable children.  you know.  us.

  then i think about the rest of us.  what are we to do with
  ourselves?  free of the responsibilities of parenthood, single and
  almost justifiably self-absorbed, we're the ones they're jealous
  of...at least, in the more difficult moments, i'm sure.  but
  they're insured against the feeling that i've been feeling.  no
  doubt, they graduate to bigger and more harrowing fears; more
  frightening consequences, should they fail.  if, in the end, i
  find i have to admit to myself that i failed in my life (however that
  may end up being defined), no one will have been harmed but me. 
  at least, that's the plan; minimize casualties.  this, perhaps, is
  another manifestation of the fear of failure which now more than ever
  sounds like a psychobabble copout.  am i reconciling myself to a
  bachelor existence as a bid at avoidance?  probably, sure. 
  indeed, why not?  this world isn't long for itself, it
  seems.  and any children i have a hand in raising would be
  handicapped relative to the children of an increasingly crueler world.

  regardless of the psychodynamic analysis, can i find other means? 
  or does the world go round the way it does because there is no other
  way?  as time ticks onward, the possibilities dwindle and
  fade.  and everyone supposedly feels this same way.  is the
  grass really always greener?  what am i supposed to feel? 
  sometimes it seems that green itself is the illusion...even though it's
  the word "other" that i'm starting to disbelieve (while desperately
  clinging to my own illusory self).  but disbelief is still an act
  of belief, and i think it'll take just as much faith to hold onto the
  notion.

  • 2:01 am
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