Propulsion & Delay

Delayed by stillness, by slowness of stagnant ambition, by weakening immunity, by rupture of restricted will, when the scale of living is lost and we see it simply and small, a cluster of little tasks, a cyclone of chores and must-haves and small talk, and the dust of other meaningless what-nots whipped up by the wind from the clock-arms. 

Here is a mess of displaced purpose threatening decay just before being gathered; then, by the gravity of presence as referenced in instants of quiet, like the few breaths now stolen in the moments before writing to old friends, where stillness focused becomes cacophonous cadences of  mind as it flirts silently with chaos in the cosmos of abandon, cascading in dance-like whimsy through the transient structures of wild spirit.  In these moments of so called contemplation we can take that sad simplicity of mundane life and turn it over like a half-wet river stone revealing both its habitual dryness and its glossy marbled saturation.  Maybe we have learned how to harness the power of the mind, even how to use it for good and for wisdom, for the all-seeing prowess of perspective, but do we forget, then, to what purpose we use it?  Was there ever purpose?

At some point there was a gift and it was made of gold as in luxury, but it was also an inexhaustible tool and with it came the message that it not be revered but that it be used, and in those exact words, as if predicting a precious destructiveness of sentimentality; as if by attempting to preserve its beauty, we could so easily forget the beauty yet to be perpetuated by the coalescence of a creative hand and its tool, a tool broken down as it were over time, and dulled, and graying, with edges fading.  Still there beaming radiant beaten old thing, warped and wrapped in calloused palms and pads of fingers, ugly then to the ignorant eye that might only be engaged by its more youthful shine.  Brimming and saturated with the stench of beauty having happened and creation off-sprung from it in measurements counted in lifetimes.  There was our art and our love, our memories uncovered; there was the pain of learning and the shapes we took after repeated resistance and calculated surrender; there were the injuries suffered by ignorance or even then by our gregarious foolishness, and the painful calm of consistent and dependable healing.  

There we were, then, with the stagger of inebriated hubris, walking with what forgotten purpose we sometimes carried to the edges of the abyss of forgetful disregard, catching ourselves just in time to see our navigational mistake and to calm the nervous shaking hands with which we carried purpose.  To work our way back through the difference between learned habits and character flaws, the difference between true experience and memories we fabricate by repetition of wishing we had learned.  We work all the way back to where there is beauty and love and basic starlight gazing back at us from the stillness of onward time and the clusters of tiny tasks that constantly surround us.  So much simply so that familiarity escapes us every time.