Saturday, July 11, 2009 4:31:53 AM
today will be the last day of my binge.
i can feel it. i’ve been dragging through my life this week, someone else’s life, all scheduled and strained and small. looking through people, over shoulders as they speak, holding my own tonsils still which swell and threaten some sudden surge of weeping. i watch my own thoughts, projected like a movie playing over every cell of me, and reluctantly practice not naming; just existing here.
but today i have raced through my senses, my history, on this bike. today i crawled inside of myself and lifted out of the fog, pushed my face into the air and made wind.
it is good to breathe a little.
it’s surprising how desensitized people are to distance. how practiced we are at condoning aloofness, witnessing each other move through the world without feeling, sharing, connecting. i realize that i am also guilty of this, of course, and think of my own integrity.
it is time for me to be more real. the friend i have always wanted.
i think of this as i tear through the evening on two wheels, a route i’ve never taken. cherry creek bike path all the way to the health center; i am mapping my way to work. the sun drips thickly, mocking time, and there are shadowy creeks and fractured stones and a thousand plodding bends littering my path. the air is wet and warm, the mutual breath of so many wandering animals, and wandering suburbanites, and very small wandering bugs. i want to take a picture each time i blink, and lay every image across the floor for strangers to see.
everything is beautiful.
i want to see the world.
but there are lots of real worlds. because there are lots of different lenses. and a life that looks irresponsible/boring/chaotic to one, may seem liberating/tranquil/eccentric to another, with a million versions in between.
nevertheless,
i wonder if i prefer the idea of life, but not the reality. i have thought on this for a long time.
because i love both. but one is less threatening somehow, uncomplicated by the raw experience of work or pain.
i think i realized last night on my ride that since my world is turning, or rather, i am turning my world, i am not certain which reality i want to buy into. which ideas are mine. which behaviors i will exhibit out of fear, or love. what the difference really looks like anyway. then again, sometimes i believe that i’m not changing what i believe at all, but am instead becoming more open to contradictions and the experience of not deciding.
because i do know what i believe in. i just don’t always know what to do with it.
.
