THE QUICKSAND AND THE DEAD

I've noticed lately that my blog posts are coming fewer and farther between while my time on that damned elliptical has increased exponentially. I am now remaining on the bloody thing in excess of two hours daily and am reluctant to dismount even when that respectable milestone has been met.

This might indicate a couple of things:  1.) I have nothing more to say, and  2.) I am running away from home.

Of course, my leave-taking is purely theoretical, as my body is the only part of myself given permission to actually do any running.  Yet it is definitely being egged on by my mind, which got the idea from my emotional state because, quite frankly, I'm fed up with trying to manage them all.

I'm fed up by many things these days.

Perhaps I should rephrase that.  Stating I am "fed up" implies that there has been an erosion of patience brought about by the million small inconveniences and adjustments I've had to oblige and make room for in a soul already crushed by the weight of its own shortcomings.  That isn't entirely accurate.  Not entirely.

Those millions of small hurdles are normal and perfectly acceptable especially given the lengthening bones of clarity and understanding they lend to my psychological stride once I make it to the other side of enduring.  Who cannot wade through a lifetime of pedestrian near-misses and patient side-stepping and not emerge having developed some level of passive assurance that it will all make sense in the end?   You almost have to or the alternative option of an early check out would be overwhelming.

No.  I'm not fed up.  I'm foreign.

Suddenly, I have forgotten my own language.  My thoughts pass through the same portals of interpretation as they have for fifty-four years, yet I no longer understand what I say to myself.  It is almost as if I've been summarily saddled with a Mandarin guide for my English-speaking psyche.

Even my body, once so patently reliable and subjectively native, lately functions more as an extrinsic vessel of questionable origin whose operational capabilities seems less internally orchestrated but instead are responsive to some remote organizational force with which I have no real communication.   It would seem I am no longer present in my own skin.

Last week I lived in the world as me.  This week I am a foreign exchange student from another dimension wondering just how long this midlife inculcation will take before I will finally be able to communicate through more than my eyes and exaggerated gestures alone.

There aren't very many reasons to continue manufacturing dialogue when the only one listening is you and you can't understand yourself anymore.  I've gone quiet for lack of interest; self or otherwise.

Ironically, during my protracted galavanting on that damned elliptical, my mind never ceases producing words and trying to string them together hoping for a yield of useful thoughts and concepts.   It is done mostly out of habit and while it produces little that I have been able to successfully translate into my former tongue, the effort remains sincere and steadfast.

After two hours I usually come away with the faint skeletal etchings of at least one poem, two blog posts, a half-dozen correspondences (to people I no longer know but will never forget) and one suicide note just to remain in touch with my edgy, tortured side.

While my insatiable curiosity as to how this life will all turn out prevents the consideration of suicide as a viable exit strategy, I find it important not to thoroughly dismiss the commotion generated by those prosperous inhabitants in the dark corners of possibility or they are likely to well up into probability.  I learned when my son played football that the best offense is always a good defense, and there is no tactic quite as disarming as to engage an attentive ear.  Just ask Julius Caesar.  "E tu Brute?"

What can I say?  Lately these maudlin toads of dark sentiment and emotional dysfunction have been beating my ear.  But I'm polite.  I listen, and even though my ability to interpret much of anything is presently stymied,  I understand enough morose-ese to have momentarily succumbed to the hard blow of failure and temporary confusion as it shoves me into the quicksand of apathy.

 At least I'm not so clueless that I don't remember that as with any quagmire, earthen or otherwise, the best resolution is non-action because the more you struggle, the deeper down you will go and so quickly you won't even know what happened to you.  A lesson learned through experience as well as observation.

So while the surrounding inhabitants of the moors sleep soundly under the moonlit wash of a night sky and wake expectantly to the warm swagger of promise in another day, I remain motionless; wedded to the lone boulder of compromise that will eventually be my method of escape as soon as I recapture my resolve and restore my mental footing.

For the moment, however, I'm forced to consider anything beyond breathing as a liability.

Where the hell are those Mandarin guides when you need them?