Erosion

I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.

Having just completed eighty hours of work for job #2, referred to at various times as "freelance", "contract", "MSN", or "tedium", I find myself worn and weary, unable to completely fathom what to do with my leisure time.

There are poems to write, books to read, movies to watch, games to play; yet time passes, and I desire none. I could sleep (I enjoy sleep), but I lay restless until I fade, and wake early in a wilderness. Getting out of bed is a victory until the realization I have nowhere to go. I am energy sans release, I am pent, energy sans release.  Soul clenched, I stalk through the days, marking them off, a trail of knife-scored trees I’ll never pass again, lost in pursuit of the horizon.

It’s numbing, these long weeks where my days consist of waking, working, driving home, working, and sleeping. Perhaps much of my past was merely training, building endurance so that I can maintain some measure of tranquility and grace.  I do fairly well, but at times, it is hard. Am I the shore which the tide gradually erodes? Or the tide itself, futilely hurling myself against the same unyielding landscape?

I am unsure, but it is not rewarding, aside from the financial benefit and necessity. I neither mind work nor hard work, but it will always be what I *do*, not what I *am*; I am not the type of person that can build my life around that empty routine.  Discontent is erosion is discontent.  Am I being washed away?  I petition quietly because I want more, need more–yes, deserve more–than a life of constant toil. 

Tide or shore, water or rock, currents of ocean or sand? I do not know.  Hope is a vantage point; it is a man huddled beneath the shelter he has built, fervently rubbing sticks together and hoping a flame is kindled into being.

Tinder
    clear ground
wooden debris
dry grass
bird down
cloth squares dipped in wax
gasoline mixed with dirt
exposed
   
Spark
direct
flint on
steel on
rock and
ignite in
the lower windward side

Fuel
slowly add
kindling
(after the tinder has ignited)
progressively larger pieces
sustenance
fuel

Oxygen
fire built
loosely
to ensure it
can
circulate
and
breathe

Warmth is beauty is yen, whether it’s radiant coals or an emotion shared or the press of flesh against yours.  It is intimacy, it is growth, it is abandon.

And I miss it in my life.