Ride The White Pony

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January 19, 2004

Horizon

There are days when you must tear the world down
Before it gets to you.
A smile simply a foreign and unwelcome adversary.
Impossible and demanding. Vicious, even.

Days when dissatisfaction, inconvenience, details, frustration, or fatigue break through the lines of your defense - turning you into that petulant beast whom you yourself despise, but are at present too weak to keep at bay. The one who spits and snaps, or at very least wants to, at anyone and everyone who dares cross its path. Drawing breath is tiresome, a nuisance strangely reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. The world is purged of color, and worth no more than a fixed scowl. Your mere presence on the planet feels forced and unenviable. Creation is stifled, tolerance discarded, and all is moving at a frenzied pace. Oh, the energy it requires on these days not to rip heads off! Tear chunks of innocent flesh off the unsuspecting victims, and shake it around violently in your teeth like an animal before casting it angrily down in your wake. Exhausting.

Sometimes the taste in your mouth is a bad one. Bitter, nauseating, safe. who knows.
Can it be avoided, or stopped once begun? Is it a choice?
Have we the strength, the understanding?
Don't we all go through it sometimes? Perhaps these imperfections are the traits that we all share. The ugliness that makes us all the same, all faulted, all human. Maybe that's what really links us to each other. We'd like to think there are better ones, though, don't we?

And in these times of trouble, we can escape to bed, to our dreams and the ramblings of our unconscious mind. A place where nothing is strange, inappropriate, or beyond reproach. A place where we are emboldened to explore what we cannot comprehend in waking life. Strengthen our strongholds on sanity or propriety with a thick down comforter, scented sheets, silence, stillness, maybe even a familiar warmth that is needlessly generous in the soundless dark. If we're lucky, we wake freed of the demon that chased us from life the day before. If not, we usually have a moment or two of blissful ignorance before it all comes crashing back down around our ears.

And some days it is enough to simply be. Strangers evoke smiles, drawing breath seems a treasure, existing feels natural, things have purpose. Days when you're reminded of the color in the world. The scent of holding something closely and just breathing it in. Doing nothing feels like a supreme and long-coveted luxury.

I have both.
I can explain neither.
I enjoy what I can,
and seek to change what I do not enjoy.
I'm a work in progress.

Posted by kati at January 19, 2004 05:05 AM

Comments

Posted by: erica at January 20, 2004 07:21 PM

Posted by: Alan at January 22, 2004 09:45 PM