a cut of the day - i

I spend too much time sleeping, time that would not have elsewhere to be placed than in devising meaningless, pregnant thoughts, deep like alluvion, heavy like manacles. Eyes shut, the mind is at peace, hopefully, a peace that is hard-fought, treasured up, too precious to be stirred at, too friable for an excited dream to break. To achieve a state of somnolence when the mind is active and phosphorescent takes more pains than fighting droopy eyelids. The latter is merely a physical tussle; the former a travail on the mind.

Now I am sitting behind the glum, fake wood table, boring into the short pass way to the flimsy door that jolts and moans whenever someone passes by from the other side; though every switch is flipped up, the lighting in the room is meager and I can barely see one scintilla boucing from any reflective surface.

I am thinking, shallow, happy thoughts—in the present day, there seem less and less of them—those pert, ebullient scums on the surface of a still, composed product. People skim them off, almost with high disgust, from the fruit of the process—the result one aims at, strives for, toils towards, pines over, pinions down, treasures up, encircles arms over, shelves for later consideration, hoards out of sense of possession, gives as much protection to as a good parent does, parades and peruses in the dark chamber of a miser. Such abhorence! Such reverse of good intentions! I do not think for one split moment any lesser the side-effect than the desired one. I always take great pleasure in charting the hinterland, straining away from packs of hustling pilgrims who thirst for worn scenery and beaten tracks. I was born in the netherworld of destiny, raised to act by the precepts of a modern life, chosen for me and not by me; and got lost in the revolutions of the wheels of fortune, whose eye seems an unmoving, cunning point plumb in the center, but still makes me giddy as if I were havering on the edge of a precipice.

I did not set out to defy, or feel obliged to oppose—I’ve only learned to see the clear image of a self that puts me on a warpath with this hateful world.