Call It A Gift — Wandering Off Is Not So Terrible

I’m prone to inevitable flights of fancy. Call it what you want. I get carried away.

It cannot be helped. Neither psychotherapy nor medication have quelled my intermittent love affair with being alive. And my willful experience of being entirely human.

Each time someone dies, we are brought to our knees with awareness of the finite. And ever so slowly, we forget, because the sight is cumbersome on our shoulders and our tongues. Days flow by, as if picking up the kids and eating free samples at Publix is all there is. In forgetting, we regain our ability to be shocked each time we experience a profound loss. Stasis does return though, soothing us with petty distractions and shiny things. It always seems to take me longer to readjust to “the way things are.” I get turned around in the transitions.

I really don’t mind it. The world is arrestingly and exquisitely present in all its faces. I like to look around. Let things be. Go with what catches my eye, my ear, my pre-frontal cortex. Follow what is interesting. My problem is…too much is beautiful. There are so many stories. Like a beagle on a trail.

I’ve never felt quite permanent. I understand the winds and am frustrated by the soil. But, I may be—apart from everything else I am, I may just be a poet.

I fall in love easily. With proposals, projects, people and intriguing textures. It simply cannot be helped.

There is no cure for it.

At some point, you just switch your lenses and call it a Gift.

 

Wandering off isn’t so terrible.