A leaf

It's easier to know what you don't want than what you do, so often because what you don't want exists, and you don't know what what you want is.

I don't want to die but I've never really wanted to live either. I prefer to be a leaf on the stream. I say prefer, but inertia is not so much a preference as an aversion to the converse.

I find I like so little that the world becomes tiny. But I like driving home on a sunny spring day, the flowers in the hedgerow, the world green and fresh. I like the water in Tingalpa Creek, the smell of eucalypts, being so stoned I cannot fret, Scotland's shame, sitting out here on a cool night with a cigar, Outhouse by Nathan Fake, knowing that I will soon be walking on the cliffs at Zennor, Zenita's smile, making my boy feel safe, my golden girl, Lorca.

There's a lot to like if you are able to float on the breeze and keep your feet from touching the quicksand.

I like you too, or I would if you were willing to be likeable. I'm pathetically easy to please. How can a leaf on the breeze be anything else?

I am old enough to be my dad. That's a weird fucking thing. But it's not something to be discontent about. I feel tired, and sometimes sorely tried, but I do not feel entirely disheartened. How could I? I have a good heart; I have faith in that; and I have faith in my fellow man, which nothing has ever managed to disabuse me of.

I believe you can lift me up, and I can you. I won't stop believing it, no matter how small you insist on being. I believe in you because life without belief is a shell of a thing, a deeply unsatisfying cavern to throw yourself into.

I cannot be a nihilist because even if there is nothing, it will always be better to believe that something lies just around the corner, maybe out of reach, but always in our imagining, something like freedom. I cannot be a nihilist because I have to believe we can free ourselves, because if we cannot, I cannot, and that is too much to bear.

Sigh. I'm sure I had something else to say. Or nothing else to say. In a blog, they're much the same thing, right?

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:23 pm