2006-05-23

Caffeine is only temporary

There was one who was astonished how easily he moved along the road of eternity; the fact is he was racing along it downhill.

Franz Kafka, unknown.

I used to wait before writing because I believed I needed something special to write about - some kind of divine inspiration perhaps, an impetus I could not explain but which guided my pen, my thoughts, ceaselessly onward to some distant shore. I don't believe that anymore. Call it the increasing humiliation of being alive, of gathering experience, a rain catcher accumulating the drops that fall in its stead. To wait is to err, and yet we are human, and so we will err. But I'm a bit tired of waiting.

I don't care about the impact of the words anymore. I care about the impact of my fingertips at the keys, and whether I captured what I really wanted to say. But, better to say it imperfectly than never at all.

And following from that, and also perversely contrary to the previous thoughts, I care about the long-term now, whereas I used to believe in motion for the sake of motion, and travel for the sake of travel. It is sometimes better to sleep than to get up early, to map it out and plan for the time you won't be here anymore, than to simply punch the ticket and take the ride. I never used to think that, but now I do.

And motion, it will always find us anyway and it will carry us, in great waves of abandonment we move, all the faces we know flying past us, turning as if in dream, circling inward, like crows to the carrion; a river frothing at its shores is forever and never changing - every particle present for a second and then gone forever, part of something greater that will march on into the sea. All straight lines circle sometime. Six hundred regrets and more, sowed only in private grief. We don't need them anymore.

I’m sure I will sound normal once more. Caffeine is only temporary.

Tell me when this blog is updated

email: