Musing On...

I can imagine dragging you

along

Down conversations you have nothing to contribute to with friends of mine you could never relate to

Thoughts forming essays you could never edit for me

Movies you find boring or else didn’t read nearly as much into

Entire worlds you might find fascinating

but still never know as i do

And I’d hate you for it

And you’d hate me for it

And you’d feel small

And I’d find you small

And in a world I might’ve stayed

despite it all

And you would’ve kept me

And lied

And cheated

To feel big and be smaller still

And what good would it do?

So for now I’ll know better

For both of us

And I’ll spare you

And I’ll spare me

Even though your shoulders are that broad

And your smile that broad

And youre so kind, right now

And so keen, for now

I’ll spare

Let you imagine

And me know

Be like the cat

Self aware but unselfconscious

Neither too proud to ask for affection

always tight when you're trying to write something and your subconscious critiques by ear-worming old Lauryn: 

"...loop over and over,

claiming that you got a new style, 

your attempts are futile, 

whew child,

you're puerile,

brain waves are sterile,

you can’t create, 

I write something that makes people think I may be a writer worthy of reading. They look me up. They find my twitter... 

Actually, it’s fine. My fear is that they’d find me inane, but, whatever. I liked almost all of my tweets when I wrote them.

I happen to genuinely think I’m funny.

Other people think I’m funny, too.

I’m writing something now,

A review,

And objectively, I can say:

It’s overly wrought

Convaluted

Structually lacking

Its sentences are too long, and comma splice heavy

Stylistically it’s repetitive

It’s overly indulgent and too in love with itself.

Who knows what will come of it?

I’m trying to retreat so far back behind my eyes

Not quite to the beginning of time

I set my sights low

cause i knew I wouldn't fucking do it

And I didn't

And the winter will mark another year

Then it will be two

In which

it continues

I continue

in a house full of people you love,

a family you chose.

Make the silence of their sleep your prayer.

i have been wondering when i will 

arrive 

ive been hoping it will be handed to me. 

i guess, I’ve been hoping that the ladder will be brought to me and that my work will be the climbing. 

instead, it seems, i will have to both do the work of finding the right path to the right steps and then too develop the muscle to climb. 

i am more nowhere than I’ve ever been, i think

perhaps things always feel more acute in the present but the stakes of nowhere-ness seem now more severe, significant, than before

what is time in the scope of Time

and still, now is not nothing. 

what i’ve been dancing around is this: 

I know what is different about where I am now

i am less spiritually grounded than I have ever been before

less engaged, less invested 

less sure 

and also doing nothing to explore that uncertainty 

it is not my uncertainty i find unacceptable 

disappointing 

it is the lack of exploration

it is that i’ve stopped asking questions of my faith 

stopped exploring my idea of The Divine

it’s there. 

but right at the point when my faith began to shatter, when the ground of it began to fall out and could have made way for something new 

i stopped digging 

i stopped reading the thing that made sense enough, shook me hard enough to break through

stopped 

and then here is the part II of the thing I’ve been avoiding 

and loathing 

and then avoiding all over again 

the first was the what: that I am afloat in a un-formed faith 

the second is the why: because I was afraid 

am afraid? 

i dont feel afraid 

not now. not anymore 

so what then? 

my fear gave way to laziness? 

not apathy, i feel far more than that 

but laziness? sure 

which surely must be worse

fear at least is active 

fear at least can be empathised with. pitied. 

but laziness? 

deplorable.

let me be, please, anything but deplorable. 

not anything. but surely not deplorable. 

okay

so then 

what: a transformation in Faith 

why: it doesn’t matter anymore 

let me start there then, at the what. 

--

and wouldn’t that be such a great place to end???

but here’s the thing

it is now 10:30 in a sleepy house 

upstairs, Liyu asleep in my room, Teddy asleep in his

down here with me Aunty Tibeb and Melat drowsily half watching some B list Black Christmas movie (it is late June, for reference)

and me, here, after a day of having accomplished little more than nothing in the sense of productivity, of output, suddenly willing, motivated, wanting, contemplating doing, this little something, this potentially inconsequential interrogating here. where will this go tomorrow morning? when there will always be a thing. tomorrow: still visiting family. next tuesday, when they’ve gone: what? there will always be a thing. 

it’s been...how long of “things”? sure, what is time in Time but 

all I’ve been alive for is time. so time within the scope of my time thus far is surely 

surely 

something. 

alas. 

what i have is this: 

the what.

what more can i do but begin there 

i cannot intellectualise beyond myself. there is the what and it is a big What 

may i have the sense, the wherewithal the will 

to begin 

and journey from 

I’ve been finding myself thinking the word “revel” a lot.

Let us pray it is a premonition.