So there’s no topic in particular today which means that everything is on the table. I’m going to close my eyes and see what happens.

Whenever people ask me what I write, upon finding that I am a writer, I usually say, whatever shows up. It’s been a while since I did that.
And yes, my eyes are closed. Let’s see how familiar the keys are, how easily my finders find their way around. I have no intention to edit, but I am sure the spelling mistakes, of which there are less than expected, will get the better of me, and I will give up on this experiment. Words deserve to be spelled correctly.

“And so you see, the problem is, you think you have time”
Jack Kornfield

“Well, how did I get here?”
David Byrne

She would find her way, the way they all had, by trial and error. Through hardships untold and other lines from labyrinth espousing the honour of a good adventurous quest to find oneself. Every day she would unpack a little more, giving rise to the notion that we arrive whole, and are broken by a near constant forgetting of who that person is, with the influence of the world around us. Not through any fault of those who love us, for they too have been taught to forget themselves. It’s much easier to glue fragments of people interspersed with anomalous cultural provisos than it is to impose one’s will onto whole and unbroken people.

There is nothing resembling a straight line in the trajectory of our paces, there is nothing so distant as a short cut, and yet we seek ways to make things easier by adding more effort, and taking more time. I’m not talking about the benefits of being able to drive a car over a distance in a matter of hours that before would have taken a generation or two. I’m talking about the need to fill time with entertainment, with the inability to entertain myself…

Okay I said I wouldn’t edit, but this isn’t going in a direction that feels proper. Not that it’s improper to talk about the endless distraction of the times we live in, but that the direction it’s taking is a distraction in itself.. And I can’t stand the spelling mistakes anymore. I’m going to do the rest with eyes open. I feel like that is a good way to face things anyhow, though going by feel does have great merit in certain situations.

Everything comes from somewhere. Words have origin stories, as do we all. When one walks in the woods, it’s important to look at your back trail, where you have been is just as important to recognize as where you are going. Otherwise you will get lost if there is ever a need to go back. And I think it’s good to go back now and then. To recall what prompted this journey in the first place. I have so many moments where I look around, dazzled by how far I’ve come, how my life has improved, changed, seemingly dramatic shifts in temperament, geography, perspective. But all the signs were there if I looked around often enough to recognize them.
Sometimes it feels as though the changes happen so quickly, I don’t have time to process, and it’s the kind of scenario where taking a moment to stop and look around means the opportunity passes. Sometimes it’s better to jump and hope that the landing is soft, because hard or soft, the landing itself is inevitable. Gravity is like that.

There is such a sweeping macro/micro shift happening at the moment, both in the world and my world. Outdated mindsets are being left behind by myself and quite a few others, while many are digging in heels to resist the inevitable change that comes, though rarely so instantaneous and irrevocable as a global pandemic inspires.
I think about it all the time, and yet rarely ever. It’s almost as thought it’s too big to look at directly, so I sort of exist to the side, doing my thing while adapting as best I can to the guidelines invoked to deal with a situation that we only have history and a day by day exploration to learn from. I’ve read so much about the big events, my favourite genre is historical fiction, and while there were times I look back on with a hindsight perspective that they were monumental moments, it’s quite something else to be witnessing such an event in real time.

It feels the height of conceit to even talk about the changes in my own life, in light of all that is happening, but the small things are just as instrumental and intrinsic as the big ones.

But even so, I’ve run out of steam a bit. I let myself wander away from the plot, these are tumultuous times after all, and while I do feel like I’ll get back there at some point, it won’t be tonight. Tomorrow’s prompt is Seduction, and I’m sure I’ll find something saucy to say about that.

I used to get so hung up on finishing a wordy ramble with some cohesive wrap up. But having a point isn’t always the point. I feel it’s more important to exercise regularly, even if it’s just a little bit each day, rather than what I used to do where I would decide to be an expert at pushups, write a novel in one sitting, knit an entire rainbow of legwarmers before I’d learned to cast off. So while it might not seem as though this went anywhere in particular, it feels like enough that it went somewhere at all.